Sorry, Windows Phone 7.5. You really need a serious make over, really.

Maybe I hoped too much about Windows Phone 7.5. In short, it is very disappointing. It is just like a failed iPhone imitation.

Last month, I received my Lumia 710. It is the only Windows Phone available in Korea yet. I know it is a cheap model. I am not complaining about the hardware itself. What I am going to complain about is the software.

Let's say.. The only things I liked about WP 7.5 are the nice built-in sound clips (way better than those in Android or iOS, in my personal opinion) and the smoothness of the UI.

I do not know where to start... First of all, it is all tied to Microsoft services which are not very mature as Google's. I can only use Bing as my search engine. I can only use Bing map. But the Bing search engine sucks. One strange thing as an Android user is that pressing search button always brings the bing search screen, not the search feature of the application. For example, on Android if you were playing music and you pressed the search button, it searches songs in the music player. On WP 7.5, it brings the Bing search. To search in applications, you have to press the application's custom on-screen search button (if it has any).

I think the tile system will eventually thrown away. It is just inferior to icon + widgets. Icon + widgets can do everything tiles do. My 4-inch Android phone normally displays 25 icons on one screen. But Windows Phone can display only 8 tiles maximum on one screen. That means, if you have many applications, you have to scroll many many times. All applications are listed in a one-in-a-line manner, so you have to scroll many times there, too.

Lack of notification system really sucks. If you missed an e-mail while using a program, you will never notice it until you lock the screen or you go to the tile screen and scroll down to the e-mail tile.

Lack of widgets or shortcut menus really makes it tedious to use the phone. For example, if you want to toggle the airplane mode, you have to go to all applications, scroll down to settings then go to airplane mode. On Android, you can just press the power button long, or use widgets, or the quick button on the menu (if you are using a Korean phone).

There are really few applications other than games on the Marketplace. It has passed about one year since WP first came out, but still there are really few number of apps. Why? Well I do not know, but it seems like Microsoft is trying to be an Apple. To run the  apps you compiled on your own WP hardware, you have to pay MS $99 each year and you can use three devices. This probably bars casual developers from starting development for WP. For Android, it is just one-time $25.

Applications are also immature compared to Android and iOS version. If you have used Android, you would remember the time when Android version sucked when compared to iOS version. Windows Phone version usually lacks features.

There are so many shortcomings that I feel tired to enumerate them all. And there are very little features that iOS or Android are not already providing. There seems to be no reason to switch to Windows Phone now for most of the people.  It is not a surprise that Windows Phone has such a low share. It is actually decreased (2.7% in 2010 to 1.5% in 2011). There is really no attraction in Windows Phone for both users and developers.

Sorry, Microsoft. If you do not throw away the stupid tile UI, introduce a nice notification system, make shortcuts, provide richer API in Windows Phone 8. I think it will fail miserably, too.

When people say "no", it means no. Do not try to convince people that what they hate is actually a good thing for them.