Do windows 7 phones actually exist? This is a totally serious question.
I know, literally, zero people who have a windows phone at this point.
I have never actually seen one except on TV commercials.
Do windows 7 phones actually exist? This is a totally serious question.
I know, literally, zero people who have a windows phone at this point.
I have never actually seen one except on TV commercials.
They do indeed exist, and they are very nice, aside from being rare. We quite like ours. Full disclosure: yes, I do work for Microsoft.
I only know one person who has one, but he only has it instead of the company iPhone or Blackberry because he calls on Microsoft on behalf of the company.Originally Posted by Timex
From all things I've heard it's a great OS. I just haven't seen many people actually with it!
God, the UI model on my new HTC Trophy is so fucking better than the HTC Incredible.
So anyway, what IS new and exciting with Mango? I tried reading a few articles about it, but the detail:blather ratio was too low.
Is it still a totally locked down environment like the iPhone, where the only way to get an app on it is through the Microsoft-curated app store? Because that kills it for me, anyway.
It's hard to read articles about it or look at feature lists and get a clear idea, much like how it was hard to do that for the original release of WP7. On paper it looks all jumbled and disorganized. In video it makes sense.
There's the long press conference they gave here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...eoGallery.aspx
And here's a shorter walkthrough: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw
I saw some massive lists on other forums that people put together but it's kinda hard to read through them. Here's one I copy-pasted with some of the repetition/fluff edited out, and the stuff I'm most looking forward to:
-Full turn-by-turn directions with voice pompts
-Voice-to-text and text-to-voice for SMS and IM
-Built-in real-time integration for Facebook and Live Messenger chat that combines with texts from the same person
-People groups
-E-mail groups - kinda like threaded messaging on the iPhone but it's not all-or-nothing, you can set up multiple groups that combine different e-mail accounts. So like a personal e-mail group that combines gmail/comcast, and a separate work e-mail group (if you want)
-Some form of multitasking similar to what the iPhone does
-Quick app switching using tiles in the same way the Palm Pre does
-Better podcast support
-Much better live tiles (you really need to see this in video, hard to understand in writing)
-Easier application browsing on the phone
-Much better marketplace search
-Visual voicemail (finally)
-Built-in barcode scanning, Microsoft and QR-code scanning, book/DVD cover scanning, etc.
-Built-in Shazzam-like audio recognition
-Built-in "around me" type stuff for finding restaurants, events, shops, etc. around you
-Thousands of new APIs for developers (according to their counts)
-3rd-party apps can integrate with search better
To answer your question about if it's totally locked down, it's not a simple yes or no. WP7 is already less locked down than the iPhone, since developers have from the beginning had the ability to integrate with hubs and other stuff on the phone. And it sounds like they're expanding on that for Mango.
But I highly doubt there will be any application obtaining from anywhere outside of their own curated app store.
Constant accusations about being a "shill" or "viral marketer" earlier on this thread removed any desire I had to post about it on this board. But whatever, here you go.
Last edited by LMN8R; 06-01-2011 at 02:03 PM.
So most of that stuff sounds good, but more along the lines of reaching parity with Android than anything else. Which I suppose is still noteworthy, in that it's one of the generic phones that people can be happy with now. But it still seems like if you're in a distant third (or fourth? not sure if WebOS has greater market share) place, you need something really distinctive to be an affirmative reason for people to purchase it.
A bunch of my coworkers have the phones (yes, I work at MS) and they're super-slick. The UI's awesome, and I'm a big fan of the Zune integration.
I've posted positively about the iPhone 4, and I do like it a lot, but the only reason I haven't switched to a Win Phone is because I'm in mid-contract and I don't want to stay with AT&T. By the time my contract is over, I'll be set to pick up a Mango phone. That gives me the rest of the year to convince the devs to port Uniwar and Disc Drivin'. :)
But that's the thing - once you actually see it in person, or at least watch a video, it's much easier to understand that what you're saying is necessary (differentiation) is exactly what Windows Phone is doing.
Not perfectly, and they're obviously doing a shitty job at advertising it (par for the course, I guess). But I'd argue that Mango is doing a ton of stuff that no other platform is close to doing, in the ways it combines everything about specific people together, how integrated yet "open-ish" the platform is in what 3rd party apps can do with the system, and how so much stuff is built right into the platform without requiring any 3rd-party apps at all.
I have one, and love it, but again I work for Microsoft.
Ok, does anyone who doesn't work for Microsoft have one?
One guy at my school has one. But he's a clueless guy when it comes to tech and wouldn't care which smartphone he used. I had to set it up for him, and the outlook/exchange connection stuff looked really good.
I was interested in the platform and excited about the Dell Venue Pro. I bought one at release (which was about 3 months into the life of Phone 7, I think). The look and feel of the OS was great. The smoothness of the web browsing experience was great (though some people really took issue with some UI elements in the browser itself, it was hardware accelerated, so doing things like panning around a page was instantaneous and really, really smooth).
The platform was definitely hampered by some blatant technical limitations (no copy/paste, no multitasking, etc), but it was a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, there were problems with the Dell hardware that caused some units to lock up whenever they were connected to wifi. They refused to acknowledge the problem, so I returned my handset. I liked the OS but didn't like any of the other US-available handsets, so I ended up getting an Android.
Even though I am a big fan and user of the google ecosystem, I will probably switch back to WP7 when my phone breaks. Assuming it still exists and there are some interesting devices.
But all that stuff is pretty techie. WebOS had a similar person-integration thing ("Synergy"), plus sweet multitasking plus a notification system that is still the best in the industry, plus a super-dev-friendly policy plus a great UI, and that wasn't enough for it to get traction against the Android/iOS juggernauts because it was perceived as a "loser" OS with no apps.
What does Windows Phone 7 have that's going to allow it to succeed where Palm pulled an Amiga? I feel like the only possible answer is "Microsoft's unswerving willingness to lose billions of dollars to keep it going," and I'm just not sure that's enough.
I still think they should have made it the Xbox Phone and played up the gaming aspect of it, because that's the only stuff that ever makes me think I might want one.
I actually do know a couple of non-techies (and non-Microsofties) who have a Focus - my fiancee, and a friend of a friend who's ridiculously non-techie in any way.
I have a number of friends with Pre's and think it's a wonderful OS, and I'm really really happy that my Focus will be getting stuff that the Pre has done for years that no other platform does well - like combining text/IM into one interface, etc.
What I think Windows Phone 7 does for non-techies is that it makes it all much more clearly presented. Even a Pre's screen can get overloaded with tons of icons doing different things, and there are a lot of UI concepts around swiping from the bottom, the home button that does the same thing as drag from the bottom (or something like that), the home button that does other things, swiping on the touch-sensitive non-screen part of the phone, and a lot of other idea. They're really cool, and make a lot of sense once you get used to them, but it just seems like it would be overwhelming to a non-techie.
WP7, by contrast, has far fewer concepts (for better or for worse), and is *much* more consistent throughout the UI. I would think it's appealing to the non-techies that the home button always does the exact same thing no matter where you are. Tap-and-hold is the only slightly difficult concept to discover. The back button always seems to do what I hope it will do.
Most importantly though is that even 3rd party applications tend to be 100% consistent with the main OS UI - pivots, swiping left and right, big headers with content below them. The Facebook and Twitter 3rd-party apps look just as native as the Mail and Pictures hub, pretty much every other 3rd party app does too.
The few non-Microsofties and non-techies I know who have a device more or less agree. They're not very technical people, of course, so it's not like they're going to give me a huge run-down of every feature they like and why, but they like the phones because they're really easy to use, and really consistent throughout.
I suppose you can't make a living as a WP7 dev eh?
(stuff about Mango deleted)
Thanks for posting that. I think your recent posts have been appropriate for the thread, so ignore the haters!
On the one hand, this sounds good (consistency is useful). On the other hand, I don't see how this differentiates WP7 from an iPad, since my iPad's home button does the same thing every time I hit it too.
Back button? Where's my iPad's back button!?!?!
Now this is a big difference between iPad and WP7 (I can't speak for Android but I suspect Andriod falls more in the iPad camp than the WP7 one here). So WP7 appears to integrate the apps more and presents a more consistent UI. This could be a good thing, depending on the level of freedom an app has. If you can't differentiate your app from everyone else's through any sort of UI is this an incentive or a disincentive for developers? Seems like they're saying content (as opposed to presentation or style) is king.Most importantly though is that even 3rd party applications tend to be 100% consistent with the main OS UI - pivots, swiping left and right, big headers with content below them. The Facebook and Twitter 3rd-party apps look just as native as the Mail and Pictures hub, pretty much every other 3rd party app does too.
So, I don't know anything about developing for windows 7 phones, but I had been operating under the assumption that you could basically cross-develop for the phone and windows.. Is this true, or is it a totally separate target for development?
It has been totally separate. It looks like Windows 8 will be more phone-like, but Microsoft is also saying at this point that Win8 is an HTML5 development environment, not Silverlight (which is what WP7) is. So, either a) Win8 will have Silverlight APIs, despite them being really evasive on the point so far, b) WP8 will have the same HTML5 APIs as Win8, or c) WP8 and Windows 8 will remain isolated dev targets.
It's a separate target, but not wildly different -- you can use all .NET languages, XNA, Silverlight, etc., etc. There are of course plenty of custom libraries that only exist on the phone, and Windows apps have such different interfaces from phone apps that you probably wouldn't cross-develop the UI itself, but in terms of utility libraries, data structures, LINQ, etc., it's all the same.
I used an iPhone for more than two years and loved it, but you have to admit the Home button does a whole lot more than one thing.
-If an app is open, it'll close it, but not bring you back to the first home page
-If a folder is open, it'll close it, but stay there
-Hit it again, it'll bring you to the first page
-Hit it again, it'll bring you to search
-Hit it again, back to the first page
-Double tap it, it'll do something else (that you configure)
-Hold it, it'll bring up voice prompts
I mean, it makes sense over time, but this guy explained what I'm trying to get at much better: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/0...ndows_phone_7/
Check out the app Cocktail Flow, or watch the video here if you are...well...part of the 99.9999% of the world who doesn't have access to a Windows Phone :-)
Video here: http://cocktailflow.com/
It's one of my favorite apps not just because it's pretty, but because it's also one of the most useful, well-designed applications I've ever used on any mobile platform. Yet even though it's beautiful, and very differentiated from every other application I've used on Windows Phone, it still manages to say relatively consistent with the OS.
I don't work for MS and I have one!*
*though I did late last year when all the employees got WP7 phones.
Now that I'm on my third smartphone brand I've really lost interest in speculative OMG applications. So here's the set I've got installed:
Accessories
Mobile First Aid
OneBusAway
Opentable
Seattle Traffic Map
Tools
Weather Channel
HTC
Attentive Phone
Compass
Flashlight
Media
Adobe Reader
Amazon Kindle
AP Mobile
Handyscan (lite)
Shazam
Youtube
Social
Messenger by Miyowa
The only one of those that really impressed me was the $1 seattle traffic one. It does some cool things with traffic camera overlays. And it's the only one that's as fast as "it should be"; I'm continually amazed by bad mobile application developers are at UI snappiness on all platforms.
The game situation is rather depressing, though, it's just old arcade titles, puzzle games, and crapware. No nethack port yet? Psssh.
Definitely check out Wordament and Cocktail Flow if you haven't. Wordament is a pretty cool "mmo"-ish word game concept, and it's free!
Enh, I'm just not a word game guy. I swear all I'm interested in anymore is roguelikes, RPGS, and strategy.
Staying consistent with the native OS is great as long as:
1) You aren't doing anything terribly complicated.
2) You're fine with not shipping to other platforms or you have time re-design your entire app when you do.
There's a reason why a lot of devs don't do it. WP7 has fewer apps overall and the ones it have are either made by heavy-hitters with big dev teams, they're in the relatively simply category or they were heavily subsidized by MS. The biggest reason the iPhone has more divergence from a "standard" UI is that its app market is just a lot more successful and thus more diverse. (this isn't a good or a bad thing, I just wanted to share some experience on the topic)
I think looking at the total number of applications is quite silly. For the claims that WP7's native OS look are driving away app developers, the app catalog has certainly grown a lot faster than the iPhone did or Android did.
The development tools make it extremely easy to adhere to the consistent look. There are even tools available now to easily port iPhone apps over.
The main thing keeping app developers away is installed base, not the difficulty of developing apps.
None of that is really relevant. All platforms have easy-to-use widgets that conform to native standards. iOS has UIKit and Android has a similar XML-based language for describing UI widgets that supports all the native widgets.
With respect to install base versus difficulty of developing: both are keeping developers away. The small install base means that it's hard to justify dev time.
With a smaller base of apps, you've got a higher percentage of apps that:
1) Got kickbacks from MS.
2) Are fan-developed apps by WP7 users who don't care about other devices.
3) Are built by powerhouses like FB where (presumably) dev time isn't an issue.
As you expand that market and get more middle-tier developers looking at the platform as an additional revenue stream you'll get a lot more UI divergence. These people will care a lot about their RoI for WP7 development and will also be doing more interesting apps (i.e. games) that won't use standard widgets. The cocktail app you point out looks cool ... but it's also a dead simple app. How does Angry Birds look on WP7? Look at the top 100 apps on iOS and you see that most of them are a lot closer to Angry Birds when it comes to their level of complexity and that's the biggest reason why they diverge from iOS UI norms.
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