Yeah, I’m pretty late to the game here. That said, I bet I’ve played with this (thanks Shawn!) before most of the people I know or who read this blog. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that most of the people I know never intend to ever giving it a try (so why are you still reading?). Well, if you’re one of those people, you owe it to yourself to at least give Windows Phone 7 fifteen minutes of playtime at your favorite phone store or, even better, a 15-30 day trial from your favorite carrier. It’s still a 1.x phone and, therefore, is missing some of the polish and completeness of it’s iPhone and Android competition, but I think it’s a fresh, cool approach to the smartphone category.

As a current Android user and a former (reformed?) iPhone user, I have a pretty good feel for what I use the phone for and what’s most important to me. I don’t play games on my phone. It’s a communication device primarily, a synced data access device (think Evernote and Smugphoto) secondarily and web browsing device tertiarily (did I just make that up?). I run a handful of apps that don’t fit into these categories, but they’re icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. In that light, I found Windows Phone 7 surprisingly satisfying and quite a bit different from the other platforms.

The first thing you notice is how fast the UI is. Everything runs smoothly without pause. Even on mediocre hardware, the OS feels quick. Add to that the constant visual feedback and animation in transitions and the experience is just cool. Also out of the shoot, Microsoft’s choices of fonts and font sizes make the display clear and easy on the eye – almost playful. The tiled, mosaic home page makes getting to what you want quick and painless. Since I use just a few apps, most of those being native to all leading phones, I can always get to what I want fast. That seems to be the goal of phone and one which it achieves . . . in a 1.x sorta way.

Email is my primary app when using a smartphone. Setting up the stock email program to work with my Gmail account (including contacts and calendar) was as easy as setting things up on Android. I’m still a bit unsure if Windows Phone uses all the correct labels from Gmail for spam, trash, etc. There’s also no basic “Archive” button, which I have become quite used to in Gmail. Also missing is threaded messaging. For some, that’ll be enough of a deal killer. Apparently, MS is going to add it in a later rev of the software. Moving between messages is easy and reading them even easier. With threaded messaging and a little more Gmail integration, this email app could blow away the stock Android app. For example, it’s much easier to move a message to a folder (change its label in Gmail-speak) than on the Android Gmail app.

Contacts get a little weird. If you’re big into email like me, your contact list is critical. Windows Phone sucks down your contacts from Facebook and merges them with your other contacts. I don’t like that at all. Segregation of contacts is important to me. I have Facebook “friends” who shouldn’t be allowed to mingle with my real friends, if you know what I mean. Apparently, there’s a way to sorta separate them, but there’s still bussing between the lists. Funny enough, Twitter followers or followees are not allowed to participate here – at all. Word on the street that this will be addressed in the next version.

As you’d expect, there aren’t many apps available. Important ones like Evernote are, but other basic ones aren’t yet there. One gets the idea that they’re coming. Just very slowly. If you’re an app hound, the list may never be long enough on this OS for you. For me, I think the key apps will be there shortly.

Perhaps the biggest current failing of the phone is no multi-tasking. Actually, I shouldn’t say that there is no multitasking, the native apps seem to do it just fine. Zune runs in the background, mail downloads in the background, etc. It’s just not available to third party apps. MS has to rectify this or this phone will be a total loser. Again, apparently they’re workin’ on it. Funny, it seems like they should know something about implementing multitasking, huh?

Browsing is fast and efficient. SMS is more than reasonable. Oh yeah, the phone works great, just like a phone should.

I was pleasantly surprised with Windows Phone 7. Can Microsoft pull it off and become a contender? I hope so. Not only because I’m a MS fan, but because I’d love to see more competition driving this market.