@Wibble
Ok, seriously Wibble, your myopic hatred of WP7 for no apparent reason is really starting to grate, and you need to check your facts.
You said: "No. Not until it's in general availability and 'real' people have 'real' experience using it."
Err.. it IS in general avalability, and 'real' people have 'real' experience of using it (unless you think we're all stuck in the Matrix imagining all of this... :p ). Before you post your ill-informed comments, do some research: you can go down to your local Orange/Vodafone/O2 store and ask to use a WP7 phone (unless - as El Reg recently reported - they've already sold out... but don't worry - they'll be getting more).
You said: "We don't know how reliable it is (fanboi shill opinions don't count)"
So basically, anyone who uses WP7 and has something positive to say about it is a fanboi and their opinions don't count? Way to express an open mind!!
For what it's worth, I have owned an HTC Mozart for a little over 2 weeks, and these are my answers to your questions:
- "what it's like to live with;" Pretty good - build quality is excellent, no 'creaks', no light leakage, no loose bits if shake it. Unibody aluminium is obviously a good thing. The screen is beautiful and bright. Call quality is solid. The UI is super-fluid and very easy to use. Zune Pass has now completely replaced my reliance on iTunes (to the extent that I have given away one of my two iPods, as I really no longer have any use for it).
- "how long the battery lasts;" obviously it depends on what you use it for. Average use for me is some browsing the web while listening to podcasts on the way to/from the office, some calls, some games and some texts and emails each day, and I have yet to see it get down below half-way (I tend to charge it overnight). I love the fact that you can play 3d games *while* listening to music or podcasts (with no apparent lag) but it does reduce the battery life quite a bit if you do that.
- "if the missing features are really painful to live without;" I honestly haven't had a scenario yet where I needed cut & paste (mostly because the integration of contacts is superb, and pulls in your existing SIM contacts, facebook and email contacts and matches them up, so you don't end up with four entries for the same person - and you can merge contacts if you do happen to find any duplicates). Flash isn't a big deal for me, since I rarely feel the need to watch skateboarding dogs on my phone, so I can't really comment... but Adobe have announced that flash is coming, so by the time I do get that skateboarding dog itch, I'm sure they'll have it covered.
- "if the 'new' features are of any real use;" OH YEAH! I really cannot stress enough how awesome ZunePass is. As I said above, I literally have no use for my iPods any more. It is dirt cheap - for £7.50 per month, you get all-you-can-eat music, and 10 DRM-free songs to keep forever. Those same 10 songs on iTunes would cost £7.90 and you would get literally nothing extra. Secondly, as set out above, the contacts integration is brilliant. Exchange & Office connectivity is top notch (as you would expect, from MS, really). Xbox live is also brilliant (although I don't actually own an Xbox... yet).
- "being Microsoft, how much it crashes..." Surprisingly (and I say this as a guy who has owned several previous Windows Mobile phones, and who has also had to fix my wife's iPhone on more than one occasion) it has not crashed once in all the time I have owned it.
Personally (as I explained in an earlier post) I think it's the best phone I've ever used. If you have any more questions, do let me know.
Mine's the one with the troll-seeking missiles in the pockets.