List of Windows Phone7 Apps & Popularity

I stumbled on this link and thought I would share. You can see the apps, and their popularity. So far, all my favorites are in good working order including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare. My hopes are high that the app market won't be flooded with crap like the Android and iPhone stores but I can already see the fart apps and others coming in.

As a former Android G1 user, I'm delighted with the user experience and ease of use that I'm finding with the apps. I'm spending less and less time navigating and I get in and out quickly in my phone. It really is a phone to save me from my phone. So far, I've converted three people into making the switch. Each were iPhone users who have what I describe as iFatigue. They were ready for a change and I see Windows Phone7 being a slow growing that is going to start catching the buzz in the next few months. I'm thinking it's going to be a good time to buy some Microsoft Stock. their stock has been downgraded often because they aren't sexy but between Phone7, Windows 7, and Kinect, I'm thinking it's a great time to buy.

What do you think? Have you seen it yet? I'm smitten and I keep making the joke that I keep playing with it so much that I'm going to go blind. #Love iT!

I've got my HD7!

w00t w00t! So, I got my phone today at 2pm from UPS. I had to wait a week after everyone else because I wanted to save a little money by ordering through Amazon Wireless instead of waiting on T-Mobile to open up their ordering. Instead of $199 for the phone through T-Mobile directly, I got it for $169 from Amazon. To my surprise and delight, I received an email from Amazon a few days before it shipped stating that the lowered the price to $149. Sweet!

So, I get the phone, and it's gorgeous. Despite people saying the screen wasn't that nice, they obviously are much more picky than I am. I've been happily using my Android G1 for the last two years and this is a HUGE step above. The phone feels study and as others have reported, fits nicely into my hand and isn't too big.

For the unboxing and setup, I've been running into some stumbling blocks that might hurt the experience for those less technical or patient. My brother used to work at T-Mobile and I know he would have his hands full over the last week with complaints. My issues are detailed below to help others and they aren't meant as a complaint. I know what I get into with being an early adopter and I am hard headed enough to love it.

1. To be honest, it took me a few minutes to even figure out how to turn it on. there is a piece of plastic over the battery connectors so despite clicking power and trying to charge it, I had to open up the back and remove it.
2. Adding emails and linking accounts was pretty simple. I couldn't auth to my Xbox Live ID and it was driving me crazy because my other Live ID worked just fine with the same exact password. This one is resolved as it turns out this ID has a non Microsoft suffix and when I logged in via a web browser, I needed to authorize my account. A click of "Send authorization email" and then clicking the "Yes, I want to authorize this account" in the email made the problem go away.
3. During the setup, the initial Facebook setup process was easy, the only problem was that it brought in the contacts and shocking amount of information for my over 700 friends into my phone. Under settings, then people I selected to not list contacts that were not linked to others in my phone. My word of caution is to not select this until you've linked all of them up properly. If you only have an email from someone and it doesn't match their name or email on Facebook you won't be able to link the account and it will go away.
4. There is no option for "GPS" and only "Location" on or off. I've selected on, but the maps app has me about a quarter away from my house. This is a result I would expect on my G1 if I was only using wifi for location. The same issue showed up in Foursquare as it didn't realized I got in my car and drove a few miles away. I'll keep digging.
5. Outlook seems to complain when I type in the wrong server with a "Cannot connect to mail.xxx.com" and when it's right, and the password is wrong it tells me. But then, it says it's syncing and can't finish. The error is below and this is still an outstanding one. Googling isn't helping so far. Any takers?

"Outlook error

Not updated

We're having a problem syncing your

information. Try again later.

Last tried 2 seconds ago

Error code: 8500201D"

As mentioned above, I realize when it's wrong information on the server, username, domain, or password based on the information that is coming back.

I'm sure that I'll find more to post about later but those are my first 5 issues. I was able to stream Netflix like a champ and download apps very well. I'm still grinning ear to ear and loving the phone. I am a satisfied customer and I'm confident this is a good phone and the issues are only software bugs that are resolvable.

*Update: 11/16/2010 6:40am CST - I was troubleshooting some more and unchecked to sync email leaving Calender and Contacts selected. This actually worked. Selecting email again, resulted in the same previous error. So I've definately got the right settings in place, I might need to get my IT team to look at something on their end as the issue might be a server side setting dealing with security, permissions, or policies. I found this post that I'll be discussing with my IT team on shortly.

Additionally, I was able see this morning that maps did show me in the right location. I don't think I made any changes and I'm worried that it's going to be that slow. I will keep you updated here too.

As a last update on this post. I found the ability to import my Gmail contacts into my LiveID account. This was pretty huge as I was dreading putting my contacts into the phone. Switching from Android meant that all my contact information was there. Despite connecting to Gmail and being able to read my emails, it doesn't pull the contacts. This ability to import from the web interface easily solved my issue. It even linked up the majority of the contacts to Facebook and my Outlook contacts where appropriate. Good stuff. :)

*Update: 11/16/2010 9:40am CST - At work we have a hidden SSID for our wireless connection. This is a missing feature in Windows Phone7. I hope they add it later, and I would hope that T-Mobile would want it too so they can save their bandwidth. This is pretty annoying considering I just bought two games in the market place and I can't download them over the air or tethered. It only supports downloading via wifi. That means I have to wait till I get home. :(

*Update: 11/16/2010 1:49pm CST - We have Outlook! Even tho I had only selected to download email from the last 3 days, it appears that the amount of email in my inbox was causing it to freak out. As I was troubleshooting with my IT team, they noticed that when I was tethered, it looked like my laptop was making the queries to the Exchange server instead of the phone directly. Since my laptop was on the VPN, I changed the mail server name to the internal name and unchecked the SSL option.

This was the magic combination and in a few minutes, I had all my email. After that initial sync and subsequent tests, I disconnected and tried again but it failed because it wasn't on the VPN. Then I changed it back to the external name with SSL as it was originally set and it worked. Now I'm getting my emails without a problem.

My co-worker with a Samsung Focus on AT&T was having a similar issue with a different error code. My fix didn't work for him but he did get it resolved. It turns out that it didn't like him having sub folders under his inbox. Removing them allowed him to connect and resolved his problems.