This is the first part in our seven-week series of 7for7, seven reasons to wait for Windows Phone 7 debuting later this Fall.
Every competitor has got one: a cloud service for their mobile phones and other devices. Google’s Android devices actually require you to have a Gmail account set up to use their phones, Apple’s own offering of MobileMe is not as strict when it comes to the iPhone but they both offer more or less the same contact sync and email services. Apple steps up the game a little bit more, though, with actual storage to keep pictures, videos, and other documents up in the “cloud.” The same is true for Windows Phone 7 with SkyDrive, but there’s a reason SkyDrive has the advantage here. Read on to find out exactly why.
Google’s services
All three–Google, Apple, and Microsoft’s–services seem to have their own respective advantages. Google’s is probably that they have a little bit of everything and, most importantly, it’s free!… for the most part. Google’s wide variety of email support, contacts, Google Docs, Calendar, and other social networks become a crutch for what they lack and that’s not a bad thing, per se. As opposed to Apple or Microsoft, Google doesn’t offer consumers a one-stop place to get all of their needs met. At least it can feel that way when there are a diverse number of Google websites and not one place to truly keep track of them: you have to go to Gmail for your email, you have to go to Picasa to upload pictures (which isn’t like actual storage), you have to go to Docs for your documents, and YouTube to “store” videos if you’d like. There’s no “Google Live” hub that places all of those things in one convenient area. More so, Google did introduce a way to actually store documents and other files early this year onto their servers through Google Docs, but that is just even more confusing, and it will cost you about $0.25 USD per gigabyte per year. The first gigabyte is free.
Not all’s bad, though. Chances are you already use some of Google’s services (and you don’t even know it, you should check out Google Dashboard pronto!) and it’s just a matter of building an actual email.
Apple’s MobileMe
It’s like Gmail, it’s like SkyDrive, it’s like $100 a year! Okay, correction, it’s more like $99 USD per year. MobileMe is Apple’s old .Mac line of cloud services that offers email, storage, contact sync, and even a way to locate your lost iPhone! And only your iPhone. Well, I can’t say much about locating the phone because SkyDrive is the same, but the other stuff is true! Unlike Google and SkyDrive, you can only use MobileMe with mobile devices that happen to be Apple-branded. So, if you ditch the iPhone halfway through your MobileMe paid year, there’s no going back.
MobileMe offers all what I’ve stated before plus a gallery (like Picasa), an email, a way to find your phone or remotely wipe it, and storage up to 20gb of space per year. Now if you’re doing the math, compared to Google–which offers 20gb a year for $5 USD–that’s a 1,900% price jump. Though, for some, the convenience outweighs the price for iPhones.
Windows Live and SkyDrive
And finally, Microsoft. Look, we’re not saying Microsoft is perfect but the facts speak for themselves: 25gb (not per year) for pictures, documents, and other files; Microsoft Office tools online which are most widely used document-making tools; a way to share videos and photos; contact sync; calendar and other tools; and an email that you most likely (especially if you’re a total Microsoft fan and have a Zune Social account) already use with Hotmail. Best of all? It’s all free! Microsoft’s even going to offer a Find My Phone service, like Apple’s, which yes is also a total big, fat $0.
What’s more, like Google, the Windows Live services (which do not include Find My Phone and some hard-sync’d contact information, I’m sure) can be used on most phones: Android, BlackBerry, Nokia, and yes…even iPhones, and most phones with an Internet browser.
All three of these services comes with their pros and cons, and obviously, you need to use their actual devices to get the most out of what they do. But will just cloud services sway you over? No? We’ve got six more reasons why you should wait, so don’t you worry! Tune in next week.
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7for7 series:
#7: August 24th - Windows Phone Live, SkyDrive, and the cloud
#6: August 31st - Carrier variety
#5: September 7th - Hardware and devices
#4: September 14th - Zune
#3: September 21st - Apps and easy app development
#2: September 28th – TBA
#1: October 5th – TBA
Special: October 11th – Microsoft keynote & Windows Phone event
