Ever since they released Windows Phone 7, that’s what I wanted to buy. Alas, it wasn’t officially selling in Japan back when I bought the iPhone 3GS. Well, it is not being sold “officially” in Japan even right now, but you can buy an unlocked phone from Amazon. For example, the *unlocked* HTC HD7 is only JPY40,000 which is pretty decent. But I cannot buy it just yet, as it is missing few features: hardware wise as well as software wise. Read on.
Missing hardware features
1. Front facing camera. This is pretty much it. Of course, there is still no software support for a front facing camera as there aren’t any VoIP apps. But the support is coming soon (it better!) and I don’t want to be stuck with an already outdated phone.
Missing software features
You know what? I thought a lot of apps that I use on the iPhone will not be available for Windows Phone 7. How wrong I was! Almost all the apps are available. Here’s a list of apps I regularly use on the iPhone.
The following apps are already available on Windows Phone
Evernote
Dropbox
Wthr Doodle – not exact thing, but there are so many other great choices
Dictionary.com
VLC
Lastpass
Ebay
Photo Crop
Wikipedia
Speedtest - Not same thing, but Bandwidth is a good sub
Photobucket
Blogger+ - Not samething, but wpblogger is a good sub
Facebook - inbuilt
ShopShop - Shopping List++ is a great sub
Cricinfo - Live Cricet is a great sub
Google Maps - GMaps Pro. Bing Maps are there anyways.
Angry Birds
Google+ - coming soon
Skype - should come with or soon after Mango update
Fring - Should come after Mango update
The following apps are not available on the Windows Phone 7 yet.
Kotoba - :( (could be a dealbreaker) But there are other Jap-Eng Dictionaries, so might be OK
XMarks
Teamviewer
Parcel Track
Amazon JP - well I can use the website
Other apps that I migh install on Windows Phone 7
Adobe Reader
YouTube
Picasa Metro
IGN
TWIT
All in all, I will keep a close eye on Mango update, the new Windows Phone releases (I won’t be spending 80k on a phone!) and iPhone 4GS/5 release. Hopefully Softbank or some other carrier will bring WP7 devices to Japan.
No comments:
Post a Comment