(I wrote this over at Ars last week. I now have my iPhone 4 back!)
First let me say I love Windows Phone 7 and I want it to succeed. I am a big gamer and I love Xbox LIVE and the Xbox 360. (I love my acheivements!) But sadly, I've come to the realization since that day on November 8 when WP7 hit the US that it is not ready for prime time. Coming from iOS (understandably a more mature platform) to WP7 was a tough transition and ultimately I am going back to the iPhone 4. I rely on my phone for business and personal use. I am on it constantly, even more than my PC/Mac and iPad.
The WP7 OS itself is awesome. BUT, the beauty of the iPhone is that there ONE DEVICE and Apple has FULL CONTROL over it. I've been using the Samsung Focus and it is an excellent device. But quite simply there is NO device IMO that can match the quality and experience of using an iPhone.
The killer feature I miss more than anything is the "retina display". My wife still has her iPhone 4 and every time I looked at that screen and go back to the Focus it's all I can think about. There is noticeably less eye strain when reading text on the iPhone 4. I even enjoy reading emails on the iPhone 4 more than the iPad because of the display. The Focus has a Super AMOLED screen that is quite impressive in it's own right but simply can't match the iPhone 4. iOS task switching is also something I miss dearly. The back button is not a replacement for this. I can't wait until October for the WP7 update (heck the NoDo update isn't even here yet), and seeing the recent stubmles with the first update who knows if Mango will even ship this year. Lastly knowing the iPhone 5 is coming in June and to still be stuck with the Focus is something that really weighed on me. (Although, not sure I will be eligible to upgrade when the 5 comes out, but that's another matter)
I think Microsoft has a great thing going here, I only hope the recent stumbles with the first "update" are not indicative of future performance. Windows Phone 7 is truly a joy to use. For a version 1 OS it is very impressive. But for my use, I need to go back to iOS.
Here's some more WP7 (Samsung Focus) annoyances (besides the screen) that I've been able to learn over the past 4 months....
-- Focus battery life is not acceptable. I am a heavy user and by 2PM I am having to plug it in. Once battery hits 40% or so it dives down quickly.
-- Zune Marketplace hangs constantly requiring a RESET. MS apparently knows about the issue but due to their inability to issue frequent updates this hasn't been fixed and who knows when it will be.
-- Also documented is skipping before changing songs in the last 10 seconds or so. Quite annoying especially with no skip albums like concerts
-- There is a bug that pictures taken on the Samsung Focus cannot be saved to the iOS Photo Library. So for example if I text a pic to my wife on her iPhone 4, when she tries to save it to the Photo Library the picture is corrupted(grey ".jpg" icon)
-- Inconsistent Search button behavior. In Native apps it searches within the app, but others apps it exits the app and launches Bing search
-- All the Twitter apps suck
-- No Sirius/XM app (not MS's fault, but still)
-- No in app email (meaning apps have to reload when coming back to the app) makes emailing from other apps slow and take longer than necessary
-- Devs has no access to the camera hardware so there are no cool photo apps like Hipstamatic and barecode scanning apps have to EXIT the app to access the camera and bring the pic back in (slow)
-- No auto focus (have to use HW button)
-- Camera settings are not saved (I did see MS say this was a "feature", huh?)
