WP7 vs Android - Part Two and Three

Texting is a huge part of most peoples' phones, and it's important to get the experience right. Android offers a feature rich text message client, and Windows Phone 7 offers a simple, but functional client instead. Both platforms use threading, which is essential on new phones.

Android offers conversation view, with the contacts name, as well as Facebook or Google Contact picture appearing next to their name. While the integration of pictures and all this information can be appealing, the design isn't exactly attractive, and can feel very cluttered. Notifications are shown across the top bar, with a preview of the message before it hides away as an icon.

If we're perfectly honest here, Internet Explorer Mobile has always been somewhat useless. If I still owned my old Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, I'd dig it out to compare, but despite high hopes for Windows Phone 7's browser, it continues to disappoint. It's not to say Microsoft didn't do anything right here, they've built in some nice pinch to zoom functionality, the ability to have multiple pages open at a time (with previews of them when switching) and the ability to pin them, but these don't make up for the dismal way it displays websites.

I didn't actually have any huge problems getting to pages or loading content, but the way Internet Explorer displays things is often very obscure. On the left is Windows Phone 7, and the right is Android. Android displays Neowin just like a desktop browser, but, Windows Phone 7 for some reason makes random bits of text larger. I'm not exactly sure if this is by design, but it definitely makes no sense.