Once you've added some accounts your contacts will be pulled in automatically. These are all aggregated in the People App. Duplicate entries can appear if the same people exist in different address books but these can be filtered out very simply by reducing the number of address books shown. Groups can be set up to keep logical contacts together, ie Work, Family etc.
Swipe left and you are given a live stream of updates from across all the social networks that you have configured. You can interact with the updates in this stream too. This is a very nice feature and saves having to install a third party app (which you can do of course). A swipe to the left and a list of all the contacts you have recently interacted with.
When you actually open up a contact, the usual detail is attached but if you have setup a social account like Facebook or Twitter then you also get options to interact via those services on a contact record, ie Post On A Wall.
Swipe left and all their latest social media activity will appear, based on what accounts you have set up for yourself. A further swipe to the left gives you the photos that your contact has shared across various social networks. The final left swipe shows any recent interaction you've had with your contact.
The contacts implementation is slick and intuitive and for me is the best thing about the Nokia Lumia 8 with Windows Phone.
When accounts are added Windows Phone also adds email Apps for those accounts and also starts downloading an initial set of emails. There is no default unified inbox and all email accounts are kept in separate tiles so you can't flip between accounts from one app. You can link inboxes manually which will create a unified inbox of sorts. Any linked accounts the have their app takes removed and a new Linked Inbox appears. Unlinking is fairly easy and reverse the process and reinstates tiles for unlinked accounts.
Default view is all in an inbox. Swipe left and you'll get Unread messages only. Swiping left again will give you Flagged messages with a further swipe revealing those that are Urgent. Sending emails is easy as is replying, forwarding and deleting.
I think the contact, email and social implementation is one of the best parts of Windows Phone with a fresh approach and simplicity. The fact that you don't actually have to install any social media apps is pretty cool although if you are a due hard user of Facebook or Twitter then I am sure the apps offer additional features and value add.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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