Windows Phone 7 Hands On: Three Stand-Out Features

Windows Phone 7: Does anybody have one?

Getting Microsoft to talk about Windows Phone sales has been like pulling teeth, but the company did eventually announce that it has moved 1.5 million devices in six weeks. Problem is, those are devices shipped to retailers and carriers, not sold directly to consumers.

Slideshow: Windows Phone 7: Visual Tour of 10 WP7 Smartphones

I’ve been playing around with a Samsung Focus smartphone for the past few weeks, and can say that Windows Phone 7 is by no means perfect (more on that in another post) but it does have a lot to offer the average user. In fact, its biggest strength is that it’s pretty darn easy to use.

Here are three stand-out Windows Phone 7 features. For two of these features I used my personal HTC Droid Incredible phone as a comparison, which is a similar device and a key Windows Phone competitor.

Web Browsing with Internet Explorer Mobile

Windows Phones uses an amalgam of IE7 and IE8 for its mobile browser, and it offers ultra-smooth touch capabilities for zooming, scrolling and panning.

View of open browser tabs on the Samsung Focus Windows Phone. (credit: Shane O’Neill)

OK, those blue tiles on the phone’s homescreen are boxy and ugly and kinda boring, but it’s what they open up to that matters most. Microsoft’s marketing message is that it WP7 sets itself apart from the pack because it organizes information by content type: People (basically your Facebook friends pulled into a Zune-like interface), Music and Videos, Pictures, personal e-mail, work e-mail (Outlook), Xbox Live, Maps, Marketplace, Microsoft Office, etc.

iPhones, Droids and BlackBerrys also give users easy access to all of this same information and do so with slicker and sexier interfaces, but it’s all done by application, which often results in a traffic jam of apps on your home screen.

Having content organized into broad category blocks may be dumming things down, but many smartphone users are overwhelmed and want to keep navigation as simple as possible.

Microsoft Office Mobile

As a constant Microsoft Word user, occasional Excel user and rare PowerPoint user, it’s nice to have access Office files from your smartphone or as an e-mail attachment and be able to make edits and save the file just as you would on a PC.

On a smartphone, the most you’ll realistically do with an Office file is review, edit, and save it, and then post it to a network folder or SharePoint site (if your company uses SharePoint) or e-mail it to someone. This is an area where Microsoft has an advantage over every other smartphone, including my Droid Incredible, which will only let you preview read-only versions of Office files or require third-party software to edit bare-bones versions.

News that Microsoft is allowing OneNote — the least used of the Office apps — to work on iPhones may indicate that Microsoft is more open to Office mobile compatibility, but for now Windows Phone 7 offers by far the best Office experience on a smartphone.

Shane O’Neill covers Microsoft, Windows, Operating Systems, Productivity Apps and Online Services for CIO.com. Follow Shane on Twitter @smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline. Email Shane at soneill@cxo.com.