Windows Phone 7.5 vs. Symbian: Managing contacts

Now that the Nokia Windows Phones have been officially announced, we’ve been taking a look at what Windows Phone 7.5 brings to the new handsets and how it compares to the experience of using a Nokia Symbian smartphone. Today we’ve been looking at how to add contacts to your phone.

While Symbian^3 makes it easy to add contacts to your Nokia smartphone, Windows Phone 7.5 goes a little bit further by letting you add a vast range of extra information to help you fine tune, navigate and use your contacts list. Making it easier than ever to keep track of all of your friend’s important information, the Windows Phone People Hub is a simple to use, yet incredibly powerful app for the Nokia.

To add a new contact, you tap on the People tile on the Windows Phone Start screen to open the People Hub, then tap the New button - illustrated with a plus sign - and select New Contact to start adding information. All the usual options are available, including name, phone number and email, and by tapping on any of the options, you can access a range of extra options via a detailed sub-menu.

Tapping on Name, for example, gives you the option to enter information into a choice of seven fields, letting you add details of your contacts first names, surnames, titles, suffixes, company name and nicknames, among others. Entering new information is easy via the large and user-friendly onscreen keyboard and, once you’re done, you just tap the Save button to exit back to the main menu.

To help you differentiate between your contacts, you can easily set custom ringtones and add photos to your contacts in a couple of easy clicks. Tapping on the Add Photo button takes you straight to the Windows Phone Pictures app, to browse your current photos and you also have the option to open the Camera app and snap a new photo on the fly. Tapping Ringtone works in a similar way and opens a seemingly never-ending list of available ringtones for you to choose from.

The option that really sets Windows Phone 7.5 apart from Symbian, though, is the option labelled Other, which lets you add a staggering array of related information to any of your contacts. As well as the option to add standard details, such as your contacts address, you can add details of their website, birthday, anniversary and even the names of their children and partner.

While the option to include all of this extra information is a very welcome addition, we were a little disappointed to see that your contacts don’t appear to link directly with other contacts, or with the Windows Phone Calendar app. We would’ve liked the option to enter details of a contact’s birthday and have it automatically set a reminder in our calendar, or to tap on the option to enter details of a person’s significant other and choose them directly from our existing contacts list, but this doesn’t appear to be possible yet.

Once a contact has been entered into your Nokia Windows Phone, you can then choose to merge that contact with other related contacts, using Windows Phone 7.5’s excellent Groups feature. Using Groups, you can better organize, categorize and communicate with your contacts, and it is just one of the great features that clearly sets Windows Phone 7.5 apart from its rivals.

And while it’s incredibly easy to add contacts manually, it’s even easier to import existing contact details from your SIM card into your Nokia Windows Phone. All you have to do is swipe to the right on the Windows Phone Start screen, tap Settings, then again swipe to the right to access your Applications settings, and scroll down to tap on the option labelled People. Here you’ll see an Import SIM Contacts button that you can tap to instantly your existing contacts to your Windows Phone.

Outdoing even Symbian’s excellent contacts features, Windows Phone 7.5 makes it quick and easy to add contacts to your Nokia Windows Phone and just as easy to communicate with them. After using the great features of the Windows Phone People Hub for just a few days, we’re already smoothly integrating them into our daily lives and wouldn’t want to be without them – one of the key signs of a truly great smartphone operating system.

We’ll be bringing you more new guides each day to all the great features that you can enjoy on the Windows Phones courtesy of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, so stay tuned and let us know if there are any specific features that you’d like us to help you learn more about.