Windows Phone 7 apps

I've had my Windows Phone for over a month. (I went from the Lumia 710 to 800 as my 710 was faulty. The 800 is better in every way.) Here's a list of apps that I'm using.

Wordament: Boggle where you compete against everyone else playing the game at the same time. Really well implemented and completely addictive. Having that "you vs the Internet" is an excellent feature. I can play in Spanish now too. Genial. Free

NextGen Reader: Superb RSS reader. Best I've used on any device. $2.50

AU Weather Pro: Australia only, but best weather app I've used on either WP7 or iOS. I love the customisable live tiles! I have current temperature plus 2 day forecast on one side, and radar on the other side. $3

Call Credit: It tracks your call and data use. Works really well. Free

YouTube Download: Download any YouTube video so you can replay it whenever you want. $1

Skype: Finally out of beta. It works but it's a bit naff. Needs integrating with the OS. Needs to sort by online/offline. Needs to run in the background. Disappointing. Free

Nokia Drive: Occasionally gives the wrong advice, but generally very good. Free

Amazon Kindle: Works fine. Free

Facebook: A bit slow and a bit redundant (Facebook is basically already part of the OS). Free

Flickr: Works fine. I wish this was fully integrated into the Pictures app of the OS. Free

Office: Only time I've used this is when I needed to read my brother's Word document that he sent to me. It was all formatted really well, including images. Free

iStunt 2: Fun little game. Free (for trial version)

Skydrive: Like Dropbox but way more space. Free

Comments on Windows Phone

I bought a Nokia Lumia 710 yesterday, my first smart-phone. I've tried the iPhone quite a bit and have an iPad. I've had a play with some Android phones. Somehow Microsoft have managed to make the best mobile OS out there.

I've completely changed the default layout to be entirely people centric rather than app or service centric. It makes people with iPhones look like geeks. This came from Microsoft! Inconceivable!

Things I like:

• Metro UI. It's taking over the whole Microsoft design world. It's superb. It looks good and easy to use. Someone really needs to apply it to computer games (I'm not talking about GUI in games, but the games themselves. Imagine a FPS in a Metro style!)
• Unobstrusive. I don't like how iOS interrupts my activity with irrelevant messages.
• Linking to all my accounts was simple. Way easier than setting up my Google mail account on the iPad, for example.
• Very responsive. It loads apps very quickly. It doesn't have the clunk of iOS (and it's not even multi-core yet).
• It's a social OS. My phone revolves around people rather than mediums (calls, SMS, email), services (Facebook, LinkedIn) or apps (pictures, music, etc.)
• The base apps are really good. E.g., Nokia Drive, Office, Xbox games.
• The back button is really useful.

Things I don't like:

• Animation on the people tiles. These tiles should not change unless I have a new message. I know who the person is by their picture, I don't need the OS to switch between their picture and their name. Bad user experience Microsoft! (But it's the only poor decision I've seen thus far.)
• The link between a person and their e-mails doesn't work correctly. On a person's profile it will say I've received emails from them. When I click to see the list it lists all emails, not the emails coming solely from them. Surely this isn't an uncommon use case! Weird.
• I'm not convinced that the screen-size is large enough to use the keyboard effectively. I feel like I'm getting more typing errors than I'd expect. This could be an OS issue, screen issue, general issue with smart-phones or a me issue.
• Needs Skype integration. (Microsoft, you might not have noticed that you own Skype!)
• Needs Google+ integration. I know few use it, but most of my geeky friends do.
• The search button uses Bing. (Useless)

I'm glad I bought a Windows Phone over an iPhone or an Android phone. The integration is great. I really dislike the app hell (too many apps all over the place!) I get with Apple. The design is much better too. I still shudder when I bring up Notes on the iPad. Ick! But WP is still playing catch-up with Google and Apple. I want the future Apollo features today. Just imagine what people will be able to do with app to app communication.