Listen up, Nokia: Get Lumia show-offs in pubs or it's game over Nokia has a couple of mountains to climb. There's the real mountain: in the marketplace it's starting from scratch, a newcomer that just happens to have a large distribution business in place, and a couple of billion euros in capital. Then there's the metaphorical mountain, which is a mountain of cliches. For Nokia to survive …
I've been promoting it since the day i got it. If anything, this is the best device if you live in a Microsoft world.
I have company email, which is Exchange, almost a given nowadays.
I have hotmail, which belongs to Microsoft.
I have an Xbox360, all my stuffs from there is on the phone too.
Everything works happily side by side and it was a breeze to set everything up.
I think Nokia/Microsoft need to put more focus on consumers, as i personally think they have the business side down pat.
To put this in perspective, i've always had much love for Nokia and have been working in the wonderfull world of Microsoft for almost 15 years now, so it makes sense for me to follow this path.
We all like to debate the pros and cons of various mobile OS'es, and we all love/hate a particular brand and get up on our fanboy pedestal to promote our favourite platform.
It's worth mentioning however that we are probably less than 1% of the total consumer base for smartphones. The vast majority of people want a phone that 'just works' (to quote a famous fruit) and looks good to their eye.
My girlfriend bought a Lumia 800 (sim-free) a few months back to replace her aging iPhone 3G. She is in her late 20's and is your average consumer when it comes to tech. She started showing her friends the Lumia she'd just bought and told me yesterday that now, 5 of her friends are using a Lumia 800, and another is planning on upgrading soon to a Lumia. That is the power of consumerism.
Now I can already imagine the replies saying they've bought a dead platform, blah blah blah. You know what? They either don't know or don't care. My better half was upset when I told her that Windows Phone 8 will not be coming to her phone, but soon stopped caring when she realised that she would get the 7.8 update, which essentially is all the new features of WP8 which her hardware can support. Including full support for all WP8 apps (that don't use the new WP8 hardware features). In reality, she is missing out on nothing.
> she would get the 7.8 update, which essentially is all the new features of WP8 which her hardware can support.
That is not true. The only 'feature' announced for 7.8 is a cosmetic update to the tiles. In particular it will have different sizes and a few extra colours.
> Including full support for all WP8 apps (that don't use the new WP8 hardware features).
That is completely untrue. WP8 apps will _NOT_ run on any WP7.x. It seems that the SDK will not even allow a back port once an app has been designated as WP8.
OK, I've just found this quote from Redmond....
"New applications compiled specifically for Windows Phone 8 will not be made available for Windows Phone 7.x devices."
I stand corrected. Apologies, I obviously got myself mixed up with the forwards compatibility from WP7.x to WP8. This is definitely a problem for existing users, depending on their needs and app requirements. I hope the major app providers will continue to update the WP7.x apps for the average replacement cycle of a smartphone (2 years-ish in my case).
And fair enough on the second point, but what other interesting features are coming to WP8 that aren't hardware related?
> Including full support for all WP8 apps
Further to my previous post, here is what MS says:
"""Longer answer, courtesy of a Microsoft spokesperson:
"We are designing Windows Phone 8 with the goal of allowing all existing applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace to work on Windows Phone 8 devices. We will also be working closely with key developer partners to create versions of applications that take advantage of some of the new features available in Windows Phone 8.
"New applications compiled specifically for Windows Phone 8 will not be made available for Windows Phone 7.x devices." """
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-phone-8-finally-gets-a-real-windows-core/12975
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