WP7 Update October 2011

Well finally we have a nice update, with reasonable content for windows phone 7, Its promising they have addressed some of the issues I previously pointed out.

I’m still finding little quirks here and there nearly 3 weeks later, all in all if you have a windows based phone get this update!

The first thing I have to say is that the update itself takes about 20 minutes and there’s a lot of restarting, personally I had no issues with the update failing or what have you and all in all it was a painless experience.

The most critical change is there is now a battery life saver mode, which effectively turns data roaming off automatically when you battery life is lower than around 10%.

I now have the option to set up other email accounts, which is massively helpful to me, no more webmail (also you can set up an exchange account)!

The people icon is now dynamic and continually throws up pictures from your contact list obtaining content from facebook, which keeps your home screen refreshed I guess.

There are a number of minor changes that are hardly worth noting and I do question the point in them, for instance the volume control is no longer based on bars but is displayed as a number ie 15/30 instead of 5 coloured bars and 5 empty ones, the point of this change is beyond me but I guess they just gave the entire phone a graphical overhaul.

The lock screen now displays how many unread emails you have instead of just displaying the texts, which is useful if your waiting on an email!

The applications screen now has letters so you can jump to an application quicker, this was already utilized on the phonebook and it makes sense for it to be here as well. Talking about applications has reminded me I did have to update ALL of my applications after this update, so 30 updates later I could use my phone again (make sure your hooked into the wifi on that one)!

Anther little graphical improvement has left your text conversations with someone in slightly different shaded colours, this is a good thing!

On top of a few extra options here and there you will mainly find added functionality at the bottom of your screen in various locations throughout the operating system (which largely go unnoticed). You will also to note not most likely use or need these options!

One extra thing I noted of equal non-benefit was I now have my “linked in” account set up under email and accounts but did not really see any difference or functionality with its addition (anyone? clues on a postcard)!

Anyways its an improvement, just keep them coming and quicker this time, thanks!