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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Why I cannot buy a Windows Phone just yet

windows-phone-2012Ever 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 and I don’t want to be stuck with an already outdated phone.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

 ebaypicasadictionary.comangrybirdsevernotelastpassgmaps

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.

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