Microsoft never got it right with the names. The inconvenient name might be old-school Microsoft, but the Windows Phone 7 Series is more Zune than Windows Mobile 6.5. Fresh, would be the word to describe it.
Thanks to the massive design team (one of the biggest for any Microsoft product), the UI is clean, slick and simple. And yes, they weren’t trying yet another iPhone. Not a huge game changer though, it is different to embarrass pretty much everyone else except Apple.
The UI has been designed for touch. face of Windows Phone 7 is not a rectangular grid of thumbnail-sized glossy-looking icons, arranged ina pattern of4x4 or so, like basically every other phone. It feels like, the Zune HD. Interface elements that run off the screen; beautiful, oversized text and graphics; flipping, panning, scrolling, zooming from the screen to screen; broken hearts.
Windows Phone 7 is connected in the same sense as Android, with live, real-time data seamlessly integrated, though it’s even smoother and more natural. Live tiles on the Start screen, which you can totally customize, are updated dynamically with fresh content, like weather, or if you’ve pinned a person to your Start screen, their latest status updates and photos.
Of course, no Flash. Simple reason. Microsoft makes its own Silverlight platform, a rich-media platform which rivals with Flash on the web.
However,one question seems to pop up. A “different” UI certainly isn’t a reason to switch when users have no issues with the UI they have got. They might not own a Xbox, and may have no plans to own one, so I don’t see anything offered here that isn’t on other OS’es that already mature.
Tags: microsoft, Silverlight, ui, windows 7 phone, Windows Phone 7, Xbox, zune