Windows Phone 7 - Anyone else picking one up in the morning?

[MysticLlama]

Here's to hoping I'm the only one that cares and there's no line.

[island911]

I'm thinking Bell square. you?

[MysticLlama]

Century Square, 2 blocks from my parking garage, makes it easy hopefully.

[Halm]

I want to grab one of the Samsung's but I am 6 months out from my "upgrade" window so it would cost me $500. . . Will have to think long and hard about that.

[MysticLlama]

I think once you're within 6 months they'll give you the subsidized price, for another 2 year re-up of course.

So far I'm liking it, the line wasn't too bad, got there 15 before opening, was out 15 after opening, was 4th in line. There were probably about 10 people waiting though once I was out. I also got an unadvertised $100 off and no activation as a launch day special.

[red-beard]

I just 'upgraded' to the HD2, 6 months ago, so I'm going to wait a little bit. They do not have any approved programs to allow connection to a PC for internet sharing, so that is another reason to wait. I also like the look of the Dell unit with the slide out keyboard...

[gtc]

Ok, lets see the "unboxing."

[MysticLlama]

It was in a box, no pics, look them up from someone who has much more time to waste.

The Dell does look pretty nice, not sure what the timeframe on on of those is going to be yet.

The big gap that I see right now is no remote desktop app, hopefully that won't take too long. Tethering would be nice too, but I don't think I'd get a ton of use out if it at this point, and my old phone didn't do it, so wasn't used to it anyhow.

[Halm]

I went by a corporate store at 11AM to look at a Focus. According to them, the entire city of Charlotte was already sold out. But that is not a surprise in that there have been reports for 2 weeks now about manufacturing supply chaim issues.

[MysticLlama]

Ouch.

I've heard the same thing about the Omnia 7 (Euro version of the same phone), I'm guessing the Captivate would be affected as well, it seems to be a constriction of the Super AMOLED 4" screens.

The Captivate already has a bunch of stock built up though since its an Android phone.

[island911]

Well, I went, I saw, I tested. Great hardware, and the 'active tiles' are very cool, fast and usable, but text input is found only with the on-screen keyboard. ...no speech to text, except in Bing (which is nothing new) :-/

[design rant] WTF is with these feature choices? It's as if all of the product architects learned all of their skillz from little-league soccer (aka "Herd-ball") I mean, c'mon, just because the rest of the kids are drawn towards a design solution doesn't mean that everyone has to run to it. --like a herd of kids to a soccer-ball. Cap-sense is not as precise as resistive, yet everyone is running to it. The on-screen keys are NOT the best input solution. ..yet everyone is running to it.

Yes, I know . . ."but there's an app for that" [/design rant]

Well, I haven't seen the Dell phone yet. At least it has hard keys.

I'm think that I'll be keeping my HTC a while longer. (even though I'm well past the 2year mark.)

[MysticLlama]

The keyboard seems alright, nothing great or terrible. I'd say it's not really any slower than my Blackjack II, though I thought it would be.

One bummer is that you can't swap out keyboards like you can on Android. Rachel is running Swype on hers, and I have to say, it's pretty cool, and it's predictor is great.

There are definately a few gaps, and some things that I'd change, but we'll just have to see how it evolves. For how behind MS is, it's really pretty decent. I wouldn't expect it to be as good as a current Android or iPhone since there has been all of two weeks of really real world testing at this point.

The problem with resistive mass-market is that people destroy them, especially on subsidized devices, I think it's a durability thing.

I usually have computers around anyway, if I want to really rip into an e-mail, I'm unlikely to do it from my phone anyhow. *shrug*

[island911]

Originally Posted by MysticLlama

...
One bummer is that you can't swap out keyboards like you can on Android. R...

Exactly what I'm talking about.

My current phone has the (now) ubiquitous thumb keys, also a mini/full keyboard (stylus/fingernail point pick) which allows ctrl/x ctrl/v . . Or, chose the transcriber (just write on the screen) Or, for the old-schoolers out there, palm gestures --all those on one device. Like you say, the HTC Android phones have the speech-to-text option. I was really hoping the phone 7 would at least have that.

I'm usually near a cmptr too, but I do like my lists, calendar and the ability to quickly respond to an email when on the road.

[MysticLlama]

Hopefully it'll get better, I've already run into a few issues.

Have to remember it's a rewrite, so can't just count on old stuff working.

There seem to be weird usability quirks, at least for the way *I* want to use it. I hate devices that think they know what's best for me. I'm guessing a few things will change quickly.

First big big annoyance. Have to have a live account to use the market, no big deal, similar to itunes. But.... your first Live account you sync (I have one I use for IM) will sync contacts, photos, etc. and you can't change that. If you add a second Live account you can.

So I ended up locking my phone to a bunch of IM contacts that don't have valid email addresses or phone #s, thus cluttering up my People page... LAME! Had to reset the phone to do that over.

[Halm]

Okay, so I called what I think is the main corporate store here in town. They had one more Focus. I talked the manager into a discount off the the "No committment" price and got it. Lots of things to like so far but clearly not mature like iPhone or Android. My gripe is no way to add new ringtones and the required Zune software to sync pictures, music, etc.

So far, so good. But this is a work in progress and we won't know much about its future for 5-6 months.

[island911]

good choice. That Samsung focus is a nice bit of kit. Great in-hand feel. and really sharp/bright screen.

T mobile has the HD7. I thought that Verizon (my carrier) would have it, but no.

Rob, Which one did you get?