The incomplete list of impolite WP7 user feature requests
When I first moved from the combination of a dumb phone and a separate music player, I had modest requirements: phone calls, MP3 playback, calendar notifications, contact management, email, camera and solitaire. Even asking for only these seven things, my first smart phone was as life changing as my first laptop. I could do a great deal of my work while out and about, allowing me to have a much more productive work/personal life balance.
When I was first married, the word “love” didn’t seem big enough for what I felt for my bride. These days, the word “phone” doesn’t seem nearly big enough for the pocket-sized mobile device that I’m never without, like my wallet and my keys. Further, I expect my phone to replace my wallet and keys any day now, along with the Walkman, DVD player, TV, radio, book shelf, notepads, calculator, compass, alarm clock, wall calendar, newspaper, encyclopedia, dictionary, GameBoy, carpenter’s level, laptop, navigation device and landline it’s already replaced.
Now that I’ve been through several smart phones, including my favorites, the T-Mobile Dash and the iPhone 3G, I have a much longer, incomplete list of what I want from my Windows Phone 7 Series (and I know it’s incomplete because after I post this list, someone is going to remind me what vital things I missed : ).
· A calculator. It’s surprising how useful this is, including the scientific features.
· A battery that lasts at least 24 hours while I’m using Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, music and my apps. Oh, and please let me charge the thing with a standard connector (USB!) and let me use my phone while it’s recharging.
· An easy, high-quality way to run the music through my car stereo. The Sells Brothers and I like to jam!
· An easy way to switch back and forth to airplane mode. Or even better, can you make it so the device isn’t an FAA threat during takeoff and landing so I can stop reading the stupid magazine in the seat pocket in front of me for 5 minutes at the beginning and ending of my flights?
· Great auto-correct on my hard or soft keyboard entry. This is really the only way that allows my big fingers and the lack of tactile feedback to even work with a phone keyboard.
· Copy-paste: I can’t live w/o it anymore. Also, please include pasting into my phone during calls so I can stop memorizing 9-digit conference call IDs.
· I’d really love intelligent integration of music, i.e. keep it playing when I switch apps and not just the built-in Zune player, but 3rd party music apps, too (aka Pandora). Also, let me pause, next, previous while my phone is locked or I’m in another app. Finally, make sure to stop music when I get a call and start it back up again when my call is over. I love that.
· Full (!) calendar support:
o Sync’ing with Exchange and not Exchange.
o Recognition of phone numbers and addresses in my calendar appointments with links to dial/get directions.
o Reply All to an appointment so that I can let folks know I’m running late.
o Snooze on my meeting reminders (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten my meeting after the one and only 15 minute reminder).
o Show my appointments on my home page instead of making me dig into some app.
· Please provide a responsive UI, even if I haven’t rebooted in a week. Ideally I’d never have to reboot at all.
· Wireless sync’ing to my PC. My house is bathed in Wi-Fi; why make me connect a wire?
· Tethering so I can use my phone as a network connection for my PC. I’m paying for unlimited data — let me use it! And ideally make that wireless, too.
· Turn-by-turn directions! This won’t be ready until I go off course and I hear “recalculating” from my phone piped through my car stereo with Pandora playing in the background.
· There definitely needs to be an “app store” for phone apps, but also there needs to be a way to install apps from other sources without hacking my phone. Also, please let me install them on my SD card so I can take advantage of the extra memory.
· Let me install extra memory!
· Let me replace the battery! Batteries go bad over time and they need to be replaced on the go.
· I need a great audio book listening experience (bookmarks!) and a great ebook reading experience (formats!).
· I’d like some phone-wide search, including the ability to see where the result came from. I never want the email-only Contact from the list of everyone that I’ve ever received an email from — I want the real contact info that I’ve got cached on my phone.
· Full contact lookup, both personal and corporate (Exchange).
· Good camera (and flash): the one on my phone is the only one I ever use, as it’s the one I always have with me.
· Bluetooth and voice dialing for hands free operation (required by state law in both Washington and Oregon, where I spend most of my time). Also, I’d love the same integration with my Jawbone that I have with my iPhone, i.e. volume control and battery indicator.
· Apps I can’t live without:
o Evernote: I’m willing to move my data into OneNote so long as I can sync between the web, my phone and my PC.
o Social networking clients: IM, Twitter, an RSS/ATOM Feed Reader, YouTube and Facebook.
o Converter for currency, distance, volume, etc.
o A Compass.
o A Flashlight. I have used the ambient life from my phone to get myself out of the forest in pitch blackness. Without it, I’m sure I would’ve been hacked to pieces by Jason or Michael Meyers.
o TripIt, Movies, OpenTable, UrbanSpoon, Mint: I use these all the time.
o Shazam: Before this app, I used to record snippets of songs and email them to my son would be charge me $.50/ea. to find the title and artist so I could grab them for my phone. Shazam has cut out the middle man and represents ~100% of the music I purchase these days.
o Skype or some other good way to use my phone to do IP Telephony (or even IP Video Conferencing)
o Tetris! I guess there are other casual games in the world, but that’s mine.
Because the WP7 hasn’t shipped yet, I can pile all of my hopes and dreams on it and, like everyone else not on the WP7 team, I have very little idea of whether my hopes will be fulfilled, but that doesn’t stop me from dreaming. So now it’s your turn — what did I miss? : )
P.S. I know that lots of phones have a subset of these features and I’m sure someone will tell me that, with the correct config, I can make their favorite phone do all these things. I know that’s going to happen because whenever I complain about a missing feature in the Visual Studio editor, some emacs guy says, “Oh, you can do that with Alt+Shift+Left Elbow in my editor!” I don’t care about what your phone can do. No phone’s UI has stirred me like the WP7’s UI. That’s the one I want to use, so that’s the phone I’m going to bang on ’til my incomplete list is complete.