If you recall, Scott Adams of Dilbert fame was lamenting his iPhone and EVO 3D on Twitter and thus fell in to Brandon Watson's clutches. Watson famously offered Adams a $1,000 donation to his favorite charity if he would take Windows Phone for a spin and didn't like it.
Well, Adams received the phone and has written up a decent little review of it compared to his iPhone 3GS and HTC EVO 3D (Android). We'll just cut to the chase:
"The Windows phone has the best user interface experience, although the onscreen keyboard is problematic just as it is with the other phones I used. The Windows interface is intuitive, simple, and has a liveliness that I find appealing. Voice call quality was good, and battery life seemed good too. I declare it the winner compared to my iPhone 3GS with AT&T and my HTC EVO 3D with Android on the Sprint network."..."If you want a smartphone that is easy to use, performs well, has a good battery life, and doesn't frustrate you, the Windows phone is the best choice of the three options I tested. All you give up is some hipster credibility and access to lesser-used apps."
Bam!
Now, having said that, it wasn't all gushing either. Adams did a neat breakdown of major features and gave pass/fail grades to all three devices. He confesses he's not a professional reviewer, nor a gadget geek like we in his write up, which we think is a good thing sometimes. Areas he didn't care for on the AT&T Samsung Focus running Mango:
- On-screen keyboard - yeah, he actually didn't like it. In fairness, he didn't like the iPhone's or EVO's either, so he's being consistent. Fact is, he just doesn't like soft-keyboards and you can't fault a guy too much for that (there's a reason why we like the Quantum, Arrive and Dell Venue Pro around here).
- "Intangible coolness factor" - this is pretty arbitrary but hints at a larger problem for Microsoft, namely they're just not cool. Yeah, we know, kind of a lame thing to judge the phone on, but lets face it, Microsoft has an image problem. It's getting better but they're still no Apple and that matters to consumers.
- Apps - "okay-ish". This has been the Achilles heel so far in reviews and while he notices the lack of some big name apps, he doesn't consider the whole phone a fail because of it.
Overall though, Adams seems impressed with Windows Phone, slamming the EVO on its clunky UI and terrible battery life (no argument there) and the iPhone 3GS gets bad remarks for reception and okay results for UI. So Watson, mission accomplished.
Source: Dilbert.com; Thanks, Paul, for the heads up!
