And the tumbleweed rolls through its app store
Because although desperate for developers, they deserted in droves - just like the .net mugs m$ is about to shaft.
CES 2012 Week Stephen Elop took the stage at CES last night to reveal the much-leaked Lumia 900, the next member of Nokia's Windows Phone range of handsets. While it bears a striking resemblance to its younger 800-branded sibling, the Lumia 800, the 900 bulks out the battery from 1450mAh to 1830mAh and ups the screen size …
I was concerned that when Win Phone made it's grand appearence at Nokia, they would lose innovative and diverse range of design ideas that they had back in the days of Series 60. The Lumia 900 has assuaged my fears by being a completely new and bold reinvention of the phenomenally successful Lumia 800, rather than just being a carbon copy with all the charm and flair of a lump of granite.
Difficult to improve on perfection eh. The 800 wowed the press with its cool hardware design, so the 900 is perfectly entitled to give more of the same, methinks.
Just like the Titan II looks almost identical to the yummy Titan (which I own). Just because it's similar in looks to a previous model is no reason to throw your toys out of the pram.
The 900's 4.3 inch screen makes the iPhone look like a postage stamp. My Titan's 4.7" screen makes me want to reach for a magnifying glass whenever anyone tries to show me something on their iPhone.
"Difficult to improve on perfection"
Quite, and why Nokia should have stopped with the N9, as this is the origin of the Lumia 800/900 chassis design and a device that also runs an OS custom built for such a design.
I've got both an N9 and Lumia 800, and hands down the N9 is the better product, with a perfect combination of software and hardware.
But I won't expect you to agree with me Jim, considering you've probably never used an N9, and also that you appear to be a Microsoft shill.
Apple releases iPhone 4S - looks the same as the iPhone 4 - people go nuts for it and it becomes the best selling phone model of its time.
Nokia releases Lumia 900 - some pretty big change to the 800 but keeps similar design (that got praise) - people start criticising.
Once you hate someone it doesnt really matter what they do, they can never win in your eyes... "Look at that woman over there, eating crackers like she owns the place!"
Got my Lumia 800 a few days ago (thanks Nokia!). In general the hardware is pretty decent with an amazing screen, and a solid industrial design. Major quibble is the charge port is under a hatch which strikes me as completely pointless given the device has to be charged every day.
OS wise, Windows Phone 7.x has a very impressive and sleek UI but it's not hard to see the cracks after using it a bit. For some reason Microsoft has chosen to make all menus lower case which really looks stupid given that they're not even consistent in doing it, e.g. WiFi is capitalized and surrounded by other menus which are not. Apps and settings are also scattered around the UI so you actually have to leave an app in order to change the settings for the app which is plain dumb (Apple does this too). My biggest annoyance is if an app wants to download something (e.g. a 100MB map in Nokia Drive app) then you must endure the download because if you flip away the download is suspended. Its the most frustrating and silly flaw borne from a fundamentally broken single tasking interface.
The market place is also afflicted by a dearth of decent apps, many of which cost more money than their Android / Apple equivalents. On the positive side, games are handled in a far more integrated way than Apple or Android with XBox Live being put to good use and offering trials for lots of games. I was surprised not to see Skype in the market place store.
So in summary hardware good, software so-so. I can see users who are intimidated by Android might feel more comfortable with this OS, but really it doesn't offer any compelling features of its own. Given the price of the device I would not recommend this phone to someone who has a choice to get something running another OS.
One thing it has piqued in me is a desire to get my existing Android code to run on it. Best as I can think I'll have to compile as much of the Java code with GWT and house the lot inside an HTML view or phonegap wrapper. Should be interesting to see what happens.
No background downloads? LOL.
I keep hearing that iOS is just an app list but what else can it be? If you want degrees of separation from purchased apps and the actual OS, to ensure security and you want a consistent UI experience, how else do you create a user customisable UI that will allow instant access to those apps and not have some sort of list?
Icon/list based navigation is the only way. Metro is essentially just the same thing but with a few live updating widgets, the so called customisation is at the expense of multiple levels of click throughs. This can only diminish productivity as more apps are loaded, after all there's only so many notifications you can have on a smart phone screen, at once.
I've experienced the Metro interface on Xbox and in a word it's unsuitable. I and all of my friends have gone back to using the central button on the remote, to access the quick menus - essentially just lists - to navigate the system. Which further renforces my observations that Metro is just fairly useless eye candy, which is there to promote advertisements and ultimately reduces overall navigation speed. Yes, the apps are a welcome addition but access to the system has become less intuitive and therefore more frustrating - not a good sign.
@mrweekender: Just because one app hasn't been properly written to take advantage of WP's background task facility doesn't mean you should condemn the entire OS. But you're so keen to diss WP, you forget that. Your bad.
I have several apps such as BBC News Mobile and Engadget which download their content in the background, updating my phone every half-hour.
I think you're referring to background agents and there are severe limitations on the number you may install, the frequency they are called and the amount of time they can run for.
I assume the BBC app is using a periodic agent since resource intensive agents don't even run unless the phone is plugged in. A periodic agent is restricted to running once every 30 mins for a maximum of 25 seconds. So if it can't download everything and update its database in that time it doesn't work at all.
It's better than nothing I suppose and gives some semblance of multitasking but it is not multitasking. It discounts the ability to download arbitrary amounts of data, or to update data more frequently. e.g. I might quite like to be able to update my tweets every 5 mins but I can't on Windows Phone 7.
It also rules out the possibility of Nokia Drive for example downloading a 100Mb map in the background. Maybe there is a discrete download service where an arbitrary url can be downloaded (like the BITS service in Win32) but it certainly isn't using it as far as I can tell.
@DrXym: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are capitalized on the settings menu b/c they are trade names. The rest of the menu items are not. The menu system is quite consistent and looks very good. Luckily Microsoft put a lot more time into it than you did for your post. Not sure where your comment about app settings comes from given that just about every app has an in-app settings menu. General system settings that affect more than one app are found on the system settings screen (I know, complicated isn't it?)
Background downloading (as mentioned by others) is supported and is up to the developer to implement.
"The market place is also afflicted by a dearth of decent apps..." ?! Are you reading from a script here? Did you even bother to look?
"...but really it doesn't offer any compelling features of its own." More from the script. Beautifully streamlined interface with extremely well integrated social features. XBOX live integration, office integration, live tiles...no nothing unique or compelling here.
"I can see users who are intimidated by Android might feel more comfortable with this OS" Ah, another way of saying it's only good for the non tech savy. Why not put it this way: if you would like your phone to work for you instead of the other way around, if you would like to get things done with your phone instead of spending all day killing tasks, re-starting your phone, and endless re-charging then you should give Windows Phone a try.
I see the Windows Phone has a defence force of at least 1.
a) Nokia Drive does not background download so the premium app in the flagship phone is broken right?
b) Not all apps implement a settings in the app at all and splitting them out from the app they refer to is just confusing.
c) I realise Wifi and Bluetooth are trademarks and it instantly introduces an inconsistency in the menu. And putting stuff in lower case just looks silly.
d) The app store is a ghost town. Apps like Netflix and Skype (also trademarked) that one would expect to see (the former since Netflix just launched in the UK) simply aren't there. Others like YouTube player are just dumb HTML wrappers.
e) I've rarely have to restart my Android phone and battery life is par for the course for smart phones. It's true some people use task managers but so what? The Lumia certainly doesn't win any awards in the power consumption department either, so far requiring charging every day and is pretty slow charging too.
Sorry but while the experience is superficially pretty it simply doesn't compare to either iPhone or Android.
via the developer programme.
Let me put it this way, hell will freeze over before it replaces my MeeGo-Harmattan N950 (also free from Nokia).
I can't stand the text-heavy and graphics light Metro UI, the People Hub feed (particularly twitter) is a just a mess and very hard to follow without avatars, and since I don't have an Xbox or need to read/update Office documents on my phone these features are a complete waste on me.
When WP7 has worked out whether it's aimed at gameheads or businessmen while appealing to neither, maybe it will have a chance of success to those who find Android "complicated".
Ultimately though it brings very little that is new, and seems to try too hard to be different without being better - at least MeeGo-Harmattan achieved that.
You would think that Nokia would have more time to think about hardware now that they don't write the software. But such minor spec bumps are laughable.
There's two current Lumia handsets and a forthcoming upgrade when there could be just one handset. Not to mention all the different colours which are largely all hideous.
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Owners of cheap Android phones are:
1: likely to be disappointed with the experience and blame Android, not the cheap hardware
2: unlikely to switch to a substantially more expensive WP7,IOS or better Android phone
47% aren't all looking for a better smartphone, many are looking for a better *cheap* phone, neither IOS or WP7 delivers that. Androids loss will be largely to feature phones and some of the cheapskates won't be happy whatever they buy. At the high end defections happen both directions, if WP7 ever launches a real high end phone they can join the 3 way traffic ;)
Double-fail!
ZTE Skate (aka Orange Monte Carlo) has a nice 4.3 inch screen with an even better (and more useful) resolution of 800x480. Not as fast, of course - but fast enough.
Battery lasts 9 days with wi-fi off. very surprise to see some posters claiming that Android needs regular reboots, app killing, etc... all that is alien in my experience & that of the Mrs (who has a ZTE Blade). I guess that must be astroturfing?
Yep, it's not a looker.
Sadly just gave up on my WinPho last week and after 4 years of total resistance swapped to an iPhone 4S. I hate Apple with every once of my flesh, but I hate a device that irritates the hell out of my daily life much more.
I loved Nokia (owned 17 Nokia phones since my first in 1993) and even after the slightly harsh killing of Symbian, I gave WinPho a chance. Total failure. It's not good and every day you love it less and less :( I can't think that any sane WinPho user with more than 3 months experience of the device would be posting anything favourable on here... I'm very suspicious of the significant pro WinPho comments that appear from "device owners" that don't even make 1% market share.
And in response to the earlier comments, the app store is truly pathetic (more apparent due tothe lack of flash in the browser) with even stuff like BBC iPlayer not there!!! Android has too much junk cluttering up the good but MS has only the junk.
Farewell Nokia, I don't think we'll be seeing you round the land of smartphone again. Shame as the N8 I had still pisses all over the Lumia and makes my iPhone 4S look weak (god that N8 camera is to die for).
Looking at the recent sales for a related Nokia in the UK, Engadget reported this tragic survey news:
"Nokia Lumia 800 made up only 0.17 per cent of devices shipped.."
WIth this in mind, I can hardly see any iPhone users switching, and the Apple percentage will carry on growing, while the generics fight amongst themselves for the rest.