Engadget’s Windows Phone 7 Review

Judging from various initial reviews of Windows Phone 7, including Engadget’s, the biggest initial problem seems to be launch times for third-party apps:

In day to day use, the lack of multitasking proved to be an even bigger annoyance than we expected. Not only is there no third-party support for the function, but if you lock your screen while you’re in a third-party app (say, Twitter), the software must reload when you unlock! This can be especially annoying when you’re playing a game which has a substantial load time (more on that below). It doesn’t freeze your state, so you have to reload the app and your saved game all over again. It’s not just bad — it’s nearly unforgivable.

The iPhone got away without any sort of third-party multitasking for a few years, but iOS apps didn’t quit when you locked the screen. And it seems like apps take longer to launch on Windows Phone 7 than they did on pre-multitasking versions of iOS. Actual multitasking — apps that continue to run in the background — isn’t nearly as important as fast relaunch/resume.

★ Friday, 22 October 2010