A week with Windows Phone 7

It may not make you swoon, but this mobile OS is competitive

For reasons I cannot understand, I found myself at Union Square in San Francisco on Black Friday. This is unlike me, being one who prefers Christmas shopping at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday when crowds are lightest. But I went to Union Square -- one of the busiest retail centers in the country -- anyway to snap some holiday photos (left) on a Windows Phone 7 smartphone, which I found to be one of its many attributes.

The phone in question was the HTC 7 Surround on loan from AT&T Mobility, which, along with T-Mobile, are the only carriers so far in the U.S. selling devices running Phone 7, Microsoft’s make-or-break comeback in the mobile smartphone business. While I can’t say that Phone 7 offers the religious experience testified to by fans of the Apple iPhone, it clearly is a contender and Microsoft and its carrier/handset partners stand to sell a bunch of them.

Of course, a “bunch” is a weasel word if there ever was one. Early reports were that Microsoft sold a modest 40,000 units, but that was only the first day and Microsoft knows it’s going to take longer to build demand to iPhone or Google Android levels.

By now you’ve seen the Phone 7 home screen with its array of, not application icons, but tiles for the different main functional areas of the device. There are about 15 tiles by default for Phone, E-mail, Messaging, Internet Explorer, Facebook and the like, but more that you can add or swap for existing ones. Icons for additional available apps are listed on another screen for you to touch and briefly hold until the words “pin to start” appear. Click that and the app tile appears on the home screen. I successfully added an app that allows you to create a list of stocks to follow.

Phone 7 also delivers as advertised by arranging itself around the people in your life rather than the apps on your phone. This device, having been loaned to several other people before me, has hundreds of contacts in the directory, with contact information including phone, e-mail, Facebook account, physical address, whatever info the person has elected to share. This is not unprecedented in the world of smartphones but it is smartly presented on Phone 7.

The camera was a pleasant surprise and one of the best I’ve ever used on a smartphone. I’ve suffered some truly crummy ones, but this 5.0 megapixel camera with auto-focus took sharp, stable pictures. A Phone 7 feature allows you to share a photo via e-mail or Facebook, send in a text message or upload to SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud-based destination for storing and sharing photos.

Oh yes, and for those who want their smartphone for doing work, one of the default tiles is for Office, allowing you to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint and OneNote. While I successfully created a document, sent it from the phone to my laptop and back again, I would probably need a bit more time to fully explore the capabilities of Office on Phone 7. Network World’s Jon Brodkin did a pretty decent drill-down on it in October.

In sum, I have only one complaint about Phone 7: Stop talking about it on “Hawaii Five-O!” Cripes, it’s one thing to get a product placement on a TV show, but Phone 7 has become a recurring character! Danno’s a technology Luddite who can’t compose an e-mail. In one scene, Chin Ho tells him “Y’know, if you start typing a word it completes the word for you,” while Steve McGarrett tutors him that, “If you turn it sideways, it’s easier to type.”

If Phone 7 solves the crime in the next episode, I’m going to stop watching the show!

• Microsoft
• Windows
• AT&T Mobility
• HTC
• Windows Phone 7