The Blog

The HTC Trophy was my first windows phone, one of the first windows phones to launch. It was hard to find, Vodafone representatives at their call centres didn’t know what it was. Staff in shops said they had not recieved any stock. I went to Three Vodafone stores until I got my beloved Trophy. It felt like it was a trophy, after all the trouble I went through to get it, I deserved it.

Why did I want it so bad. Why not get an Android or an iPhone. Better yet, why not bow down to peer pressure and grab A BB. I chose A Windows Phone because I saw a phone that gets me.

I use facebook like its an extension of my life online, these days we all do. It’s How we communicate, how we plan get togethers and parties, how we say happy birthday, how we remember its their birthday, how we share videos or articles, its where we store and share our photos, its how we express who we are, how we show our appreciation for the things we love wether that be books or restaurants. I also like my Xbox – I am a gamer. Playing Halo online or getting engrossed in the science fiction universe via the novels. I also love my music, in the past I have used last.fm, spotify and Zune to get my tunes. Movies are also an interest of mine, whenever possible I make visiting the cinema at least once a month a routine. I watch movies on the Xbox and its High Definition and surroundsound. These are my interests my activities and the Windows Phone seemed to be the only phone that stood to enhance these activities let alone support them.

The Windows phone is tightly intergrated with facebook, you contacts pictures are pulled fromt their fb profile pic. Their status update shows next to their face on your phone and you can comment on it just like that, no need to jump into a seperate app. You can view their photos like they were already on your phone. I remember one time a friend of mine was puzzled when I was showing him and our friends pictures of an event he was describing, he said “how did you get my pictures?”. Little did he know that from the pictures hub on the windows phone one can look at all their own facebook photos, all their own skydrive photos as well as all the photos their friends have shared on facebook. All the albums are just there!

The gamer in me got excited when I learned that Xbox will be on the phone. I would be able to play a game on my phone and get achievments for playing that game just like on the Xbox. Being able to message friends, see what their doing on their consoles and compares game acheivements was a mind blowing prospect. Today you can do much more than that; any windows phone can control their xbox 360 just by touching their phones screen. It allows you to search all content on your Xbox, whether it be from Zune music, Zune Videos, Sky or Lovefilm. Then you can launch it, and control the play back of that movie or song from the touch of the screen. I mentioned Halo, well I think you should simply watch a demonstration of this app. I need not say more. With regards to the Novels, I read them on my phone using the Kindle App from the marketplace.

Zune, Spotify and Last.fm are all on my phone now. Though I stopped using Spotify and use Zune and last.fm I have never found a device so perfect for playing music. The only thing I will say is the gap between songs needs to be sorted out or an option to toggle made available apart from that It has to be the best exmple of having music on a phone.

I now have a HTC Titan. With it I can watch movies, music videos from Youtube or Vevo and play games on its HUGE screen. I do my groceries with the lovely Ocado app, look for inspiration with the ffffound app, browse the web and keep up with the latestes news on the BBC website. At night before I sleep, I plug my charger into the phone an fire up Kindle to continue reading Halo cryptum whilst reading a page or two of Frank Gardeners blood and sand.

As you may gather, I love my windows phone, I wouldn’t part with it. I never hesitate at the chance of showing off its features and educating others about this wonderful and easy to use smartphone. One thing I am extremely proud of is giving away my Trophy to a friend of mine. She had a phone that didnt have colour. It wasnt smart. It just called and text people. She was happy with it. But since I gave her my old phone she has been very pleased with it.

Promoting and sharing with others the joys of windows phones seems like an act of giving something back to Windows Phone, rewarding it for the joys it has given me. That is probably why I created Windows Phone Wallpapers for people to download on to their phones. Surprisingly This got noticed by people at Microsoft, what happened after that will be left to the second part of this post “Windows Phone – Wallpaper – Part 2″.