Windows Phone Review, Our Take On WP7

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys this is davey here from bumbuff.com and in this video i'm going to be doing a quick review on the windows phone operating system giving you some of the things that i like about it and some of the things that i dislike about it so i'm gonna start off with the things i dislike so i can end on a positive note the first thing that i dislike about the phone or windows phone should i say is the marketplace and the reason why i dislike the marketplace isn't because the way it looks or the way it functions is because of the lack of app selection now a lot of the major apps that i use on android and both ios are on here such as angry purge is on here fruit ninja those are just some games of course facebook is on here and uh things like espn and groupon and weather channel are on here but yet there is some apps that i use on both ios and on android that aren't yet in the marketplace now that might change in the future and as developers take uh windows phone more and more seriously as more and more users start using windows phone but as of right now their the app selection just doesn't compare to android and ios so it may or may not be an issue for you but keep that in mind the next thing that bothers me with windows phone is the lack of app functionality this may be due to the fact that developers don't necessarily develop their apps as much or for their apps as much as they do on android ios and you can't really blame them because windows phone represents such a small percentage of their market but for example i'll go to alarm so this isn't even a develop or a third party developer app it's actually an app you know that's a stock uh that comes stock with the phone and you can see that when i go to my alarms options i have the ability to change the time and uh the repeats and the sound but i don't have the ability to uh change the interval in which the snooze time is so that's just one of those things that you'd expect from an alarm and yet this one doesn't have it so of course i might be able to download an app off the marketplace that takes care of that need but it just kind of goes to show you that the functionality for whatever reason seems to be a little bit less on windows phone comparatively the next thing that i have a complaint about is the lack of universal search so let's say i wanted to search uh through for a song that i have on my music player you would think you'd press search right here and uh just type in the song that you're looking for but this only searches the web uh through bing and it's a great service but it's not what i'm looking for it doesn't search my apps it doesn't search my uh my text messages and it doesn't search my music so that's one of the things that you know i've kind of come to get used to with ios and android both offering that functionality another thing that might not be a big issue for you but to me it is is the fact that you can't turn off auto rotate so the auto rotate is great on here it's really fast and responsive but you can't turn it off no matter where you go you know in the settings if you go under uh the display under brightness you know there's nothing here to do it and uh you know i've searched those settings through and through and i can't find any option to turn auto rated rotate off and the reason why i do that is because sometimes you know late at night if i get an email and i want to check it while i'm sleeping you know i'll take the phone in on my side i'll use it and uh if the phone rotates over it's kind of hard to use it like this with one hand so this is one of my complaints it's something that i've gotten used to with android being able to turn that off but uh again it might not be that big of a deal to you and for the most part you know as long as you're awake and not trying to sleep it isn't that big of an issue alright so the last thing that i really have a complaint about is the notification bar or the lack thereof you get your notifications on these live tiles which is great i mean the live tile system is really nice but the problem i have is not just the notifications but being able to check my battery life so right now i have no way to check what my battery life is by looking at the top of the screen i would have to go into my settings and uh go under battery use or battery saver to be able to tell my percentage which is 48 now of course you could tap right here on the top of the screen and this will populate but i don't see any reason why they would hide this other than maybe to look a little bit more visually appealing but to me that gets in the way of functionality and it's definitely a negative alright so enough of other things that i don't like about windows phone because honestly there's a lot more to love than i dislike and uh the first thing i'll show you is going back to the marketplace now of course i said that's something i dislike but it kind of makes up for it in the way in a way by letting me try apps out so let me show you what i mean i'm gonna go ahead and go to uh let's go to fruit ninja it's a game that cost 2.99 now on android ios you have to buy it in order to play it and on this phone you could go try unless of course there's you know there's a free trial on android but most of the time you know you don't have that option and on windows phone every single app every single game has the ability to try it out first so it's downloading it into my uh games folder and you know i could play of course it's just a little demo but being able to use it just a little gives me a better idea of whether or not i want to buy it and you know it kind of just reduces returns for the developers as well so that's definitely something i like and while we're here i want to talk about xbox live because the xbox live integration you know being a microsoft product is really nice to have on the phone um i have the ability to send or see who's online which one of my xbox friends are online be able to send them messages and uh you know just seeing my own stats and things of that nature so it's definitely something cool something that is unique to windows phone that isn't yet available for ios or android and we're not sure if it will be at all next thing i want to talk about is the live tiles so the live tiles kind of are similar to widgets on android but what's cool you can see my my people tab right here it has a collection of my twitter and my facebook uh integrated which i'll go over in just a second but you can see it's just flipping through these pictures which is kind of cool my music flips through the artists my xbox live uh tile shows my little avatar you know moving around and uh depending on what uh tile you put on here they have different sorts of functionality if they don't they're just a standard icon like this but definitely something i like about windows phone and uh let's go ahead and look at the facebook and twitter integration within the os so i'd even download an app for facebook and twitter at first i did but i realized that the integration within the os itself is better when i go over to uh my what's new tab i get all my twitter and facebook uh status updates right in here i go over here to see my recent as far as what i was looking at of course i got all my all my contacts right here with their facebook and twitter's uh all linked up and another great thing is i'll lock my screen and show you the lock screen actually shows me because it's integrated with facebook and twitter it'll show me someone's birthday so right now right here you can see it's some one of my friends birthdays and uh it really doesn't give me an excuse to forget anybody's birthdays and in the same way it'll show you a calendar event such as you know a dentist appointment so with windows 1 i feel like i'll never really forget something because every single time i unlock my phone boom i get a reminder and i swipe up and uh you know i make sure that i won't forget so it kind of helps your productivity which is one of the reasons why we get a smartphone in the first place all right so i switched back and forth between windows phone and android and ios um one thing that i like about windows phone is the music player i feel like the music player is just really well laid out it's really easy to navigate you can press the letter on here to uh see the whole alphabet and you know go to whatever letter you want for that uh artist or you could go by albums by songs and uh by playlist it all syncs up with zoom similar to the way that uh the iphone does with itunes and another thing that i like also is the picture gallery so i'll go ahead and try to see if i can load up some of my pictures in here um so i'm gonna have my albums you just go through them right here and what's really cool is i have the ability to you know look at maybe my uh one of my albums or actually know better yet i could sort them by date which is one of my favorite things so i'm able to actually look at all the dates dating back to all the oldest pictures into the newest pictures that i have on my phone so if i wanted to see you know pictures from uh november of 2007 i click click on it and boom i have them right over there so definitely a cool way to organize and look through your uh pictures and of course the pictures also uh update with your facebook so when you go into your picture gallery anybody who uploads a picture on facebook it'll show up there as well speaking of pictures uh when you use the camera what i really like is so if i launch the camera right here um so it loads up if i wanted to go to my pictures i could just swipe over to the left and i go straight to my gallery so this is a really nice way to be able to you know go in and out of your pictures and it's really fast something that i really like and again you know the whole fast theme is really what when the phone's all about that's why you see the microsoft store or the microsoft employees challenging you saying we'll give you a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars if you could beat us at a certain task so i mean that's something i really want to talk about too it's just the os of speed i mean i don't know if you've been able to uh notice throughout the review everything i pretty much click on is just about instant i mean when especially the system apps um like i said the browser makes a difference as far as the process goes i mean you can only go so or you can only optimize an os so much to load a web page but when i click on pretty much any of the system apps such as calculator or messaging and i've compared it to my iphone i've compared it to my galaxy nexus and windows 1 really does beat those other guys out and what really helps the speed is the multitasking so it's kind of similar to ice cream sandwich now but windows phone had it first where you're able to press and hold on the back button and kind of go through these windows kind of like webos in a way too of course you can't close them out by flicking on them but being able to switch in and out of apps that easily is a really nice and like like i said there is no delay there is no lag everything is almost instant when you click on it on windows phone all right so i want to finish up this review um let's talk about microsoft office really quick because i think it's worth it um to talk about it obviously being a microsoft phone you'd expect better uh word excel and power a powerpoint experience and you actually do get it i feel like you have more functionality with the word document with the excel uh documents creator and uh you could just do a lot more and again everything runs super smoothly and i've been pretty happy with the way it works uh one note is great i actually used it to take notes and it all syncs up with microsoft skydrive so when you get a new windows phone all you gotta do is sign into your live id and uh everything will be transferred back to your new phone all right so the last thing i want to talk about is the beauty of the os i feel like the os is the best looking os out there of course that's a matter of opinion but the reason why i like is because it looks really nice all the apps look nice whether you're downloading facebook or you're on xbox live everything is consistent and um also you have the ability to change the theme so it's not much custom customization as you would get on android but being able to change it a little bit is nice um something that you don't really get with ios but like i said um definitely a good looking os and definitely a fast os and the last thing that i want to talk about is i feel like you get a better bang for your buck with windows phone because of the fact that you don't need a dual core or quad-core processor to be running it uh manufacturers are able to keep the prices a little bit lower compared to some of the higher-end androids or iphones out there because of the fact that you don't need to put a quad-core processor in there and they don't need to put um you know one gig of ram in there of course they do have to pay a microsoft or microsoft a licensing fee to use it but other than that you know their costs are relatively low so a lot of times you'll find a phone like this like the hd7 which is over a year old i'm actually launched with uh windows phone like i said it probably sells for free at t-mobile if you could find them in stock all right that's pretty much it for me and this review this is dave from foambuff.com thanks for watching it and don't forget to visit foambuff.com for more cell phone news reviews and how to's thank youwhat's up guys this is davey here from bumbuff.com and in this video i'm going to be doing a quick review on the windows phone operating system giving you some of the things that i like about it and some of the things that i dislike about it so i'm gonna start off with the things i dislike so i can end on a positive note the first thing that i dislike about the phone or windows phone should i say is the marketplace and the reason why i dislike the marketplace isn't because the way it looks or the way it functions is because of the lack of app selection now a lot of the major apps that i use on android and both ios are on here such as angry purge is on here fruit ninja those are just some games of course facebook is on here and uh things like espn and groupon and weather channel are on here but yet there is some apps that i use on both ios and on android that aren't yet in the marketplace now that might change in the future and as developers take uh windows phone more and more seriously as more and more users start using windows phone but as of right now their the app selection just doesn't compare to android and ios so it may or may not be an issue for you but keep that in mind the next thing that bothers me with windows phone is the lack of app functionality this may be due to the fact that developers don't necessarily develop their apps as much or for their apps as much as they do on android ios and you can't really blame them because windows phone represents such a small percentage of their market but for example i'll go to alarm so this isn't even a develop or a third party developer app it's actually an app you know that's a stock uh that comes stock with the phone and you can see that when i go to my alarms options i have the ability to change the time and uh the repeats and the sound but i don't have the ability to uh change the interval in which the snooze time is so that's just one of those things that you'd expect from an alarm and yet this one doesn't have it so of course i might be able to download an app off the marketplace that takes care of that need but it just kind of goes to show you that the functionality for whatever reason seems to be a little bit less on windows phone comparatively the next thing that i have a complaint about is the lack of universal search so let's say i wanted to search uh through for a song that i have on my music player you would think you'd press search right here and uh just type in the song that you're looking for but this only searches the web uh through bing and it's a great service but it's not what i'm looking for it doesn't search my apps it doesn't search my uh my text messages and it doesn't search my music so that's one of the things that you know i've kind of come to get used to with ios and android both offering that functionality another thing that might not be a big issue for you but to me it is is the fact that you can't turn off auto rotate so the auto rotate is great on here it's really fast and responsive but you can't turn it off no matter where you go you know in the settings if you go under uh the display under brightness you know there's nothing here to do it and uh you know i've searched those settings through and through and i can't find any option to turn auto rated rotate off and the reason why i do that is because sometimes you know late at night if i get an email and i want to check it while i'm sleeping you know i'll take the phone in on my side i'll use it and uh if the phone rotates over it's kind of hard to use it like this with one hand so this is one of my complaints it's something that i've gotten used to with android being able to turn that off but uh again it might not be that big of a deal to you and for the most part you know as long as you're awake and not trying to sleep it isn't that big of an issue alright so the last thing that i really have a complaint about is the notification bar or the lack thereof you get your notifications on these live tiles which is great i mean the live tile system is really nice but the problem i have is not just the notifications but being able to check my battery life so right now i have no way to check what my battery life is by looking at the top of the screen i would have to go into my settings and uh go under battery use or battery saver to be able to tell my percentage which is 48 now of course you could tap right here on the top of the screen and this will populate but i don't see any reason why they would hide this other than maybe to look a little bit more visually appealing but to me that gets in the way of functionality and it's definitely a negative alright so enough of other things that i don't like about windows phone because honestly there's a lot more to love than i dislike and uh the first thing i'll show you is going back to the marketplace now of course i said that's something i dislike but it kind of makes up for it in the way in a way by letting me try apps out so let me show you what i mean i'm gonna go ahead and go to uh let's go to fruit ninja it's a game that cost 2.99 now on android ios you have to buy it in order to play it and on this phone you could go try unless of course there's you know there's a free trial on android but most of the time you know you don't have that option and on windows phone every single app every single game has the ability to try it out first so it's downloading it into my uh games folder and you know i could play of course it's just a little demo but being able to use it just a little gives me a better idea of whether or not i want to buy it and you know it kind of just reduces returns for the developers as well so that's definitely something i like and while we're here i want to talk about xbox live because the xbox live integration you know being a microsoft product is really nice to have on the phone um i have the ability to send or see who's online which one of my xbox friends are online be able to send them messages and uh you know just seeing my own stats and things of that nature so it's definitely something cool something that is unique to windows phone that isn't yet available for ios or android and we're not sure if it will be at all next thing i want to talk about is the live tiles so the live tiles kind of are similar to widgets on android but what's cool you can see my my people tab right here it has a collection of my twitter and my facebook uh integrated which i'll go over in just a second but you can see it's just flipping through these pictures which is kind of cool my music flips through the artists my xbox live uh tile shows my little avatar you know moving around and uh depending on what uh tile you put on here they have different sorts of functionality if they don't they're just a standard icon like this but definitely something i like about windows phone and uh let's go ahead and look at the facebook and twitter integration within the os so i'd even download an app for facebook and twitter at first i did but i realized that the integration within the os itself is better when i go over to uh my what's new tab i get all my twitter and facebook uh status updates right in here i go over here to see my recent as far as what i was looking at of course i got all my all my contacts right here with their facebook and twitter's uh all linked up and another great thing is i'll lock my screen and show you the lock screen actually shows me because it's integrated with facebook and twitter it'll show me someone's birthday so right now right here you can see it's some one of my friends birthdays and uh it really doesn't give me an excuse to forget anybody's birthdays and in the same way it'll show you a calendar event such as you know a dentist appointment so with windows 1 i feel like i'll never really forget something because every single time i unlock my phone boom i get a reminder and i swipe up and uh you know i make sure that i won't forget so it kind of helps your productivity which is one of the reasons why we get a smartphone in the first place all right so i switched back and forth between windows phone and android and ios um one thing that i like about windows phone is the music player i feel like the music player is just really well laid out it's really easy to navigate you can press the letter on here to uh see the whole alphabet and you know go to whatever letter you want for that uh artist or you could go by albums by songs and uh by playlist it all syncs up with zoom similar to the way that uh the iphone does with itunes and another thing that i like also is the picture gallery so i'll go ahead and try to see if i can load up some of my pictures in here um so i'm gonna have my albums you just go through them right here and what's really cool is i have the ability to you know look at maybe my uh one of my albums or actually know better yet i could sort them by date which is one of my favorite things so i'm able to actually look at all the dates dating back to all the oldest pictures into the newest pictures that i have on my phone so if i wanted to see you know pictures from uh november of 2007 i click click on it and boom i have them right over there so definitely a cool way to organize and look through your uh pictures and of course the pictures also uh update with your facebook so when you go into your picture gallery anybody who uploads a picture on facebook it'll show up there as well speaking of pictures uh when you use the camera what i really like is so if i launch the camera right here um so it loads up if i wanted to go to my pictures i could just swipe over to the left and i go straight to my gallery so this is a really nice way to be able to you know go in and out of your pictures and it's really fast something that i really like and again you know the whole fast theme is really what when the phone's all about that's why you see the microsoft store or the microsoft employees challenging you saying we'll give you a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars if you could beat us at a certain task so i mean that's something i really want to talk about too it's just the os of speed i mean i don't know if you've been able to uh notice throughout the review everything i pretty much click on is just about instant i mean when especially the system apps um like i said the browser makes a difference as far as the process goes i mean you can only go so or you can only optimize an os so much to load a web page but when i click on pretty much any of the system apps such as calculator or messaging and i've compared it to my iphone i've compared it to my galaxy nexus and windows 1 really does beat those other guys out and what really helps the speed is the multitasking so it's kind of similar to ice cream sandwich now but windows phone had it first where you're able to press and hold on the back button and kind of go through these windows kind of like webos in a way too of course you can't close them out by flicking on them but being able to switch in and out of apps that easily is a really nice and like like i said there is no delay there is no lag everything is almost instant when you click on it on windows phone all right so i want to finish up this review um let's talk about microsoft office really quick because i think it's worth it um to talk about it obviously being a microsoft phone you'd expect better uh word excel and power a powerpoint experience and you actually do get it i feel like you have more functionality with the word document with the excel uh documents creator and uh you could just do a lot more and again everything runs super smoothly and i've been pretty happy with the way it works uh one note is great i actually used it to take notes and it all syncs up with microsoft skydrive so when you get a new windows phone all you gotta do is sign into your live id and uh everything will be transferred back to your new phone all right so the last thing i want to talk about is the beauty of the os i feel like the os is the best looking os out there of course that's a matter of opinion but the reason why i like is because it looks really nice all the apps look nice whether you're downloading facebook or you're on xbox live everything is consistent and um also you have the ability to change the theme so it's not much custom customization as you would get on android but being able to change it a little bit is nice um something that you don't really get with ios but like i said um definitely a good looking os and definitely a fast os and the last thing that i want to talk about is i feel like you get a better bang for your buck with windows phone because of the fact that you don't need a dual core or quad-core processor to be running it uh manufacturers are able to keep the prices a little bit lower compared to some of the higher-end androids or iphones out there because of the fact that you don't need to put a quad-core processor in there and they don't need to put um you know one gig of ram in there of course they do have to pay a microsoft or microsoft a licensing fee to use it but other than that you know their costs are relatively low so a lot of times you'll find a phone like this like the hd7 which is over a year old i'm actually launched with uh windows phone like i said it probably sells for free at t-mobile if you could find them in stock all right that's pretty much it for me and this review this is dave from foambuff.com thanks for watching it and don't forget to visit foambuff.com for more cell phone news reviews and how to's thank you\n"