* Posts by DocWilson

10 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Apr 2011

Windows 8? Nah: Win Phone 8 should give Apple the fear

DocWilson

Cheapest is £300? Not true

Admittedly these were time limited deals, but within the last year, both the 710 and 610 were available for little over the £100 mark.

Even now, Carphone Warehouse are advertising the 710 at shade under £230 and the 610 for a little under £170 - both of those less than the £300 you claim.

I think CPW recently made the Lumia 800 available on an £11.50 monthly contract (over 24 months) on their Talk Mobile network.

At these prices, I'd say they're competitive, even if they're limited (apps-wise) to what other phones can do. The UI, the Zune music player are excellent, and with Nokias you do get free Sat Nav and other apps.

The cheap Android handset (Samsung Galaxy Europa) I bought for the other half last year was pretty dire, and I reckon a WP7 model for twice the price would've "felt" twice as good in terms of build quality/speed/UI. The Europa got sold off (and replaced with a far better Galaxy Ace) within a year, whereas I'm still not feeling the need to upgrade my near-2 year old Omnia 7 as it does everything I need it to do.... I'm missing the Kobo app, but there's always the Galaxy Ace to resort to for that side of things!

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked, the point I wanted to make was that there are WP7 handsets available for less than £300. I reckon MS have got too much of an uphill climb to make a dent in Android sales, but as long as there are options for the people that want to choose from all of iOS/Android/WPx/BB/WebOS/feature phones, all the better

National Rail Enquiries

DocWilson

Au contraire

It is available for Windows Phone, has been since early last year, I just assumed it must have been out a lot longer than that on the other OSs...

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/search?q=Rail%20Planner

Woz says Windows Phone 'sets the mark' for mobile UI

DocWilson

WP7 - some good bits, but still lacking in many areas

Having had a WP7 since April last year, I feel well placed to comment on it's good points and shortcomings.

I like simplicity of design, and what's there is interesting, I think MS have done some good work with the UI - as long as you don't feel the need to tinker with it too much! Generally, what's there, works well, and the way almost any app can hook into the live tiles is pretty cool.

Zune works really well.

Apps-wise, it's getting there, but given the market share, it's always going to be the poor relation to iOS and Android - why would developers spend their time, effort, money on developing for market of, say, <10m when there could be more than 10 times as many users of the 2 largest smartphone OS's? And even when there are apps released, they are sometimes lacking in feature, unbelievably so in the case of Skype (they're now owned by MS, yet it lacks background calling as available on iOS/Android, and even a rival VoIP app Tango can do this). I got my better half an Android phone, and use hers for missing apps (things like Kobo, Money Magpie, etc)!!!

Over the last year, the main problem as I see it is that MS set certain expectations, and these just aren't being met.

Flash support was talked about months before the initial release of WP7:

http://wmpoweruser.com/adobe-and-microsoft-working-closely-together-on-bringing-flash-10-1-to-wp7/

and it never came. All the things users might reasonably expected from WM6.5 were (shockingly) dropped:

Removable storage

More extensive Bluetooth profiles

Turn-by-turn BING Maps navigation

And now, there's a huge amount of uncertainty over the future of even the latest releases, in terms of whether they'll be upgradeable to Apollo. I can see this putting off potential Lumia 900 users.

A year and a half after release, and it still feels like an incomplete system.

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

DocWilson

The Langoliers

Simply dreadful adaptation of a Stephen King short story (from the same collection as The Shawshank Redemption, if memory serves me correctly, which makes it rather ironic!)

Please, don't watch it to verify my opinion of it, you'll never get those hours of your life back!

TuneIn Radio Pro

DocWilson
Happy

Re: Use this every day

You've just given me an idea - instead of looking for DAB/Bluetooth replacement stereo for the car, I could just use TuneIn, and have both internet radio and handsfree via the mobile... Nice one :-)

Nokia Ace to launch from $100m mountain of ad cash

DocWilson
FAIL

Erm... what?

Hi there,

More details please - names of viruses, what are the AV packages available for WP7? A few links to the reports would be greatfully received. Unless you're spouting complete rubbish, in which case you need not respond.

PlayStation 3 sales catch up with Xbox 360 total

DocWilson

Wouldn't you be walking towards it, if you turned 360 degrees?

</pedantry>

HTC outs 'Mango' WinPho 7 smartphones

DocWilson

Nice UI, good social networking integration but...

Hi all,

Don't post on El Reg very often, but will do this time seeing as I've owned a Samsung Omnia 7 for about 6 months now.

On the whole, I love the UI, it seems they've really thought about how to differentiate it from the standard grid of icons - it's very smooth and slick, the live tiles are a neat idea, and Mango will really develop the concept further.

I haven't missed USB syncing as much as I thought I would (considering how much I was used to this on the old Windows Mobile 6.x series for about 3 years, and I bought an Android phone for my other half last year which is also a very accessible and customisable device). Having said that, just because I don't have a use for it, I don't mean to dismiss other peoples concerns about this.

Zune player (and media syncing) is great, and I find myself dipping into Facebook very often as it's just there and I don't have to go into a separate app. I'm also using Twitter far more frequently since buying this phone, but suspect I may have done on any other platform due to the availability of various apps?

Battery life is fair (for me) - this will vary massively according to how you want to use it. I get a day out of it with a fair few hours on Twitter/Facebook/browsing. I'm able to top up at work via USB cable, so I can't say I've ever had to go more than a couple of days without a recharge.

The downside is that I do miss being able to bluetooth photos to friends and family, and although in the current version (NoDo) there are rudimentary cloud services, I would like to see a more natural/integrated/intuitive interface to SkyDrive or a native Dropbox app. Office functionality seems a bit hampered at the moment, but I don't use it much so it's not currently at the top of my gripes. I've recently discovered EverNote and wonder why OneNote doesn't do as much (love being able to sync notes between my phone and various computers).

The other thing is, as much as the app marketplace has grown, there are still lots of apps I've used previously in WM6.x or are available on my friends iPhones or Androids that I'd like to see. BBC iPlayer, banking apps, a decent SatNav app, Flash player ... hopefully these will be on the way but I understand that developers will want a good chance of getting a return on the time/money it takes to build the apps, and its far easier to make that decision when the platform you're aiming at has 20%+ of the market!

Some of the decisions just seem odd - MS not having implemented full Bing Maps functionality, when they are the creators of this and it was available on their previous mobile platform, and yet one can find it on the competitor's devices.

Mango, from what I've read, seems like a good step forward to bringing it more up to date, and I'm hoping Nokia can bring out a phone with some outstanding hardware specs.... esp with regard to being able to add additonal memory - am struggling with the 8Gb limit on my Omnia 7.

To conclude, I consider it to be a really promising system, and have high hopes for the future, but also recognise that maybe it'll never break more than 10% of the market. The main downside is that in its current form, it feels unfinished. Like a really good idea that wasn't completely implemented, I'm hoping this is offset by regular updates such as the imminent Mango release to add lots of desired functionality.

Hope this helps?

Fantasy Premier League falls over

DocWilson
IT Angle

Typical Arsenal....

They always try and walk it in...

Microsoft reveals WinPhone 7 'Mango' details

DocWilson

Flashing is the answer

I was fed up of waiting as of last Friday and flashed the ROM to a stock SAMSUNG one - there's a thread on XDA Developers about it.