

For podcasts not represented in the Marketplace, you could use an "Add a Favorite Podcast" link in the Zune PC software to manually subscribe with an RSS feed URL.

In the old way of doing things-which is still supported for you luddites, of course, you would find and subscribe to podcasts via the Zune Marketplace in the Zune PC software and then sync these podcasts with your phone.
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For a great list of which Windows Phone 7.5 features are available in which locales, please visit Andrew Birch's excellent Windows Phone 7.5 Feature Availability Matrix. As is often the case with Windows Phone features, the over-the-air support for podcasts and the Podcasts Marketplace is currently available only in the United States and even Zune PC-based podcast support is limited to several of the markets in which Windows Phone is sold. All the better, this is also an example of a feature that Microsoft implements better in Windows Phone than does Apple in iOS. And one of the ones I appreciate the most is the new support for over-the-air podcasts via a new on-device Podcasts Marketplace. (Just an aside, but the fact that Microsoft then makes you sync photos through the Zune software is yet another sin, though one outside the realm of this particular discussion.)īut there have been improvements to this situation in Windows Phone 7.5. So you tether the thing to your PC and sync manually like its 1999 all over again.
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But there should be an option for full photo uploads and, come on, no one shares photos from SkyDrive anyway. Microsoft's excuse is that these smaller pictures save bandwidth and are fine for sharing online. (As does iCloud, which implemented this feature, again, a year later.) Instead, the pictures you upload to SkyDrive are condensed and compressed, from their original size (8 megapixels on my Samsung Focus S) down to a paltry VGA-ish quality. But this feature, called Auto Upload, does not provide an option for uploading full-sized, full-resolution versions of your photos.

Microsoft provides a feature in Windows Phone that allows you to automatically upload every single picture you've taken with the phone's camera to Windows Live SkyDrive for backup and sharing purposes. The biggest issue, in my opinion, is with digital photos. But for now there are still some key PC/phone sync operations for which there is no cloud equivalent. And these holes mean that you still need to physically tether your Windows Phone to your PC and manually sync data between the two. Still doesn't, in v2 (Windows Phone 7.5). And that's because, despite all the forward-leaning goodness of Windows Phone, the pure revolution of it all, Microsoft actually didn't go far enough. But give Apple some credit, since that company's solutions are more cohesive and complete than what Microsoft offers now with Windows Phone. This strategy was so amazing, Apple aped it a year later in iOS 5 and iCloud, and from what I can tell, no one but me even noticed that. That you should utilize cloud services like Zune Music Pass for digital media, which you can access from the PC, the web, or your phone. Windows evolved to include various utilities that were designed solely to sync content from the PC to devices.īut with Windows Phone, Microsoft is taking the controversial but correct position that it is the cloud, and not the PC, that sits at the center of this paradigm, that you should manage your email, contacts, and calendar in Hotmail or Exchange/Office 365, not Outlook on a single PC. And you'd use Windows Media Player or iTunes to sync digital media content. Consider how devices of the past typically worked to understand the difference: You'd use applications like Outlook to manage your email and personal data and then sync that with a device when it was tethered to the PC. And the Metro UI is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to innovation in Windows Phone.Ĭonceptually, it's possible that the single biggest innovation in Windows Phone-and this was as true with the initial 2010 release as it is today with Windows Phone 7.5-is that this mobile OS is cloud-centric, not PC centric. Most people will point to the Metro user interface and its expressive tiles as an obvious example of how this platform isn't just differentiated but is also superior to what the competition offers. But this revolution wasn't always obvious. Even in its first incomplete version, Windows Phone was a revolutionary take the smart phone, and not yet another me-too design.
