Nov 2, 2010 19:01 GMT  ·  By

Recently launched on the mobile OS market, Windows Phone 7 has many strong points, but some weaknesses as well. Its competitors, Android and iOS, had even longer lists of unsupported features and bugs at launch, but were prepared for the outcome and managed to fix them relatively quickly.

Another issue that Microsoft is confronting with is the lack of mass availability of the devices running its new mobile platform.

There still isn’t a lot of practical information about Windows Phone 7 available, so the following guide contains tips for those that already got their WP7 smartphone and would like a few basic pointers about the OS's capabilities. An interesting feature that has been embedded into Windows Phone 7 is called “Find my Phone” and helps users locate their device if they lost it or it has been stolen.

Users can activate the function from the Settings, Find my Phone option, as the feature is not enabled by default. “Find my Phone” saves the user's location at certain, previously set intervals.

The integrated web browser features an option that can switch off mobile browsing, which makes Internet Explorer display only the desktop versions of the websites. Users can toggle the function on/off from the Settings, Applications, Internet Explorer menu.

Adding a bookmark for a favorite website on the Start screen can be easily done by clicking on the three dots displayed at the bottom of the screen and choosing “Pin to start”. The three dots always appear when you have more options and works just like the Menu button for Android OS.

Internet Explorer includes a useful "Find" feature that allows users to find a specific word on a webpage they are visiting. Simply press on the three dots, choose “Find on page” and type in the word you want to search for.

Feel free to add your own Windows Phone 7 tips and tricks, especially if you're an advanced user.