Cnet on WP7: Great Software, Bad Battery Life
Ina Fried at cnet has spent more than a month with Windows Phone 7 and is happy to report – it’s good. She notes that the flat look of the OS doesn’t get boring and that the phone doesn’t act like a minicomputer- in a good way. She notes:
Microsoft often throws around the phrase "it just works" as a design goal for a new piece of software. In practice, however, the products rarely live up to that billing. That said, Microsoft appears to be pretty close with Windows Phone 7. Although the software is not final and it is running on prototype hardware (in my case the Samsung Taylor), its clean look isn’t interrupted by error messages, hiccups, or other form breaks.
Overall she seems very impressed except…
My biggest gripe is battery life. Despite being a vast improvement over the hour-and-a-half life it once got, my Windows Phone 7 device won’t get me through a busy workday–and that’s without listening to music or playing games (I still don’t have any third-party apps on the device).
That said, I’m told that Microsoft and its partners have made further gains in battery life and that the shipping devices should at least reach my goal of being able to be used hard for a full day (and I’m not talking just an 8-to-12-hour workday here).
In fairness she notes that the software and hardware being tested in not finalized and she’s told that it’s been optimized to perform a lot better. Let’s hope so because if you can’t use Zune, play Xbox and use the cloud then the entire device is useless. You can take a read of her full thoughts here. Overall I’m still optimistic about it. She’s impressed with the device itself and if they can resolve the battery issues (which they clearly know about and are working on) then it seems like they’ve got something great here. What do you think?
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Battery life will be much better on real phones, it’s a pointless thing to discuss on pre-release hardware.
I got jumpy when I read this “the shipping devices should at least reach my goal of being able to be used hard for a full day (and I’m not talking just an 8-to-12-hour workday here).”
Yeah, but she always gripes about battery life. That’s always her biggest complaint with any phone she tests.
And like l3v5y said, it’s demo hardware.
Ina is the only reviewer i’ve come across who griped about battery life with the WP7 demo models. A great benefit to optimizing an OS to be used with a specific chipset is improved battery and system performance. Apple’s gotten away wiht having an underpowered CPU for years by optimizing the software running on it.
Overall it was interesting hearing Ina echo the sentiment that she wants the phone to seem more like a portable consumer electronic device and not a computer. There are millions of people who purchase products for this very same reason. Ignoring this market segment is unwise and Microsoft has got the message.
@David K-You’re right. Without Zune, Xbox Live and heavy cloud usage the device and platform would be an epic fail. Good to hear Microsoft is on the job.