Holy Crap – David Pogue Likes Windows Phone 7.5: What A Change a Year Makes

A year ago, to the day, David Pogue wrote that “for now, [Windows Phone] may not be the phone you’ll want to buy”. What a difference a year, and a release of Mango, has made. In his column today he’s genuinely impressed with the OS. Check out some sound bites:

Windows Phone 7.5 is gorgeous, classy, satisfying, fast and coherent. The design is intelligent, clean and uncluttered. Never in a million years would you guess that it came from the same company that cooked up the bloated spaghetti that is Windows and Office.

Most impressively, Windows Phone is not a feeble-minded copycat. Microsoft came up with completely fresh metaphors that generally steer clear of the iPhone/Android design (grid-spaced icons that scroll across home pages).

He continues to talk about live tiles, the implementation of voice integration and all of the other things that Mango has brought to the table. In fact, his biggest criticism is that Microsoft is so late to the game that it’s hard for them to get a foothold now. He notes how Zune was debuted and it looked great and seemed great on paper but when people went to buy all they new was iPod. That’s the same dilemma they have now.

Of course, for my two cents, I think Nokia has already helped with marketing and this holiday season they look geared to gain mindshare. But to gain mindshare you need to start with people thinking that you’re delivering a first tier product and reviews like David Pogue’s are a phenomenal start.