My new Surround finally arrived today, and I picked it just before work (I live in the same town as my parents, but they have a porch that is setback from the street, whereas i do not) and activated it once I got to work, there is no music on it since I haven't hooked it up to Zune yet, but this is what i have so far.
My previous phone is/was an iPhone 1G running iOS 3.1.3, and I prefer OS X and iTunes, but I won't get to that until I actually hook this sucker up to Zune.
So, first thoughts (these are kind of going to be all over the place at first, bear with me);
It feels really good in my hand. It is a little bit taller and thicker than the iPhone but the same width roughly, so it still fits in my hand well, the volume rocker is on the upper right, which I thought would bug me, but I really don't mind it at all. The power button doesn't protrude as much as the iPhone's, and since that is the only way to unlock it (as opposed to the home button alternative on the iPhone) it really wish it was better. It is too easy to press and almost flush to the phone, so it just feels off.
The kickstand/speaker is nice, but since I am at work I haven't had a chance to play with the speaker much, though the kickstand is pretty good when paired with Alarm Clock w/ Weather (app on the Marketplace), since that actually does support landscape.
The lack of landscape support is bothersome, so much of the iPhone supported it, that to have it taken away where i used it the most (browser) really blows. The software keyboard is really good though, but I am not totally used to it yet. There were times that I was flying on it, typing just as fast as I ever could on the iPhone, but then there were other times where every other letter was wrong and I couldn't find my ass with a map.
As a paradigm shift, the hardware back button is interesting. It was nice to be on the browser looking at stuff, accepting and responding to an incoming text, and then hitting back to jump right back to the browser. It felt quicker than hitting the home button, then Safari.
A lot of my favorable impressions almost certainly have to do with the hardware differences. My iPhone was a first gen. This thing is so much faster, with 4x the RAM, in a lot of ways it isn't a fair comparison. However, it is a testiment to iOS that even the first gen could still handle certain tasks incredibly well. It is still the best, easiest to use software keyboard that I have ever encountered, hindered only slightly by its slow speed. But if you put an iPhone 4 in my hands, i would fly on the soft keyboard.
The fact that I finally have 3G is also pretty awesome, but you guys are already all up on that, so whatever.
Bing Maps aren't too bad, I like the fact that it gives you landmarks in addition to just street names (turn left at Turner St. Citgo Station). That is pretty nice.
I haven't played with the browser much, but it feels pretty fast, and scrolling/zooming are crazy responsive.
I noticed a weird issue. If using either my work computer or my laptop's USB to charge the phone, the bottom got really hot which also may have contributed to crazy keyboard issues. Phantom presses, the backspace inserting letters, and all kinds of kooky things. Since hooking it up to the provided charger, it seems to have cooled down (literally) and the keyboard is back to normal. YMMV, but that is something you might want to keep in mind.
The screen on this thing is great. I mean, really really great. When I was comparing my old phone to it in the store, the guy there kept telling me to compare it to the Focus, because it has the (S?)AMOLED display. And I told him that I already knew that the Focus had a great display, but I was planning on getting the Surround for $0.01 anyway and didn't want the Focus to throw off the experiment.
The colors are about the same to my eyes (slightly colorblind), but the increased res that little bit extra screen size (mostly the res) is very nice. Pictures are pretty nice on it, a little bit nicer than on my iPhone.
Haven't actually made any calls on it yet... just showing how little I actually use phones as phones anymore, so I can't speak that yet.
The lock screen controls for the music player are an absolute joke. They weren't that great on the iphone, but they are like half the size, maybe smaller on the WinMoPho (as my friend calls it) and are really hard targets to hit. I seem to recall that the ZuneHD had a cool thing where you could just swipe to go forward or back, but apparently they didn't carry that over, which is upsetting.
I am still getting used to Search on this thing. The fact that a search in the Marketplace will bring up games/apps/music/movies is a little odd, and unless you go Marketplace->Apps, you will get a lot of cruft.
The Twitter and Facebook apps are pretty nice, but I am still not totally sold on having my facebook stuff in my contacts, but time will tell on that one.
The start screen is also an odd paradigm shift. I haven't explored yet how far down it will go, but as it is right now, I am having a hard time deciding with 8 tiles should be at the top, especially since on the iPhone I could have 16 apps on each screen, plus the 4 in the dock. Going from the 18 apps on my first screen on the iPhone to just 8 big tiles is weird.
Now for the requests. WinMoPho users, what are your app recommendations, specifically in the game department, but also generally speaking. Another specific request, I need an RSS reader to replace NetNewsWire.
My previous phone is/was an iPhone 1G running iOS 3.1.3, and I prefer OS X and iTunes, but I won't get to that until I actually hook this sucker up to Zune.
So, first thoughts (these are kind of going to be all over the place at first, bear with me);
It feels really good in my hand. It is a little bit taller and thicker than the iPhone but the same width roughly, so it still fits in my hand well, the volume rocker is on the upper right, which I thought would bug me, but I really don't mind it at all. The power button doesn't protrude as much as the iPhone's, and since that is the only way to unlock it (as opposed to the home button alternative on the iPhone) it really wish it was better. It is too easy to press and almost flush to the phone, so it just feels off.
The kickstand/speaker is nice, but since I am at work I haven't had a chance to play with the speaker much, though the kickstand is pretty good when paired with Alarm Clock w/ Weather (app on the Marketplace), since that actually does support landscape.
The lack of landscape support is bothersome, so much of the iPhone supported it, that to have it taken away where i used it the most (browser) really blows. The software keyboard is really good though, but I am not totally used to it yet. There were times that I was flying on it, typing just as fast as I ever could on the iPhone, but then there were other times where every other letter was wrong and I couldn't find my ass with a map.
As a paradigm shift, the hardware back button is interesting. It was nice to be on the browser looking at stuff, accepting and responding to an incoming text, and then hitting back to jump right back to the browser. It felt quicker than hitting the home button, then Safari.
A lot of my favorable impressions almost certainly have to do with the hardware differences. My iPhone was a first gen. This thing is so much faster, with 4x the RAM, in a lot of ways it isn't a fair comparison. However, it is a testiment to iOS that even the first gen could still handle certain tasks incredibly well. It is still the best, easiest to use software keyboard that I have ever encountered, hindered only slightly by its slow speed. But if you put an iPhone 4 in my hands, i would fly on the soft keyboard.
The fact that I finally have 3G is also pretty awesome, but you guys are already all up on that, so whatever.
Bing Maps aren't too bad, I like the fact that it gives you landmarks in addition to just street names (turn left at Turner St. Citgo Station). That is pretty nice.
I haven't played with the browser much, but it feels pretty fast, and scrolling/zooming are crazy responsive.
I noticed a weird issue. If using either my work computer or my laptop's USB to charge the phone, the bottom got really hot which also may have contributed to crazy keyboard issues. Phantom presses, the backspace inserting letters, and all kinds of kooky things. Since hooking it up to the provided charger, it seems to have cooled down (literally) and the keyboard is back to normal. YMMV, but that is something you might want to keep in mind.
The screen on this thing is great. I mean, really really great. When I was comparing my old phone to it in the store, the guy there kept telling me to compare it to the Focus, because it has the (S?)AMOLED display. And I told him that I already knew that the Focus had a great display, but I was planning on getting the Surround for $0.01 anyway and didn't want the Focus to throw off the experiment.
The colors are about the same to my eyes (slightly colorblind), but the increased res that little bit extra screen size (mostly the res) is very nice. Pictures are pretty nice on it, a little bit nicer than on my iPhone.
Haven't actually made any calls on it yet... just showing how little I actually use phones as phones anymore, so I can't speak that yet.
The lock screen controls for the music player are an absolute joke. They weren't that great on the iphone, but they are like half the size, maybe smaller on the WinMoPho (as my friend calls it) and are really hard targets to hit. I seem to recall that the ZuneHD had a cool thing where you could just swipe to go forward or back, but apparently they didn't carry that over, which is upsetting.
I am still getting used to Search on this thing. The fact that a search in the Marketplace will bring up games/apps/music/movies is a little odd, and unless you go Marketplace->Apps, you will get a lot of cruft.
The Twitter and Facebook apps are pretty nice, but I am still not totally sold on having my facebook stuff in my contacts, but time will tell on that one.
The start screen is also an odd paradigm shift. I haven't explored yet how far down it will go, but as it is right now, I am having a hard time deciding with 8 tiles should be at the top, especially since on the iPhone I could have 16 apps on each screen, plus the 4 in the dock. Going from the 18 apps on my first screen on the iPhone to just 8 big tiles is weird.
Now for the requests. WinMoPho users, what are your app recommendations, specifically in the game department, but also generally speaking. Another specific request, I need an RSS reader to replace NetNewsWire.
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