Five ways Microsoft can rescue Windows Phone Windows Phone might be the most impressive bit of software Microsoft has produced - but it isn't setting the world on fire. The iPhone and Android go from strength to strength - the latter proliferating so widely even Google doesn't know how many Android systems are out there. (It can't count the Chinese forks which don't use …
you obviously like living in the past. Xbox has been profitable for some years now - http://www.quora.com/Is-Xbox-profitable-for-Microsoft - like any major hardware/software launch it takes a while to recoup the R&D costs and deal with things like the RROD recall but they stuck with it and continue to enhance and add things like Kinect.
Get them into stock in the shops.
In large quantities.
Every time I go into 02, CarphoneWarehouse, Phones4U is see racks of seemingly identical iPhones, Samsungs, HTCs, a few odds and sods of LG SE etc, but no Lumia Phones.
"No demand mate" was the comment in the 02 shop on Princes Street.
It read like he was having one off the wrist under the table while he was writing it, so excited did he seem about the possibility of an oppressive future, and a young protagonist all set up to resist it heroically. Entirely one dimensional IMHO.
I owned a Win phone in the days of the Orange SPV. I still have the scars.
I did buy a WinP7 hTc Mozart cos it was dirt cheap, and it's still working after 6 months - which is more than a cheap samsmug android I got at the same time.. my hTc is now at Win7 Mango 07.10.8107.79 whatever that means. Look, Win7 is an entirely average phone at around half the price of an iPhone 3GS - should you actually try looking widely enough, (I noticed that even Lumia 710s are down to £230 in Italy yesterday)
The line in Andrews piece about WinP7 'lacking removable storage card support' is actually a strength! I was an early Nexus One adopter and that particularly nice handset used to f**k with my microSDcards to such an extent - lost 1 x 16GB data & 2 x 4GB's to unrecoverable errors that needed a week on a linux box to try and recover (most) of the data, per event! Thanks Google!
I swore for my next update that soldered memory is preferable to a mem that might not be there when you need it! - so WinP7 won. Duuno what I'll get next time!
"I swore for my next update that soldered memory is preferable to a mem that might not be there when you need it! - so WinP7 won. Duuno what I'll get next time!"
Hmm, then the Mozart must have been a tough choice given that its bundled memory is provided by an 8GB MicroSD card. Its a fu*ker to change (requires a void waranty and a torx) but at the end of the day its just a concealed SD card held in with a piece of tape.
I believe the mozart can handle upto 32GB but its a bit picky about what it wants shoved in it.
It seems to me that your missing the point about the UI.
I like it better than Android or iOS because the home screen gives you the most applications in a nice overview. That makes a lot of difference. Another thing is you can put more than eight on the home screen, you only have to scroll up or down without switching to a different screen.
But the other points are things to think about for them i think.
Help me out here: what is it about scrolling vertically to expose more links that's so much better than scrolling horizontally to expose more links?
Also: please explain the difference between a 'live tile' and a widget? Other than the name and that widgets don't have to look like 'tiles'?
Perhaps you could also solve my confusion over why using 1/8th of the screen to show my SMS/Email/Missed call count is better than showing it in the notification line beside the signal strength, volume and connection indicators - using no extra screen space?
In many ways WP7 is different simply to distinguish itself from the competition rather than any functional justification with an added dose of lawsuit avoidance. The WP7 UI is certainly different, distinctive, even memorable. But none of those terms are the same as being 'better'.
The interface is blazingly efficient though - you can get to any app in four moves:
Starting at Homescreen
More -> 'A' -> 'First letter of app's name' -> Possible Swoosh (If it's not already displayed)
Thats ANY app. You can get to a max of 261 apps (I think) in 3 moves cos you won't need the swoosh. Nearly the same with contacts, but you sometimes need two swooshes...
iPhone in three moves is, I think, 68 possible apps - I stand ready to be corrected on that! Android is similar.
"The interface is blazingly efficient though - you can get to any app in four moves:"
The Android contacts chooser also does it that way, although its even quicker to just start typing the name and let search do the job without starting the contacts app!
Nice, *if* the task is finding any random app, especially compared to scrolling through 10 pages/156 apps in my Android app draw.
...but not optimal because that's not how people use devices. Right now my 9 most used functions have 1 click links, the next 22 are in folders 2 clicks away and searching through the whole app list is a rare event. I still have widgets and unused space on that single screen. If use changes I'll rearrange things to a more efficient mix.
Efficiency needs to be aimed at the right part of the UI to make a difference.
Well can't help you with the difference between a live tile and a widget.
But i hope you have noticed that the bar with the signal strength, connection indicators is hidden most of the time in WP7. So it would be logically then to show the number of messages, missed calls in "widget" in stead?
To distinguish itself is the whole idea behind competition isn't it? If everything looked the same there wouldn't be much to choose. Just be happy there is difference between the competition ;) Otherwise we would have nothing to argue about.
Funny, i used to say the same of Windows Mobile 6.x ;-)
I also used to say this about Symbian Anna vs Belle.
One example: On Anna you could get 6 email-account-widgets on 1 screens showing the first new email on each.
On Belle you can only have 2 email-widgets on a homescreen but these are huge and scrollable so that you can easily read your entire mailbox from the homescreen (which isn't bad either).
I guess evolution and changes happen always. Some things appear bad at the beginnen but later turn out not so bad at all. Perhaps Winpho is such a thing.
The problem is that as far brand-awareness is concerned. A Nokia phone running a Microsoft OS is impossible, unnatural or simply wrong. A HTC or Samsung phone sure. Those whores sleep with everyone and make/made handsets with every OS just to dumb their shit on the market without any regard for customers' satisfaction (particularly Samsung).
From Nokia, I expect something else and that is not a Lumia.
Launcher 7 is an Android Market download away, if you want the tiled look. It'll even fit the wider widgets on 2x1 tiles for you and has an application list that is easier to navigate than the Android default due to having the very basic addition of alphabetical tabs. There's a free (ad supported?) and a "donate" version, which if I remember right off-hand I paid 62p for.
I have to say it lays dormant except for the occasional "I can make it look like a Windows Phone" brag though. Those "tiles" are basically massive icons, you can't fit much on a screen and the swishy graphical touches and web page preview tiles don't mitigate the fact that I find the stock-like ADW Launcher just easier to deal with.
Still, if tiles are your bag, Android has 'em.
"This discrepancy puzzles people. Reviewers like WinPho a lot - it's clean, fast, functional and forward-looking."
The problem is the Microsoft bit of the branding.
People who buy smartphones; at least in the recent past, it's becoming far more mainstream; grew up watching MS use every dirty trick in the book to maintain a monopoly in Server, Desktop and Office Software and as a result charge them, or their businesses, ridiculous amounts of money for what was being provided.
Breaking file formats, crappy security, extortionate prices and just not 'playing fair' in with MS competition or it's customers. It always felt like an abusive relationship. We had to put up with it, because they were the only game in town.
As the mobile device becomes more important, MS has found it's not needed any more and is trying to buy its way in using a combination of a huge war chest and it's Windows branding, but they don't seem to understand that it's branding is at best not a selling point, and at worst a negative selling point.
Had I been responsible for selling Nokia handsets, I would have done everything I could to minimize the MS side of things. Certainly not had an OS related to Windows in name or style.
@CaptainHook: I agree that the MS branding is problematic, but I'd put it differently. I don't think most non-techies care much about the abusive relationship thing (though it's true enough), but what I think is a real issue is that Microsoft = Corporate. Windows, Office and the rest are the stuff the suits sell. We all use it (well most of us), some of us even manage to cope with it, but few people get excited by it. They've turned into the company that sells dull corporate stuff. Now if Nokia wanted to sell Lumias to suits, PHBs, or grey people in large corporate IT departments, that would be fine. But if they're consumer-facing (which has been Nokia's main market in the past), it's a problem.
Nokia have never been consumer facing.
Their customers have always been the telco providers.
Nokia designed their phones to tick the checkbox requirements of the telco's who then pushed the phones at hapless, captive consumers who for many years had a choice between functional but less than spectacular feature phones from Nokia or Sony Ericsson or clumsy Windows Mobile or CE based "smartphones" that were designed to please corporate IT people but not actual human beings.
Apple were the first manufacturer to put the end user in the driving seat and that was a game changing move that wrong footed every other phone maker, none of whom had ever considered that people were their customers at all.
Too late to market, too slow to catch up is my summary. If Microsoft had released the new OS around the time Android appeared it might have stood a chance. But it comes a bit too late, once people have paid for apps they don't really feel like throwing it all away to try another platform (and get locked into a lengthy contract in many cases).
in the tech market there is no such thing as too late if you have the right product, and the balls to back it. Sure apps to increase the risk of lock-in but there is no reason why you couldn't offer a system that allows for migration for example (at least from android). Give incentives to Devs to offer transferable licenses for example or promote discounts to transfer your app library. There are plenty of ways to lure people to the Redmond side (this btw applies to google and apple as well)
Even if you don't like WP7, you should be encouraging its success. The market needs the competition. iOS is still out of the price range of the majority of consumers. That means your choice will default to Android if you want a smartphone. Blackberry is going to die, and then Android (as good as it is) will own all of the smartphone market where users can't afford or don't want iOS.
It's not about if you like WP7 or not (and it IS a nice OS), it's about encouraging its success because a competitor to Android is good for everyone.
The 3GS costs £300 SIM free from Apple. There are unlikely to be any discounts around. That's bloody expensive for a phone that's now 2 1/2 years old.
Similarly specc'ed Android handsets can be had for about £150-£200.
If you mean 'free on contract', then that means even more expensive. Neither the phone, or the bundled minutes in a contract are free. You have to pay monthly to get them, after all...
The phones have a very large mark-up, compared with getting a SIM free one, and a separate package.
I recently checked the pricing for a friend. He would be paying £800 for an iPhone4S on a 2 year contract, as opposed to £500 SIM free from Apple, and the same minutes from the same company.
The cheapest iphone 3GS contract where the phone is free is still £15 a month, for which you can get a dozen android phones that compare very favourably to the 3GS (Galaxy Ace, Desire S or xperia mini). On PAYG it still costs £300 and that is where android shoots ahead, as the galaxy Ace can be had for as little as £120. This is what people mean when they say cheaper.
That doesn't sound free at all. It sounds more like prisoner of AT&T for the next 2 years.
North Americans have a really strange sense of freedom. Perhaps you shouldn't use that word so much. At least some ppl in Europe realize that nothing is free. And that the 'freedom' we have is very restrictive with all the political hypocrisy, impenetrable jungle of rules & laws and economic slavery.
In fact if WE come protesting in the streets for whatever reason, the cops are also awaiting to beat the crap out of us. Just as everywhere else.
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