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Windows Mobile 7 Phone Release Delayed Again
jcoventry writes "Microsoft is delaying Windows Mobile 7, and it is thought new phones with the operating system are unlikely to reach the market before 2010. Microsoft partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early 2009 have been told that it won't be ready until the second half of 2009. Partners include companies like Verizon, Motorola and Samsung, all of which plan new phones that include the Mobile Windows 7 OS. Windows Mobile 7 is expected to have features like gesture recognition and speech input."
Welp, there's always android for now.
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
er, won't the hardware be looking crappy with that kind of delay? The top end phones seem to change markedly each year.
Or will the target hardware change fast enough that microsoft have to delay again while they get the OS working 'properly'? Rinse, repeat.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Microsoft is just too slow and clumsy nowadays. Mobile Windows 7 may already be old at the time it hit's the market.
Ville / Varuste.net
I'm no iPhone fanboy but it seems ironic that after 6 iterations of Windows Mobile, Microsoft still hasn't released an update to handle gestures.
iPhone is way ahead of the game in this area, and I'm sure Apple intend to exploit this position agressively.
Microsoft must be kicking themselves for resting up during the last couple of revisions, whilst Apple takes away significant market share and "wow factor".
p.s i don't own an iPhone :D
Can the HTC Diamond Touch have its OS updated to Win Mob. 7 from Win Mob. 6?
Is there also a delay because Silverlight isn't ready yet?
I wonder if Microsoft or the mobile 7 software recognizes the gestures currently being submitted by the developers.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
Apple, Google and RIM will be that much farther down the road.
Windows Mobile is dead.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
...after reading Ballmer's latest prognostications.
Tell me, tubby, how do you expect to own the market when your product is late and lousy, your competitors never sleep, and abuse-of-monopoly type shenanigans aren't an option?
Someone needs to get him one of those "I reject your reality and substitute my own" t-shirts.
Screw gesture recognition, I just want MS to fix the crappiness that is the current-gen Windows Mobile OS and turn it into something that is usable.
On my HTC Apache (aka XV6700) which I personally upgraded to W.M.6 from the W.M.5 that came with it, and I still am sometimes not even able to answer a call; no matter how many times I try it will just register as missed. Sometimes this doesn't happen, but the call goes directly to speakerphone. That is lovely for the times when Mom calls and promptly does the mom thing when I am trying to pass myself off as a professional.
Switching from data calls to voice calls is a pain, and vice versa. IE Mobile sucks at rendering most pages, and makes it a total pain to do even the simplest of things. My backlight can randomly be switched completely off by some unknown mechanism. The phone is running at 520Mhz but always feels sluggish (and yes, I do completely close, not just minimize, all programs when I am finished with them). The list goes on and on.
I don't need fancy stuff like gesture recognition, I just want my phone to work the way it's supposed to. Hopefully Android can prove itself early on and I can switch to an HTC Dream.
I don't need fancy stuff like gesture recognition, I just want my phone to work the way it's supposed to. Hopefully Android can prove itself early on and I can switch to an HTC Dream.
As someone else once said, there is another.
I wouldn't mention the iPhone since obviously you don't own one at this point for a reason, but I thought I'd point out that coming from Windows Mobile you're going to have a much better Windows integration experience with the iPhone than with Android as it ships today, and possibly for some time to come.
If my phone was giving me all the crap yours was I'd switch to anything else.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The article uses very unclear wording in that part, so I thought I'd clarify.
Microsoft will release updated browser in their 6.2 update. The good news is it can render Flash and AJAX and so on because it's based on the rendering engine of the desktop Internet Explorer browser. The bad news: it's based on the desktop version of *IE6*.
Here's to you MS! nlm
Wow, Microsoft is really falling behind here.
Google has just released a prototype Android phone for review and Apple is still going strong with the iPhone.
I hope Google is able to push their OS hard enough to knock MS right out of the phone market. The last thing I want is a phone running a proprietary OS that is impossible to program for...
I think the best thing about the Android compared to other phone OS's is the open development. It can be programmed easily using well known and widely used languages, unlike the iPhone that requires Objective-C!
..if you are surprised by this.
It seems today to be almost common practice to announce release dates you never intend to keep. That way your product appears better than the competition, except that it won't be available until technological development has allowed to competition to equal it.
The fight will be between Google and the Open Source community in one corner, Apple and its traditional strength in human factors in the second corner, and the Koreans with their history of innovative phone products in the third corner. (I was in Seoul a year ago and I never saw so many different kinds of weird cell phone gadgets :-)
Although I'm pretty much an Apple fanboy (based on how much better their products work -for me- versus the competition), I'm very excited to see competition based on real innovation, rather than on the Microsoft Monopoly's ability to seize and lock up the competition.
I have not bought a smartphone (although I was a pretty early dedicated Palm user), and I'm waiting to see how the iPhone and Android mature before jumping in. The Crackberry -never- had any appeal for me (I had to fight one off back in 2002, the project I was working on was an early adopter.) As someone who types pretty well, the thumb keyboard has no appeal to me whatsoever. Pen-based inputs (e.g. Palm Graffiti, but not Graffiti 2 which was worse...) work for me on a handheld.
But a note to Verizon: If you want to continue to be my carrier, then you'll have to look way beyond your current handset offerings and their developers, and your approach to business/marketing. The other carriers are catching up in network quality, and the traditional "grab the customer and screw him for all he's worth" approach of the big carriers is failing in the face of the Brave New World the iPhone has helped create and that Android has legitimized.
dave
As Anonymous Coward because of obvious reasons.
The big feature of Windows Mobile 7 will be Silverlight.
Basically an iPhone with a slide-out keyboard. I just cannot manage the on-screen keyboard for love or money. I'd even settle for a Blackberry-type format of half screen half keyboard.
Unfortunately I know that with Jobs we'll never see an iPhone with a keyboard of any kind, so it looks like I'm stuck with WM for a while. My Moto Q mostly sucks (calls you can't end, crashing, slow), but ActiveStink works pretty well and the phone part generally works.
in other words: i don't think about microsoft because i'm one of those fanbois who has his head too far up his ass to see that microsoft is a more proliferated platform with a larger and more open development base.
keep drinking that apple kool-aid. it's amusing.
The fight will be between Google and the Open Source community in one corner, Apple and its traditional strength in human factors in the second corner, and the Koreans with their history of innovative phone products in the third corner. (I was in Seoul a year ago and I never saw so many different kinds of weird cell phone gadgets :-)
Although I'm pretty much an Apple fanboy (based on how much better their products work -for me- versus the competition), I'm very excited to see competition based on real innovation, rather than on the Microsoft Monopoly's ability to seize and lock up the competition.
I have not bought a smartphone (although I was a pretty early dedicated Palm user), and I'm waiting to see how the iPhone and Android mature before jumping in. The Crackberry -never- had any appeal for me (I had to fight one off back in 2002, the project I was working on was an early adopter.) As someone who types pretty well, the thumb keyboard has no appeal to me whatsoever. Pen-based inputs (e.g. Palm Graffiti, but not Graffiti 2 which was worse...) work for me on a handheld.
But a note to Verizon: If you want to continue to be my carrier, then you'll have to look way beyond your current handset offerings and their developers, and your approach to business/marketing. The other carriers are catching up in network quality, and the traditional "grab the customer and screw him for all he's worth" approach of the big carriers is failing in the face of the Brave New World the iPhone has helped create and that Android has legitimized.
dave
While you may be right in terms of the market, if you just want the best phone with the most flexibility and software, it's definitely going to be on WM6.x for the forseeable future, as long as you're willing to mod your phone and you get a good one, like an HTC Touch Diamond, Pro, or HD.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
As a windows mobile user for professional reasons I do have to say that for work purposes and general Outlook integration the phone got good capacities. Now for the rest...I mean yes the word "terrible" to describe that OS is not making him enough honours...
The whole problems with Windows Mobile is not only with the OS himself, I had several Palms who where working perfectly even under "heavy" usage. A Windows Mobile smart-phone-pda-assistant (whatever) has to be reseted quite often just to make it work as before, but with their "active-sync" software too who is just magical black box of "it works it works it doesn't works it works it doesn't works" (you see the idea).
Now looking a Windows mobile based phone (I've seen many) they had always been SLOW yeah the whole experience is slow - or going at the very same speed since I do remember having looked at theses- slow when mobile CPU's evolved, more RAM was packed inside ? Now comparing that with a I-phone damn the whole stuff is sexy of speed, interface design and the hand gesture...doing it once got you addicted to such a simple idea.
Linux inside a mobile phone...indeed this gets me interested but let's be realistic phones are not only phones they are your best friends operators and they don't want to have something so open as a free os. Google android...yes why not ok Google is evil but if you want android it's because you plan to use google calendars, mail, map services, dating services, mating services, monkey services so Google being evil you don't really care anymore.
I'm very much willing to wait for something with substantially more appeal than either a Windows-for-handhelds device or the current RIM offerings. I feel no compelling reason to compromise just to get a new smartphone today...
dave
MS has let Windows Mobile stagnate for a very long time. It has seen glacial changes since Palm entered irrelevance. Now suddenly after seeing its marketshare crash and burn MS seems to care again. Its like Firefox all over again. Yet if we look at that case study it is apparent that even with a new push, MS just doesn't have what it takes to fight the open source Android, or even Apple who is better than MS at their own game. Heck even RIM is doing just fine. Balmer should be drawn and quartered by the shareholders for this, Vista, Zune, and the Xbox.None of which have done anything but hurt an already damaged reputation.
I own a Samsung Sch-i760 that comes preloaded with Windows mobile 6, the interface is a little too business like for me, but after some help from http://www.pdaphonehome.com/ i quickly modified the interface. Windows also released the 6.1 update which added a task manager , and threaded text messages. I must say that Windows Mobile is very stable and very enjoyable.
Let's not mention this:
Let's also not forget that for a significant number of business users, WM 6 is quite sufficient and still beats the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry hands-down in a corporate environment.
For proof, take a look at the latest WM6 phones from HTC and Samsung, such as the Touch Pro about to come out in a few weeks.
All of these competing phone OSes are making improvements (such as the iPhone 2's ability to activesync), but by the time they catch up with WM6 in the business world it will be 2010, when Microsoft has released WM7.
-David
I think the best thing about the Android compared to other phone OS's is the open development. It can be programmed easily using well known and widely used languages, unlike the iPhone that requires Objective-C!
Having done a lot of Java, and now a lot of Objective-C (for the iPhone) I can say that's not really true.
Objective-C the language does not take long to pick up if you've used another modern language - Java is an especially good starting point.
From there, both platforms require a lot of work to understand the system and UI libraries. Knowing a language is a very small part of development for a platform compared to understanding the full extent of the system libraries available to you.
Android may be a little quicker to pick up for some but in the end the amount of work to be done before you produce a real application is about the same, or possibly a bit easier with the iPhone since the UI design tool is so useful.
Furthermore it's funny you should speak of "languages" as I'm not sure you can really target the Android VM very well with languages other than Java (even though other languages have been ported to generate Java bytecode). With the iPhone you really have the choice of doing mostly C or C++, and then just using Objective C calls into the system libraries.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While you may be right in terms of the market, if you just want the best phone with the most flexibility and software, it's definitely going to be on WM6.x for the forseeable future, as long as you're willing to mod your phone
I'd have to say you're far better off getting an iPhone and Jailbreaking it if you are allowing mods into the picture. There's already a lot of useful software from the App Store and from the jailbroken apps today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The fight will be between Google and the Open Source community in one corner, Apple and its traditional strength in human factors in the second corner, and the Koreans with their history of innovative phone products in the third corner
And where does Symbian, an OS written by a British company and maintained by a Finnish one, which owns over 70% of the market share, fit in to this list?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Although I'm pretty much an Apple fanboy (based on how much better their products work -for me- versus the competition), I'm very excited to see competition based on real innovation, rather than on the Microsoft Monopoly's ability to seize and lock up the competition.
I totally agree.
I'm doing a lot of iPhone development right now, but can easily see adding some Android work at some point - but I'm happy to see a fight based on technical merits rather than other factors. I hope we can see at least a few good Android phones come out for just that reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's obsolete before it ever even hits market :)
wtf is microsoft thinking. they should just bow out.
I have to disagree with almost everyone as well. Using Windows Development tools is a *pleasure* compared to other environments. I even prefer it over Linux. Additionally, there's already a great base of relevant and useful applications out and about. I look forward to using Mobile Skype to replace wireless charges. Soon, gecko will also be usable on it to give a good mobile surfing experience.
I have used several versions of Windows for PDAs and phones. Every single implementation was bloated, slow and unreliable. Reboots were needed daily and battery life was always crap.
I am now a blackberry user. There are few things I miss like on-board development but at least it's damned reliable. I can actually use my BB as an alarm clock and don't have to worry about a missed wakeup because of a crased OS. I will never purchase a windows based device every again.
BTW, palm wasn't good as an alarm clock either.
It fits into the 2006 list. Symbian market share is now down to 55%, just as Microsoft's WiMo fell from 23% back in 2004 to today's 12%.
Nokia is taking over Symbian and making it into an open source foundation because royalties are dropping rapidly. Nobody wants to pay for OS software. Without revenues (down 14%), Symbian can't afford to invest in modernizing.
The era of Windows-like software platform licensing is over. From here on out, it will be integrated proprietary platforms (RIM and Apple) or free platforms (Google and Ubuntu). There's no need for paying for a commercial software OS. Symbian is adapting, Microsoft is pretending the climate isn't changing.
Ballmer changes tune while dancing around Apple's success
According to Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe, Microsoft is delaying Windows Mobile 7 to include features found in Android and the iPhone!
More here on the analyst views:
http://techpulse360.com/2008/09/23/microsoft-delays-windows-mobile-7-to-add-iphoneandroid-like-features-yankee-group-analyst-suggests-sees-palm-struggling-with-upcoming-platform/
Wait, what? Shouldn't Team Nokia/Ericsson/Scandinavia/Symbian be in there somewhere? I'd consider Nokia to be the traditional leader in usability, making snappy, easy to use and feature rich smart phones of high build quality. You consider them out of the game because they haven't released their touch phone yet?
I guess we could consider both Nokia's and Apple's treatment of developers a ringing endorsement of their competitors, though...
I'm hoping this whole Android business will force Nokia to be less reluctant towards open source... They'll pay it lip service, but good luck flashing your firmware or doing real Symbian application development without a Windows box, you have to register everywhere to download apps that phone home, and having to sign everything is a PITA. It's not as bad as the iPhone, but there's a definite feeling that the chip belongs to Nokia and not to you, and you have to crack the OS to really get at the 'good bits'.
Back to WM, its user interface is IMO horrible, but I actually consider it the best phone for developers at this point, and judging by the large number of applications available compared to the relatively small user base, so do many other developers. Moore will see to that the ridiculous hardware requirements will become less of a problem over time. Microsoft isn't going to throw in the towel, and you'd be a fool to count them out.
The nervous one at this point would be Google. The only thing the Android platform has going for it at this point is the Google brand name. It could very easily be a flop, and I'd say it's a year or two too early to consider them anything like a 'big player' in the phone market.
Meh, I suppose things are different in a country where it makes sense to talk about your carrier's handset offerings. Heheh, iPhone, Brave New World indeed...
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
Nokia/Ericsson/Scandanavia/Symbian have -not- produced the breakthrough devices that are represented by
a. Treo
b. Blackberry
c. iPhone
So I'd characterize them as "legacy" with the negatives that term can imply.
(you asked...)
dave
Except it "sorta" forgot to completely copy the Windows paradigm. I am angling to skip laptops and use things like SuperPhones as ultramobile computing centers, with "commodity" hardware externals like keyboards, monitors.
I still can't believe that a 400-some Mhz machine can't run something like a stripped Windows2000. Lasy I understood you can't even easily use the classical C:\ tree model & install stuff as if it were an OldSchool comp.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Please don't be right.
I might even send you a cake upon being reminded of this.
"Unified Windows Rollout! Windows Seven Desktop. Windows Seven Mobile. Windows Seven. It's a Revelation".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
AAhhhhhahahahahahhhhahhhhhahahahahah (exclamation point, DOCTOR !!)
It's already 6 months late (CE6 was Summer 2006, and WM based on the new OS has, for the past 10 years, been 18 months behind), so add on another 18 months and it's really two years late. WM6 came a year ago. Wm6 is CE5.02. WM5, which goes back to mid-2005, is CE5.01. So the transition from CE5-based OS (WM5) to CE6-based OS is FIVE years. Thems a lot of wasted days and wasted nights at Fort Redmond (Fort Bangalore to be accurate).
roflnoob? u have to be joking..i have an HTC artemis (wm6 pro) and the only reason i havent dumped it for something else is because it comes with tom tom navigator and a built in gps which works amazing. everything else is pure crap. let me enumerate the ways:
id say the second best thing after tom tom is office mobile. these phones are only used by businesses that want to punish their employees. blackberries, nokias and the iphone are a million times more productive, responsive, elegant and understandable. the only reason these phones were remotely poplar in businesses is because MS forced it down their throats and at the time there was no competition. its a simple fact, windows mobile is complete and utter garbage. what was the difference between wm5 and wm6??? the skin and bug fixes! and this is what MS delivers with a major version number increment?!? up until now, the OS has not changed at all...all major version increments have simple bug fixes and updated skins. the fundamental problems are all still there. windows mobile 7 will be the same crap. mark my words
sorry but in my opinion, MS will have to pull a great phone out of their Tech labs if they want to have a competitive phone in 2010... The mobile market is way more competitive than the PC OS market is, and whats nice now, could be worth nothing on the phone market in 12 months
You don't have to end any process in WM, the OS automatically closes old processes when a newer process needs more memory. So they DO autoclose.
"Internet" and "Work" networking not only make sense, they must be that way. "Internet" is outside your company firewall (probably via cellular,) and "Work" is behind it with access to company resources. Some custom apps need to make sure they are on the work network.
"Communication Manager" isn't a WM app, that's your phone's third party app. I don't doubt it's crap.
Did you try installing one of the many PDF readers for WM?
Pocket IE does have some javascript support. You can, of course, install another browser if you want.
I could go on and on . . .
Mr. Clippy: You appear to have thrown your telephone with considerable force. I am unclear as to your intentions. Could you please provide me with some addition..[Splat!]
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm pondering idea of switching my augmented reality app to iPhone from Symbian. What kind of investment should I do ?
Is MacBook + iPhone enough ? Are there a good free IDE for Objective-C ? Or IDE is part of SDK ? SDK (development programm) itself is only 99$, correct ?
Well, somewhat. The N82 I'm using at the moment go straight to the log by pressing the dial key, for instance. The default menu layout admittedly looks like someone swallowed all the icons and puked them up again, but it's all customizable, so it didn't take long to rearrange it so I can get to anywhere I ever need to go with three button presses, and to the stuff I use 90% of the time with just one.
Anyway, I said they were traditionally the leader, I didn't say they were good. Oh, wait, I did say 'easy to use'... I guess that should be 'relatively easy to use'.
As an aside, that's a very cool link in your sig. I had the idea of doing something like that just five hours ago. I never told anyone about it, and I never wrote it down. Your spies clearly work with great efficiency and speed. :)
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
Porting to N95(Symbian 9.2) right now :) Probably will take couple of weeks more. After that - either to markeless outdoor tracking, or iPhone port, havn't decided yet.
One thing to be aware of is that currently, the location services give you positional data but not direction, unless you move - I think that's true of the new GPS phones as well as the old, but it may take more experimenting. I don't know how that would factor into how you are using devices today.
A Macbook should be plenty for development. I have an older Macbook Pro (first Intel model) that I think is slower than the latest Macbooks so speed wise things should be fine. The screen is a little on the small side but if you get used to Spaces you'll probably not notice it much (I do all iPhone programming just on the laptop with no external screen, split into four virtual screens - development, debugging, Interface Builder, and mail/web/documentation section),
The IDE you use is XCode which is free to download, macs ship with it actually (on the install disc) but you have to download an updated version from Apple to develop against the iPhone SDK anyway so just get that. Go to developer.apple.com and you can register to become a free iPhone developer first, so you can browse the API docs and see if it all looks good to you before you even get a computer. You don't have to pay the $99 right away but it can take a little while for that acceptance to go through so you may as well apply as soon as you are sure you want to try that path.
The IDE includes XCode, a decent IDE with a good GUI wrapped around GDB for debugging and some nice performance analysis tools. It also includes Interface Builder which is a little hard to understand at first but well worth the effort as it's very powerful and saves a lot of time in the right ways for building GUI's. More hidden is Shark for performance profiling, and some other tools that get installed in /Developer
I think it's really, really helpful to read through some material on Cocoa programming in general, the bible everyone uses is "Cocoa® Programming for Mac® OS X, Third Edition" by Hildegrass (just updated this year). Cocoa Touch is simpler than full Cocoa but the foundation classes (like collections and URL handling and strings and such ) are all about the same so that would be one of the areas to focus in, along with Interface Builder concepts.
A resource you'll probably fine REALLY helpful going into Objective C is "From C++ to Objective C"" which is basically a rosetta stone from C++ to Objective C concepts. I found it helpful moving from a mostly Java background (it presents a number of Java examples in addition to C++) with a more distant C++ base of experience. I don't know that any book would be more useful since you already know what you are doing and need a conceptual guide more than syntax help.
Also look around for iPhone developer forums, you can use Apple's site but there are others.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Surely the real name is [i]Vista[/i] Mobile!
Gestures on Windows Mobile are almost as old as Pen Gestures introduced back in the Tablet PC in 2002.
Sad that people in the mainstream don't have any idea where all this comes from and how Apple did better at marketing than innovating anything.
Yes on the "sad that people don't know where it comes from," no on the "Apple didn't innovate." Remember the Newton? Yes, that was 1993. A decade before your Tablet PC.
Now I am horribly reminded of the seven deadly sins.
Please, keep the cake. It is probably a lie anyway.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I call bullshit.
I give you one thing: the Symbian UI only makes sense if you're a longtime Nokia user, as the whole workflow is obviously based on the older non-smartphones. But that's also where it shines. To take your log example: if you're going to treat the phone like a computer, you're going to have to go through the main menu and then three levels deep to find the log. Or you can press the 'Call' button, and immediately be thrown into the call log (and logically, starting at the 'Placed calls' sublog).
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Let's fire Balmer for releasing the most popular gaming machine amongst gamers
Where by "gamers", you really mean "a subset of all gamers which I define based on some arbitrary ideas on who is allowed to call himself a gamer."
The Xbox 360 will end up in third place, doing worse than the original Xbox which at least managed to (barely) outsell the Cube.
Visa wants to become a part of your mobile phone, working with Nokia Corp. on realizing mobile payments and also announcing services for Google Inc.'s Android platform. The idea of using the mobile phone as a payment device has been around for a long time, but has not yet encountered widespread success. With more than 3 billion mobile devices already in the market today, though, Visa sees a big opportunity to extend its reach, according to Elizabeth Buse, global head of product at Visa. For future owners of the T-Mobile G1 and other upcoming Android phones, Visa will first include three services -- Alerts, Offers and Locator -- which will be available for download before the end of the year. With Alerts, consumers will receive what Visa calls "near real-time" notification of purchase activity, based on rules defined by the cardholder. Offers and Locator will make it possible for users to receive targeted offers based on previous purchases and show consumers nearby locations of shops or ATMs that accept Visa. The two functions can also be combined. Consumers would opt in to the services, only activating those they choose, and would be able to opt out at anytime, according to Visa. The services will first be offered to Chase Visa cardholders in the U.S., and Visa said it plans to add more banks later. Visa is also developing a payment application that will enable consumers to make mobile payments with Android phones. Visa's work with Nokia will also enable users to make payments using their mobile phones. Using the Nokia 6212 Classic, expected to be available starting next month, users will be able to make contactless payments, remote payments, money transfers, as well as receive alerts and notifications, according to Nokia. What makes all that possible is built-in support for a technology called Near-Field Communications, which lets consumers simply wave the phone within a few inches of a special point-of-sale reader to complete a transaction. Nokia and Visa will first do trials with financial institutions, but for it to really take off, the retail sector has to get on board, and that is currently a blocking point, according to Richard Webb, directing analyst at Infonetics Research. "Mobile payments are a good thing for the mobile sector, but there is no real gain for the retail sector, which would have to upgrade its systems for payments to work," said Webb. Companies such as Nokia and Visa have to explain what's in it for retailers, but there are also other aspects that need to be addressed before mobile payments can take off, including security and trust, according to Webb.
Xbox? You know the console which is selling more {...} than practically all of its competitors combined? Sure it's not selling like the Wii {...}
Yeah, that's a coherent and logical argument, Xbox sells more than all competition combined, except that one of the competition is selling even more. Somewhere, you failed at your "additions" skills.
which is pretty much a WiiSports Box {...} Let's fire Balmer for releasing the most popular gaming machine amongst gamers and giving microsoft a reputation for releasing cutting edge home entertainment gear?
Well, you can argue that the Wii is targeting a different market than the hardcore gamer oriented PS3 and Xbox360, thus they are not comparable.
Except that, currently, Wii is selling more units nonetheless, and making more profit. For a "make profit at all cost" company like Microsoft, it's still defined as a failure.
Zune? Have you used a Zune? {...} the only Microsoft product which has attractive, hip and desireable marketing.
And let's not forget about the completely asinine market move about completely scraping the whole "Plays-for-Sure" WMA campaign and associated DRM, and push a different distribution scheme which none the less use the same WMA format (so users are even more confused) while at the same time using a completely incompatible DRM (Now, please stay in line with your credit card ready in order to rebuy once more all the music collection you already have bought).
Oh, and add to the list the single best argument that the Zune has over the iPod : wireless. Except that the over protecive DRM managed to botch it and doesn't really let users squirt files at each other for more than 3play or 3days (when at the same time, owners of non-locked bluetooth enabled PDAs and feature phone have been happily swapping whatever over bluetooth).
Yes, indeed. The Zune is such a brilliant gadget !
why would Microsoft want to get into the business of offering a pmp to stereo vertical integration of the entire media market when Xbox Live Marketplace and Zune marketplace finish their inevitable merging?
Why criticizing them ? I don't know perhaps because... ...they haven't it done yet, and the Plays-for-Sure debacle has shown that won't trully integrate, just introduce new incompatible systems ?
Microsoft has had the stated goal for decades that they want to be on your computer, TV, Car and in your hand. { ...} Eventually they'll succeed and it'll all work together. You'll buy a movie on your xbox and watch it on your zune. You'll buy a song on your zune and play it on your xbox. You'll have all your music on your laptop and your phone. Zune is just a windows CE device with the desktop hidden.
Well, except probably this will require you to have a new special Zune 3, a Xbox720 and a laptop running Windows 7. You'll be forced to upgrade everything otherwise it won't be compatible (a la Vista is required for DirectX 10). And you can count that you won't be able to drag around all your previous acquisition, but would need to buy them again once more on the ground on a new different DRM scheme.
Which probably will let you only play once on the Xbox what you bought with some other device. And will let you only 1 single pairing of a WinCE device.
Also count on a nice bunch of net worms able to seamlessly exploit the whole windows enabled family.
Vista might be a black mark but personally
Vista is such an awful product that even a Microsoft fanboy can't manage to find anything positive about it beside "mine hasn't crashed as often as other people's".
And maybe... just maybe the reason they aren't releasing in 2009 is because they recognize that fact and want to actually take the time to do it right--for once. Microsoft's greatest failing is usually their rush t
An ARM processor at 400 Mhz is not even close to a real x86 processor at 400Mhz. First of all, you'd have to port all the kernel junk from x86 to ARM (hint: not fun) but more importantly, the performance just isn't there. ARM is designed for power-thriftiness, not performance.
I have a 400Mhz ARM in my phone (HTC PPC6800) and the thing has serious trouble rendering complex HTML (Opera Mobile 9.5, part of the slowdown might be scaling images down to 320x240 though) -- something that my old PC doesn't even blink at.
It can't be cloned especially by MS. The iPhone and Apple is exact opposite of MS.
Apple squeezed Unix into a Mobile.
Microsoft squeezed a Mobile into Windows.
That's the difference.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I am concerned how even Mobile 6.1 is getting so slow. Pleas more lean and robust systems, less 3d and animation. Jack http://seoapplied.blogspot.com/
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I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
I had an HTC Tytn which needed recalibration at least once a week (known 'issue'). Replaced it with an HTC Polaris and not had to be calibrated since I got it 6 months ago.
To be fair to the original, the fact that my IPod touch doesn't even have a recalibration option makes me feel a lot more comfortable.
I like Windows Mobile. It's open and it's easily the most 'powerful' OS you can get on your phone.
My main issue with it, is whilst under the hood it's wonderfully complete (all manner of fancy stuff you can fiddle with and ability to shove on any app that's popped into anybody's mind) - the actual GUI layer ontop of it all is utterly shite.
HTC have made a decent stab at pasting over the most obvious cracks in the 'experience', but it's still just a skin and eventually you get dumped into the vile default UI. The 5->6 upgrade was pretty rubbish. 6->6.1 whilst a lovely upgrade was mainly just a load of deep bugfixes that whilst welcomed, shouldn't have been there in the first place.
In an ideal world WM7 would be the core of WM6 with a real Apple-tastic workover of the UI. If it takes longer than they thought, then it takes longer. I just really don't want them to rush out some half baked release.
MS is always a step slow. It still continues to be in the running. Let other companies innovate and confirm trends. It will swoop in after and take over when others fade. Yall hate it but its true. It's just business. Cold blooded business. Go to f'ing Russia if you don't like competition. Don't give me that BS about fairness either. Life is not fair. Build a bridge and get over it or jump off.
BTW -A device is only as good as the network. iPhone will not reach its potential until AT&T wireless gets mature. Why do you think the Bold is not out yet? RIM misses its financial targets because AT&T's 3G is w/o capacity. Verizon will continue to have the biggest/best 3G cloud in the States until it has the biggest 4G floater.
I think I said that these products produce NO PROFIT. And guess what, I am correct. You MS fanboys say that /. is so anti-MS yet my truthful statement got modded troll. Fucking-A.
I agree. I installed SBP Mobile Shell and it added a bunch of finger gestures to the WM interface, along with eyecandy flips, slides, and other animations obviously a la mode now because of Apple's influence. I understand that HTC also added finger gestures with its Touchflo interface, along with apparently lots of rotating cubes. It's just not that difficult to add this stuff to a small, simple UI and the fact that MS is taking so long to do something that small ISVs have already accomplished shows that its priorities are elsewhere.
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It could, but the 400mhz chip in a phone is an ARM.. and, after NT4, Microsoft slowly removed any cross-platform ports the NT kernel had. (It *was* for x86, MIPS, DEC Alpha, and there was a PowerPC version... plus of course the ill-fated Itanium version.) To make sure noone was cheating and using x86-specific code, it was initially built for Intel i860 and MIPS.
WinCE is ported to x86, MIPS, ARM, and Hitachi SuperH, although x86 (for testing) and ARM are certainly the most popular.