[Windows Phone 7 General] prjkthack:
Most of the time, its purely personal preference. And very rarely these days do I see people using "old fashioned speed dial" as it used to be pre-smartphone. Our smartphones are much smarter than having to hold down a single physical button to call someone (and thus, more complicated).

You throw the same concept onto a smartphone and you don't get the same result. You press the power button, swipe/pinch/tap/slide/triple-tap/whatever/dance/smile/sing/talk to make the lockscreen go away, tap the phone/dialer application, bring up the dial pad if its not automatically displayed, and THEN finally hold down a single digital digit to make it dial someone. This is not speed dial. The problem doesn't exist because speed dial the way we know it does not exist on a smartphone. You've got some shortcuts and apps and methods to make dialing easier, but there is no real speed dial on a smartphone.

Every phone has a different way of doing it, if it even has such functionality to begin with.

I didn't say that the "metro way" was more or less efficient than any other speed dial method on a smartphone, but it does follow Microsoft's whole people-first/social methodology instead of trying to emulate the function of a hardware button that simply does not work the same way on a smartphone. Microsoft didn't just copy everyone and throw the speed dial thing in there for the sake of it. Neither was the change/push to make your favorite things a pinned live tile(s) a change for its own sake. It has a purpose, and as a people-centric/social platform, that purpose is to bring your phone to life. Your contact is more than just a number you hold down and press. And yes, everyone may not like it, but to really appreciate this platform is to understand why Microsoft made certain things work the way they do and why Microsoft said hey, "If we really want people to buy into this whole live tile thing, we've gotta push it hard and show people that there are different ways to send and get information, and yes, even a different way of making a phone call." That they probably left a lot of old, tired and standard ideas on the chopping block because they believe in their platform and in how they designed their software, and that just adding speed dial to make that small percentage of people who still use it happy shows neither faith in what they originally set out to do nor faith in their ideas and concepts.

Certainly not change for the sake of it. Its because Windows Phone 7's sole purpose was change. This has been their whole spiel all along - to be different. And certainly some people won't like it, and that's fine, maybe Windows Phone 7 isn't for you. But if you can take a step back and look at some of things that Microsoft has done with the platform, to surface information and to bring things to life, I'm sure most people will clearly see that the method that they have chosen for their own platform exemplifies and brings out the best qualities and features of the platform, and fits perfectly into putting people first. That there is more than just one way to speed dial a contact yet still get more out of it than just a phone call at the same time.

Take some time and embrace how Windows Phone thinks you can do and accomplish things, and if you don't like it, then hey, Android and iOS are still out there. No harm done.

Also, there are only so many digits you can assign speed dial to, so unless you really just like everything, then you probably won't run into an issue of having too many tiles on your Start screen. The same issue presents itself on any other platform as well. You can have 100s of app icons on iOS, or 100s of widgets on your 100 Android home screens. Take your pick.