Introduction
While almost all of the AnandTech editors are using Android or iOS smartphones as their daily driver due to the relative maturity of those platforms (and oftentimes bleeding edge hardware within), Brian learned I'd been using the Windows Phone 7.5-equipped Dell Venue Pro as my daily driver for almost a year. 2-year contract plans in the United States amount to highway robbery, but a no contract deal from T-Mobile is actually very reasonable. As someone attracted to Windows Phone's UI and someone who preferred the physical keyboard, the Venue Pro turned out to be a perfect fit.
Unfortunately, time has revealed Windows Phone 7 for what it was: a transitional offering that was practically end-of-life when it left the gate. Windows Phone 8 is Microsoft's real long haul darling, and when Brian discovered I was looking to replace my Venue Pro with something more robust, he asked HTC to send me their flagship Windows Phone 8 handset, the Windows Phone 8X. He's already run performance and battery tests, but we haven't really talked about what Windows Phone offers that Android and iOS don't, and how effective it can be as a daily driver. That changes today.
Android and iOS have both shown tremendous advancement and increased polish over their lives, but I had very good reasons for avoiding either. Whenever you buy an Apple product there's a very real concern about vendor lock-in, and since I don't run any Macs at home, that means having to suffer with the continually buggy Windows version of iTunes to manage an iPhone. The iPhone also isn't readily available on T-Mobile, currently one of the only vendors offering a reasonable no contract plan rate. Verizon's prepaid service starts at $80 for a smartphone, $20 more than T-Mobile and a paltry $20 less than their contract plan. AT&T is no better, asking $5 more than T-Mobile for a 1GB cap instead of 2GB.
What about Android? Android's main problem and uphill battle has been and continues to be fragmentation. With few exceptions, most of the vendors who add their own UI over the existing Android UI only wind up mucking up something that was mostly fine in the first place. Samsung, HTC, and LG aren't software companies, but they try to act like it. I'm also not personally fond of even the stock interface of Android, which is a bit too busy for my taste.
This review is going to be a bit more editorial in nature than we usually do, detailing the experience of using Windows Phone 7.5 regularly, what Windows Phone 8 brings to the table that corrects WP7.5's flaws, and talking about what's still missing from the Windows Phone experience. But before that, a few words about the HTC Windows Phone 8X.
The HTC Windows Phone 8X
Brian already gave the HTC Windows Phone 8X a good once over here; today I'm fortunate to offer a slightly more detailed analysis beyond the existing performance metrics. The WP8X is essentially competing with the Nokia Lumia 920 as the flagship phone for Windows Phone 8, and while the Lumia 920 has benefited from a combination of Nokia's close relationship with Microsoft and Nokia's own remarkably useful app suite, it's tempting to give the slight edge to the HTC.
On paper the Lumia 920 is the more robust device, offering greater storage capacity (32GB instead of the WP8X's 16GB), better camera quality, and a slightly higher resolution IPS display. I've copied Brian's chart from his preview below to give you a better idea of specifications, adding information about the Lumia 920 in place of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
Physical Comparison | ||||
Apple iPhone 5 | Samsung Galaxy S 3 (USA) | Nokia Lumia 920 | HTC 8X (International) | |
Height | 123.8 mm (4.87") | 136.6 mm (5.38" ) | 130.3 mm (5.13") | 132.35 mm (5.21") |
Width | 58.6 mm (2.31") | 70.6 mm (2.78") | 70.8 mm (2.79") | 66.2 mm (2.61") |
Depth | 7.6 mm (0.30") | 8.6 mm (0.34") | 10.7 mm (0.42") | 10.12 mm (0.4") |
Weight | 112 g (3.95 oz) | 133 g (4.7 oz) | 185 g (6.53 oz) | 130 g (4.59 oz) |
CPU | 1.3 GHz Apple A6 (Dual Core Apple Swift) | 1.5 GHz MSM8960 (Dual Core Krait) | 1.5 GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 (Dual Core Krait) | 1.5 GHz Qualcomm MSM8260A (Dual Core Krait) |
GPU | PowerVR SGX 543MP3 | Adreno 225 | Adreno 225 | Adreno 225 |
RAM | 1 GB LPDDR2 | 2 GB LPDDR2 | 1 GB LPDDR2 | 1 GB LPDDR2 |
NAND | 16, 32, or 64 GB integrated | 16/32 GB NAND with up to 64 GB microSDXC | 32 GB NAND | 16 GB NAND |
Camera | 8 MP with LED Flash + 1.2MP front facing | 8 MP with LED Flash + 1.9 MP front facing | 8.7 MP with dual LED Flash + 1.3 MP front facing | 8 MP with ImageChip, LED Flash + 2.1 MP front facing |
Screen | 4" 1136 x 960 LED backlit LCD | 4.8" 1280x720 HD SAMOLED | 4.5" 1280 x 768 IPS | 4.3" 1280 x 720 SLCD2 |
Battery | Internal 5.45 Whr | Removable 7.98 Whr | Removable 7.4 Whr | Internal 6.8 Whr |
Interestingly, though the 8X has a slightly lower resolution display than the Lumia 920, the change in aspect from 15:9 to 16:9 has ameliorated one of my minor complaints about the Dell Venue Pro and Windows Phone: the extra space at the top of the display stemming from the slightly taller aspect means you can still access the notification pane in applications designed for the 15:9 ratio.
The Windows Phone Interface
When Microsoft came up with the
When you do use applications that employ the Modern UI design language, screens remain exceptionally clean. Since you're restricted to customization between having white text on a black background or black text on a white background and can only choose which accent color you want the tiles and highlights to use, the interface remains crisp and easy to understand.
Ultimately, between Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8, the only immediately visible major interface change is the addition of the quarter-sized live tile on the start menu. You can add additional notifications to the lock screen and choose a single application to get a full text readout, but I felt like the one notification type seriously missing from the WP7.5 lock screen was a toast notification for whatever games I was playing with friends (i.e. WordFeud). Despite being able to assign a "games" icon to the lock screen, there's still no toast notification for any of the games I play. On the flipside, pinning the games I play regularly to the start menu allows the live tiles to indicate to me whenever it's my turn, so at least there's some way to know.
Essentials: The Phone
While the actual telephone part of a modern cell phone isn't necessarily the most important part anymore, it's worth noting that Microsoft has actually changed the interface here a little bit. In Windows Phone 7.5, the number keys were sizable and easy to use, but if you're in a call, the number keys switch to being half-height instead. This is one of those places where I feel like having big number keys that you can mash your idiot fists on is actually more useful, and I was sad to see it change.
That said, failing anything else, the clean Modern UI produces a very functional and easy to use phone.
Essentials: Contacts
I've been spectacularly bullish on the contact management of Windows Phone 7.5 and now 8. Windows Phone does a wicked job of integrating contacts across multiple different platforms, and it does it in a way that feels intuitive and makes migrating between phones much easier than it has been in the past.
If you've been an Android user, you'll be pleased to note that Windows Phone easily imports all of your Google contacts without a fuss. But Windows Phone can also pull contacts from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Hotmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com, and it integrates them all into your contact list. If you have one person in multiple places, you can easily link their different networking profiles under a single heading; typically their photo winds up being whatever they're using in Facebook, which trumps whatever you've assigned before under your Microsoft account or under Google.
Where I think Microsoft could stand to simplify the interface a bit more, though, is by integrating the "Me" section with the "People" (contacts) section. People handles your contact list, your Groups, and your social networking feeds, while "Me" shows you your own social networking feed, gives you the option of posting something to the social networks you've entered into the phone, and lists notifications of who's tweeted you or replied to one of your posts on Facebook.
Essentials: Messaging
The Messaging section has gone completely unchanged from Windows Phone 7. There are two pages here: one for text messaging, and one for online chat services. Unfortunately, the "Online" pane really only supports Facebook chat or MSN Messenger; support for additional protocols would be appreciated tremendously. Really this should be closer to a multi-protocol desktop application like Trillian.
The text messaging threads are easy enough to navigate, though. If you receive a text from a number you haven't assigned to a contact, it's also easy to tap the number and add it either to an existing contact or to a new contact entry.
Essentials: Browser
As Brian mentioned before, the browser experience on Windows Phone 8 is improved largely under the hood. Windows Phone 8 enjoys the Trident 6.0 engine shared by Internet Explorer 10 on the desktop and even identifies itself as IE10. It's smooth and gets the job done, but actually feels too stripped down. I've come to accept that if I want Flash on a mobile platform I need to be running Android, but tab management is sorely lacking.
Again, though, performance is definitely up from 7, and compatibility as well. I've found IE10 in WP8 to be a noticeable improvement in practice.
Essentials: E-Mail
I've heard complaints of the e-mail app in Windows Phone 7 (and 7.5 and now 8) as being too stripped down, but I've never actually felt it was particularly oversimplified. I have three different e-mail boxes that I need regular access to: my personal e-mail, my Gmail, and my AnandTech e-mail. You can choose to have each mailbox store all of your e-mail from that box from the past week, from the past month, or just plain all of it. My AnandTech e-mail box is a nightmarish abyss of spam and clutter that I've done a horrible job curating, so that gets set to "past week."
Essentials: Calendar
Just as the People hub brings all of your contacts from all of your disparate social networking accounts under a single unifying banner, so the Calendar does with your events and calendars. The Calendar app is also essentially unchanged from Windows Phone 7: a single calendar aggregates your Google calendar with events from Facebook.
Meanwhile, assuming you have it set to be the single text readout on the lock screen, the lock screen itself will tell you what, where, and when your next Calendar entry is.
Essentials: Search
One of the places where Windows Phone 8 has done an excellent job of moving forward is the "Search" function. As one of the three buttons mandated on the bottom of the actual phone, this should've been a more robust feature in Windows Phone 7 and 7.5, but I never used it on the Dell Venue Pro. It was easier for me to just type whatever I wanted to search for in the browser window.
I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I just find myself using Search far more in WP8 than I did in WP7.5. It feels like a more useful tool and less like a trojan horse for Bing.
Essentials: GPS Navigation
While it's still not the catastrophe that Apple Maps was on release, Bing Maps continues to be a sore spot for Windows Phone. The map quality itself is fine, and Microsoft has worked with Nokia to integrate vector maps, but the actual navigation leaves a lot to be desired. Simply put: Bing Maps doesn't provide turn-by-turn navigation. This was something I found myself missing intensely from my time with Android, as Google's navigation is frankly excellent. With the default Bing Maps, you have to tap the display to get the next direction instead of it just simply being read to you as you approach it.
Essentials: Camera
The camera app on Windows Phone 7.5, or at least with the Dell Venue Pro, was frankly mediocre at best and downright terrible at worst. As someone who enjoys foisting pictures of his cat to the internet, the Venue Pro was an exercise in frustration. White balance was never accurate, detail was poor, and image stabilization was nonexistent.
Migrating from Windows Phone 7.5
If you're one of the precious few people who invested in Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 like I did, Windows Phone 8 is going to feel pretty lackluster initially, if not even capable of engendering a mild feeling of resentment. Windows Phone 7 was a rough draft and a product with no real future the moment it left Microsoft, and they knew it. If you're a Blizzard fan you're probably used to being treated like a free beta tester, but for the rest of us, the relatively barren app ecosystem, entry level operating system, outdated hardware, and lack of support even from Microsoft undoubtedly felt disappointing.
With all that griping said, though, you couldn't really deny that Microsoft had produced a very polished experience. More than anything, Windows Phone 7 was stable. While Android and iOS can suffer from apps becoming increasingly bloated (leaving some handsets nigh unusable), WP7 was able to make even its fairly outdated hardware at least feel snappy. Any problems I had with the Dell Venue Pro were because of the Dell Venue Pro, and not its operating system.
The problem is that it's not quite as stable as WP7 was, and that's due chiefly to app compatibility. While I haven't had any major problems with the hardware or even most of the software I've run on it, Zynga's bloated code nightmare Words with Friends has caused my handset to either hang or reset multiple times. I would expect users running older WP7 and 7.5-based applications to have a mostly trouble free experience (and certainly worlds better than Android), but there are still hiccups here and there.
As for actually making the jump from 7.5 to 8, since the UI is almost exactly the same, it's incredibly easy to switch. Everything is where you left it, it's just now there's more of it. The quarter-sized live tiles are a welcome addition, the faster hardware is a major improvement, and probably best of all, Microsoft is starting to really throw their weight behind the OS and its app ecosystem. Third party apps exist to handle a lot of what you're looking for, and they do it reasonably well, but I'm really looking forward to an official Pandora app. Nokia making Drive available for all WP8 handsets is also a major boon. While Apple Maps turn-by-turn navigation was likely to lead you to the family from The Hills Have Eyes, at least you didn't have to look at or tap the display to get there.
What's Missing
While Windows Phone 8 keeps everything you loved about Windows Phone 7 and 7.5, we're still unfortunately dealing with the same chicken and egg problems that WP7 had in terms of apps. When I started using the Dell Venue Pro, it was pretty clear I'd at least lost a few things switching over from the Android-based LG Optimus V. The lack of good turn-by-turn navigation (and no clear recommendation on a replacement for WP7), no official Pandora app (when even BlackBerry had one), no alternative browsers, and a lot of social games that were available for iOS and Android. The Dell Venue Pro wasn't even able to operate as a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Over time, some of these problems have been ameliorated. Just about all modern smartphones can function as a Wi-Fi hotspot now (the HTC 8X included, of course.) The recently added Nokia Drive+ Beta still needs traffic information, but at least we have useful turn-by-turn navigation now. Third party apps have been mostly available to pick up the slack for missing services, and Microsoft's increased push with WP8 seems to be gradually yielding fruit. Zynga may have produced crappy ports for WP8, but at least they're there now.
Frankly, the problem is that while I feel like Microsoft has done an excellent job of trying to tap into existing ecosystems, they're nonetheless having to build their own from the ground up. Android and iOS are both mature with a lot of software and services to their credit, but Microsoft's had a very hard time getting and keeping all of its different services under the same roof. This past year they've been heavily condensing their branding, doing away with Live and Zune and folding entertainment features squarely under the Xbox banner, but the damage is done.
Microsoft may be wearing the prettiest dress, but they're still late to the party and there's a lot of catch-up to do. I think they can do it, because this is Microsoft we're talking about, but those of us willing to either migrate over to Windows Phone 8 or just jump in as our first serious smartphone investment are unfortunately going to have the unenviable task of providing the chicken that will hopefully start laying app-flavored eggs.
Conclusion
Despite the moderate shortcomings of Microsoft's platform, due at least substantially to its relative youth, I can't help but continue to be bullish on Windows Phone. It's still very clearly an also-ran despite the sometimes brilliant innovations and design at its core, but it also suffers from having to build its brand essentially from the ground up. I'm not entirely convinced this is the platform for gamers or serious power users, and I think the fact that I'm the only AnandTech editor using Windows Phone as their daily driver is telling.
I absolutely think Windows Phone is one of the best options, if not the best option, for the average consumer that wants a fairly robust smartphone, though. That's only further solidified by the additions in WP8. Of all the people I've shown WP8 to, only one has actually disliked it. For most users, Microsoft has effectively out-Apple'd Apple in producing an experience that's easy to use and easy to understand. For me, personally, WP7.5 and now WP8 aren't just adequate for my daily use, they're perfect for it. The social media integration in Windows Phone is absolutely fantastic, and the operating system is a joy to use.
With WP8, Microsoft has also brought the hardware up to where it needs to be. The HTC Windows Phone 8X isn't some bargain basement phone; this is a modern handset with a dual-core SoC from Qualcomm, a reasonably fast GPU, a healthy amount of memory, a beautiful 720p display, and overall excellent industrial design. It has all the modern bells and whistles but LTE (available on the MSM8960 version), including front and rear-facing cameras (complete with Skype support), dual band Wi-Fi, and an NFC radio.
The other problem is the lack of a solid app ecosystem, and this is something that looks to be improving by the day. Microsoft is throwing a lot more weight behind WP8 than they did behind WP7 because they need it to be successful, and while I think gaming may be a reoccurring problem, popular services are liable to start appearing on the platform with greater and greater frequency.
Ultimately I would recommend both Windows Phone 8 and the HTC Windows Phone 8X without hesitation to the vast majority of users. Users stuck in Apple's ecosystem might have a hard time migrating, but Google users will only have to sacrifice some of their apps; Microsoft has done a lot to integrate outside services and streamline them with their own. If you're already on Windows Phone 7.5, I'm sorry you got hosed, but this is a worthwhile jump to make and a much safer one. Windows Phone 7 was Microsoft getting their foot in the door, but 8 is the chosen one. You'll get a better phone, a better operating system, better support, and a better collection of apps available.
Culled from: http://www.anandtech.com
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