[HD7 General] Frinkky:
I've always liked Samsungs. I started with an SGH-D520, then an Omnia (original on WinMo6). That failed so bought a Monte to see me through the last few months of my contract.

Despite most of my friends having iPhone 4's I've never been one to subscribe to that train of thought (although I love the retina display). I opted for an HD7 and wp7 mostly out of curiosity.

So far, not disappointed. I had read numerous reviews so expected some shortfalls. Love the ux - I can get wherever I need in a couple of swipes. The htc flashlight app is probably the best I've seen (makes full use of the dual flash ;) ). Seriously though, I got what I expected. A super smooth ui, fast access to native apps, a bit of fun on xbox live and easy to use syncing (love the wifi syncing).

I'm possibly not the best judge of the screen, having coming from Omnia and Monte, but when I first turned on my hd7 it reciprocated the favour. I was impressed and could not see the issues others were mentioning - but I guess its all relative. Still, I heard it could have almost doubled the price of the handset to develop a 4.3" S-AMOLED screen. That would not have been worthwhile - we need better batteries first.

Speaking of batteries, I ordered a spare 1500mAh battery from amazon for 6 squids. Its my default for now, despite its cheap price and innocuous origins, but it seems fine so far. The original stays in my wallet for emergencies.

There are shortfalls, as I said I expected. Some are frustrating; copy/paste, integrated twitter client, messenger, camera settings. As for things like customisation I couldn't give 2 short poops about. I chose wp7 for its ui so I'm glad o2 had no more access to it than changing the default search engine from within ie to yahoo. This isn't android - so I expected no fine tuning. The browser is also poor - a mash up between ie7 and 8. It works well enough for most sites, but I would have hoped for more, especially as some more modern sites are beginning to drop support for ie7 and lower - having to wait for another few months for ie9 to be rolled out could be painful especially if other browsers cannot/will not make their way to wp7.

The zune marketplace search displaying results from all areas doesn't really bother me, its a foible that can be resolved and I'm sure it will. A lot of issues people have should be little more than tweaks.

As for multitasking, iphone 4 had issues of apps not properly supporting it (ref: can't post url due to newbness - pm or just google 'iphone 4 pros and cons'). I'd not be too surprised if MS decided not to include it initially so app devs would not gloss over proper support. They've now had it in the dev software for a little while so hopefully updates and future apps will be properly supported.

All in all it is a solid start. Main areas of consideration have been social media and setting up the base framework for a decent sync and marketplace (apps coming soon! ;) ) I do get the feeling that we have paid to be beta testers, but whatever - perhaps I shouldn't have turned off feedback!

I expect there are things I missed, but I may come and edit this.

In conclusion, I rate both the phone and the os. I can do all I need - phone, text, email, socialise, take quick snaps, take quick video, play some games, listen to music and watch movies. I'm not an extremist in any of these fields (although project sunburst is usually running while I work :D ). Purists may not like it due to some of the issues raised, customisers definitely won't yet and I can understand that. It's not a finished product but is pretty nice anyway - if its your thing.

Edit: Will be interesting to see how the expiration of the MSFT anti-trust consent decree in May this year will affect things. Maybe some things are being developed, but saved till then? (again pm or google 'microsoft anti-trust may 2011')

Edit 2: Maps - love the fading transitions between levels, however the data is at least 10 years old in parts. It recognises the road my folks live in, but satellite still shows a huge field :D

I'm not expecting wp7 to offer this to the same extent. I don't believe MS wants it that way either, so I am curious to see what happens with the whole homebrew collaboration (more the approved version - I don't want to invalidate my warranty just yet :) )

Current verdict: Very happy with the ux, happy with the phone and the os.