HTC Windows Phone 7 Smartphone Leaked, Hitting Verizon Soon? [New HTC Windows Phone 7 Handset Image Hits the Internets, Phone Coming Later This Year]

I am waiting to buy a WP7. I am an Android developer and have (3) Nexus Ones sitting on my desk right now – but my personal phone is going to be a WP7.

WP7 will be superior in the quality of apps, user experience of apps, media integration with zune / xbox, it will have better computer sync support (through the Zune PC app), better quality of games (XNA), superior ease of use, longer battery life, greater stability, better media codec support (if it matches Zune HD), and really nice search features (the integrated Bing search app is awesome), and it has a far better development environment than Android (VS2010 with a slick emulator using .Net / silverlight / blend vs Eclipse with a POS emulator using Java / magicsauce XML for the UI).

Androids main selling points are Adobe Flash support and tethering (on the 2.2 OS). Unfortunately WP7 will likely never have either of those features. Comparing the whole enchilada WP7 still wins for me though.

I don’t consider 3rd party multitasking support a feature. There are very few mobile applications which require true multitasking other than background music – which WP7 gives you a service to use for that. I don’t want to run a web server on my phone while playing games and answering calls. Tombstoning exists to restore an app to exactly how you left it (fake multitasking). True multitasking can be more of a detriment than a feature once 3rd party devs (and even phone vendors) abuse it (hell – task killer is like the number one Android app).

Copy/paste missing is unfortunate – but it will likely make a future release. I honestly hope true 3rd party multitasking does NOT make it into a future release. I like my battery to stay alive for more than 5 hours.