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Video: What’s the SMS experience like on Windows Phone 7? [Spoiler: Amazing]

Categories: Windows Phone
By: , IntoMobile
Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 11:49 PM
smswin7

Since Microsoft is basically starting from scratch in terms of the user experience of their mobile operating system, many of you might be wondering: what’s the SMS messaging experience like on Windows Phone 7? I may be a tall, wide shouldered, burly man in my mid 20s, but I text like a 13 year old girl who is captain of the cheerleading squad, so SMS is important to me. The video below, recorded by the awesome folks from Pocket Now, shows what it’s like to receive an SMS when the screen is off, when the screen is on, what the conversation UI is like, how to send an SMS, MMS, and everything else you need to know about how enjoyable it’s going to be to blast 160 character messages to all your friends.

I have to say, I’m impressed. It’s so clean that it hurts. It makes Apple’s iOS look dated, Google’s Android OS look like MS-DOS, and Symbian … well Nokia hasn’t change the UI of their SMS application since it first introduced color screens. They say that Symbian^3 devices have built in threaded text messaging, a feature that was introduced by Palm with the Treo 600, but I don’t know whether that means Nokia rewrote the messaging application or they simply installed the “Conversation” application by default. If it’s the latter, I’m going to be pissed. Maemo, or MeeGo as it’s now called, has threaded SMS built in right from the start.

What do you think? Are you going to buy a Windows Phone 7 handset at launch just to see what it’s like? I no longer call myself an early adopter and often wait for the 3rd generation of a product before even considering purchasing it, so I’m not going to touch Windows Phone until version 10. That is unless Microsoft does something so amazing that they’ll have me foaming from the mouth.

For now Android 2.2 on my Google Nexus One is good enough.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Michael

    Hi there,

    please tell me where this differs from the sms app i have on my galaxy s??? in the android notification bar it also shows you the message and the sms are left and right in bubbles in the app.
    “Google’s Android OS look like MS-DOS” how do you mean that??

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLZnaV_uGKg

    there you go, look at this

  • http://www.intomobile.com Stefan Constantinescu

    interesting, stock Android doen’t look like that. it’s all text, time stamps, and that’s it.

  • Michael

    i’ve never seen pure android, i am “stuck” with touchwiz, so maybe you’re right with stock Android. but you can try “Handcent” if you want to, is quite nice as well…

  • adoalv

    I;m really bout this excited about this new OS but im not seeing any phones that are going to verizon. I will not leave verizon to go to ATT. if that happens i will go with an Android that will teach them hehe.

  • http://mobile-thoughts.com mshafik

    I don’t know if you have tried Handcent SMS on Android or not, it’s free and it’s a thousand time better than the ugly interface and lack of options I saw in this video.