Three First Impressions of Windows Phone 7

If Microsoft is to have a fighting chance with Windows Phone 7 then it better make a good first impression.

Three reasons Windows Phone 8 Metro/Modern UI is bad

1. Poor use of display real estate poorly

• Menu title split across multiple screens isn't professional
• A big black bar on the home page's right side for just an arrow
• Tiles on the home screen are too big (lots of scrolling) and boring (like a static IE logo): Unlike what Microsoft tells you, bringing information to the home screen isn't unique, Symbian and Android have it via widgets
• Too much scrolling for the same thing: Text is way too large by default. Contacts that normally take a page on iOS or Android needs scrolling through 1.5 screens or more in Metro UI

2. Too much scrolling needed

• Page names are listed at the top but spread across the multiple screens so I can't see what pages are available to me without having to scroll through each one
• Unconsistent UI transition: When you click an option, the current UI will flip out to the left but clicking the back button doesn't cause the last page to flip back from the left to replace the current screen but shows the current screen flip back and the last page just blink in. 

3. Easy to quickly lose menu context

• Overuse of flashy transitions that aren't intuitive to the user what's happening and deep scrolling
• Small non-descript icons: In a few places in the UI, small + or arrows icons are presented but it's difficult to tell what each would do without clicking on each one