I'll wait until I see PSN on PC and Ericsson before considering a wider world!
Live anywhere ushered in by Win Mo 7 ?
- Thread starter eastmen
- Start date
Silverlight & XNA frameworks confirmed for Windows Phone 7...
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/18/windows-phone-7-development-policies-and-guidelines-leaked/
Also, multitasking is confirmed as well..
Tommy McClain
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/18/windows-phone-7-development-policies-and-guidelines-leaked/
Also, multitasking is confirmed as well..
Tommy McClain
I was very pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Steam did this.
Yes, I was expecting this. It's big news, because many thought the mobile silverlight project was dead. I'll assume it's going to be silverlight 4. 3 is very capable, certainly good competition with flash 10. Having native support is a big thing. Someone else already mentioned it'll probably make services such as Netflix a trivial port.
It'll be interesting to see how it performs. The XNA .net CF running on the xbox is a modified version of the old WinCE .net CF, and frankly, it's performance is terrible (being optimised for limited memory, etc). Whereas the PC silverlight runtime is actually quite fast. Not as fast as the full runtime, but still very quick.
The IPhone has a potential performance advantage with it's native object-C. Not so much for Android with Java.
Although ironically, .net based iphone development is quite popular using monotouch. I wonder how many ports we'll see?
If the phones are capable, it will be interesting to see how many XNA developers port their games from the 360 (XNA on the Zune is fairly lacking right now). It'll also be interesting to see if how/if they will allow games to connect between the console/phones. In any case, it's a big leg up for XNA.
That's the part that interests me most with Winmo7, the dev side. My company is a registered iPhone developer, but the fact that Apple can refuse your app for no reason at all, even if you drop 100k into making it, is really irritating. Microsoft really understood developers on their console side, I'm hoping some of that translates over to their phone development side. If it does then they have a winner. We'll see!
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I'm sure wimo7 will get more than enough populairity. Or I certainly hope so. Even now I'd take a wimo 6 phone over a iPhone everyday. I just don't like how apple decides everything for you and limits you to such a small choice of hardware (its 2010 and apple still charges you a fortune for a phone with a 480x320 resolution...). Palm doesnt really exist in Europe and I'm not sure how much I trust google though the OS seems nice.
corduroygt
Banned
You're definitely in the minority, because all WM versions have absolutely terrible usability, and for a phone usability trumps features every single day. That's why iPhone and Android mopped the floor with WM. Microsoft finally wisened up and started from scratch and WM7 is a good start.
480x320 is plenty for a 3.5" screen, i mean even in that resolution you can make icons small enough so that the touchscreen can't tell which one you pressed, so I don't see why you need any more resolution at that size. The biggest obstacle for WM7 will be apple store and its 200k+ apps, not to mention we don't know what apple and google do until the end of the year, because they're definitely not going to sit still. Still WM7 is a step in the right direction and kudos to Microsoft for starting over.
Yeah, I've heard exactly one guy saying he prefers Windows Mobile over the iPhone (well besides tongue_of_colicab), two that they preferred their HTC Diamond over the iPhone, and everyone else I know prefers the iPhone.
After a lot of research and looking around, I've ordered us one as well - my wife has really taken to the iPod Touch's user interface and its applications, and as much as I'd like to (I've looked at the HTC Hero for instance long and hard), I don't consider Android to be good enough quite yet. Android I think has a bright future - they're selling 60.000 Android devices a day now, and it seems a good enough OS with rapid development. But they're not there just yet, and I think we'll be safe with the iPhone for the next two years at least, before Android settles into something coherent and mature enough to be a true rival. Same for my work by the way, where iPhone has also been chosen, provided we can manage to purchase unlocked devices legally from somewhere (which it looks like we can).
Things that tipped it for me, in no particular order:
- performance of even the best Android devices don't beat the iPhone
- internal memory of Android devices that allow installation of applications is FAR too limited
- user interface designs between individual phones are too inconsistent and not mature enough (HTC sense isn't bad mind you, but iPhone still has the upper hand)
- App Store beats anything else by a wide margin both in useability and content, and it will take a year or two at the *very* least for any competitor to catch up
- current plans here don't make an Android device cheaper from other devices
- tonnes of people have one
Downsides:
- can't develop on PC. However, this is only a downside versus Windows Mobile, as Android isn't any better, because you need two phones, one development and one consumer, whereas for the iPhone you need one, and buying a new Mac Mini is actually cheaper than buying a second Android device. Also the Android device emulator is horribly slow, whereas the iPhone emulator is great.
- spelling correction learns bad words and you can't unlearn them, making it unusuable for me (it somehow learnt to always correct 'the' to 'THE' ...). Not a deal braker though as typing is accurate and fast enough. But it needs an editor
- multi-tasking is limited, although I'm not 100% convinced that multi-tasking on devices like these is a good idea.
- Apple is master of the App Store and controls it fairly tightly. However, for now that's not necessarily been a really bad thing, and it's hard to complain when there is no real alternative out there currently that does things differently.
- there are some weaknesses in its streaming/networking behaviour. My ancient PSP for instance if it loses a Wifi connection it can manage to find it back after quite a while still and resume its network activity. On the iPhone that doesn't happen and I have to tell it to resume manually, whatever it was doing.
After a lot of research and looking around, I've ordered us one as well - my wife has really taken to the iPod Touch's user interface and its applications, and as much as I'd like to (I've looked at the HTC Hero for instance long and hard), I don't consider Android to be good enough quite yet. Android I think has a bright future - they're selling 60.000 Android devices a day now, and it seems a good enough OS with rapid development. But they're not there just yet, and I think we'll be safe with the iPhone for the next two years at least, before Android settles into something coherent and mature enough to be a true rival. Same for my work by the way, where iPhone has also been chosen, provided we can manage to purchase unlocked devices legally from somewhere (which it looks like we can).
Things that tipped it for me, in no particular order:
- performance of even the best Android devices don't beat the iPhone
- internal memory of Android devices that allow installation of applications is FAR too limited
- user interface designs between individual phones are too inconsistent and not mature enough (HTC sense isn't bad mind you, but iPhone still has the upper hand)
- App Store beats anything else by a wide margin both in useability and content, and it will take a year or two at the *very* least for any competitor to catch up
- current plans here don't make an Android device cheaper from other devices
- tonnes of people have one
Downsides:
- can't develop on PC. However, this is only a downside versus Windows Mobile, as Android isn't any better, because you need two phones, one development and one consumer, whereas for the iPhone you need one, and buying a new Mac Mini is actually cheaper than buying a second Android device. Also the Android device emulator is horribly slow, whereas the iPhone emulator is great.
- spelling correction learns bad words and you can't unlearn them, making it unusuable for me (it somehow learnt to always correct 'the' to 'THE' ...
). Not a deal braker though as typing is accurate and fast enough. But it needs an editor- multi-tasking is limited, although I'm not 100% convinced that multi-tasking on devices like these is a good idea.
- Apple is master of the App Store and controls it fairly tightly. However, for now that's not necessarily been a really bad thing, and it's hard to complain when there is no real alternative out there currently that does things differently.
- there are some weaknesses in its streaming/networking behaviour. My ancient PSP for instance if it loses a Wifi connection it can manage to find it back after quite a while still and resume its network activity. On the iPhone that doesn't happen and I have to tell it to resume manually, whatever it was doing.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I take my touch diamond over a iPhone every day. My friend who isnt technical at all also took a HD2 over a iPhone. Ofcourse its a good thing MS started over for WM7 because it is obvious 6.x isnt capable of delivering what a modern phone should with only the various skins saving it somewhat. But I still think it has advantages like not requiring that piece of crap iTunes. Though I heard you have to install ''zune'' software to transfer data onto your phone with WM7? I hope MS drops that because I want to be able to just hook it up as a usb drive and drag&drop my music. Atleast that works 100% no matter what + it is easy to use at lets say a friends house when you want some of his/her music.
I dont think the amount of apps really matters for potential buyers. Who needs 200k+ apps when the big majority is useless and/or crap? I rather have a relative small amount of apps but a decent % of usefull apps than a whole lot of apps with a whole lot of crap. I'm sure MS will make sure there is a decent amount of usefull apps when they launch.
I'd add iTunes to the list of downsides. I love the iPhone, but iTunes is seriously appalling.
corduroygt
Banned
You must be talking about the windows version, the mac version of itunes works fine and fast, however the windows version is crappy.
corduroygt
Banned
You can delete all the learned words from the control panel. You can't edit word by word, but what I do is use it for a couple of months and my learned words vocabulary fills with crap and I delete it and start over again. It would be nice if you could edit the vocabulary words and if it would be saved when you sync.- spelling correction learns bad words and you can't unlearn them, making it unusuable for me (it somehow learnt to always correct 'the' to 'THE' ...
DuckThor Evil
Legend
I was going to get the Iphone, but decided to purchase the Nokia N900 instead, because of better web browsing and it's a more open platfrom, no sim locks etc. It still needs some updating to really shine, but it looks promising imo.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
And what OS are the far majority of people running?
I own and regularly use both a Nexus One (Android 2.1) and an iPhone 3GS.
The Nexus One is notably faster than the iPhone 3GS in every way possible. App responsiveness, web page loading, etc. I have heard that the iPhone 3GS is better in 3D graphics, which I have not verified as I don't use the iPhone or Android for that purpose. It may be a hardware issue (lower model GPU) or it may be a driver issue, I don't know.
The internal memory bit is annoying, but that's one reason I rooted my Nexus One -- allowed me to move a ton of stuff to the SD card, was not hard at all to do. The inconsistency across phones is not a big deal, as most people just use the one phone.
It is true the iPhone app store has far more apps, but the reality is the number of truly useful apps are almost at a parity. It's happening far faster than you might think. I develop on both Android and iPhone now, and the entire shop prefers developing for Android...it's quicker, easier, better debugging tools, and in general a far better experience. The gap will shrink pretty quickly, and isn't a big deal. There's a couple apps I miss on the iPhone that I don't have on my Nexus One, and I know they're in development now anyway.
It's my firm belief that Android phones will eclipse iPhone sales within two years. It seems history is repeating itself, PC vs Mac....Android vs iPhone. Apple's just got it too closed off to be sustainable with majority marketshare past another year or two.
In terms of practical usage of the phone, I completely am in love with the Nexus One/Android 2.1. Multitasking, for me, is imperative. I feel handcuffed on the iPhone. I like being in a chat application and seeing when a new tweet comes in on the toolbar at the top. I can pull the drawer down and see what they said, and if need be, respond/retweet it with ease. I can see a link on a page and easily tweet it or IM it to a friend. I can have my internet radio app going while I'm viewing email, sending messages, browsing the web, etc. It's just been an invaluable addition to my day-to-day use of the phone that I am genuinely aggravated to switch back to the iPhone and deal with its limitations.
Not to mention the screen. I am very much bothered by the low-res nature of the iPhone 3GS screen now. I can see the pixels, and the contrast ratio is terrible. I am truly spoiled by the high-res OLED screen on the Nexus One, it's almost destroyed the iPhone for me.
Edit: The development freedom on Android is refreshing also. I recently developed an app that will automatically do a reverse phone number lookup (Canada only) on an unknown number and tell you the name of the person calling (if they're listed in the phone book), as well as the city they're from. If that's not available, it just does a simple area code lookup for region they're in. It presents this information in a nice, tidy toast message overlayed on top of the incoming calling screen. This kind of stuff is not possible to do on the iPhone.
Last edited by a moderator:
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Only synching of video's and mucic use Zune on the PC. Everything else is done wirelessly through the cloud.
So you sync whatever you want to the online cloud. Then you can sync any device you own with that data.
It's unclear if you can wirelessly access SMB shares on a computer, that would be a nice feature.
Regards,
SB
Sounds good Asher. Like I said, I'm thinking too that Android has a good shot at overtaking iPhone in two years, but until that day, our household will make do with the iPhone. Remember, at home it'll be mostly for my wife.
And don't forget that I'm in the Netherlands. Nexus One isn't available yet here and while the major English language applications are probably moving fast, that's much less so for the local applications. I also don't know what regional limitations the Android store may have, but they seem to be substantial, in that there really isn't much when I'm looking at the store. I'm a big fan of a really nice timetracking application in the iPhone, and when I selected it there were tens of them to choose from, while I could find only one barely finished product on the Android store. And TimeTracking preferences are tricky - TimeTracker is perfect for me, but it's the first time in a long time that I found anything on any platform that I liked to work with.
Well, anyway, obviously being a PC developer I'm rooting for an open platform that I can develop for on PC. So go Android! But I'm learning to be patient. And last time I tried, the iPhone devkit on an old MacBook was still a lot more comfortable to use than Eclipse with the Android Device emulators, but maybe things have changed already that I'm unaware of, or I just took a wrong approach. Most of the hoops I had to jump through on iPhone had to do primarily with certificates and such, but after that I was good to go and got things working immediately. For Android I couldn't even really get Hello World to show up on the device emulator.
To bring it back on-topic, this is where I benefitted greatly from having a Windows Mobile 6 Treo a while ago. I actually quite liked the device, despite its primitive tiny screen, it was still touch based, and I could port my .NET applications to it really easily.
And don't forget that I'm in the Netherlands. Nexus One isn't available yet here and while the major English language applications are probably moving fast, that's much less so for the local applications. I also don't know what regional limitations the Android store may have, but they seem to be substantial, in that there really isn't much when I'm looking at the store. I'm a big fan of a really nice timetracking application in the iPhone, and when I selected it there were tens of them to choose from, while I could find only one barely finished product on the Android store. And TimeTracking preferences are tricky - TimeTracker is perfect for me, but it's the first time in a long time that I found anything on any platform that I liked to work with.
Well, anyway, obviously being a PC developer I'm rooting for an open platform that I can develop for on PC.
So go Android! But I'm learning to be patient. And last time I tried, the iPhone devkit on an old MacBook was still a lot more comfortable to use than Eclipse with the Android Device emulators, but maybe things have changed already that I'm unaware of, or I just took a wrong approach. Most of the hoops I had to jump through on iPhone had to do primarily with certificates and such, but after that I was good to go and got things working immediately. For Android I couldn't even really get Hello World to show up on the device emulator.To bring it back on-topic, this is where I benefitted greatly from having a Windows Mobile 6 Treo a while ago. I actually quite liked the device, despite its primitive tiny screen, it was still touch based, and I could port my .NET applications to it really easily.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
So no drag&drop like you can currently do? I hate that, I dont want to install extra software just to do something like copy music or video.
But how will the wireless syncing work? I now use outlook on my home pc to sync contacts and the agenda but outlook isnt online so how is wm7 going to sync?
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