Buying Apps
The iPhone has the famous App Store, Windows Phone has the Marketplace. While the iPhone obviously has exponentially more apps available than Windows Phone does, a lot of the major apps were available for Windows Phone from day-one. I can’t, in good conscience, say that the Windows Phone Marketplace even compares to the iPhone app store in terms of apps, yet, but things do look good for such a new system.
Both systems allow you to buy/download apps through your computer or through your device, so they are basically equal in that regard. I do think that the Windows Phone will need to find a better way to arrange and organize the apps and games once the marketplace starts to really take off, though.
One place the iPhone has the Windows Phone beat, hands-down, right now is the fact that you can’t view what apps you currently have on your Windows Phone when using your PC. You can only view and manage your apps through the phone.
Interface
The iPhone interface was revolutionary when it came out, but it’s become old after a while, and a lot of flaws have become apparent. It’s difficult to arrange the icons on your iPhone; there’s no real method of organization and it’s actually somewhat clumsy.
On the Windows Phone, it’s a little more simple (in my humble opinion; I am well aware of the fact that people will disagree with me vehmently). You have one home screen and can pin as few or as many apps to that home screen as you choose. Almost anything can be pinned to the home screen. If you need something that’s not pinned to your home screen, you tap an arrow and get to view the full list of apps on your phone. One minor complaint I have about this is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a way to search for the apps you have installed (clicking the search icon while viewing your app list takes you to Bing to search the Web).
Camera
Unfortunately, since I never had an iPhone 4, I can’t comment on its camera. However, the 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash that’s included in the HTC Surround takes really nice pictures even in low light. The iPhone 3G took decent pictures in ideal conditions, but really stunk otherwise.
The photo shown on the right was taken in near complete darkness with the camera zoomed in about 50% (which, by itself, would have resulted in a terribly pixelated and blurry photo on the iPhone 3G).
On Windows Phone 7, after you take a picture, you can share the photo through MMS, e-mail (any of your accounts), Facebook or your Windows Live Skydrive (which appears to be like Dropbox on steroids – 25 gigabytes of storage space for free) account. If you have any photo-related apps installed on your Windows Phone, you can access them directly from the camera, as well. Simply touch the “extras” menu and it brings up a list of the photo apps (for instance, on my phone, I have the “flickr manager” app installed) and lets you use the photo in the app you select.
Conclusion
Is Windows Phone 7 better than the iPhone? That’s not really a question that I can answer. It really comes down to what you want out of your mobile experience. If having over a million different apps from which to choose, using apps like Facetime or the Google Mobile interfaces, using copy and paste, syncing with a Mac or using iTunes is really important to you, then you should definitely stick with the iPhone. Likewise, the plethora of 3rd-party accessories for the iPhone currently puts the Windows Phone to shame and most likely will continue to do so unless the Windows Phone gains a lot of traction.
If the ability to sync multiple calendars at once, open, edit and share Office documents, keep up with your friends on Facebook, integrate your gaming experience with your Xbox Live account and use the Zune Pass sound like things that might be important to you, it might be time to pick up a Windows Phone 7 device.
I will be the first to admit that there are a lot of things I miss about my iPhone (I’ll be writing a post soon about the various iPhone apps I really wish were available for Windows Phone 7), but I really like my new phone and am extremely impressed with the implementation of its features.