Technology Lab / Information Technology

Windows Phone 7: The Ars Review


Camera and Pictures

Taking photographs is one of the most important things people do with their phones these days, and for that reason it's something Microsoft has prioritized in Windows Phone 7. Every handset will have a dedicated camera button for instant access to the camera; it should take no more than a second or two to have the phone ready to take a snap. Combined with the high minimum camera specification, it should be the ideal platform for capturing moments of drunken idiocy to post on Facebook.

The actual camera application is perhaps the area that will show the most variation from OEM to OEM. Though the basic camera interface is common to all models and includes digital zoom and both still and movie mode, the camera configuration and options are up to each OEM. The hardware companies are free to add custom image effects, more complete control over camera parameters (ISO, white balance, metering mode), or special features like shake reduction.

The camera interface itself works well, and it's particularly pleasing when you've taken a picture. The picture you just took slides off to the left of the screen, with just the edge visible; the main area of the screen reverts to being a viewfinder to take another picture. If instead of taking more shots you want to review the ones you already have, you just pan from left to right to bring the saved pictures back into view. It's as if the pictures were on some kind of literal roll of film. It's a clever mechanism, as it allows speedy operation whether you want to quickly bang out another photo or look back and admire your handiwork.

Pictures can be optionally geotagged and automatically uploaded to either Facebook or Live Skydrive. The camera roll is, of course, included in the Pictures hub.


Everything about Windows Phone 7 is unapologetically consumer-oriented, except the Office hub. I can't for the life of me understand it. Functionally, Office Mobile 2010 on Windows Phone 7 is all but identical to Office Mobile 2010 on Windows Mobile 6.5. The interface has been updated to conform to Windows Phone 7 standards, but that's about it.

It's not that I think that the ability to read and review and perform simple edits to Office documents is a bad thing. Obviously, having the ability is better than not having it. It's just that, well... there doesn't seem to me to be any great consumer need for this (nor even much in the way of corporate demand, judging by Windows Mobile 6.5's dismal market performance), and I can't help but feel that the time spent refreshing the software to give it a new interface would have been better spent doing something like updating the Zune software to resolve the far more consumer-relevant criticisms there.


The games hub is, naturally enough, the place where games live. We've known for some time that this includes Xbox Live integration: the games hub uses Xbox Live accounts, and Windows Phone 7 games can accumulate gamer score and achievements in just the same way as Xbox games can do. Earlier in the year a selection of games and developers were announced, and last week Electronic Arts was revealed to be supporting the new platform too.

Games are split into two kinds; there are games, and there are Xbox Live games. The former are just regular apps, and need only meet the standard guidelines for applications sold through the Marketplace. The latter have a higher quality standard and must include support for a demo mode and achievements. Xbox Live games can also support multiplayer, though there is no provision for online, realtime gaming; at the moment, it's strictly turn-by-turn.

The Games hub shows off your Xbox Live avatar and your gamer score. The full Xbox Live integration uses a free application, Xbox Live Extras. This allows avatar customization, Xbox Live messaging, friend list management, and more. The most fun feature is the avatar; you can prod and poke him to make him move around. Shake the phone and he'll fall over. It's a cute gimmick.

The avatar designer is the only thing I used on the phone where I was frustrated with the phone's performance. It's sluggish. While the actual animation of the avatar seems nice and quick, moving between screens to pick his clothes, hair, and so on, was jerky. The contrast with the rest of the operating system, where performance was good and animation fluid, was striking.

I must admit, I'm not an Xbox gamer, so much of the value of this was lost on me. I can imagine that messaging friends using the phone is a lot better than doing so using the Xbox 360's controller, and I know that people care a great deal about their gamer score, but it's not something that I have any real interest in. Nonetheless, the integration is smart. It's something that Microsoft can offer that Apple and Google can't.

The games themselves are, well, pretty much the kind of game you'd expect to see on a phone. There are a few free games and quite a few more paid ones. As an actual gaming platform, I feel that Windows Phone 7, much as with the iPhone, is better suited to casual games rather than anything too hardcore, thanks to the lack of hardware controls. There's a Tetris game, for example, in Marketplace, and though it has all kinds of bells and whistles and different game modes and whatnot, the use of touch-screen controls really lets it down. It's just not as easy or accessible as the venerable Game Boy version (and the music isn't as good, either). The Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are still the better platforms for people who actually want to play games.

I would have liked to see Microsoft bundle a game or two with the handset. In the dumbphone world, a couple of integrated games—Snake, maybe Solitaire—is standard. The failure to do so—a failure replicated in the iPhone—just leaves the phone feeling a bit, well, lacking. I know I can trawl through the Marketplace to find something I want to play, but I would appreciate having a few fun, simple games preinstalled. It would make showing off the phone easier, and it would also mean that the Games hub wasn't so empty by default.


Surprising as it may seem, people do occasionally want to use their smartphones for actually calling people on the telephone. I don't get it myself, but I hear it's quite popular. It all works. Not a lot you can say about telephone calls, really.

Plenty can be said about the SMS client, however, and little of it positive. Windows Mobile used to treat SMS messages as if they were more or less a different kind of e-mail. You had an inbox, an outbox, a sent messages folder; you could resend failed messages, check their status, and so on. It wasn't very pretty, but it did work well.

The Windows Phone 7 SMS client is extremely simple. I'll start with the positives; there is built-in support for MMS (picture messaging). (In Windows Mobile the core operating system didn't do MMS, so OEMs had to integrate extra third-party software to support it.) The whole thing does successfully send text messages. Those are the good bits.

The bad bits are more numerous. The only view is conversation view with little speech bubbles. I know some people, possibly even a lot of people, like conversation view for SMS, but I don't. I don't like it because it tends to group together text messages from disparate conversations—just because I am texting the same person doesn't mean that today's texts are related to all the previous ones I sent them. I would have liked an inbox-style view, at least as an alternative.

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