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Two people that I know have written excellent articles comparing the latest breed of Windows Mobile Smartphone devices to the Blackberry. I've never used a Blackberry and I suspect most Microsoft Employees never have. As such our expectations of what a data centric smartphone should be like are probably lame. For example there are two features that the Blackberry has that are just killer features and I would have never expected from our own platform for a variety of reasons.

1. When you place a blackberry in the holster it turns off the screen and buttons preventing any unexpected interactions.
2. When you receive an email and go to grab the device within a specified time frame it will automatically display the email. What's that? You mean the device actually knows what I want to do?

Both of these are good examples of the harmony you realize when you create both the hardware and the software (like our favorite fruit company). The experience is simply unmatched. I doubt Windows Mobile will ever get there simply because of this fact, but also because most people at Microsoft who might simply do a drive by competitive analysis would never notice some of these features. The same way a Windows user would never notice the amazing ambient light detection on a MacBook Pro Keyboard.

Anyway, my co-worker, Steve Schreiber talks about his experiences with Windows Mobile and the Q and my fellow blogger Greg Hughes talks about his experiences with the Samsung Blackjack (my current phone).

My favorite idea is this one from Steve:

I find myself wondering if anyone who designs these “Blackberry killers” has ever used a Blackberry for any amount of time.  A good friend of mine has a Windows Mobile based Treo, which he uses to sync to his own corporate Exchange system.  When speaking of the dissatisfaction that he had with that device, and the same displeasure his wife had with her Q, he suggested that “those guys in your company’s Windows Mobile group need to (1) have their desktop Outlook turned off; (2) be issued Blackberry devices and have to use them for 30 days; (3) have the their Blackberries taken away and issued Treo or Moto Q devices for 30 more days.  If that doesn’t cause a light bulb to go off in their heads, then nothing will.”

I couldn’t agree more.  The only thing I can hope is that this type of exercise will happen before the next round of devices hit the scene and that Microsoft will hold their ODM partners to a higher standard before allowing them to ship with a Windows Mobile device.

I hope folks in the MDD Group (Mobile Devices Division) will take these two excellent write ups to heart and improve the experience moving forward.