Yesterday, I upgraded from my TouchPro 2 to a HTC HD7 device. As a whole, the device is very fluid. I love the interface and simplicity of it all. With it, I feel that Windows Mobile has finally stepped into something that users nowdays would actually want (and most importantly, enjoy) using.
However, there are a few glaring issues that I see from a usability perspective.
1) Marketplace Search is ATROCIOUS. Filters are a good thing (when done right). Sometimes running the text based search is quite challenging (when it pukes out all of the hits - apps, music, videos, etc all in ONE list).
2) Custom ringtones. My monochrome LCD phone from the 90s could do this. Come on...
3) Contact management. If there was one thing that I ever felt was like information overload, it would have to be the "People" hub. It is akin to a bucket that all of my contacts from Facebook, Live Messenger, and Gmail gets dumped incoherently into (but to their defense, there is a "link" ability). I currently have 462 (FOUR HUNDRED and SIXTY TWO) contacts in my people's hub. I estimate that I have around 50 phone numbers. Can you see how much crap I'll have to wade through? Plus when I hook up the PDA to my car's Multi Media Interface (via bluetooth), the phonebook will have 462 entries of which most are email addresses (and utterly useless).
4) Apparent demise of MyPhone. I can kinda understand how they are some what consolidating their efforts (and it is now part of Windows Live), but I was completely Sadly Out of Luck. I had to wade through all 462 entries in the People Hub (see #3) and manually enter in their phone number (I had already wiped my old device at this point). While I'm all for consolidation of efforts, please give your users an exit plan. As of writing (11/14/2010), there is no way possible for users to export contacts stored in MyPhone (nor have it merged/migrated with Windows Live Devices.
These are mainly "teething" issues in my opinion. The gravity of it does somewhat very from an "Oh Well" to a "WTF".
I really hope this gets sorted out properly in the future. Or else I may choose to completely exclude my Windows Live account totally from my WP7.
