Top 10 reasons why Windows Phone 7 is better than the iPhone

Friday, November 19, 2010 gc 22 Comments

# 10: Windows Phone and Marketplace are more open
The distribution model is more of a hybrid model where Microsoft offers a vetted marketplace to download music, apps, and more. You also have the ability to use a private distribution model. The Marketplace vetting process is far more open than the App Store—not difficult to believe.

# 9: Office integration
Now, my notes and documents are available on my desktops, in the cloud, and on my phone—always synced.

# 8: Feels better
The Windows Phone 7 is more usable with the panorama design element, hubs, and haptic feedback. It feels more alive and responsive.

# 7: Looks better
It is clean and simple; the metro design language is beautiful.
The animations and fonts are much more fluid and modern looking. Tiles change to reflect status changes.

# 6: More configurable
Windows Phone and Zune are more configurable. For example with podcasts, you can precisely determine how an individual podcast is synced.

# 5: Gaming
Gaming is connected to Xbox Live. The underlying technology is XNA—an existing technology for game developers. Great games exist and many more are coming.

# 4: Bigger screens available
The iPhone has a 3.5" screen. Windows Phone 7 is available up to 4.3" screens. It makes a difference. Personally, I have trouble reading an iPhone even with the retina display.

# 3: Wireless syncing
With Windows Phone 7 once you have initially synced by wire to Zune, you can sync using only WiFi. Once you enter your home wireless network, it will automatically sync.

# 2: People hub
A smart phone is, ultimately, about people, places, and content. The people hub combines Facebook, Linked In, Live, and Outlook contacts into a single hub. You can see updates, make calls, text, profile pictures, etc. from one hub. This is just not available centrally on the iPhone—only contacts.

# 1: iTunes sucks
Let's face it, iTunes sucks, especially on the PC. It is frustrating, clunky, and outdated. You can't sync and do anything else until it is completed. The Zune software is beautiful and works well. I can sync while even working on the phone and Zune at the same time. Try out the Zune software for yourself—no phone or Zune player required: http://www.zune.net/

While these reasons are from my own perspective, I am not biased against the iPhone. I have been using the iPhone since it was launched 3 years ago. The iPhone is enjoyable, but now I like Windows Phone 7 much better. If you have a MacBook running OS X then the iPhone certainly makes sense; but if you have Windows 7 machine and an Xbox then the new Windows Phone makes much more sense.

The Windows Phone 7 is great design—it not perfect, it is not magical, or made from unicorn tears, but it is great.

[Sidebar]
Recently, Microsoft has gotten heat for losing a few senior executives, but they have also hired great designers that care about esthetics and are producing great technology. And they're doing high quality, high velocity development by leveraging agile methods. Talented people tend to bubble up. Now, new blood will be given a chance. Don't consider Microsoft out.



This post was inspired by Will Clevenger and David Letterman. Enjoy.

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22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your thoughts.

Anonymous said...

It has NO FLASH support, NO Copy/Cut/Paste and NO Multitasking!!! It's like the OLD iPhone 2G. What a disappointment.

gc said...

@anonymous Have you used it yet? iPhone will doubtfully ever have Flash support. I believe the other two features will follow quickly and more given the much better runtime infrastructure; that is, given that it is based on .NET/CLR. Thanks for you for your comment.

Anonymous said...

MS is dying, faster they IBM, jump ship while you can.

Anonymous said...

It has NO FLASH support, NO Copy/Cut/Paste and NO Multitasking!!! It's like the OLD iPhone 2G. What a disappointment.

Really! Did you really say that?
I had iPhone 3G for like a year with no copy/cut/paste that's the 3rd generation (and I rarely used it when I got it - what's the big deal). MS will add this in January.

Multi Tasking will be here possible in January too, iPhone had to wait until version 4 and what about the poor sods on 3G and 2G version - get a new phone!

Last but by no means least, Flash will never come to the iPhone - guess when we will get it for WP7?

Anonymous said...

What is that last screenshot? It looks like a tablet device. Any details?

Anonymous said...

I am one of the fresh bloods soon to join MS....in their XBOX hardware division....Soon I can say...I design ur XBOX's !!! :D

Its good to see that Windows phone 7 doing pretty good... its a welcome change from the stereotypical IOS operating systems.
And now there is a jailbreak also for WP7... thats great news.

Anonymous said...

I have been using windows phone 7 since last 2 days and i love it. It's such a bright and big screen. Easy to use camera. Really liking the typing.

Alicia said...

We just picked up the Samsung Focus last night and will be giving it a chance to wow us. So far I miss how my iPhone apps looked. ie, Facebook...on iPhone it looked the same as it did on my pc, its hard to navigate and manage on windows7 phone. I miss my calendar layout and my notes app. The predictive text is much better in Windows phone and the web browsing seems to be better. I don't like having a monthly fee for Zune, I liked having iTunes cards to pay for my apps so that the monthly bill amount wasn't effected. It was easier to control my children's spending. My initial comments to my spouse: The iPhone felt and looked like a mini computer, the Windows phone looks and feels like a phone that has internet. If you never had an iPhone you will be very happy. I am just finding it hard to switch.

Fredrick said...

Reason #11: no problems with signal if you´re a lefty

Anonymous said...

does the window 7 phone have good games? can you use the internet on it?

Unknown said...

The title of this article is "Top 10 Reasons Windows Phone 7 is better than the iphone"

Which, in my humble opinion, is incredibly misleading. You arent comparing WP7 to the iphone, you are comparing WP7 to IOS 4.x and quite frankly its an incomplete comparison. The iphone comes with IOS, yes, BUT the phone itself was what attracted me much more than the operating systems. At this point in the game the OSs out there are pretty comparable in my mind, preference and network being the only game changers. When it comes to the hardware, I find the iphone to be near a work of art. I shopped around quite a bit before settling on my first smartphone, and having spent better than half a year with a private cell network team, I have had the pleasure and misfortune of dealing with the COMPLETE line of Android phones, WinMO and WP7, and of course the iphone. What I can say with certainty, is that each is equally useful, and there is no task one is presently capable of, that the others cannot also do, despite the methods being different (again preference). But when compared side by side, the iphone is physically built better, has a cleaner finish, behaves more smoothly, is intuitive, and it is far more durable. These are all hardware related attributes. In direct response to your Reason #4: The Retina Display is quite possibly the biggest draw to this phone when it comes to hardware. With the highest resolution available (at the time of this writing), I find it easy to read even the smallest of text. This point is beyond unfounded IMHO.

If you are going to continue to write, please take more care in naming your articles...

Anonymous said...

I find it hard to believe that ms has made a phone better than the IPhone. However, ITunes sucks and I hate inferior Macintosh software infecting my pc and wasting my time. I love the iPhone, hate iTunes, hate Macintosh computers. I just wish I could have all my stuff work on one computer without having to convert files all the time.

James Ng said...

Jailbreak your iphone. It has flash support, copy paste, and a totally customizable UI.

@James: Or you can get WMo6 or (WP7 and wait for couple of weeks). M$ products rule! Zune, Silverlight, Windows OS, MS Office, WP7, .NET, Exchange/SQL/Forms/Commerce Server and everything from MS is superb and piece of work. and hey... Sharepoint 2007!! WAOW Microsoft!

Thumb down for Goofies and Apes...

_an honest m$ customer.
_a fanboy.
Microsoft.Bing->"MyCrowSoft"

Carlos said...

"NO Copy/Cut/Paste and NO Multitasking"

Apparently this is being pushed to the phones as I write this... At least it has already been seen in the wild.

Also not having Flash is totally Microsoft's fault for not having bought Adobe and forced them do port Flash to WP7.

Anonymous said...

...#11: You can make calls on it.

Anonymous said...

Why do you need flash support anyway! Just use a free online storage site like hotmail or dell.com,save whatever you want there, and download it onto your phone anytime, no cables required! Plus, 343 studios announced the next halo game will be for the windows phone! You can't get THAT with an iphone! They even banned any apps with the word android in them from their market! (-:

Anonymous said...

IPhones suck! I absolutely LOVE my windows phone :) my friend has the iPhone and admitted to me that mine was much better

Nicholas said...

"the iphone is physically built better, has a cleaner finish, behaves more smoothly, is intuitive, and it is far more durable"

Wrong, it has one of the worst builds of any phone on the market, its finish isn't cleaner than anything on the market(that's absurd), it doesn't behave any more smoothly than an Android phone or a modern Windows Phone 8 phone, it's less intuitive than competing phones and it's one of the least-durable, most easily-shatterable phones on the market. iPhones are horrendous jokes, and now Android phones make up 75% of the market while iPhones represented 14.9% of phone sales worldwide; Windows phones represented around 3-4% of phone sales this past fiscal year, I expect that to surpass iPhones within the next two or three years. Crapple(did I say that right?) is even losing the tablet market pretty swiftly.

I'm proud that the market chooses variety and options over monotony and repetition, Apple hasn't ever really pushed any innovation forward and their only real weapon against competition is litigation. I can't wait until they're laughed off the market, they're a shameful representation of what is bad in the tech industry these days.

Anonymous said...

Yet despite all of the advantages of WP7 over iPhone, WP7 is dead and iPhone lives on.

Ultimately, the market decides which products win and which ones lose. Often times it is difficult see understand why a superior product loses in the marketplace.

I do think that it is curious that MS decided to combine multiple failed products (i.e., Zune, Kin, WP7) into a new product -- Win8 -- and expect it to win.

It has been my experience in life that when you combine losers, you end up with losers. That is not a principle of good design. Rather that is a principle of a free and open market.

IPhone have already been dead just waiting to close their eyes lol, I'm guessing u don't know about the Lumia 950 and 950xl that's launching soon huh? Those two phones have much better specs than the iPhone 6s and it's cheaper, if you did your research well you'd realise that many iPhone users are jumping ship and going to windows phone...it's a fact, not a theory