HTC's Radar 4G and Nokia's Lumia 800
Once upon a time, the name “Windows” stood for something. Several things, actually. It was (and is) the world’s dominant personal computer operating system–a huge, powerful, feature-rich, messy, often infuriating and largely unavoidable piece of software. Windows’ market share has been so overwhelming for so long that there are adults who don’t know what life was like before it.
And then came last year’s Windows Phone 7.
Nominally the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5, the new version had virtually nothing in common with any previous Microsoft operating system. For one thing, it was the darkest of dark horses in the smartphone race led by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. (A recent study puts its market share at an anemic 1.5 percent.) More important, Windows Phone 7 was a spritely, streamlined piece of software with an all-new user interface that was–I’m pretty sure I’ve never applied this word to a Microsoft product before–delightful.
It was also a work in progress. Like Apple, Microsoft followed what I think of as the Benjamin Button school of software design: From the get-go, it gave its new mobile operating system a look and feel that were strikingly mature and thoughtful, knowing it could add more capabilities later. (Google, by contrast, started by packing Android with functions. Only now, with version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, is it focusing on making the software as personable as it is powerful.)
This year’s edition of Windows Phone is version 7.5, also known by the codename Mango. The first major upgrade, it’s got most of the stuff that was conspicuously absent in version 7, including multitasking, cut-and-paste, unified e-mail that puts all your accounts in one inbox with threaded conversations, multiple-calendar support, custom ringtones and much more. For the first time, Windows Phone feels fully baked.
Microsoft’s operating system isn’t on anywhere near as many phones as Android is, but AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless all offer at least one Windows model apiece. I tried HTC’s snow-white Radar 4G, which is available on T-Mobile for $149.99 with a two-year contract; a $50 mail-in rebate brings the final cost down to $99.99. It’s a nice handset, one that neither mimics the iPhone’s industrial design excessively nor mindlessly follows the fad for massive screens. And like all Windows Phones, it has a dedicated button for the camera, which makes snapping photos a cinch.
I also spent time with Nokia’s Lumia 800, the Finnish phone giant’s first Windows handset. That may seem like a quixotic decision considering that the Lumia isn’t for sale in the United States. But Nokia, alone among the world’s phonemakers, has adopted Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform, and plans to bring models to the U.S. next year. That could be good news, judging from this curvy, polycarbonate-clad phone–it’s one of the most handsome models I’ve seen in a long time.
So why would anyone bypass the smartphone field’s two obvious choices, iPhone and Android, in favor of a Microsoftian handset? Really, there are two primary reasons why you might–and should–consider a Windows Phone.
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The first is that inventive, intuitive user interface. Microsoft calls it Metro. It hasn’t changed a bit from Windows 7.5, and unlike Android, it owes little to the iPhone. Instead, it exudes its own personality. (One idiosyncratic touch I liked: When the battery dies, your phone says goodbye before it shuts down.)
Instead of icons, Metro is built around Tiles–oversized, widget-like blocks that in some cases contain visual or textual information. The Pictures Tile, for instance, shows a photo from your collection, and the Calendar one lists your next appointment. And Tiles don’t just represent apps: You can set one up for a particular person or a group of people, for instance.
Swiping from side to side lets you move between an app’s various screens; holding the Back button now gets you thumbnails of all open apps, allowing you to bop among them. On both the Radar and the Lumia, the experience is fluid and responsive.
Above all else, the Metro interface is simple, with big, easy-to-read fonts and a lack of unneccessary visual fripperies. For single-handed use, it’s just about perfect–you can cradle the handset in your palm and use your thumb to tap and swipe your way around the interface.
(Even if you never buy a Windows Phone, incidentally, you may end up getting acquainted with Metro. Windows 8, due next year, will bring a scaled-up version to laptops and desktop PCs.)
Mango also sports some new voice-control features. They’re nowhere near as clever and futuristic as the Apple 4S’s Siri, but are plenty useful on their own terms. You can speak commands to perform tasks such as making a call or opening an app, and can dictate e-mails and text messages. (Dictation, sadly, isn’t available anywhere you’d normally type on the on-screen keyboard, as it is on Android phones and the iPhone 4S.)
Beyond the winning interface, the operating system’s second defining feature is its bevy of built-in social networking features, an emphasis which Microsoft alludes to in its new tagline, “Put People First.” It goes far beyond the social tools in rival mobile environments, such as the iPhone’s Twitter integration and Ice Cream Sandwich’s support for Google services like Google+ and Picasa. At times, in fact, Windows Phone feels less like an operating system and more like an uncommonly ambitious, wide-ranging app for managing the people in your life.
As in Windows Phone 7, version 7.5 stitches together a master list of your friends, acquaintances and family members, which it calls People. It can now meld together information from your address book, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Windows Live. You can use People to make calls, send text messages and address e-mails, but you can also browse photos, status updates and other items relating to any individual. It’s easy to group together related people, such as high school classmates or poker buddies. And you can Tweet, post Facebook updates and check in without loading up a third-party app.
For the most part, all this works well. Mango did, however, mistakenly conflate my information with that of a Facebook acquaintance of mine who happens to share my name. It assigned his birthday to me and helpfully brings his pals’ comments to my attention–both of which were startling given that he’s a sixteen-year-old boy. As far as I can tell, there’s no way to explain to the operating system that he’s a different Harry McCracken.
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Other bundled Windows Phone 7.5 apps that aren’t so people-centric are also fancier this time around. The newly spruced-up Bing program, for instance, lets you search by typing, typing or taking a photo of a real-world object and includes a Shazam-like feature that can listen to music and then identify it. (Bing-o-phobes can use Google to search in the Internet Explorer browser, but Microsoft isn’t about to go out of its way to make it easy.)
These days, of course, third-party apps are as critical to a phone operating system as the ones it comes with. When the first Windows Phone 7 devices showed up a year ago, a thousand apps were ready in Microsoft’s store. Now there are 40,000 of them–far short of the hundreds of thousands available for iPhone and Android, but a critical mass of sorts. Many are quite good: They use the Metro interface to achieve a feel unlike anything you’ll find on an iPhone or an Android device.
A bunch of big-name mobile apps are present and accounted for, but hardly all of them. You can get Netflix but not Hulu; Foursquare but not Instagram; Spotify but not Pandora. Skype, despite being recently purchased by Microsoft, is currently a no-show. Some software doesn’t yet fully support the new multitasking capability: Each time I went to the Twitter app, it displayed a splash screen and loaded Tweets from scratch.
Bottom line: If you pick a phone based primarily on the quality and quantity of available software–which is a perfectly intelligent strategy–the iPhone still rules.
I also found that the Web as experienced in Windows Phone 7.5’s version of Internet Explorer has its disappointments. Some sites that deliver slick versions customized for iPhones and Android handsets show up on Windows Phone in more rudimentary mobile incarnations. (You get a dumb-phone version of Gmail, for instance.) I believe this may not have much to do with Windows Phone’s abilities–it’s more likely that site owners are simply oblivious to this operating system and haven’t bothered to support it well.
Lastly, Windows Phone continues to lag the newest versions of Apple and Google’s operating systems when it comes to letting a phone act as a stand-alone, fully wireless computing device rather than a mere PC peripheral. It does let you get at Office documents stored in Windows Live’s SkyDrive online storage, but I was surprised at how often the formatting was wonky or I was permitted only to view a file, not edit it. And while you can stream music directly to the handset, Microsoft’s Zune Pass service for buying music and movies still expects you to sync the phone with a Windows PC running Zune software. (Mac users don’t have access to the full-blown Zune Pass service, but can use a different piece of software to sync a Windows Phone with their iTunes music.)
For all that Microsoft has done right with Windows Phone 7.5, the competition with Apple and Google remains daunting. Microsoft has proven that it can build a pleasing modern phone operating system, but it hasn’t yet figured out how to make it into a hit. Even phone buyers who are intrigued by this platform might feel more confident about it if there were more signs that it won’t suffer the early demise of its ancestor, the legendarily unsuccessful Zune music player.
Still, I think phone shoppers who are the least bit adventuresome should take a look at Windows Phone 7.5 before assuming it’s not for them. It’s a choice, not an echo. And I hope Microsoft keeps plugging away at this market, regardless of the new version’s commercial success. Back in the 1990s, the conventional wisdom was that the company never got any product right or found much success with it until the third try. If that turns out to be true with Windows Phone, the next version could really be something.
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McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he’s @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every week on TIME.com.
A previous version of this article stated that Spotify was not available for Windows Phone. It was released earlier this month.