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Chinese Phone Maker ZTE Turns Down WP7
An anonymous reader writes "Chinese smartphone maker ZTE, fifth largest in the world, has publicly criticized Microsoft for the lackluster market reaction to its Windows Phone 7 operating system and said that ZTE has no plans to develop a WP7-powered phone. That's bad news for Microsoft for its well-regarded but not well-received mobile OS."
Good. I don't have WP7, but that's because I owned WM6.5. In order to import contacts you HAD TO HAVE Outlook. You couldn't import from a text file. A simple list of names and phone numbers required a full install of Outlook. FU
You know a device is bad when even China doesn't want to touch it (and clone it).
FTFA: "But I think Microsoft should understand that it doesn’t have an engineering or a product problem, it has a marketing problem and that it needs to address it" I tend to ignore anyone who tries to explain a trend (or lack there of) in the mobile space but I agree with this point. As a mobile developer I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and "fun" it could be to build a WP7 app. The development tools arent too bad and seem pretty mature. Also, aside from the Windows-Live nagging I have found the OS to be fairly well engineered, which is saying a lot in the current Mobile OS landscape. All that said I dont know what else could be attributed to how ZTE, LG, and the market in general have responded to WP7 other than the poor marketing.
if you don't know by now, Microsoft spends lots of money( billions ) getting people to use their stuff and get some market share. I've seen the Chinese government play games with Microsoft a few times declaring Windows as the "standard" for this, that, or the other thing and the deal includes big cash incentives for doing this. I have little doubt that this company has executives who know Microsoft is spending billions buying resellers of their rehash of a Windows phone OS and are just holding out for more money. They will most likely ship some WP7 phone eventually and get paid well for doing so. We'll see if they are smart enough to not tie the money to sales figures for the phone.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Who else has high regard for Windows Phone 7?
Nobody that I have seen.
As far as I am concerned, ZTE is exhibiting amazingly good taste.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I wonder if this is a ploy to get MS to let them tweak the UI more?
My understanding is that MS has locked down UI tweaking by the manufacturers quite a bit. Nokia has been granted some concessions however.
This could just be their way of saying, "If you want us to make phones with your OS then try harder to make it worth our while."
Would be interesting if in a few months time we hear they have just done a "very nice deal" with MS.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
As far as I am concerned, ZTE is exhibiting amazingly good taste.
That's a valid point. Until you consider that ZTE has been recently charged with unauthorized software use (AKA: Piracy), in order to avoid licensing fees.
... but only by accident, not out of choice.
So they may be exhibiting good taste
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Well, I don't MICROSOFT know how many astro-turfWINDOWS PHONE 7ers there are here, personally, but then I've iPhone never actually seen one. WINDOWS PHONE 7
Honestly, I think WP7 is going to be a slow-burn. It started out way behind, but it's a decent mobile OS as far as it goes, with a lot of potential.
It's going to take a while to find traction. First, it has to "catch up" with what's already there (and that will take a while). There are also people who might be interested but who are already under contract with other phones (I fit in this category). I'm not even elegible to think about buying one for another year or so.
So there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, along with a late entry into a relatively saturated market. I think it's highly likely that they'll slowly grow over the next year or 18 months into third place, and likely stay there for several years... eating away at a slowly increasing share. I think the Nokia deal will seriously help this, but so will it's release this year on other networks (Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint here in the States).
As long as Microsoft keeps the updates coming, and pushes updated hardware specs for a second generation that will keep pace with where iOS and Android are going, things will continue to improve.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I know this is a story about mobile phones, but why's that guy have such a comically oversized bluetooth headset? Stupid slashdot icons.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A good alternative for them is Android, which is (as far as I know) more open, less expensive and more popular. They're a business, so why would they choose a closed, more costly and less popular mobile OS?
Why is this guy modded down? Now I Android want to go back and Android read all posts, looking for shills by checking the "tells" listed above. Android. Those M$ punks can't fool me!
Wait, what? Dammit!
They have more business sense than Nokia.
One could think of this move as less competition for Nokia... right? Except Nokia has to be worried by now "sh** we picked a big stinky turd and nobody else want piece of it"
Not to be obtuse, but where exactly is WP7 "well-regarded" beyond, say, WP7 commercials? I read a lot of reviews when it came out, and the most favorable ones seemed to view it as a passable mobile OS but short of features it'd need to really compete with the others. Saying "meh" or calling something mediocre doesn't strike me as regarding it well.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Purchase, not be paid to endorse.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I thinks it's pretty simple if you think about it. Consumers all around the world don't see Microsoft as a true innovator in the technology business. What does this mean? It means that people does not see Microsoft products as "must-have" because of innovation, features or overall coolness.
Microsoft products become "must-have" only when they become the only platform available to run something the consumer wants.
Windows (Windows applications), Office (Office documments) and X-Box (X-Box games) are the main successful Microsoft products and all three follow this lock-in scenario.
Any other products, platforms or services they created (that don't depend on external content or software) were soon taken over by superior alternatives.
The problem with WM7 for manufacturers is that with the fear of fragmentation Microsoft went ahead and :
1 Dictated the hardware, so as manufacturer don't have much say on how the device going to look, no small screen with dedicated keyboard or such designs, so in essence no real distinction between one manufacturer’s phone to another. This would not be a problem if it was not for the second point.
2 Manufacturers are not allowed to change the UI to place there own “look & feel” to the phone. So end of the day one WM7 phone is exactly like the other.
We all know a HTC (Android), Apple (iOS), or Motorola (Android) phone just by looking at it. But all the WM7 phones look and feel the same. For some people that is selling point but for a manufacturer it not. How can you make someone buy your WM7 phone and not your competitions.
I do think that ZTE will sell WM7 phones they just want a cash incentive to do so.
Personally I don't like the WM7 blocky interface or the half words that break to show that there is a next screen, and I do think Microsoft did a bad thing aiming something that you cant really customize to gamers 1st (Xbox Live). They should have targeted a market that hates customization – the work place, in other words they should have build better Office/ Exhange/ Sharepoint integration instead, cause that is where they can seriously 1 up the competition.
You mean television isn't real?
I think its all about the money really - Microsoft paid a billion to Nokia to save their sinking mobile OS, now they are of the opinion its worth something, they are probably charging money for hardware manufacturers to to use it, despite Microsoft being behind the curve against a free mobile OS.
Who would have purchased an android phone 6 months after launch? Who would have predicted that Android market share would outpace iphone market share as quickly as it has?
Right now MS is moving at a glacial pace with windows 7 phones, which isn't encouraging for their business, but the one thing you don't want to be is a 3rd party supplier and find out you've made enemies with the new big dog in town. In 12 or 18 months with nokia on board MS could have a vastly superior product to anything else on the market.
They probably won't, because they seem to want to work really hard to fail, but that could change. I think every 3rd party phone maker (i.e. anyone who isn't apple or RIM) should have a MS phone strategy. Just in case. That strategy could be 3 guys and a dev kit. But it should be there. Who knows, maybe MS has some killer app up it's sleeve that will take the phone market by storm, that will suddenly make us all converts. The vast majority of even Android users run windows PC's after all, one would hope MS has some ideas on how Window 7 computer could play nice with windows 7 phones.
For a moment I thought the article was discussing WordPerfect 7.
I dont know where this comes from except a couple of known fanboys and paid bloggers. Amongst normal people and people in the mobile industry, WP7 is anything but well regarded. Its just a huge big "meh..." and thats it. An also ran without anything even remotely interesting, but at the same time lacking many things we take for granted in a mobile phone.
With WP7 i cant friggin set different volumes, on a smartphone! Multitasking only avaliable if my lips are up against Microsofts bottom. No copy/paste, WP7 wont connect to WPA2-P2K wifi. You cant create playlists on the phone 7 and there are tons of other issues that would make well regarded sounding pretty forced or an outright lie.
WP7 is only well regarded amongst a small group of hardcore ms followers. But, i know many who works 100% with only MS products that really hates it with a passion because they poured oodles of money into Winmo 6.5 projects that are now down the drain and they will never make the same mistake again.
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Actually, ZTE are currently pumping out surprisingly decent Android handsets. For the past few months the ZTE Blade (AKA Orange San Francisco, Base Lutea and possibly a few other names) has been the go-to handset for Android newbies here in Europe (UK, Germany, Switzerland)... cheap, good specs (same as a HTC Legend but with more RAM and higher screen res), awesome.
Who would have purchased an android phone 6 months after launch? Who would have predicted that Android market share would outpace iphone market share as quickly as it has?
Ummm anyone who was watching the market. There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian when the Open Alliance formed back in 2007 made up of many mobile device and chipset manufacturers. Then there were clearer signs in 2008 when another 14 companies joined the alliance which now pretty much included every handset manufacturer except Nokia. This very site has been praising the platform ever since it was announced that it would be open source and based of the 2.6 kernel.
The parent was right, given what we know about WP7 who would buy it? 6.5 was UI disaster of epic proportions, 6.0 was an inconsistent slow buggy mess which spent more time with an hourglass on the screen then it did making calls. On top of that, up until Nokia joined the Windows camp the only major handset provider pushing windows 7 phones was HTC, and even they are selling at glacial pace, and few manufacturers are pushing the platform.
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
â--¦Capacitive, 4-point multi-touch screen with WVGA (480x800) resolution
However, no way to get more than 1 point using standard framework (silverlight)
â--¦1 GHz ARM v7 "Cortex/Scorpion" or better processor
No native code so compiler optimized/programmer-tightened assembly, is not available; not possible to do any cpu-critical coding - at all
â--¦DirectX9 rendering-capable GPU
Within constraints, like 2000x2000 max pixel area; poorly if at all documented are these thing since so little "good stuff" is documented, likely because these are absent
â--¦256 MB of RAM with at least 8 GB of Flash memory
Max any app can use is 90 MB; go over an app fails to get into marketplace - meaning no way to ever load it on any device except your own -- everything MUST BE GOTTEN FROM MARKET PLACE
â--¦Accelerometer with compass, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and Assisted GPS
Fine, but no access to compass, nor light sensor, nor prox sensor
â--¦5-megapixel camera with an LED flash
That's not saying much - no access to the flash, either
â--¦FM radio tuner
God am I glad, I think - but needs a special headphone cable else no radio for you
â--¦7 dedicated hardware buttons - back, Start, search, 2-stage camera, power/sleep and Volume Up and Down
And the only accessible button is the back button; the others are dedicated (to MS apps)
All in all, a fine system if you like your freedom dictated by the like of Hitler, Stalin, or Republicans
Which brand/model? I had to buy a new phone in a hurry at the start of the year when my old one literally fell to pieces; I looked at the android, iphone and wp7 models available and the UI on the wp7 phones I tried was slow and clunky. I ended up picking up an iphone 3gs due to the slick UI and the fact it was cheaper than an iphone4 without losing anything i really needed (like exchange and google sync). Didn't have access to the Tab.
Of course, two months later and so far I've run into the "goes flat in three hours while heating your pocket" problem, the "stuttering scroll and ignore single taps" problem, and the "have to jailbreak the phone even just to have a custom sms tone" problem. Sigh, wish my old phone had lasted just another few months...
"There was clear signs that Android would be the next Sybian"
I know some people love their phones, but that's getting into Jerry Springer territory.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Meego development continues, and I'm waiting to see whether I want to replace mine or whether the production Meego will meet my needs. But if I do replace it, it will probably be with the new WebOs phone/tablet ecosystem.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Not to mention that the ads Microsoft push as of late are not only crap in quality, but also testing new waters such as at the start of Youtube videos providing them not with positive advertising, but instead a stigma of "the company who helped ruin youtube" and not just youtube. The only place I've seen microsoft ads is where I don't expect them, and haven't previously seen advertising.
Microsoft's ad problems are a whole 'nother issue - I have a friend who's a copywriter and has recently worked for Microsoft. Even after the disastrous ad campaigns of the past decade, they still require broad consensus before approving a new ad. Even worse, their division heads often co-opt the process altogether - basically rejecting the professional ad copy and then writing their own.
It's something I see with faculty at my university a lot - because they are smart in one specific area, they seem to think that makes them experts on all topics, no matter how diverse from their actual area of expertise.
#DeleteChrome
It is heads and shoulders above the iPhone in almost any respect.
It's funny how that phrase - that EXACT phrase - is creeping into multiple comments on this discussion. You'd almost think it was coordinated.
#DeleteChrome
You are aware that the techies don't see ads on the internet, don't watch ad blocks on the tv and have an mp3 player in their car?
Who exactly are they advertising to? The late late late adopters?
The problem is also from my own experiences is that people who are at the lower end of the market tend to have bad windows experiences. They don't have a choice for their desktop OS but are hardly going to want their phone to be as malware riddled as their desktops.
MS just doesn't have a rep.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is that it has all the vendor lock in of Apple (Closed Source, one App store) with all the (hardware) fragmentation of Android. Atleast Android and iOS has one of two bad things; WP7 has both.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
It's funny how that phrase - that EXACT phrase - is creeping into multiple comments on this discussion. You'd almost think it was coordinated.
Not at all, it's just head and shoulders above other phrases in almost any respect.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Dildroid. - An app which you won't find in the walled garden may help :-)
After a couple of weeks using product A, it replaced product B as my primary device. It is a brand of shampoo above product B in every respect.
It's not even subtle. A better shill comment would be:
I really liked product B, but I found feature X to be a bit cumbersome to use and I really missed feature Y. Product A has some faults, but feature X is a lot easier to use, and it has feature Y.
An ever better shill comment would be expanding on one of these points, for example explaining that using feature X on product B required this sequence of actions, while on product A it only required a shorter sequence, and explaining why anyone should care about feature Y. Of course, at this point, you're getting dangerously close to giving an honest review, which may not be what your corporate overlords are looking for.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Just the browser makes WP7 bad as far as what I would use it for. Go to the acid3 test in mobile Safari, then in WP7's bastardized IE version. Safari renders it correctly and gets 100/100 on my phone. IE produces garbage and a low score.
SSC
Those in need of a single tasking XBox controller. No need for cut and paste, regular bricking on updates comes with the territory and eating up all your monthly allowance is no problem since its mom and pops tab anyway.
Bullshit, ZTE Blade is a very good phone and with more than decent quality. The thing is, it has a price no smartphone comes near, and not many "dumb phones" like nokias lower range either. ZTE is after low prices and low margins but they do not seem to disregard quality, making them an extremely hard competitor to target.
Nokia wont survive WP7 and the rest, ZTE and other "tarnishing brands" will take over.
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The original WSJ article attributes this quote directly to ZTE...
Like most vendors ZTE will wait and see how much traction Microsoft gets before committing. In fact that they even have prototypes of in the lab is probably good news for Microsoft ( who themselves are keeping the hardware partner list short ).
Oh and also WP7 doesn't have native Asian language input support ( display works fine ) until Microsoft Mango release slated for later this year. So I don't see them doing much in Asian markets before then.
...until Android became a serious competitor to the iPhone?
throw new NoSignatureException();
Since you're being paid do endorse the product, maybe you could at least try to give your employers value for their money. This, for example, is an obvious shill comment, and will be disregarded on Slashdot:
Wow, so everybody who doesn't agree with your limited view of the world are paid shills? I must say, you are recovering quite remarkably from your brain-removal surgery, apart from that rather silly religious attitude you have acquired.
I have no idea what phone you tried with WP7. As I mentioned, I am a developer and I work in the mobile space as well. I got the first WP7 phone that became available in my marked, the LG. It is widely considered the worst WP7 phone out there, and it beats the iPhone in almost every way. Connectivity and responsiveness being two of the more notable.
I wasn't aware that capitalizing proper nouns made you an astroturfer. I guess I should be getting paid by everyone, then.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
How long until we get VMs for our phones?
I forget what 8 was for.
It would be nice if you could tell specifically how it's "head and shoulders above iPhone".
Openness? Nah, it's locked down more than iPhone, both from user and from developer perspective.
Apps? Fewer than either Android or iPhone, and some big titles are notably missing (e.g. Skype). Reason primarily being no native code for apps, so no easy way to port.
Features? Well, Office apps are nice, but aside from that... the Exchange app is less complete than Touchdown on Android (it won't show "protected" emails, for one thing). In terms of phone itself, there's no tethering at all - even iPhone has that! It requires Zune software on PC with syncing set up to do anything with data on the phone - so if you're visiting someone and want to show them the photos from your phone, you can't easily do so. In contrast, Android exposes the entire user-writable filesystem when attached via USB (either as UMS in previous versions, or via MTP in Honeycomb), and iPhone does MTP for the photos.
Stability? Better than Android, but I've seen more force closes on it than on iPhone (Marketplace especially).
About the only thing that really stands out is UI - and I actually grokked why it's better suited specifically for the phone form factor, eventually: it centers around vertical lists, and you don't normally need to position your thumb on a precise horizontal coordinate (as with iPhone/Android icons) - only flick it left and right to switch between panorama/pivot panes. Thus you've only got one (vertical) axis where thumb position matters, which is easier for when you hold the phone one-handed and operate with thumb alone. Which is all good, but even the best UI is useless if the features aren't there.
Well done, you've completely failed to address anything I said in my post. I've had 'brain-removal surgery' because I want someone endorsing a product to actually list what advantages it has? I think that pretty much confirms that you're a paid shill - no one who doesn't work in advertising would consider requiring actual evidence of a product's superiority (rather than just a hand-waving comment that it's better) to be a 'rather silly religious attitude'.
Did I say that anyone who doesn't agree with my 'limited view of the world' is a paid shill? No, I said that you are a paid shill, and that your employer is not getting value for money because you are very bad at it. Of course, I could be wrong, you could just be incredibly inarticulate.
First, what 'limited view of the world' do you think that I have? That the iPhone is better than WP7? Sorry to disappoint you: I've only used an iPhone for a few minutes, and have never used WP7, so I have no opinion of their relative merits. You, on the other hand, feel the need to jump in to every discussion related to Windows Phone 7 with a ringing (yet fact-free) endorsement of WP7. You also feel the need to attack anyone who suggests that you might be a paid shill.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hello, I'm a Microsoft new media recruiter. I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I never used a Windows phone in the past. My daughter had one and it was terrible but the Windows Phone 7 looked really appealing and it turned out to be a great buy. I bought the Samsung Focus so I can't speak to the other phones but as far as the quality of the user experience it's better than iPhone and Android. The UI is extremely responsive and very easy to use. Obviously the market place isn't as big as Android or iPhone but it's getting there. There are some really great games that rival PC games for enjoyability. My only big complaints is there's no way to upload videos directly to facebook and there's no goodlink or EMM support yet.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
I have the Samsung Focus and the UI is extremely responsive.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
MS just doesn't have a rep.
MS does have a rep. My mother in law curses Windows when she uses it. I'm sure she's going to be delighted with it on a mobile phone.
Deleted
It's something I see with faculty at my university a lot - because they are smart in one specific area, they seem to think that makes them experts on all topics, no matter how diverse from their actual area of expertise.
What? really? Never seen that for example, here.
It's a general failing of specialists, because they are good at one thing, they think they're good at everything.
Deleted
Of course, two months later and so far I've run into the "goes flat in three hours while heating your pocket" problem, the "stuttering scroll and ignore single taps" problem, and the "have to jailbreak the phone even just to have a custom sms tone" problem. Sigh, wish my old phone had lasted just another few months...
I've had an 3GS for almost 2 years now, and I don't experience any of the problems you mention except for the lack of selection in SMS ringtones.
Maybe your problem is that you jailbroke the phone?
The only way I could get the battery to run down in 3 hours, is if I'd run TomTom with GPS in the background and Spotify over 3G playing streaming music and watching YouTube videos in the foreground. Usually it lasts me about 3-4 days between recharges.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Funny thing, I have never heard anyone say that the WP7 UI is slow, so I have to assume the poster who claimed it was sluggish is simply lying.
Well done, you've completely failed to address anything I said in my post
You didn't actually say anything in your post. You just threw out dumb accusations. No, I am not a shill, and I am certainly not paid by anyone to say what I think about WP7.
If you want to know why I like WP7 you could read any of the reviews of the product. They cover the basics. Here are some things though.
Those are some of the things I like as a user.
As a developer i like the following. The WP7 phone has the best developer experience of any phone. With an enormous margin. It lacks a few things, it would be really odd if a V 1.0 product didn't, but even with what it lacks, I can put together a full cloud-enabled business application on the WP7 an order of magnitude faster than I can on any competing product. For enterprise app development, that is crucial.
The phone is okay, but the buttons are somewhat difficult to press and the CPU is very slow.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Been waiting for this. Wouldn't be surprised to see it become an avalanche. You pay $1B to one manufacturer to incentivize them to make WP7 phones, and don't think it will make others feel disenfranchised?
Mark me troll if you want, if you think businesses are above reacting based on such sentiments, you've been blessed with working in some very unique environments.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
As I was not lying, perhaps try assuming something else?
Other possibilities include, but are not necessarily limited to: botched customisation of the OS/UI for local market, laden with bloatware by local distributor, settings messed up by previous potential customers (they were demo models after all), or combination thereof. As I said, I was in a hurry; I didn't have time to properly review each of the dozen or so models I looked at.
Thankyou for your original polite reply, at least.
Heh, that's the thing, I actually haven't jailbroken the phone - though I would have to if I did want a custom sms tone. I'm just bemused by such a bizarre limitation. :)
And it doesn't always exhibit the "goes flat in three hours while heating your pocket" problem; it seems to be random (or at least I haven't yet figured out what triggers it). When it's behaving, it usually lasts about the same time between recharges as yours. I've tried a factory reset and restore from backup, no luck.
I've been reading that some iphones have a specific battery fault; I do plan on contacting Apple about whether mine is one of those.
I saw the headline and wondered what in the hell a Chinese phone maker would be doing with word perfect 7 and why it would be news for nerds or stuff that matter. Perhaps they were bringing back envoy, sidekicks or something for advanced functionality. I was excited to see old things made new again and run on hardware about the same power as the original.
Turns out, it's nothing to do with the aging and outdated WP7 at all. It is all about some Microsoft windows creation for phones. Well, seeing how I do not care about windows phone 7, I purpose that before we start reusing abbreviations for products that were available in our life time to mean other products, we stop and thinks is mpw7 or something else might be more efficient in it's understanding. I mean I could start calling everything a DOS or whatever too, but I know it would only confuse people.
Let's look at your possibilities:
It is safe to say that you were "saying about something that isn't that it is" as lying was once defined as. There is also another item that strongly indicates lying, this sentence fragment: each of the dozen or so. Yeah right. Lying indeed.
I'm a non MS type usually and my personal phone is an android thing, but I have to say I'm impressed by the WP7 HTC I played with recently. Really responsive and sensibly laid out. I would definitely consider it over the shitty little thing work gave me called an iPhone4.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I define lying as "knowingly speaking falsehood". Which is why the accusation offended me.
Thankyou for ruling out those possibilities. Does that apply globally to all phones running WP7, just the models in your market, or just your particular model?
And as for "each of the dozen or so (models)", perhaps you assumed that I meant only WP7 phones"? I apologise if I was unclear - I was referring not to only WP7 models but rather to all the models - wp7, android, iphone, etc - of phone in the shops that I checked out.
Anyway, have a nice day. Truly. You sound like you need one.
Well regarded by whom outside of MS? I bought one and returned it within a week. No way to connect to secure wifi, no way to load programs outside of MS app store, no way to load a cert. in order to be able to connect to company email, etc. It is really only for people who want facebook and xbox games on their phone. For me it was a real disapointment.
Joe Moyle
You picked the iPhone!?!?!?
I haven't played with the LG, but the HTC is way slicker and faster than the iPhone4 my work just gave me.
iPhones are the most constricted and difficult to use pieces of shit in the smart phone market. A good droid definitely kicks arse, and this is speaking from the point of view of one who recently switched from a Nokia to an Android and then got an iPhone4 a few weeks later, so I have been through the "this is all new to me" phase on each device and done a side by side comparison.
Here's an example at how Apple suck at usability but manage to brainwash people into not realising it. If you are sensible and have your SIM lock on, you have to enter a code before the phone is useful. Unlike the Android where you can't access anything until you enter the code, with the iPhone4, you have short opportunity to enter the code before the thing loads the main screen, giving you access to the data on the phone but no phone ability. Worrying from a security standpoint.... oh, but apple is such a secure system...
Now there is no obvious way to unlock the SIM, so most people would turn it off and on again, this time staring at the apple logo. See what's going on there? These people are being brainwashed into the church of Apple. Having the Apple burned into their psyche. Masses of drooling Apple drones staring at the shiny Apple deity waiting for thier opportunity to be truly shiny too.
There is another way to do it... go to Settings > Phone > SIM lock and turn the SIM lock off, enter your PIN, turn the SIM lock on and enter your PIN again... yeh, Apple gear is so easy to use...
I don't therefore I'm not.
I have only briefly played with a WP7 phone (the HTC whatsit), and I agree it is slick. Definitely way ahead of iPhone4 in usability, but not quite enough to get me off Android... I'm hooked on the utility of the Galaxy S.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Heh. You can also (at least with iPhone 3GS and iOS 4, can't speak for earlier versions) just go to make a call and it will prompt for the SIM code.
:)
But yeah, in hindsight, I may have chosen... poorly.
my company is one of the biggest fans of microsoft - we go microsoft everything, and even the director and VP of IT says WP7 sucks. How the hell is WP7 "well regarded"?????
So I have to pretend I want to make a call to get my email and calendar to sync? So convenient!
I don't therefore I'm not.
So I have to pretend I want to make a phone call to get email and calendar to sync? Of course! Silly me. :/
I don't therefore I'm not.
Does that apply globally to all phones running WP7
I thought it was pretty well known that providers are not allowed to do any modifications to the WP7 UI. Universally. If you didn't know this, how do you expect anyone to take your comments on WP7 seriously. It's one of the most discussed aspects of WP7 compared to older WinMo phones. It is also one of the things that has been debated in the Nokia deal.
Do I believe you when you say you have tested a WP7 phone? No, I don't, since you claim that it suffers in areas where everybody else says it shines. Why would your, and only your, experience be different? -- that is, unless the only thing you tested on the phone was the Twitter client (which isn't shipped with the phone, so I don't see how that could be). The official Twitter client for WP7 has performance issues for sure.
Oh, I see what you mean. Locked SIM = no data via cellular. Heh.
I didn't know that. As far as smartphones go I'm little more than a newbie end-user, which I suspect is pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from someone like yourself who does mobile development for a living? I tested - if one can call five to ten minutes per phone testing - start UI, call UI, contacts UI, calendar UI, and google syncing. And in my newbie end-user opinion the iphones and androids felt faster and less clunky, and the iphone UI felt 'slick', all of which I should fully admit are subjective observations (and given the issues I've since experienced, one might say the 'slick' has worn off).
I apologise for stating as fact my personal opinion.
Your experience with Windows7 Phone runs counterintuitive to every major publication's published reviews. Please post a video of your slow and/or buggy WP7 device, until then no one is going to believe you. Put simply: put up or shut up.
My wife loves it, but I can't get it to install under WINE on our new 'puter.
Who is perplexed of the success of Android despite the huge fragmentation issue? Case in point - a particular QVGA sold like hot cakes here in NZ...does it run Angry Birds? Nope. Doodle Jump? Nope. Web browsing? If you're really desperate I guess. I see a lot of developers/users like myself getting sick of a million different phones (I've seen developers with a desk full of androids, with a single Iphone 4 at the side!). MS may be late to the game, but they're running the right play.
Eh, I'll just shut up. Building a time machine would be too much like work. :p
"head and shoulders over the iPhone"
Does this means WP7 is like iOS, but with dandruff?!
Dandruff = flaky, so yes.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
that would be an ex-gay man against freedom.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.