My assessment on the WP7 is a mixed bag as of late. I had to opportunity to scoop a Dell Venue Pro for a very good price ... and so I thought rather than buy an MP3 player might as well pick up a showcase of Nokia's future OS. I have been playing around with the phone for about 3 weeks and it definitely is no Maemo something I already knew going into it but wanted to see for myself first hand. Now don't get me wrong the WP7 experience has plenty of ups, but it's the simple things that really kills it. Like a lack of contacts export/ import feature (basically just pulls numbers from either a google account or a liveid account or a sim card but no other alternatives). Also missing is that seamless OS integration with IM and VoIP services such as google talk which allowed you to see your friends who are online just by opening the address book. Also the Camera just plain sucks, I think this is mostly the OS side of things because a lot of people are saying the same thing when it comes to camera quality which doesn't focus right, colors are saturated, white balance is horrible, etc...

Also being in the Microsoft sandbox is a scary notion. When you think about it, Microsoft the king of antitrust cases has a thing of not acknowledging services far superior to their own. Like for example the Google Calendar sync is non-existant or gimped ... but they are more than happy to suck contacts from your Google account. They have a messenger like service but they will probably never even fathom having google talk baked in. They don't openly support alternative search engines, and so on. MS likes you to use their services even when their are better options, and that s the typical MS bully pulpit. The stance on SD cards for phones, MS is trying to control more then they should.

The WP7 OS in my opinion is more buggy then PR1.0 and I am serious. The OS auto mutes, no multitasking (seriously a hampering situation), every WP7 has some sort of firmware issue (for the DVP there is a WiFi bug, and a RAM issue). Control of settings is really not on par with what a smartphone should be like. Their seems to be only to modes ring and vibrate. But you can't even edit these profiles, the ring volume changes because it is tied to the system volume. If you were listening to music loud, the ring is loud and if it was low the ringer is low. The motor you can't control, the email notification tone isn't even set as a default you would have to set it from the get go. The marketplace app crashed often pre NoDo and since the update that has gone. Zune can't seek by pressing a seek bar but by rather holding the forward button which is quite onerous for those 1hour MP3's like lecture recordings. Having to use Zune to sync files I hate just because I am of the drag and drop computer generation.

With all that said, their is potential but under MS's hands I don't think it is a step forward but rather a copy and paste move because after all MS is not an innovator but rather the last guy invited to the party. Nokia would be better off going its own way because the Microsoft way is about doing what others do after it's done and old. Speaking of which Maemo today can blow MS's WP7 OS on a technical basis ... in the end it wasn't the product that failed but rather Nokia as it did have a winning product but not the cojones to back it up with real money. The key phrase for this entire transition is the word Ecosystem. Mr. Elop said the battle for future companies is not the brands but the ecosystem they ride their platform on. He is correct, and the reports coming out seem to indicate that MS can capture the number 2 spot, but he should not forget that MS can only capture the number 2 spot because of Nokia. The point is MS needed Nokia and not the other way around. Nokia had an ecosystem when they convinced themselves they needed another companies. Sort of like how Nokia had an OS in Maemo before teaming with Intel for MeeGo.

What I do now is carry two phones, my WP7 for Netflix and the N900 for everything else. As much as I like Nokia, I now want to see capitalistic forces of nature to take effect. These series of bad choices from management is inexcusable and a company with a sense of purpose needs to take hold. We are already starting to see the vultures swarming ... two rating agencies downgraded Nokia already, I don't think the WP7 adoption rate is accurate and Nokia will lose with an MS gamble because their will be competing phones from the likes of HTC, LG, and Samsung. Comparitively when it comes to hardware Nokia has a slight edge, but build quality of phones for these companies is actually improving and Nokia will lose that edge. Nokia will revert to a hardware design house, most of the engineering will be outsourced but in house engineering will shrink. Patent trolling also is a likely cash cow in the foreseeable future. I think the Feb decision Elop made set these motions in play and are now out of anybodies control ... the remaining brand power of Nokia has been diluted to mean cheap plastic phones, old Symbian, and Winmo which are all bad connotations in a field where brand matters. Blackberry still sells a bunch of crappy spec'd phones because they have a brand ... and in this field brand is as important as air to living creatures. As always disappointed and my honest opinion of all things Nokia ... feels good to get that off my mind.