Chances are you’ve been hearing about Windows Phone 7 a lot lately. And with good reason: this is a major shakeup in the communications industry and when a major shakeup comes to an entire industry, it’s worth paying attention. And it’s especially worth paying attention to if you run your own business, because you never know just what tool will prove to be the next valuable tool to make your business the best it can be.
The big early word around Windows Phone 7, which sometimes goes by the name of “Mango”, is getting a lot of early looks at it, and, essentially, the universal word across a variety of words so far is that it’s a different experience. I know, how specific is that? But it’s a perfectly valid judgment, as everything we’ve seen about it so far says it’s an experience without immediate comparison. It’s a largely visual experience, with a series of tiles that you can slide up and down, which is somewhat unlike the icon-based operating systems of iOS and Android.
It offers up the People Hub, which is a great way to keep all your contacts organized and in one place, though some reports say that People Hub can be a little overzealous, going into your social networks and the like. This has a tendency to result in some duplicates, or so the same reports go. Still though, for offices that pack a lot of Microsoft hardware (and let’s face it, most everybody’s running Windows gear in the office anyway), you’re likely going to find this one a great mobile complement to your standard desktop hardware package.
The plain and simple is that, like so much of electronics geared toward business, the best thing you can do is give it a try. See if you can make arrangements to test it out for a couple weeks and see how much value there is for you. It doesn’t seem like a bad idea, especially if you’re on the road a lot and your office primarily runs on Windows hardware. Still though, your mileage is almost sure to vary, so start small to see if you can see the value first.
Related keywords: smartphone, Windows Phone 7, iOS, Android