A week with a Windows Phone 7 – It just works!

I have had my LG WP7 phone about a week now. The best thing about it, it just works. Ok I have had a few learning issues over the Metro UI, but usually the answer is so obvious I have just overlooked it. Stupid things like I was looking for the button that was equivalent to the long press on the end key on my HTC Windows 6.5 phone to lock the phone; I had not consider the off button! A classic UTS (user too stupid) error, or maybe a user dragging old habits over to a very different way of working?

The thing that has impressed me the most so far is the voice control. In the past using a voice system usually involved recorded names and phrases and tagging them to applications or people so calls can be made. On WP7 it just works, press the button say CALL FRED BLOGGS MOBILE and it dos the rest. I have not had it fail one yet, very impressive.

The main thing I dislike most is the one I expect to dislike and that is the lack of tethering, I used my old phone as 3G modem when at client sites. It was great that I could just use my standard phone voice and data package for both phone internet access and PC internet access. I tended to not use this feature every week, but when I needed it I tended to use a lot of data, but it did not matter it was just covered by a single package at no extra charge. However, now I need an extra 3G dongle, so I have to work out whether it is more cost effective to get a PAYG dongle or an extra contract.

Another minor irritant, and this is not the operating system but the electronics, is that there is no led to show if the phone is charging or low on battery. It is all shown via the main screen. At one point I let the phone go completely flat and when I plugged it into a PC via USB to charge I saw nothing for about half an hour until there was enough power to show the screen. I though the phone was broken;, a nice little led would have fixed this for me,

So thus far it is a success, far better than my old HTC Diamond2 (but I am having to keep that in the glove box of my car to do SatNav for a while until there is WP7 solution)