Windows Phone 7 How does it work?
Where to start?
As I mentioned in my previous post about the phone you can associate your phone with a Windows Live ID. Having done this all your contacts from Windows live sync via the could to your phone. Now I am not 100% sure that you need a Windows Live ID, though if Android phones are anything to go by needing a Google account to access the Google market place I would guess you do.
As I found out thanks to Paul Thurott on the Windows Weekly podcast, first you need to link services to your Windows Live ID. This can be done via the services link on Windows Live. Linked services are other web sites like WordPress.com, Slideshare and Facebook. Having completed this step, when you sign into your phone the “People” Live Tile fills with the latest updates from which service has the latest.
The People Live Tile where all your contacts reside
When you tap this Live Tile you go to your contacts where you can see all your contacts information as well as any live updates from theirs and your linked accounts. Also at this part of the people UI you can manually add your contacts which will then be synced to your Windows Live ID and viewable through your Windows Live account on the web.
As with all the smart phones you can also integrate with Microsoft Exchange Web Mail. This populates seamlessly, on the phone importing all your exchange contacts from your online contact list. You can add phone numbers, avatars (pics of your contacts) etc easily as well.
To add your exchange account you can swipe left or tap on the home screen arrow situated on the top right screen to show all the phones applications.
Apps display left to right iPod 4, HTC Mozart 7 Windows Phone 7
Simply scroll down to the settings app and select email & accounts, go to the Outlook app and fill in the required information for your exchange account. Having acquired the exchange server the phone populates almost immediately with email and contacts.
Here as well you can link your Gmail, Yahoo or other POP email accounts which will also populate your People Live Tile with yours and your contacts recent activities associated with each account. One thing to note about linking in all these accounts is your choice of 3G data usage, the more accounts you have the more data is used.
Now not all Tiles are Live Tiles, some tile just sit there waiting to be tapped into action, then there are the Hub Tiles. The Hub tiles span the breadth of the home screen interface. Currently on my phone there 3 which came on the phone.
One is the HTC Hub which for those with other OS’ed HTC phones would see as similar to the HTC Sense software. The difference here however is that you can delete this Hub and application from the phone if you chose to do so. It is the same for Telstra related applications, once deleted there gone, only re installable from the market place.
The second of these is the Calendar Hub which displays any calendar information for the day. It displays any calendars which you have linked to such as your Windows Live calendar or your Exchange online Calendar all over the air.
The third is the Pictures Hub which is associated with any pictures on the phone or on your Windows live account on the web. you can actually specify that any new pictures taken on the phone are uploaded and synced to your Windows Live account.
Windows Phone 7 tile interface showing the Calendar and Pictures Hub's
Next post will be about the standard applications on the phone like Office, the quality of the market place.