Microsoft: Even cheapo Lumias to get slimmed down Windows 10 The “next chapter” in Windows is coming to Microsoft's cheapo, mass-market Lumia phones. Microsoft is working to get Windows 10 working on devices with just 512MB RAM, including the Lumia 520. The news was tweeted by Microsoft operating systems group vice president Joe Belfiore on Sunday. Just one catch: small memory means …
Does this mean one day they actually might make more money on their own mobile efforts than they extort from the work of others?
>Does this mean one day they actually might make more money on their own mobile efforts than they extort from the work of others?
No. And they really don't need to. This is about protecting the desktop from non-windows 'slab creep. Phones are just part of the "windows everywhere" strategy that doesn't work but soothes MS' pride.
Assuming MS is going with surface 3 pro-type tablets, losing the phone market really doesn't matter. Those devices will never run the windows apps people expect windows to run. Its just a vanity project.
@ P.Lee - Yes indeed - MS are playing a long game in a declining (for them) market. A few years ago - your only choice was a laptop or a desktop - probably running Windows, most people don't need that for browsing eBay / watching porn / trolling on Bacefook /watching cat vids on YouTube / sending emails - so Phones began to eat into that market, but most still bought a laptop. With tablets, your typical user gets the familiarity of their phone GUI and a larger screen to eBay / watch porn / Bacefook / YouTube / email- no need for a laptop. In the near future, as they enter into the workplace the automatic choice of buying into Windows isn't so obvious anymore (they grew up with Linux/Android or iOS) so Linux starts to get a foothold into the corporate desktop as it has into what was once only the MS Windows Server or Enterprise Unix space. MS has to make some serious changes in its business model if it is to stay relevent over the next 10 - 15 years.
Ssssh! Microsoft wants to keep these patents top secret so they never actually get contested in court. Their tried 'n' tested FUD tactic is the one surefire way you can tell they 'aint changing their spots any time soon.
"Ssssh! Microsoft wants to keep these patents top secret so they never actually get contested in court"
Microsoft's patents have been contested in court numerous times. Mostly Microsoft has won. Hence why companies worth billions pay up rather than fight. They know at least some of the patents will stick.
The primary reason that Microsoft tries not to reveal which patents it is leveraging is simple business positioning - it doesn't want potential licensing fee targets to be able to work around or avoid using it's patented technology. It would rather be able to charge them a fee. Quite common sense really if you are in business to make money...
"Nope, does not compute."
It sure does. Perhaps you have a lack of data?
Windows Phone 8 - Zero known vulnerabilities. Zero known malware.
Blackberry 10 - over 50 known vulnerabilities.
IOS - loads of known vulnerabilities. Some malware.
Android - security of a collander to hold water. Millions infected with malware.
Nothing else holds over say 1% Smartphone market share to mention.
I could say..
Zero known vulnerabilities.
- If nobody uses it, it's not vulnerable.
Malware,
- it's probably lack of interest. Windows Phone is not really worth anybodies while as regards malware.
But, I'm not....
You've only posted very vague summaries, 3rd hand sources at best, these could be just your assumption of the state of the smartphone security and not reality. The language you use also strongly hints at an impartial viewpoint.
Microsoft are cutting bits out of Windows 10 in an attempt to cram their white elephant OS into the kiosk category cheap smartphone hardware in the desperate hope that somebody, somewhere will buy one. I wonder if the particular elephant organ or limb they remove will be the vital function someone buys the phone for in the first place This has also many flaws as regarding encouraging a vibrant app dev ecosystem, but beyond that, they promised a unified Windows10 and now (already) that is being fragmented.
The sub 1% Smartphone market share you are so quick to dismiss probably includes Sailfish, FirefoxOS and the new launch of UbuntuPhone (due for release this month). None of them really depend on the app market that much as all mostly run webapps. All share the well defined linux security without Googles hamfisted botchups that turned Android into such a mess.
"I could say..
Zero known vulnerabilities.
- If nobody uses it, it's not vulnerable.
Malware,
- it's probably lack of interest."
You could but you would be talking utter bollocks.
"You've only posted very vague summaries, 3rd hand sources at best, these could be just your assumption of the state of the smartphone security and not reality. "
Do feel free to post something more conclusive? I could reference vulnerability counts and various articles on malware, but I was under the impression that this was well known already. At least by those with some knowledge of the subject matter....
Is there a new field on El Reg's sign up page which asks you what phone you've got but due to a sloppy programming error unfortunately has the unhappy side effect of making you post as an Anonymous Coward if you ticked Lumia?
Because that's the only thing I can think of which would generate such unwavering support for Lumias from Anonymous Cowards on this website.
Or maybe they're all embarrassed?
Maybe they could share the reason for this strange phenomenon with us.
Love my Lumia. Not an AC.
It only has the half gig RAM though.
(A 635) So only cut down Win 10 for me I guess. Pity phones ( any phones) can't have RAM upgrades.
It does seem to be an industry trick (Apple's devices used to be terrible for this, though I've heard that it's got a bit better.) that small upgrades in spec between models lead to much higher retail costs. . So that if you are looking at the cost/benefit of a device you may well end up with a lower RAM unless you expect to be doing lots of graphic and video stuff.
Which is all very well as long as your phone maker doesn't then decide to develop an OS upgrade that demands the higher level of memory, while your phone is still a pretty recent model.
While I do like Microsoft's stuff their tendency to knee jerk development does p**s me off at times.
Back in the day, Microsoft's policy was to design for "the next generation of hardware", on the basis that by the time their new product was developed, tested, beta-tested and shipped, "the next generation" would be entry-level.
That policy served them well for the first 15 years or so of Windows, until Vista. Then it bit them in the arse, hard. Vista found itself being sold on hardware that was totally unsuited to run it, and - partly as a result, although partly also on its own merits - it got a reputation for running like a leprous epileptic three-legged donkey.
Since then, they've actually been working in the opposite direction, to make each Windows release more efficient than the one before. On marginal hardware - assuming decent drivers are available - Windows 7 runs better than Vista, and Win 8 beats either. I would guess that Win 10 will continue that trend.
So there is no hardware-based impediment to MS supporting Windows on a half-gig Lumia device pretty much indefinitely. The decision is purely about marketing.
(Disclaimer: yes, I have a Lumia 520. Yes, it was cheap. And it's a nice device.)
this sounds familiar so let's play.
The claimed low vulnerabilities is due to the fact that 2% market share is not enough for anyone to bother trying to infect them.
What I find interesting is how the press keeps posting so much about Windows Phone phones with so little marketshare. So few care about it yet the press keeps posting.
>What I find interesting is how the press keeps posting so much about Windows Phone phones with so little marketshare. So few care about it yet the press keeps posting.
Which goes to show Microsoft's propaganda wing (sorry PR I mean) is still well funded and humming along nicely. Nothing beats lazy hack unpaid intern journalist wanna-bes rewording company press releases after all.
Yes, but you missed off "Zero known users. Zero known apps
Facebook, twitter, instagram, candycrush, LinkedIn...of course many of those are happpily bundled in standard the People App...well that's 90% of user needs fulfilled.
Here blows Google / Apple maps out of the water. Lumia cameras better than anything Apple and Samsung offer for even close the price (the app itself is way better). Mixradio another great one, oh of course Cortana.
Still have to use my Samsung from work for my gas / electric readings, so it does have some use.
Oh as you see, not AC and not a MS employee
>Facebook, twitter, instagram, candycrush, LinkedIn...of course many of those are happpily bundled in standard the People App...well that's 90% of user needs fulfilled.
>Here blows Google / Apple maps out of the water. Lumia cameras better than anything Apple and Samsung offer for even close the price (the app itself is way better). Mixradio another great one, oh of course Cortana.
Cool save that. You can use it for WP's obituary here in 3 years or so.
@AC - zero known vulnerabilities / zero known malware (because nobody can be bothered writing the malware or finding the vulnerabilities for a trivial userbase.
In fact - here are the stats from my dinky website:
Windows Hits: 374 (Win7: 274 / Win8.1: 61 / WinXP: 23 / Vista: 15 / Win8: 3)
Windows Phone: 4
iOS 191
OSX:61
Android: 121
Linux: 13
ChromeOS: 4
Blackberry: 1
>>"just not "desirable""
>Unless you happen to want the best camera sensor, lens, maps / nav, microphones / recording and screen contrast / touch panels and the most performant and secure OS available on any smartphone handset.
Wasn't the Zune the best on paper as well? Desirable does not always have to do with specs as WP's tiny and declining market share can attest too. The market decides not Microsoft's corporate strategists or marketing team.
Windows 10 on desktop and on phone... C'mon Microsoft, do some things that Apple has never bothered to do*- such as making it easy for desktop applications to dump tool palettes onto a smaller touchscreen device. I'm not talking about the laggy high-bandwidth approach of just making the touchscreen device a secondary desktop monitor, but a well thought-out implementation. Give Windows 10 desktop users a reason to buy a Win 10 phone.
This applies to you too, Ubuntu.
* not quite true... iPhones have always had wireless MIDI baked-in, so have been easy to incorporate into electronic music workflows. And using
http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-midi-translation-midi-to-keystrokes--audio-6914
MIDI inputs can be output as keystrokes, so one could use any MIDI instrument to control any application with keyboard shortcuts. An example - using a Korg box of knobs and sliders to control Photoshop parameters - is here:
http://www.bome.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3116
(Strangely, I've only ever tried doing the opposite - trying to use a Wacom Baboo as an ersatz Korg Kaospad - but I got frustrated with Windows' sound subsystem and gave up in disgust. )
Why would you want to drop a tool pallets onto a small touch screen when you could by a full blown touch screen for a fraction of the price?
As for things like MIDI, part of the issue is, especially Android (yes fandroids this is a fact) is that Apple have the edge as they control the hardware and software, so the timings can be tightly controlled and given a known config. MS could do this to an extent, as most phones sold are the Lumia's but for music control, Android is out.
>Why would you want to drop a tool pallets onto a small touch screen when you could by a full blown touch screen for a fraction of the price?
I take your point - for just displaying tool palettes the screen quality isn't important, so a very cheap 7" tablet would be perfectly adequate.
What I was getting at was more the software integration between the desktop and the mobile OS. In the above example, I wouldn't' want the secondary display to emulate a mouse, because it would shift my cursor from where I want it. (DANG! I've just discovered that Adobe did this four years ago.... sorry for being slow on the uptake - I'm not an Apple user. http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/05/10/adobe_releases_photoshop_companion_apps_for_apples_ipad )
Who has both a mobile and a desktop OS? Google*, Apple**, Microsoft, and possibly Ubuntu.
For MS, having what will be a very common desktop OS should be an asset to help push their phone OS. It could be something as simple and convenient as including a suite of polished phone apps for controlling media playback on their desktopPC, through to full remote desktop.
*okay, ChromeOS isn't too common, but Google have made the Chrome browser something akin to a User Environment... e.g desktop Chrome tabs open on my phone, Google have an experimental game viewed on the desktop Chrome but controlled by the gyroscopes on my phone, Chrome runs productivity applications and document storage...
** Apple have been adding 'Continuity', to allow some tasks to be handed over from MacOS to iOS and vice versa. Simple example, allowing the user to write SMS texts on their Mac. I don't know what took them so long.
Even Sony are looking to merge their devices.... see Remote Play - playing PS4 games on their Android games across the LAN.
I've been considering the possible value in a small touchscreen sitting close to the keybaord (7-10" max) as a large touchscreen would sit almost an arms length away in a traditional desktop configuration.
This small touchscreen to be used for toolsets like the gimps tool windows, it could also free up the large screen from any on-screen panels and docks and be utilised as an onscreen keyboard. A little alteration to the likes of browsers and office apps and the toolbar could go there as well.
X certainly has no baked in setting for this, and I doubt Wayland or Mir exactly have this in mind. A tiling WM like i3 could probably approximate as long as the role of the window to be matched could be identified from the main application window.
Thanks Teiwaz.
I looked into this very briefly the other day - I'm not a regular Linux user. Reading a bit more, I found a few threads in which Ubuntu users were struggling to use multiple workspaces with multiple displays - where each display was dedicated to a workspace. I didn't read on enough to discover if they had found a solution.
I don't get on well with the GIMP on Windows because its tool palettes hide each other, though I've heard it is much nicer on some Linux distros because it benefits from a window manager.
I was actually prompted into looking into this by the article about two upcoming Ubuntu phones... and again, wondering if 'synergies could be leveraged'* between Ubuntu Phone and Destop.
*Yeah, I know. I deserve some abuse for that.
I keep seeing the odd small reference that Enlightenment (one of the new ones) can do the 'workspace per screen' workflow most tilers do, but every times I try to find the original source I fail, and I can find no clue in the Enlightenment config (which is an unholy mess IMO).
It's really down to the WM behind the desktop, which on Unity is still currently Compiz. I am currently running i3wm with two screens, browser on topscreen in workspace4, terminal on bottom in workspace 2, I can change workspaces on the bottom and the browser stays where it is. Had I a small touchscreen additional to this I could also have my music player on workspace 0 on it and be able to flick tracks with a finger, this is a rudimentary use and trivial to pull off with a simple couple of entries in i3s config setting Clementine music player to the workspace 0 (as it is already) and workspce 0 bound to the touchscreen. Other configurations could be added too for example, move the musicplayer to scratchpad when I activate an omscreen keyboard to the touchscreen to be returned when the keyboard is dismissed. Gimps toolbox assigned to a specific dimension and place on the screen might be a little more dificult to achieve on i3, but it's doable on Xmonad or Subtle window managers.
Kwin as some quite good controls baked in allowiing you to bind windows and applications to certain desktops/activities, and Enlightenment creates DESKTOP folders for each screen. Unitys approach to workspaces is the one thing I find wrong with that ui, it just doesn't fit my workflow, and as workspaces are switched off by default it's obvious ubuntu doesn't rate workspaces highly as a design feature.
Oooh, I've almost convinced myself, I wonder if that usb 10" capacitive touchscreen I saw on Anders has dropped in price from £200 yet (hmm, it's that or the ubuntu phone).
Yeah, I already have a logitech t650 (about 13cm squareis), nice device shame about the non-existant linux support from logitech, but it was reduced in price so I chanced getting it working on linux.
It only lacks touch to click (I have to press down on it), which requires a firmware update (using a windows OS, which I don't have).
I also want to look into current handwriting recog as I think this is a input method that's currently underapreciated for it's potential usefulness for the desktop paradigm.
"Apple have the edge as they control the hardware and software, so the timings can be tightly controlled and given a known config"
Using Samsung as an example, just as with Apple and not "android", I have a Galaxy Note, for which samsung controls the hardware, and essentially the software as they can modify whatever they want as long as it passes google compatibility tests. So you can't necessarily compare "android" here - only base AOSP android.
So, to say that apple controls the hardware and software, but not Samsung, or any OEM for that matter, is not correct. You are just saying "android" as in "google", who doesn't make hardware. This is why there is that "update delay" always brought up regarding android updates. What are many of them doing during this time? "tightly controlling their timings", for one.
Samsung has always added and tweaked things over stock android. Music control works just fine, although I cannot speak for MIDI but how hard can that be? I have used real time guitar effect apps such as Andrig that stock Lollipop has only now caught up to as far as latency, which is on par with apple.
So, while there is some truth to what you say as a blanket statement, it is not true when you start talking about specific models of android based phones.
And windows? The OEMs cannot customize the source code. So there is certainly no optimization they can control there. MS's own lumia's could but how are they going to get any OEMs to be excited about making their phones if Lumia has the advantage?
I've got a lovely phone, an HTC HD7. The only problem is the OS it runs, Windows Phone 7 and the horrid browser called Internet Explorer. It's the worst smartphone browser I've ever used. Worst smartphone too. To get something less capable and stable it would have to be a featurephone browser. Other than the OS the HTC HD7 is a wonderful device, a decent phone, an excellent videoplayer if you have the video in exactly the right format, and a good music player. So does this mean Microsoft is finally going to fix their software and make the HTC HD7 a good device?
"some Windows 10 features will be cut out"
Come on Microsoft, let's have a list of exactly what's getting chopped - keeping developers hanging on not knowing what's going to work and what isn't going to win you any friends. God knows, you've got a tough enough battle thanks to FUD based on estimates and antiquated links - no need to make things harder for yourselves!
But Microsoft said there's no need to identify what version of Windows a device is running:
And just like any Internet service, the idea of asking ‘What version are you on?’ will cease to make sense – which is great news for our Windows developers
(Yes, I know the article is really about Windows on the desktop, but the gag was too good to miss. It's Monday: Cut me some slack!)
For phone apps, the store submission script is where you'd enforce version capabilities.
Also, the phone store doesn't have to serve the same app binary to every user. You can submit different packages under the same "application", and which one the user sees is determined by their device and/or locale.
My experience is that maintaining two branches of an application is far less messy than having all the possibilities encapsulated in one source-file, or worse: all in one executable.
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