I was fortunate enough to get a second Windows Phone 7 today and naturally wanted to transfer all my hard-collected applications from the old wp7. I visited Zune expecting there to be some form of ‘restore applications’ button. Sure enough under purchase history it listed all my applications – happy days. However, when I selected an application it says to open MarketPlace. So I went to the new phone, opened MarketPlace and nothing. Hmm. I then visited www.windowsphone.com and looked at my phone->my account. There was the same list of applications, however this time there was a big fat ‘restore’ link. It then prompted to select a phone and one ‘restore’ later the application silently installed on the new phone. Hurray. I would say that the process could be a lot easier. A nice set of checkboxes rather than doing the painful task for each app would be nice , and some sort of feedback on the phone to say it was installing would be useful too. But at least my paid for apps are back…or so I thought…

My phone operator is ‘Orange’ and they provide a nice add-on to MarketPlace called ‘Orange Selects’. It would seem that any application I’ve downloaded from there, free or otherwise, cannot be reinstalled – ‘sorry there is a problem’. Suffice to say I’m not very impressed, especially since I’m still using the same SIM and contract. So BEWARE.

EDIT: thanks to keyboardp for this; if you attempt to buy an app that you have previously purchased/installed then the marketplace will realise this and ask you if you just wish to reinstall it again. It’s a bit off putting to have to press ‘buy’ but it seems to install without incurring a payment.