The following ramblings concern my first impressions on my new cell phone. Before starting at Microsoft I was told, that all employees would be given a new Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately they were in short supply here in Denmark, so I got an old HTC brick and only recently got the real one: a HTC Mozart.
A confession: privately I own an iPhone and I love it. It it the first time I have had a phone, where I did not want another one after 14 days, because it had the wrong form factor or was lacking some kind of functionality or I tried really hard to convince myself that it was a great phone, because it had cost me a lot of money.
I have had windows phones before, and let us be honest: they did not work. In the best cases, you only had to cold start it four times a day and was actually able to pick up most of your incoming calls. And that was on the better days.
My first impressions of the Mozart are good. It has a nice form factor and feels good in the pocket and hand. It is very responsive and the user interface is quite intuitive. I’ve got myself an American LiveID, and tried to install a few apps from the market place. Worked without any problems. It is going to take some time to find out which apps to use, but that is to be expected on a new device.
I have not had time to try the music player yet, but look forward to this part as well, as I currently travel around with two devices, as my iPhone still holds my music, audio books and podcasts.
I am missing a few features like being able to install your own ring-tone and using the phone as a modem, but this will hopefully be added in a future software update.
Conclusion: Even though I am missing a few features, I feel the HTC Mozart running Windows Phone 7 will be a nice replacement for my iPhone, as I doubt I will care to carry two devices around forever.