Windows Mobile 7 phones start leaking

[Tchock]

In the end, it really makes no different. See it like this: You got a phone and new models on a regulair basis. What will happen is this. Apps will come out. Probably 99% will work just fine for atleast 1 or 2 years. Sure it might run faster on the newer models, but it will still work fine on your. Only exception being games but who buys a phone based on games?

The other case would be where you have 1 model each year. In that year 100% of the apps will work. After that 1 year you will get apps that will only work with the new model.

So at the end of the day you end up with pretty much the exact same situation. For me, that 1% or less apps that might not run on my phone after 3 to 6 months is such a low amount I couldnt care less. I rather have the advantage of always being able to buy the best specs out there unlike having to wait 1 year for a new model. The other big disadvantage of that is price. 1 model a year means you can keep prices high. With regulair newer and better models the price of the older, but still capable of running pretty much everything, models will get lower.

Just compare the iPhone with other phones. Buying a iPhone is like getting ripped off but being happy about it.

Are you sure?
The 3GS was the second phone to get a Cortex-A8. Hardware wise they're pretty sound. Sure it's not 1Ghz but is there a difference, besides games?

Which brings us back to the subject matter. If games are not the determinator for phone purchases then why do you want constantly new hardware on the curve? It's even more pointless I'd argue.

And the mobile world doesn't move that fast, actually. Not too sure why the 3GS didn't have a nHD/WVGA screen, but other than that it is pretty much on par with what a flagship phone should be even till now (Moto Droid, Palm Pre Plus, HTC's Snapdragons, Xperia X10 etc).

Now if they lag 1 year behind the first dual core A9 on Android/WP7 then you have a valid point. Right now I can't really see it. I'm for less phones per year, less depreciation means it's possible to get an iPhone for 600SGD under contract and trade it in for 300-400SGD value if you want to get a new one next year.

Right now my HTC Magic in comparison has gone to 150SGD trade-in with my initial 550 off-contract purchase. Of course it's better not tied up to the devil but still, the Magic is/was a 300-400SGD purchase on contract.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Which brings us back to the subject matter. If games are not the determinator for phone purchases then why do you want constantly new hardware on the curve? It's even more pointless I'd argue.

Why do we need dual, quad and hexacore cpu's and tons of ram when 99% of the time your pc is idling away doing browsing or typing word documents? Why do we need modern cars when all cars from the past few decades worked perfect for getting you from A to B? Why? Because technology moves forward. People want better and new stuff, even when they might not even need it.

And as we both seem to agree games are probably the only apps that will make a real difference in what phones can or cannot run I see even less reason why we should stick with 1 piece of hardware for a year. Better to give people the option to buy faster stuff. It certainly beats having 1 spec and ending up with everybody inflating prices and keeping prices high because you can't buy anything else anyway.

 

[Valzic]

The iPhone changed the Mobile Phone game- or at least the marketing of it did.

Before the iPhone, I am sure most people got phones and kept them until, they broke, got lost or finally if out of contract- got something prettier. The iPhone and its marketing came along. It mainly markets not the "telephony" services but all the rest of what it can do.

In fact a number of sites basically reviewed the features and the telephone sending and receiving was probably its weakest feature. (weak signals etc). But no matter - its now marketed as a Smart device that does everything. Now we want all the same stuff we look at in computers and video cards. Latest and greatest.

Unfortunately, what most people forget is that these devices are expensive and are "subsidized". I was talking to the phone dealer in the mall one day after someone came and tried to get a "newer" phone - replace original iPhone with current ones. They were shocked to find out that - they owed over $300 on the phone and suddenly, the cheap upgrade disappeared. I talked to the clerk afterwards and he said they get many many people now that do that. They see the marketing and come in and want the latest and greatest.

Its a new world out there and not sure how it will end up as we start to get more and more similar marketing form everyone else. Most people can't afford to pay $600 each year to get a new phone similar to paying same for a new and latest video card. You pace yourself based on what you want to spend. The phone carriers subsidize and hide taht fact from the consumers.

 

[Grall]

I love the look of that Dell slider, it's super slick. Mobile 7 in general looks very very slick too, so this combination may be killer, I'll have to wait and see. I'm raising a flag of caution about the OLED screen, I don't believe that tech is ready for mainstream use - poor durability and correspondingly short lifespan mainly, coupled with that weirdo raster pattern shown in the Google Android phone whatsitscalled... I'd be irritated as fsck if my phone screen looked like that and I were to use it a lot.

Someone said Mo7 doesn't support flash memory cards? Is that true? If so, why the hell not! All phones have had support for flash cards for years and years now - well except Apple's of course, but that's just Apple being contrary for the sake of it, and because they can (their users won't complain, they'll see it as an innovation instead) - and because selling a phone with an additional 8GB flash for another hundred dollars is pure WIN for the company's profit margin.

But why would MS follow the same dumb path? They don't even make any profit off hardware sales...

Or maybe I misinterpreted something, I dunno.

 

[Ike Turner]

I love the look of that Dell slider, it's super slick. Mobile 7 in general looks very very slick too, so this combination may be killer, I'll have to wait and see. I'm raising a flag of caution about the OLED screen, I don't believe that tech is ready for mainstream use - poor durability and correspondingly short lifespan mainly, coupled with that weirdo raster pattern shown in the Google Android phone whatsitscalled... I'd be irritated as fsck if my phone screen looked like that and I were to use it a lot.

Someone said Mo7 doesn't support flash memory cards? Is that true? If so, why the hell not! All phones have had support for flash cards for years and years now - well except Apple's of course, but that's just Apple being contrary for the sake of it, and because they can (their users won't complain, they'll see it as an innovation instead) - and because selling a phone with an additional 8GB flash for another hundred dollars is pure WIN for the company's profit margin.

But why would MS follow the same dumb path? They don't even make any profit off hardware sales...

Or maybe I misinterpreted something, I dunno.

Yeah the OLED panels used on HTC's handsets have PenTile pixel arrangement resulting in on 2 sub-pixels per pixels insted of 3. THere's green sub-pixel and Red & Bue one that alternates. But the major problem with current OLED panel is the totaly crappy outdoor visibilty. It renders the phone unsuable when outdoors. Samsung's SuperAMOLED is simply stunning thought. HAd the chance to play with a Bada and that thing is nuts.

Reagarding memory cards on WP7. That's Microsoft's way of killing side-loading on WP7. They want the memory on the phone to be exactly like on the iPhones and Zunes. No native file browser etc. Windows Phone 7 is composed of two different file systems: IMGFS and TexFAT.

 

[Helmore]

I love the look of that Dell slider, it's super slick. Mobile 7 in general looks very very slick too, so this combination may be killer, I'll have to wait and see. I'm raising a flag of caution about the OLED screen, I don't believe that tech is ready for mainstream use - poor durability and correspondingly short lifespan mainly, coupled with that weirdo raster pattern shown in the Google Android phone whatsitscalled... I'd be irritated as fsck if my phone screen looked like that and I were to use it a lot.

Just because there are a couple of phones with less than stellar OLED screens does not mean that all OLED screens must suck. That would be like claiming that all LCD displays must suck after you have only seen a couple of TN based LCD panels.
What you are talking about, regarding the Nexus One (as well as the HTC Desire and HTC Incredible), is the use of the 'Pen Tile' pixel layout as used by their OLED screen. There is only one OLED screen as far as I know which makes use of such a pixel configuration. The OLED screen on the Zune HD for example does not use this pixel layout and I've heard nothing but praise about the ZuneHD's OLED screen.
There however is one thing that OLED screens do suck at though and that's visibility when looking at it in direct sunlight. This is something that Samsung seems to have found an answer to though. Just Google around to find some more information about Samsung's Super AMOLED displays, as used in their Samsung Wave, Galaxy S and Beam smartphones. A simple demonstration of a Super AMOLED screen as used in direct sunlight can be found here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/samsung-wave-shows-whats-super-about-its-amoled-display-by-goin/ That's why I would like a WP7 phone with the same Super AMOLED screen as is used on the Samsung Galaxy S.

Someone said Mo7 doesn't support flash memory cards? Is that true? If so, why the hell not! All phones have had support for flash cards for years and years now - well except Apple's of course, but that's just Apple being contrary for the sake of it, and because they can (their users won't complain, they'll see it as an innovation instead) - and because selling a phone with an additional 8GB flash for another hundred dollars is pure WIN for the company's profit margin.

But why would MS follow the same dumb path? They don't even make any profit off hardware sales...

Or maybe I misinterpreted something, I dunno.

WP7 does support the use of flash memory cards. There is one major restriction though. The flash memory card should not be removable (replaceable) while the phone is turned on. That's why all WP7 phones that feature a microSD slot will have this slot position underneath the battery, this way you automatically turn off the phone when you want to replace the microSD card.
This is done because WP7 has a 'Unified Storage System'. The OS has two file systems, one is for the OS and the other is for user files. The OS file system is an IMGFS file system, which will only be used for the OS files itself and resides on the internal phone flash memory (ROM). The user-files file system makes use of the TexFAT file system, but this latter file system is unified over both the remaining internal ROM and any other available storage, including for example microSD cards. You will basically have broken up the Unified Storage System the moment you remove your microSD card.
I think that one of the reasons for this Unified Storage System is to prevent the storage problems that Android is currently having. On Android it's currently not possible to install apps on the SD card, which is kind of limiting for app developers. The developers have found ways around this, but it still is annoying and probably something that will be solved in a future Android update. The problem on Android is actually a little more complicated, just take a look at the HTC Incredible. The HTC Incredible has an extra 8GB of internal storage next to its 512 MB of ROM. The problem is that this 8GB of storage can not be used by apps though, those apps can't even see it while that same app can make use of an SD card. This is also the reason why Verizon is now including a 2GB microSD card with all HTC Incredibles.
One thing that Microsoft did right though, is to demand at least 8 GB of storage on the phone, although I'm not completely sure in what configuration that 8 GB has to be made available. I hope we will have more phones with a similar storage configuration as the Nokia N900 for example where you have 32 GB of internal flash along with an extra microSD card slot. Or just give me a phone with at least 128 GB flash memory, then I won't even ask for a microSD slot.

 

[Mike11]

Just because there are a couple of phones with less than stellar OLED screens does not mean that all OLED screens must suck. That would be like claiming that all LCD displays must suck after you have only seen a couple of TN based LCD panels.
What you are talking about, regarding the Nexus One (as well as the HTC Desire and HTC Incredible), is the use of the 'Pen Tile' pixel layout as used by their OLED screen. There is only one OLED screen as far as I know which makes use of such a pixel configuration. The OLED screen on the Zune HD for example does not use this pixel layout and I've heard nothing but praise about the ZuneHD's OLED screen.
There however is one thing that OLED screens do suck at though and that's visibility when looking at it in direct sunlight. This is something that Samsung seems to have found an answer to though. Just Google around to find some more information about Samsung's Super AMOLED displays, as used in their Samsung Wave, Galaxy S and Beam smartphones. A simple demonstration of a Super AMOLED screen as used in direct sunlight can be found here: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/16/samsung-wave-shows-whats-super-about-its-amoled-display-by-goin/ That's why I would like a WP7 phone with the same Super AMOLED screen as is used on the Samsung Galaxy S.

Samsung's Super AMOLED sounds really good, and I'm sure it's better than what's in the Nexus One. But I'll wait with my judgement on the outdoor visibility until there's a comparison video between it and an iPhone (and both manually set to highest brightness in the video and showing the same photo/video). And since Super AMOLEDs are also from Samsung, one should check if they also use the same inferior PenTile matrix as the Nexus One screen.

 

[Grall]

Thanks for your very informative reply, Hel! It's very appreciated.

Regarding OLED, I'm sure there's better and worse screens out there, but from what I've heard, pixel lifetime - particulary for blue subpixels - isn't really a solved issue with the tech. The screens still dim over time. Now, LED and EFL backlights for traditional LCD screens also dim, but not at the same rate as OLED is currently seeing, from what I've read.

Also, it's not really all that cheap or power-efficient either I believe. On the other hand, color reproduction is supposedly VERY good with OLED, but I'm not sure that's terribly important in a mobile device.

The unified storage you speak of in winmo 7 is intriguing. I wonder how it handles removal of the flash card, especially when part of a program ends up straddling both of the two flash devices. I don't suppose the phone will simply wipe the user part of the internal flash if you remove the flash card...?

8GB is a decent amount of flash, it's not outstanding (seeing as iPhone etc is available with 32GB I believe), but it's certainly enough to store a lot of music and software. As long as it's expandable through replaceable flash cards it's not much of a problem if the phone itself doesn't have that much flash built in IMO. Big flash cards are pretty cheap these days.

 

[eastmen]

The iPhone changed the Mobile Phone game- or at least the marketing of it did.

Before the iPhone, I am sure most people got phones and kept them until, they broke, got lost or finally if out of contract- got something prettier. The iPhone and its marketing came along. It mainly markets not the "telephony" services but all the rest of what it can do.

In fact a number of sites basically reviewed the features and the telephone sending and receiving was probably its weakest feature. (weak signals etc). But no matter - its now marketed as a Smart device that does everything. Now we want all the same stuff we look at in computers and video cards. Latest and greatest.

Unfortunately, what most people forget is that these devices are expensive and are "subsidized". I was talking to the phone dealer in the mall one day after someone came and tried to get a "newer" phone - replace original iPhone with current ones. They were shocked to find out that - they owed over $300 on the phone and suddenly, the cheap upgrade disappeared. I talked to the clerk afterwards and he said they get many many people now that do that. They see the marketing and come in and want the latest and greatest.

Its a new world out there and not sure how it will end up as we start to get more and more similar marketing form everyone else. Most people can't afford to pay $600 each year to get a new phone similar to paying same for a new and latest video card. You pace yourself based on what you want to spend. The phone carriers subsidize and hide taht fact from the consumers.

Most of the phones are not subsidised , they are artificaly raised in price and the discount you get actually still has profit built in for the carrier. I had a friend pretty high up in sprint that would allways get me the phones at sprints cost which ended up $50-$150 less than what you'd get it for on a new contract.

 

[Helmore]

Most of the phones are not subsidised , they are artificaly raised in price and the discount you get actually still has profit built in for the carrier. I had a friend pretty high up in sprint that would allways get me the phones at sprints cost which ended up $50-$150 less than what you'd get it for on a new contract.

Most actually are. Just look at the HTC Incredible an the Motorola Droid for example, they would both be at least $400 and probably closer to $500 if you were to purchase them unsubsidised.

 

[eastmen]

Most actually are. Just look at the HTC Incredible an the Motorola Droid for example, they would both be at least $400 and probably closer to $500 if you were to purchase them unsubsidised.

except its bs and is designed to trap you into an over priced contract for 2 years . The telco's still make money off te subsidised phone and then as well on the contract.

 

[Valzic]

It may be bullshit, but as far as the consumer is concerned, you are charged a set amount if there is not a contract and then they price your contracted version as if it is subsidized. At the end of the day they use whatever means they can to lock you into their contract.

 

[eastmen]

It may be bullshit, but as far as the consumer is concerned, you are charged a set amount if there is not a contract and then they price your contracted version as if it is subsidized. At the end of the day they use whatever means they can to lock you into their contract.

The word subsidized is not correct and thats what I'm explaining. The prices are inflated. I believe there is something going on with the fcc and this.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

except its bs and is designed to trap you into an over priced contract for 2 years . The telco's still make money off te subsidised phone and then as well on the contract.

Indeed. I just renewed my contract for 1 year, 29,50 a month (unlimited mobile internet included) and I got the HTC Legend for 120 euro's and a 50% discount on my contract for the first 6 months. In total I pay something like 385 euro's for 1 year. If I buy the phone without a contract its about 370 euro's...

 

[Entropy]

Thanks for your very informative reply, Hel! It's very appreciated.

Regarding OLED, I'm sure there's better and worse screens out there, but from what I've heard, pixel lifetime - particulary for blue subpixels - isn't really a solved issue with the tech. The screens still dim over time. Now, LED and EFL backlights for traditional LCD screens also dim, but not at the same rate as OLED is currently seeing, from what I've read.

Shouldn't be a problem even if you're a teenage girl. A cell phone screen just don't see the use, say, a display screen in stores/airports/similar does, nor does it have anywhere near the expected life-time.

Also, it's not really all that cheap or power-efficient either I believe. On the other hand, color reproduction is supposedly VERY good with OLED, but I'm not sure that's terribly important in a mobile device.

Weeell, a consequence of the blue colour fading at a different rate than the other is that you'll have colour shifts over time - if you were to use OLED screens for prepress work or similar, you'd probably have to recalibrate regularly, just as with CRTs. But we aren't there for a while yet. I believe.

 

[Helmore]

The word subsidized is not correct and thats what I'm explaining. The prices are inflated. I believe there is something going on with the fcc and this.

Let's just take the Nexus One for example, according iSupply the Nexus One has a Bill of Materials (BOM) of $174.15. That's just materials, not labor cost, R&D, warranty issues, customer service, marketing and some other factors. I'd say that HTC has to get at least double the price of the BOM to make a profit on a phone and they need to make a profit on a phone otherwise they can't put R&D into developing their next phone. Thus in other words, HTC has to get around $350 for the Nexus One to regain their investment. After that you have to add shipping costs, import taxes and other taxes and all the other middlemen that are between HTC and the consumer. In other words, it's not very odd for a consumer to have to pay upwards of $500 for an unsubsidized phone. These are just rough estimates, but you get the idea. There is no way that you could sell the Nexus One for $179 (price as sold including a T-Mobile contract) without some form of subsidization by the carrier.

@tongue_of_colicab - You got one heck of a deal on that contract that's for sure. They are probably making little profit from your contract that's for sure. Where they are probably hoping to get some money from you is when you exceed your monthly allowances and the fact that you are quite likely to stay with your service provider (i.e. lock-in).

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Yes its a good deal. Took me 4 weeks to get it because Vodafone didnt want me to give the deal they initially promised to me. But the funny thing is that they ended up offering me something that is actually cheaper in the end... I'm sure they make money on me. Don't forget that initially for a 1 year contract they ask 225 euro's for the phone and no discount on the contract. I'm sure they leave themselves enough headroom to make what looks like big cuts on the price and still make money on you even if you dont exceed your allowans (which I never do, not even close actually).

Maybe they dont make a fortune on me (they already did that the last 2 years) but do they really have to? Profit is profit even if its just a small one. Its better than have me change carrier and dont make any money at all.

 

[Tchock]

Well in Singapore they do subsidize the phones really well, the Moto Milestone (GSM ver. of Droid) is 200SGD (150USD) with a 38SGD (27USD) contract! 12GB data + 100 mins + 500 SMS (unlimited number in universities) I think. Upsize your plan and you get even cheaper phones.

The real catch is the plan itself would still cost the same without a phone contract tied to it. Basically think of it as T-Mobile's Even More vs EM Plus without the Plus option at all.

So if you want data you basically can just consider a contract plan; I still stand by my secondhand Android with pay-as-you-go (~10-15USD a month) and Wifi, but twitter updates are getting hard to resist.