WINDOWS PHONEANDROIDEMAIL AND
MESSAGING Both
operating systems’ email
clients are easy to set up
and offer built-in support for
Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, and
POP. Microsoft’s interface
and color design is slightly
superior to Android’s, mostly
because we can see three
lines of text in the default
view. Although Windows
Phone’s threaded SMS text
messaging looks and feels
better than Android’s, you
can download superior
third-party text clients from
the Android Marketplace.
This one’s too close to call,
mostly because both mes-
saging clients are top-notch.
WINNER: DRAWPHOTOS AND STORAGE These days, almost
all of us are walking around with the equivalent of
several rolls of fi lm in our pockets. The question,
as always, is what the hell do we do with all these
photos? Both Android and Windows Phone offer
easy ways of viewing the pictures we’ve taken. This
said, Windows Phone’s ability to upload photos
automatically to Facebook or SkyDrive, and the
ability to view all of our friends’ photographs as
well, is so innovative we wish we’d thought of it.
WINNER: WINDOWS PHONEMEDIA STORAGE AND PLAYBACK Android is
fl exible in the manner it deals with media. You can sync
up music using Windows Media Player, or any other sync
client (except Zune and iTunes), and you can drag/drop
directly from Windows to your device. Windows Phone
works extremely well with Zune, which allows you access
to a massive music library for $15 per month, and also
grants you à la carte access to movies and TV shows. And
you can sync your phone wirelessly with your PC.
WINNER: WINDOWS PHONEROUND 4
ROUND 6
ROUND 5
And the Winner Is...
T
he fact that Microsoft is in the mobile conversation at all feels like a
minor miracle. When the company announced that it was delaying
Windows Phone 7 earlier this year, we thought that was the kiss of
death. Instead, holy cow! This is a unique, good-looking mobile OS. It’s
still a 1.0 version, and doesn’t come close to approaching the levels of
customization available to Android users. But between the intuitive
use of categories for basic smartphone tasks, Zune integration, and acleaner look and feel, we have to declare Windows Phone the winner.
One fi nal thought: One of the things we haven’t mentioned in
this Deathmatch is battery life. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be fair because
hardware and battery size/type are a big part of the equation. How-
ever, our tests have made it clear that the Windows Phone OS is far
less battery-intensive than Android. As we see more devices, we’ll
investigate further.Email is easy to set up in both
operating systems, but it’s
much easier to read and
manage in Windows Phone.52 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011|www.maximumpc.com
WINDOWS PHONE 7