After years of waiting, Microsoft's online calendar and contacts services finally sync to a Microsoft mobile phone along with email; in fact all the main webmail services sync calendar and contacts too, using the increasingly common Exchange ActiveSync for push email as well as older POP and IMAP connections.

The large font means you only see five messages on screen at once, but swiping down is fast and the unread, flagged and urgent tabs make it easier to sort mail out. HTML email is generally very readable; it wraps text and fits tables to the screen size when possible, so you can read more easily.

The animation as you delete mail is cute, although we're not sure if it will still be cute in six months or if we'll wish it deleted faster without the animation.

The calendar has day and month views, colour-coded to different calendar sources and an agenda view that scrolls for as long as you have appointments (more useful than a week view on a small screen).

You can accept invitations from your inbox, and we like the way it warns you of conflicts with a link that shows you the right day in the calendar; there's isn't a map link (few meetings have an address a search engine can deal with in the location field) but you get images of who's coming to the meeting – and a rather cheeky 'I'll be late button' that sends a message to everyone.

The pictures of people in meetings come from the People hub, which grabs photos from every contact source you have. It also connects different contact entries for the same people, which minimises the clutter in your address book.

We found the People hub to be very accurate, matching people across Facebook, Exchange, Windows Live and Gmail; it also suggests contact matches it's not sure about and enables you to link contacts yourself.

Along with all the details you have about someone, from addresses to birthdays to significant others, profiles show updates from Facebook, Windows Live, and any social networks you have connected to Windows Live, which covers just about everything but Twitter.

Blame that on the fact that Microsoft and Twitter can't seem to do a deal, but it is a deficiency in so social a phone. There will be plenty of Twitter clients, but this is where the lack of multitasking may be an issue.

Even with a 1GHz processor, if Twitter apps don't use the Windows Phone notification service (which the official Twitter app doesn't) then you have to wait to see messages when you launch the app.

Apps have to start within five seconds, but if it takes another five seconds to show the interface and another ten to download messages, this starts feeling slow compared to phones that can grab content in the background; we're hoping well-written apps will avoid this.

The People hub acts as your call log (for email, text messages and social networks as well as phone calls), as well as your address book and social news page. Similarly, you get recent photos from friends on Facebook and other sites like Flickr (through Windows Live) alongside your own images in the Pictures hub – and you can comment on them directly, or scroll through all their online photos just by swiping.