Phillip Haydon

Windows Phone 7.5 has been getting some awesome reviews, and rightly so. The thing is amazing. I really think Microsoft has begun leading the way for the mobile platform.

But I’m highly pissed off with the Windows Phone team. Why? Because to use MSN, your msn contacts must be associated with the first live account you register to the phone.

I don’t even know what to say about this, it’s so silly. I understand that it might get confusing to allow multiple Facebook accounts, multiple Windows Live accounts, etc.

But could they not allow you to choose which account MSN contacts are associated to?

When I first setup my phone I didn’t use the Windows Live account I use for MSN (my Hotmail) since it’s existed since 1997, it’s got 100′s of contacts I don’t want in my phone-book, a lot of MSN contacts exist from work, or playing online games, or from forums etc. So I used the Windows Live account that I use for MSDN. I added all my contacts and everything was great, (after I imported all my contacts from outlook into Windows Live Contacts)

I attached my Facebook account, went to People > Settings > Filter Contacts, and turned off Facebook so they do not show in my normal contacts list. This allows me to have normal phone users, but see the Facebook users on the Messaging list.

Now I want to show MSN contacts, so I load up the next Windows Live account, it loads all my contacts, but when I go to messaging, I get NOTHING. No MSN users at all.

On my second Windows Phone (yes I have two) I reformatted it, and signed it up on my Hotmail Windows Live account, and what do I see? All my MSN contacts.

Ok so the team didn’t give us the option to select which Live account we can use for MSN… So I went to download IM+

DEAD END

ATTENTION MSN/WLM users! MSN/WLM is not supported in 1.7 version of IM+ due to Microsoft Marketplace request. If you would like to continue using MSN/WLM in IM+, do not update to 1.7 version from version 1.2. We will continue working on this situation with Microsoft.

WTF… So not only can I not use MSN on my phone natively. The team has blocked anyone else from providing the feature in their own applications…

That’s not fair at all.

Microsoft should be ashamed.

So as it stands, if you don’t use your MSN account as your Windows Phone account, you can’t use MSN.

Microsoft is definitely leading the way in Mobile platform, but they massively screwed up MSN for many users.

Yesterday, my new Windows Phone 7 arrived. I ordered a HTC HD7 from eBay, since it’s like $350 cheaper than buying it from an Australian retailer. Not only that it seems carriers aren’t supporting WP7 too much yet, as two shopped that I enquired about the phone, both tried to talk me out of getting a WP7.

(Photos from http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_hd7-pictures-3338.php)

It’s definitely far superior to my iPhone4, after spending a night playing around with it, pretty much everything is better, in my opinion. (I will NEVER hand over money for an Apple product ever again.)

The one flaw that Windows Phone 7 does have, is it’s contact. Microsoft really dropped the ball on the contact, or ‘People’ as they call them. The idea is great, but it lacks the ability to sync contact with outlook with ease. Contact’s are synced to… everything else.

At first I thought outlook contact’s could only be synced with exchange, but it turns out you can do it… but you need to sync your contacts to your windows live account,and then to your phone. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2454811#21method

Google Mail contact’s is a pain to sync to since it has a habit of adding people to ‘My Contact’ without asking,and Facebook contacts are included when they don’t even include contact details like a mobile number, or email. Which means if you have a lot of friends ‘random people’ on your friends list, your ‘People’ section becomes bloated.

The other thing that’s rather annoying about contact’s is they aren’t filtered for certain applications. If I create an email, and add a contact. It shows all contacts and not contacts that have an email.

Or if I create a call, or text, it doesn’t filter contacts to only those who have a mobile/telephone number.

I’ll get over the usability issues around ‘People’ but for now I find it annoying.

Time to break out the WP7 Developer Tools!