Leaving Windows Phone 7 to Return to Android

He clearly used Android first. WP7 tries to put everything right in front of you, and reserve menus and tap-and-hold for rarely used operations (like delete). Not to say there aren't problems with Windows Phone 7 right now, but:

> On the call history screen, if I tap-and-hold a phone number, Windows Phone gives me: Delete

However, if instead you tap the number itself (and don't hold), you get the full contact (should it match, with call, text, FB comment, email, etc), or Call Number and Text Number

> In the text messages list, the context-sensitive menu doesn’t give me an option to call the person with whom I’m messaging.

But if instead you tap their name or number at the top of the screen, it gives you their contact (from which you can call, text, FB comment, email, etc) or if it's just a number, call and text.

Gmail support is through exchange at m.google.com, not IMAP. It does uses folders, but archiving email is a simple as deleting it in the WP7 UI. Google keeps a copy in All Messages, just removes it from the tag or inbox.

I've used 4 different models from three manufacturers (Samsung, LG, HTC), and can say that the audio and touch screen issues must be device specific. I use a Focus as my primary phone, and have carried other WP7 phones for weeks at a time -- I've had no problems.

As a developer, and as a user, you can do a lot more with Android. I still use my Nexus One quite a bit. But WP7 is a solid first offering, and while there's a lot missing, what they did they did very well.

> He clearly used Android first.

That's a reasonable assumption. Android has been on the market for quite some time now.

> Gmail support is through exchange at m.google.com, not IMAP

That's terrible. Why not just using the browser? Even with the iPhone mail client, which is quite decent, I prefer using Gmail through mobile Safari.

And the Android Gmail client is very good, despite the fact mine (at least) lacks priority inbox.

Best thing about WP7 (for me) are the tools that they provide to developers. Visual Studio (Phone) compared to Eclipse for Android is so much better. The IDE itself and also debugging. Using eclipse after is like doing a brain surgery through arse. I use and develop for Android, but once I tried WP7 tools I got very jealous.

"HTTP is an abstraction of Berkeley Sockets."

Wait, what? HTTP is a protocol that can run on Berkeley sockets, certainly.

What is the deployment and debugging experience like on Android or iOS? I was impressed with the Visual Studio integration when I played with WP7 development a bit - you can just hit F5 and your app starts up on the phone in debug mode in, like, two seconds, and you can then step through it in Visual Studio, set breakpoints, hover over variables to see their values, and even evaluate expressions in the immediate window.

I was vaguely expecting some cumbersome deployment process, but it feels no heavier than running something on the PC. But I've never developed for other mobile platforms, so maybe this is just standard?