Here are my thoughts on the user experience of Windows 7 Phone and HTC Android 2.2.
First off: Finally! Phones that makes sense and to some degree can predict what I want to do when I want to do it. The Android (with HTC overlay "Sense") is really good. Especially the mapping app that lets me use and interact (share) with Google maps on the go: In Berlin in November last year I had agreed to meet with some friends. We'd agreed on an area and that I should pick out a restaurant. I found a restaurant that looked fine, entered got a table, whipped out my phone and started Google Maps. The app found my location. I could tap it and the name and adress of the restaurant popped up. I could then choose "Share" and send the adress and name to my friends. They received a text from me with the information and could just choose "Map it" and then ask their phone to use the built in GPS navigation to direct them to the place. Really cool. There are glitches - sure - but they are minor. Only downside on the phone I had was the hardware which couldn't always match the apps I wanted.
Windows Phone 7 has a user interface that just blows me away. It looks so sweet and acts so smooth. Unfortunately it is still very US-centric which makes it less usefull here in Denmark. Mapping sucks big time. The maps look nice enough and the phone finds the location pretty quickly. BUT: there's nothing there. Searching brings out Bing entries of WIKI stuff and businesses in Seattle. Not really usefull when I'm in Copenhagen. This *may* be rectified in the Danish release later this year. But I'm not really all that hopeful as this is a Bing-map "feature" or lack of it, rather than a crappy phone app. Also: The dialing list (recent numbers) does not collapse callers - so I have a very, very long list of the same 3 people I call most and the rest waaaay down the list. I normally use this list as I tend to call the same 10 people most, and would rather not have to go through the adress book and search every time. On the same note the keyboard for the phone does not look up in the adress book (as the Andorid does - which is really cool). I'm annoyed by the many US-centric features and some of the not so thought-through solutions MS have come up with. But I still love the phone and mostly because the interaction is so sleek.
