The new Windows phone OS will be appearing on various handsets in the coming months, and some of the previews have really got me interested.
The tile based GUI didn't do much for me in the stills I'd seen, but from the video I'm really impressed with how Microsoft has re-thought how we use phones and how the phone can help sort and present content, rather than just doing another iPhone clone.
I've been sitting on the fence, waiting to choose a smart phone, and will continue to do so until I can get a hands-on with a Windows phone. I will say that battery life could be an issue based on the constant graphical updating on the home page
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I think it looks pretty interesting. I do worry that the tight integration with social networks and media sources will fall flat on its face, as those services tend to evolve more quickly than Phone OS software. On Android or iPhone devices, because those services aren’t core OS features, you can swap the application functionality in and out rapidly to keep pace with changes in features, new sites, etc. This looks more tightly coupled.
Have they ever shown this UI working in landscape mode? Not in any of the video’s I’ve seen - I wonder why.
Blah... Why does MS think the world needs another phone OS?
Who's going to buy these? You could have the greatest os in the world, but if you don't have users, you won't have developers, and the OS is going to be useless.
Way too late in the game for this offering. This platform has about a .5% chance of succeeding and lasting more than a year or two.
I think it looks very interesting and I like the integration. Personally I would hold off on the first version as it will take them time to get it caught up with the other mobile OS's. iPhone and Android both went through the same process.
Blah... Why does MS think the world needs another phone OS?
Who's going to buy these? You could have the greatest os in the world, but if you don't have users, you won't have developers, and the OS is going to be useless.
Way too late in the game for this offering. This platform has about a .5% chance of succeeding and lasting more than a year or two.
Did you say the same thing about Android? It came to life in a market with incumbents that included RIM and Apple, and did OK.
MS thinks the world needs another phone OS because its an growth market. Having 20% share of a multi-billion dollar market is better than 0% share. They also have assets they want to leverage like Bing, Sharepoint, Office, Office Live, Office communicator, maps, Zune subscription media, Xbox Live, MSN messenger, etc. Further out, they have other interesting assets they could tie in like Windows Home Server, Windows Media Centre, etc. Hotmail, by the way, was recently made ActiveSync compatible, so they have a push email system in place for consumers out of the box, something that BIS doesn’t provide, Apple charges for (MobileMe), and Android maybe supports (not sure)
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Last edited by sclitheroe; 09-13-2010 at 01:11 PM.
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This Apple fan boy is disappointed to see you can change the colours of calendars on Windows Phone 7, something that Apple still hasn’t delivered in 4 major revisions of their iOS. I can’t be the only person in the world sick of having multiple blue calendars and being unable to change them without create bogus empty calendars to force iOS to pick a different colour.
Did you say the same thing about Android? It came to life in a market with incumbents that included RIM and Apple, and did OK.
MS thinks the world needs another phone OS because its an growth market. Having 20% share of a multi-billion dollar market is better than 0% share. They also have assets they want to leverage like Bing, Sharepoint, Office, Office Live, Office communicator, maps, Zune subscription media, Xbox Live, MSN messenger, etc. Further out, they have other interesting assets they could tie in like Windows Home Server, Windows Media Centre, etc. Hotmail, by the way, was recently made ActiveSync compatible, so they have a push email system in place for consumers out of the box, something that BIS doesn’t provide, Apple charges for (MobileMe), and Android maybe supports (not sure)
Google came in with a wide open potential market in the US, with only one crappy carrier carrying the iPhone, and Blackberry didn't have much to offer the consumer market.
Don't think the tie-ins you mentioned are too compelling over anything Google and Apple offer, maybe there are some people who care about it. No way they ever see 20% of the market. I'd be surprised to see them hit over 5%.
I don't know what you are talking about with the push email. I thought that is exactly what BIS did, as well as the gmail android app. And can't android and iphones take advantage of push hotmail just as easily anyway?
Google came in with a wide open potential market in the US, with only one crappy carrier carrying the iPhone, and Blackberry didn't have much to offer the consumer market.
Don't think the tie-ins you mentioned are too compelling over anything Google and Apple offer, maybe there are some people who care about it. No way they ever see 20% of the market. I'd be surprised to see them hit over 5%.
I don't know what you are talking about with the push email. I thought that is exactly what BIS did, as well as the gmail android app. And can't android and iphones take advantage of push hotmail just as easily anyway?
Yes. Due to hotmail adding ActiveSync it can easily be pushed to an iPhone. Gmail as well, as they also support it. BIS will push any email-regardless of provider.
Yes. Due to hotmail adding ActiveSync it can easily be pushed to an iPhone. Gmail as well, as they also support it. BIS will push any email-regardless of provider.
BIS doesn’t push email, it’s polling your inbox at a fixed interval.
BIS doesn’t push email, it’s polling your inbox at a fixed interval.
I'm going to assume gmail on a blackberry is a special case because I literally get instant emails from my gmail account on my BB when I do things like register for a site or buy something on Amazon/PSN/etc.
I'm going to assume gmail on a blackberry is a special case because I literally get instant emails from my gmail account on my BB when I do things like register for a site or buy something on Amazon/PSN/etc.
Correct, gmail is a special case.
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Bumping a thread I started over a year ago to see if anyone else has any impressions of Windows Phone 7.
The first generation of phones rolled out, with the OS getting generally positive reviews, which upgraded to very positive when the Mango update hit hand sets, and the hardware getting fairly middling reviews, with no manufacturer coming out with a real flagship phone to get anyone excited.
Consumers stayed away, though, and Windows Phone currently garners only a few percentage points of the market.
However, some recent developments have given some reason to not write off the OS completely.... The Windows Marketplace hit 50,000 apps, doing so quicker than Android; Microsoft has teamed up with Nokia, a big player in the hardware world; the first of the new generation of Nokia phones, the Lumina 900, is garnering rave reviews, including Best of Show at CES; and Microsoft and OEMs are going to begin a big marketing push, which will not only get word out to consumers, but get retailers trained in the OS and motivated to encourage uptake. Another potentially big booster on the horizon is BlueStacks, which won best software at CES, and which allows Android apps to run on Windows 8. If the rumour that Windows will effectively unite is OS across PCs, tablets, and mobile with Windows 8, this could potentially allow Windows phones to access all Android apps.
I`ve had an HTC Surround for almost a year (I think) and love the OS, though I'm definitely not a big app consumer. I like how it integrates all of my social networking info, like how the live tiles keep me alerted to any new emails, calendar changes, messages, etc., and the Zune interface allows me to seamlessly transfer virtually every avi file I torrent to my phone, playing them in the native player. The only thing I really dislike is the camera, which is definitely sub-par.
I definitely experienced the lack of support from retailers. When I went into my local Telus outlet, they had no units to try out, and recommended against getting a Windows Phone but couldn't give any concrete reasons against it besides a smaller app pool (and couldn't even really describe the OS, admitting they hadn't touched one since their initial training session).
Anyone else have any experiences, positive or negative?
If Microsoft could somehow surplant RIM as the corporate phone of choice due to tight integration with their office applications and collaboration suites, etc. they might be able to do quite well.
the UI is just too simplistic for me, i find the tile layout very boring. i do like that Microsoft is uniting the OS's with Windows 8 (hopefully that will mean a tile layout for an undocked tablet, but when docked would turn into a standard Windows interface) but with Google hitting their stride with Ice Cream Sandwich i don't see the Windows phones ever making that big of a dent in the market
This thread bump made me curious too on how Win 7 phone was doing. I looked around and so far, not so good. They are not out of it by any means, but I think they have missed so far with consumers, and probably will continue to do so.
I think this article was well written on the current state of affairs:
After reading it, I also found another article that outlines what I agree is a major blunder on Microsofts part. Looks like they are only pushing updates to carriers that request an update.
Check out the reaction to this in the comments. Yikes. Exactly the biggest weakness of Android, yet they don't capitalize on it.
Unlike BB, I think Win 7 can be a great alternative. However, I think MSFT needed to execute this perfectly to get people to look away from Android and Apple. Why on earth they didn't come out with one model, that was stacked, designed well, with updates right from MSFT is beyond me.
They should have taken a page from Apple, got one solid experience out there, and grow from there. Trying to take on Android at their own game right now is next to impossible, and I think MSFT has done too little to distinguish itself from them. Even if they have the better product.
Windows Phone 7
