Like many of the other staff at Ars, I've gone through a couple iterations of iOS, and watched it mature into a more functional, more usable product. In the last few months, I've also gotten the chance to play with what are essentially 1.0 versions of smartphone operating systems, Windows Phone 7 and the newest Blackberry OS, both of which are intended to be touchscreen-ready and radical departures from their predecessors. Having sampled both, I think it's fair to say that Microsoft did a fantastic job compared to RIM, but it still has its work cut out for it, and may need to rethink some of its interface choices.

As Peter pointed out in our epic review, there's a lot to like about WP7. The operating system is fast and fluid; scrolling long lists is a great experience. The animations are, for the most part, quick and informative, and, unlike RIM's latest, the touch-based interface doesn't feel bolted awkwardly on top of Microsoft's previous phone OS. The company promised a complete reworking, and it delivered. The fact that it's available on so many handsets is also nice, since it should be possible to find a set of features that is more closely tailored to my needs.

That said, this is a 1.0 version of the product, and it shows in some ways. There are still a couple of rough edges—animations that aren't informative or take too long—and some major features like copy and paste missing. We know Microsoft is working on some of this, so we won't spend time discussing it, and instead focus on some of the interface design choices that the company has made.

Like most other phones, things start with a display of the installed applications. For WP7, there are actually two views: a start screen, with commonly used applications, and a list of all installed applications. The general idea of a start screen, in which commonly used applications are presented as large, easy-to-hit buttons is a good one. Unfortunately, anything that's not on the screen has to be accessed through the list view, which could be a problem if Microsoft's app store takes off and most users have a lot of apps. Some degree of additional organization here better appear in an update.

Adding, removing, and rearranging icons on the start screen is virtually identical to the iOS experience. Microsoft has gone a step beyond Apple's iconography by animating some of its icons, and allowing others to show content-specific information. For example, the Zune music app will display the artwork for the last album you were listening to (similar things apply to contacts and pictures). This looks great, but it has the effect of making the icon look different each time you go searching for it. Having the option to shut this off would be welcome.

The behavior of the status bar, which contains things like signal strength and battery level is completely mystifying. By default, it's invisible; you need to tap the top of the screen to get it to appear. Once it does, by default, it vanishes again after a short period of time. This may free up a tiny bit of screen space for applications, but for someone who likes to pay attention to these things, I found the behavior infuriating. If there's an option to tweak how this operates, I can't seem to find it.

Navigating WP7

Microsoft's take on navigating within applications is intriguing. Different screens of content are accessed by left or right swipes, and the application is supposed to provide visual cues to indicate that additional content is available. In some cases, this works great; the active screen shows up by name at the top left of the device, and any additional options flow out to the right, often running off the screen. It gives a clear visual indication that other options are just a swipe away, although the font used for the text is a bit too thin to be read easily.

When there's not text to organize it, however, the system is a bit stupid. Additional content is indicated by an arrow on the right of the screen, or even a sliver of the next screen's contents peeking in from the right. In these cases, there ends up being less room for displaying the content you're actually focused on, which simply seems like a bad idea.

The other option for navigating is the back button, the left-most of the row of three that contains home and search buttons. This is a pretty compelling feature, since it returns to the previous screen, even if that screen was in a completely different app. Performance is pretty good, especially since the OS ostensibly doesn't allow background processes.

The one odd thing about it is that it's a hardware button; the habit of expecting to control where you are strictly via the touchscreen was a hard habit to break; I kept looking for a "Cancel" button in various dialogs. Still, the button's utility seems really high, so I'd undoubtedly try to learn a new habit were I to keep one of these phones.

Text entry is also very good. The keyboard is pretty standard for touchscreen phones, but it has a suggestion bar, which is very slick. As you type, it displays a list of potential completions to the letters you have down. Once the right one appears, you can simply tap it, and it will be placed in the text field and the cursor will be advanced. It's not much help for easy-to-type words (in fact, using it disrupts the flow of typing), but for longer or more challenging words, it's a real time saver.

Sucking in the cloud

Google and Apple both have cloud services that they'd like to push their phone users toward, which has the effect of limiting the ease with which their phones integrate with competitor's products. Microsoft is in the same boat, given its Windows Live services; you're asked to provide a Windows Live ID during the setup process, although the phone will work fine without it. Still, the company is pretty agnostic when it comes to data sources. Contacts can come from places like Google and Facebook, and various e-mail services are easy to set up, though pictures can only be shared with Microsoft's own service.

For the services I tested, the syncing worked well, as did the setup of e-mail accounts. Microsoft has chosen to give each account its own icon, and it launches into the e-mail application individually. Having just gotten a unified inbox on the iOS, I miss it badly here. Microsoft's user testing apparently told it that separate accounts were better, though. The browser, which is some bizarre bastard child of two different IE desktop versions, performed much better than I expected.

I was not interested in setting up an account with Microsoft's music service, but the demos I've seen seem pretty impressive, given that you can access any subscription song from anywhere. The app store is beginning to fill up a bit, as well. So, overall, it looks like Microsoft may be well on its way to ensuring people can fill their phones with some compelling content.

Overall impressions

The most striking thing about using WP7 was how familiar it all looked. It seems that the metaphors and UI for touchbased gesture computing have already coalesced into a set of standard approaches, and Microsoft has done a fine job of implementing them. In the few areas where it's done something new, the results were often great—the suggestion bar for text entry was truly excellent. The application-hopping "back" capability is another good one.

Still, not all of the ideas work all that well. Slicing off part of an already narrow screen simply to indicate additional content is a bad idea. Having icons that change their appearance so often isn't really good UI. The status bar is just annoying. If anything, these aspects of WP7 are too much like an Apple product: they sacrifice functionality to give users something artistic looking.

So, how does this add up? It's a fantastic 1.0 release that will be facing two very mature operating systems with very large followings, so it's in for a rough ride. The key to its future isn't present on the review hardware itself. To understand WP7's future, we'll have to see how quickly Microsoft gets updates out to the market, and whether it's willing to make significant changes to get things right.