The first round of WP7 reviews are starting to float in, and tech heavyweight Walt Mossberg has weighed in — and is less than fully impressed. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Mossberg is the tech editor for the Wall Street Journal, and arguably the most important journalist in the field — especially for lay people. He took WP7 for a spin, and isn’t totally enamored.
Like everyone else who has used it, he’s a big fan of the interface, but docks them points for omitting little features like “copy and paste, visual voicemail, multitasking of third-party apps, and the ability to do video calling and to use the phone to connect other devices to the Internet,” all of which are hopefully coming in software updates. His final conclusion is pretty bleak:
Overall, I can’t recommend Windows Phone 7 as being on a par with iPhone or Android—at least not yet. Unless you’re an Xbox Live user, or rely on Microsoft’s SharePoint corporate Web-based document system, it isn’t as good or as versatile as its rivals.
Mossberg might be more wrong than right here but on balance, what he says is acceptable.
who is Mossberg again? Tech writer for the Wall street journal? Don’t good tech writers write for tech sites?
Mossberg is an Apple fanboy. Most of his criticisms are things that didn’t exist even on iPhone until the recent upgrade. But never once did that prevent him from wholeheartedly recommending it.
How can Walt schmooze with Steve Jobs unless he pans Windows Phone 7.
You think Jobs is going to Walt’s All Things D conference if he says WP7 makes iPhone look like dinosaur?
Read ArsTechnica, Anandtech or Gizmodo for a real review.
As much as you may or may not agree with Mossberg, his and Pogue’s opinions matter immensely — especially to people who don’t get their reviews and gadget info from websites. As much as it pains people like us to think about it, there’s still a huge, huge number of people who think that if it isn’t published in a real newspaper, it’s worthless. If Pogue or Mossberg doesn’t like it, we can point to someone who is better qualified to review the platform, but that doesn’t change that they write for extremely prominent publications, and their views mean much more because of that.