Slashdot Mirror
Speculating On What a Microsoft Superphone Might Mean
smitty777 writes "Forbes is running an intriguing story on a new 'Superphone' under development by the folks at Microsoft. According to this leaked MS roadmap document, the plan is to build the Apollo-based phone in the 4th quarter of 2012. FTA: 'In the end, however, none of this matters. Microsoft's "peek into the future" is barely a glimpse into what the company may or may not have planned for 2012. While the "superphone" bullet is worth noting, it is not the confirmation of a revolutionary new product. At best, it indicates that Microsoft wishes to compete with Apple by offering a product that is, well, super.' It's also interesting that Sony and AT&T also appear to be working on superphones of their own."
Nokia has been preparing their Windows Phone 7 line-up. Their Nokia Lumia smart phone has beat sales in many European countries and Australia in December and November, even topping iPhone and every Android phone. It is also a very solid offering. I think both Microsoft and Nokia did the right to go together. Great hardware from Nokia and great software from Microsoft. That combination is pure gold.
I expect a Super cool bluescreen on that phone!
Windows phone 8
one phone for all bands? so you can get the phone and use it on any network with have to buy a ATT or sprint one like the iphone. No having the phone locked to the carrier you choose.
... are planning their next-gen OS called "Kryptonite".
Your move, Microsoft. And no, "Batman" doesn't count.
Microsoft has deep pockets and is not shy to use them to support a money pit until it becomes a success (like the xbox). Maybe this phone thing will be a success, but I hope they will come up with something better than Windows CE which, as a developer, was painful to work with.
lucm, indeed.
More pre-release Microsoft hype about a vapor product that is going to change the world. What ever happened to Windows Phone 7 changing the world? Remember Windows Phone 7? Neither do I.
It's only super till the next big thing arrives.
Silence is a state of mime.
Microsoft reminds me of General Motors.
The capability of both companies is immense, yet due to various internal
influences, both companies have an overwhelming tendency to produce
things which are mediocre at best and outright repulsive when compared
to alternative choices, this with distressing regularity.
Microsoft could produce an amazing phone, but it will suck in ways which
matter to smart users, who won't want to use it, much less buy it. Just
wait and see.
iPhones are a commodity with a certain amount of cache, it will eventually collapse. Android is the reasonably priced alternative used by the masses. Unless MS can come in with phones at half the price of Android phones with all the features this will be a two pony race for some time. As Android and Chrome grow though I suspect it could eventually eat into the Windows market which is the biggest strength that MS has for making Windows mobile viable. Of course this is all speculation and at best conjecture. Things will play out with time, one thing is certain though is that Android will take 50% of the market alone and eventually start eating Apple's lunch if MS can't compete.
Got laid tonight ... check.
Cool story bro.
I dont think there's been a single other player out there who can stand to compete against Microsoft in it's ability to generate huge amounts of press and fanfare in unreleased products that ultimately become unparalleled market failures.
Frankly, Microsoft would do well to take a note from Apple's playbook and SHUT THE FUCK UP about the product until it's release instead of blathering like a spastic child about it's vaporware, leaking feature after feature and allowing the competition to catch up or even surpass it's abilities before the product is even launched.
Fuck all.
The #1 smartphone OS is Android. MS would be competing with Android (Google), not Apple. I mean yeah, they'd also be competing with Apple, but Apple is just a bit player in the market now.
So next year the all hype is going ot be around the word "super" instaed of "cloud"?
***YAWN***
Because most of modern smart phones seem to be lacking in that department. My 10 year old nokia has better reception, better sound quality, longer battery life and doesn't shatter when I drop it by accident. To me, a superphone would at least be able to do this. Any added features that do not take away one of the previous named, is a benefit, but not required.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
We're super, thanks for asking.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
so that "superphone" means they will have something which supports today's hardware sometime in 2013. Remember, "super" can be a relative term and in this case it means it'll be better than the previous versions of Windows Phone( 7.x). There's little doubt that by 2013, both iOS and Android will be super duper phones compared to this Microsoft superphone.
OT: is a Windows Phone based phone called a Windows Phone phone? Android based phones are called Android phones.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
the competition to deliver something better, like a Megaphone!
Next years winphone looks a lot like last years Android phone. This is indeed great progress, but too little too late to matter.
Indeed, Microsoft could produce an amazing *anything*, but they are hobbled by their own situation.
When it comes to a phone, unless they go the route of the XBox, where they build it themselves, there is no way to keep it secret when so many other vendors have to have access to the plans to get their own version out. Thus, companies like Apple and Google can move faster and mitigate any new or innovative features said phone might actually have.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Also have a happy new year knowing you have no morals.
I was a Windows guy for portable stuff for many years because they were usually the first to market with the "killer apps" that I needed. (Apps not necessarily meaning applications but also features.) Honestly, M$-based PDAs had some killer features back in the day. But what they've got on the phone market now is a joke. They're a distant third these days. One or two phones per carrier, some still on 6.5 which is 2 years old now. Verizon doesn't even have a 4G WinMo smartphone. It's pretty pathetic. Apple's nice but they've always been behind the curve in connectivity. Last OS to get tethering, still don't have 4G, etc. Android's been at the cutting edge for a while now and, unless they totally drop the ball, it will be hard to pull existing customers away from the platform.
I made the switch a couple weeks ago and haven't looked back. It doesn't really matter to me what Microsoft puts out in the next few years because I don't think they'll be able to catch up, let alone regain the lead. The only hope they have is to go after business clients with cloud computing, workstation docks, etc. Of course, they'd still be playing catchup to Android. Already got laptop and desktop docks for Android phones along with google docs to work on your documents from any device.
It's fascinating to watch Microsoft fail in market after market where it didn't start with a monopoly, like in mobile devices generally, phones specifically, tablets specifically, media generally, mobile media players specifically, and everything else.
Except for mouse and keyboard, and in games both console and PC. Why are those different from the rest? Maybe because mouse and keyboard are just extensions of the Windows brand monopoly on the desktop, with no real brand competition whatsoever. And maybe in games the competitors each have their own monopolies, and the competition is the kind Microsoft likes: based on spending a lot of money and running a corrupt supply chain / marketing system rather than on quality.
--
make install -not war
I think the specific sub-points under the "Superphone" bulletpoint are:
It's a coin toss. Do you want companies telling you what they're trying to do so you can prepare for changes, or do you want to be broadsided by a truly innovative product developed in secure isolation?
I'd argue that if a company is working on something truly revolutionary, it's there obligation to let others know about it so they can issue the layoff notices before having their lunch eaten. :p
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
A "superphone" should be super strong. It should be able to handle being run over by a car, immersion in water, and falling off a building.
Like the Sonim XP3, the Kyocera KX12, and the Casio Ravine phones, all of which can do that. Those thin black plastic things, not rigid enough to survive and not flexible enough to bend when necessary, aren't "super".
Another thing a "superphone" should have is fallback to Iridium satellite links. None of this "no service" crap.
Supermodels - ha! Nothing super about them. Spoiled, stupid little stick-figures with poofy lips who think only about themselves. I used to design for GODS!
one phone for all bands? so you can get the phone and use it on any network with have to buy a ATT or sprint one like the iphone. No having the phone locked to the carrier you choose.
My iPhone 4S works with any carrier...
Especially since it's 11:42am by his post.
That "leaked" roadmap is what Steve Ballmer get's paid billions of dollars to shit out quarter after quarter. *sigh* I hate my job....
Are you certain about that? I would think that for a phone to be GSM and CDMA it would need to have hardware for both on board... doesn't seem like a very cost effective way to manufacture. Interesting...
Indeed, Microsoft could produce an amazing *anything*, but they are hobbled by their own situation.
It always amazes me that some people still believe Microsoft is just chock full o' amazing ideas that would overwhelm the world - if ONLY their corporate culture didn't get in the way.
There's simply no evidence for this. Microsoft has done very little innovation - most of their successful products have resulted form iterative fine-tuning on ideas that originated elsewhere (e.g. Windows, Office). They've done this very well at times... but it's not innovative in the least.
#DeleteChrome
I dont think there's been a single other player out there who can stand to compete against Microsoft in it's ability to generate huge amounts of press and fanfare in unreleased products that ultimately become unparalleled market failures.
Frankly, Microsoft would do well to take a note from Apple's playbook and SHUT THE FUCK UP about the product until it's release instead of blathering like a spastic child about it's vaporware, leaking feature after feature and allowing the competition to catch up or even surpass it's abilities before the product is even launched.
They don't have much else to talk about. Their sales suck. They are years behind the curve on most features that people want. Nobody cares (except MS employees, shills and bloggers), and the new UI is not doing a friggin thing for them. If that new UI has the same effect when it comes to the desktop, they will have even bigger problems. Its pretty tough for them to try to be in that market and get your ass kicked day in and day out. To have any hope of being a respected player, all they can do is talk. As pitiful as it sounds, it still seems to generate some press.
Perhaps the savings of not having to deal with multiple phone models outweighs the costs of including hardware for multiple bands? I don't know, but this is a guess.
SSC
Didn't we hear the same crap about the Zune over the iPod a few years back? Big hat, no cattle.
- Exciting features delivered with disappointment
- Revolutionary change followed by a miserable user experience
- Energetic marketing strategy followed up with monotonous patching and bugfixes
- missed boats and opportunities
- stale product model
- lotta' MEH
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Here's my take. I think Microsoft wants to unify their operating systems.
Windows Phone was the first "Metro" experience, but it runs on an old CE kernel and the stack above that is Silverlight (and XNA). Metro is huge. It's the first really new user interface Microsoft's shipped since Windows 95. Metro makes classic Windows and even iPhone and Android feel ancient -- the same old square icons on a desktop we've all been using for the last several decades.
Windows 8 brings Metro to the desktop, laptop, and tablet world. This world, though, is built on the NT kernel, with the WinRT API above that. Sure, you can build Silverlight-like apps in Windows 8 Metro, it might even be trivial to port your WP app to Windows 8 Metro, but you can't easily go the other way.
So, what can Microsoft do about this? Well, it's easy, move Windows Phone onto the NT kernel, and carry over the bulk of the WinRT API. This would make developing your Windows app for any form factor, from desktops to phones, a very easy task. Throw in some nice Visual Studio and Blend templates for re-shaping your app to fit the various form factors, and you've got something really compelling.
The problem with that? Well, today's Windows Phone hardware probably isn't sufficient to drive an NT+WinRT OS. Enter "Superphones."
Superphones, I'm guessing, are the first generation of Windows Phone that run on the NT kernel and support the WinRT (or at least enough of it for most apps.) Note the Apollo release timing is not far from the expected Windows 8 release. Put that together with the recent news that the Windows Phone chief was put in charge of a "a new role working for me on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8", and there might be something to this.
So, what do you all think. Am I crazy? Would "same API" across all devices be a worthy Microsoft goal? An achievable one? And what about X-box? Could Microsoft pull off the hat-trick, and unify all of their major platforms under a Metro front end? No doubt that's a tall order, and there are three CPU architectures to deal with. But Microsoft is a big and wealthy company.
http://wmpoweruser.com/ looks like pseudo "theres an windows phone user community" site.
Too much "windows wow" articles, from what I can see.
Good point. From now on they are "Windows Phone phones".
You'd turn right around and use "great products" for anything Linux based if it suited advancing your pet OS. The thing is you absolutely can't fathom that anyone would dare like a MS product, and it rankles you to the core. You know the type of personality you have? It's very similar to religious fundamentalists. You're no different than a Muslim, or a Baptist. The only difference between you and them is your religion is computers.,
Microsoft is going to steal Android, slap a Windows-like GUI on it, and call it a super phone.
It'll be awful, just like everything else Microsoft has ever made...
The phone market is done and dusted. People have increasing investment (in money and in time spent learning to use) a collection of applications, and the market for "dumb phone to smart phone" transition is finished. The only market left is competing head-on to switch people away from iPhone (good luck with that) or from Android (fractionally easier, as there's evidence people can be switch to Apple).
In order to compete, Microsoft would either have to completely kill Apple stone-dead in functionality and quality, with a release one product going against a mature product with a mature eco-system (didn't Zune teach them _anything_?) or would have to undercut the commodity Android vendors on price, which is essentially impossible now, never mind in a year's time.
Microsoft are increasing slow to react, and are arriving both late and under-armed at every fight. Music Player, Smart Phone, Tablet: they've missed all three. They need to find a new place to innovate, and for as long as they refuse to do anything which isn't based around Windows, that's going to get harder and harder for them.
What it means, no matter how good it is technically, is that it will fail through bad marketing.
Microsoft has its good points and bad points, but where it really, really always fails, is marketing. A "zune", in brown, that squirts? What complete and utter retard thought that would work?
One example of many over the past 7 or 8 years that just prove that their marketing droids are talking to the wrong people in their focus groups. Microsoft products are not cool.... at all, in any way, to anyone. Business products don't need to be cool, but tech like a phone absolutely needs to be cool to some demographic, regardless of its functionality.
It could be the best phone ever made, but unless Microsoft fires its entire marketing dept, this phone will be DOA.
I'm sure they'll find a way to ruin it, just like many other products before that, no matter how nice they may have been in theory (Zune clusterfuck, Courier debacle, ...).
Apple releases one phone per year. Google doesn't release any phones at all.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
At the top end, Android phones are just as expensive (up front costs and monthly plans) as the iPhone. At the bottom end, the iPhone 3GS is $1 with a contract.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Like Steve Ballmer says "I did it before and I will do it again."
It always amazes me that some people still believe Microsoft is just chock full o' amazing ideas that would overwhelm the world - if ONLY their corporate culture didn't get in the way.
There's simply no evidence for this. Microsoft has done very little innovation - most of their successful products have resulted form iterative fine-tuning on ideas that originated elsewhere (e.g. Windows, Office). They've done this very well at times... but it's not innovative in the least.
I think people are referring to the fact that a company of the size of Microsoft with that much cash flowing in, should be able to produce fantastic products. The fact that their company structure is set up to produce boring products is what is interesting.
I don't know, but it works for me.
Microsoft actually dedicates a good amount of time and money to R&D every year. Unfortunately most of their good ideas never see the light of day. I'm not sure why.
If it's anything like Microsoft's original answer to the iPhone, I think we can be sure it will do all of those things and more!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If that's what's suggested, then I think a Microsoft Superphone would mean...that hell froze over. Don't get me wrong; I think Microsoft is amazing, and has done a great deal for the world. But their phone products are the biggest, steamiest nut-studded shitloafs I've had the displeasure to use. I HATED my phone when I had Windows Mobile, and the odds of them coming out with a great product all of a sudden (be mindful..they've been trying to sort this out for as long as there have been smartphones) are almost zero. Throw in the recent confusion as to whether or not Silverlight was going away, and other insantiy (like opening Microsoft stores...bascially consumer electronics stores in malls...while they decide they will no longer participate in CES) and it does not look good.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
STFU? WTF? This was a leak of a simplistic chart. Apple has managed to get actual prototypes stolen.
They are so far behind in marketshare they need to do more than create a competing phone, they need to create a better phone. It's hard to see how they can claim much marketshare quickly. the churn rate on iPhone is quite low and people who have those phones generally purchase apps they may be be hesitant to abandon for the MS phone which has a fraction of the apps that iOS has available. On the Android front there are way more models than wp models which creates great pricing deals on the 6 month old models. No I ink MS is like the Tandy of mobile phones.
There is no certainty that Android will start taking share from IPhone, it hasn't happened yet, I don't see it happening in 2012. the difference between Apple and Google is that Apple is number two in marketshare but number one in revenue. Google needs to find a way to make android more profitable, winning marketshare certainly hasn't helped.
A phone that has its kryptonite?
The reason is because they don't have the correct leadership. If they get someone with a similar disposition to Jobs in charge, you can bet he'll practically live at MS Research, and you'll see tons of amazing stuff get productized. The problem with MS is that monkey sitting on top of it.
Conversely, plenty of people I know are sick of iPhone problems and Apple's clausterphobic walled garden, and are looking at the android superphones for replacements.
Word up! If Microsoft really wanted to take over this market, they'd take the phone out of their superphone and just make it super. Seriously, imagine a device you could use just like a phone but without the carrier (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, Vodaphone). Not just some WiFi/Skype thing, but a 5G, video call, LEO satellite, wireless system with global coverage and no 'pay per second' or 'pay per bit' usage charges. Call it a "Microsoft fucks the carriers." That would sell BILLIONS.
Well, the do have a lot of sharp computer scientists who sold their souls for Microsoft Research. So I guess it could be the corporate structure getting in the way. On the other hand, maybe the suckiness of the company turned their brains into mush.
This is such a worn out strategy. Almost every time MS has been out done in a product area, some info "slips" out about their new fanatastic, better-than-anything-in-history product. The reason they do this... and all you business majors out there should remember this from your business strategy classes... is to freeze the market. All the possible MS customers that are completely committed to the MS brand will hold off on making a purchase of a competitor's product hoping that MS will actually deliver. And from what we've seen of late, they haven't been doing very well. Windows 7 is not too bad, but you don't have to think too hard to remember all the disappointments that they've delivered.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Are you talking just in the mobile space? It seems to me that MS is doing just fine is OS and Office sales still, despite all that has been going on. All markets are growing - not only the tablet and phone markets (which will probably be owned by android), but the mobile PC market is still in a growth phase. The other surprising growth is actually in the custom-build PC market, so you see newegg, ncix, and other online component vendors trying to expand as fast as possible.
I think you want to take that back. GM is producing good products now.
My guess is a phone os that takes advantage of virtualization or some type of sandboxing so that you can have a single device that you use for personal as well as business use.
iPhone 4S - Technically Yes, actually NO. The modem will do both, however is locked out of the factory to a carrier and can't be changed. Plus, Sprint and Verizon only allows phones they sell on their network.
My iPhone 4S works with any carrier...
You must have a special version of the phone then. The regular iPhone 4S can't work on many carriers (ie AWS ones)
Frankly, Microsoft would do well to take a note from Apple's playbook and SHUT THE FUCK UP about the product until it's release instead of blathering like a spastic child about it's vaporware, leaking feature after feature and allowing the competition to catch up or even surpass it's abilities before the product is even launched.
Actually, it's a strategy MS has used over and over again when it's products are waning in the competitive market. They'll bluster and blather about all these wonderful features, and, but wait!!!... there's more!!! and inexplicably (in my mind anyways) they manage to get the entire media world to listen to them and ignore everyone else. Until they fail to deliver... Anyone else remember Chicago, Blackcomb, or Longhorn?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
In order to compete, Microsoft would either have to completely kill Apple stone-dead in functionality and quality ...
I think you meant something other than "functionality". The iphone doesn't really do anything. The bluetooth profiles are locked down, the radio drivers are unreachable. The only things that iphones do are look up information or make/recieve calls and SMS. And not at the same time.
They do this without crashing and hiding any menus or options that might scare the tech illiterate. I suppose that could be a strange definition of functionalty, but it wouldn't be mine.
Quality is arguable too. Every iphone release on a network also sees the number of dropped calls shoot through the roof, but no one wants to point any fingers. The iphone 4 was known for dropping calls if you touched the metal that ran along the outside. And I would expect "quality" to mean a phone could handle being dropped a few times. An iphone will shatter upon your fourth or fifth "OOOOOOH SHIII-" moment while fumbling for your keys/wallet/iphone.
To be released 2013, actual release 2015
one phone for all bands? so you can get the phone and use it on any network with have to buy a ATT or sprint one like the iphone. No having the phone locked to the carrier you choose.
My iPhone 4S works with any carrier...
No. The iPhone 4S can work with any carrier in general, for the most part. A specific one cannot though, since there is a GSM model and a CDMA model. You either have the GSM or CDMA model in one phone, not both. You could however own both models...
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Well, the do have a lot of sharp computer scientists who sold their souls for Microsoft Research. So I guess it could be the corporate structure getting in the way. On the other hand, maybe the suckiness of the company turned their brains into mush.
Sharp computer scientists don't create things consumers understand or desire. Microsoft's work on Z3 is incredible, but "phone doesn't crash" is not a feature that will get users.
Super duper phone!! So will it fly too? It will probably have the Ballmer mode enabled (automatically throwing chairs at Android users).
I would say MS is slow to react but not late. In fact in some cases early. They've had smart phones and tablets long before Apple. But their efforts were not as successful. However you have pointed out that their early failures are primarily due to wedging in Windows paradigm where it would not have fit.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
MS realises they can't compete in the Smartphone market so they have devised a cunning plan to create a whole new market, the superphone market.
Sure a superphone looks and acts kinda like a smartphone but that' doesn't change the fact that a smartphone is just not a superphone (It doesn't have an MS logo on it for starters).
And when the stats come rolling in, MS will be the only player in this new market so they will naturally have 100% market share.
But it doesn't end there. MS will trademark the Superphone name, effectively meaning nobody else can enter the superphone market. They'll also patent the act of making a phone super just to bolster their position.
The week after, Samsung will trump them by releasing a Megaphone. Their marketing will be so loud it will drown out MS's and pretty soon nobody will remember the superphone.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
for that to work at it's best. Same number does work that well for dual use.
The real problem they have is that to shift the usual mindset of "oh look, Microsoft product. It'll be garbage unless you pay way more than the competition, and then it'll be merely mediocre". In fairness to them, they are slowly, infinitesimally getting a vague clue about security on Windows, and the user interface is merely poor now, instead of dire as was. They do produce workmanlike applications now, having started off poorly, briefly called in at total crap, learned a hard lesson and improved.
However, Microsoft does not have a track record of excellence, but one of mediocrity on first release followed by slow, incremental improvements. The first version of anything new from Microsoft will be crap so don't buy it. The new super phone will follow this pattern, so it'll be late 2013 before we see the iPhone-beater in its full, iPhone beating form.
According to the report you quote, the foreign-made luxury brands are much better than GM. I guess it is all down to "segment" "properly".
Who cares about profitability in this sense? If Android phones keep eating market share from the iPhone (which is eventual if not massive) the need to be "more profitable" is limited. You're really comparing apples to oranges. If we calculate the value of sales of all Android phones against the iPhone you'll find it falls short, it's a matter or rigging in the stats in this case to favor one or the other. Long-term profitability is in favor of Android simply because marketing isn't going away.
At the top end, Android phones are just as expensive (up front costs and monthly plans) as the iPhone. At the bottom end, the iPhone 3GS is $1 with a contract
This is such a misnomer. An iPhone 3GS isn't comparable in terms of abilities with free android phones or low-cost models at this point. The 3GS is nearly 3 years old and falls behind every Android phone produced in the last year in terms of OS updatability (meaning you will never get iOS5 on it) versus almost every new android phone getting 4.0. I'm not arguing one is better than the other but cheap phones drive sales in many cases. Apple will always have their segment but they lost their shirt in the PC world on price and accessibility and again when the mobile market matures it'll happen there too. MS has a chance with great cheap phones to recover but it's more about beating android than taking Apple on, Apple is an also-ran that doesn't know it yet because of the massive closed-ecosystem they insist upon.
Does anyone miss the old cellphone, the one that wore glasses and said "golly"? The one that when you need JUST A PHONE, was JUST A PHONE? I sure do. Seems anymore that the kid on the subway next to me could hijack the space shuttle (or could were they still flying) and take it to wherever he wanted from his damned phone. I find one thing these frilly phones suck at, is just being a phone. These Swiss Army Devices can do 50 things... I just need one. Ring-ring-ring... Hello? That's it.
A company that got started by cheating and lying, then prospering by illegally abusing their monopoly, then losing their momentum altogether, has trouble building something that's great or inspiring, What a surprise :-)
If Microsoft is releasing their Superphone in 4Q12, will they announce its end-of-life the quarter before or the quarter after? Remember the Kin's April announcement and June retirement?
It's going to be the current generation of phone, with an added Infiniband port. Then, you can lash a couple of thousand of them together to make a "super"-phone.
We in the industry have been using the term "superphone" for a while now to indicate the tier that sits above the iPhone in terms of spec. It is jam-packed with very-high-spec Android devices, like the Galaxy Nexus, Motorola Droids, HTC Bionic, etc. This segment differentiates itself from the iPhone with HD resolution displays, NFC, sub 10mm thickness cabinets, dual-core processors and other techie specs. It is the only space that's really left open now that Apple has claimed the $99 to $199 space and is very crowded as a result. The only other viable space is low-end prepaid, where Pantech, ZTE, LG, Huawei and others fight it out. I have a very neat diagram of this, but I think you get the idea. So this comment on the roadmap is I'm sure nothing more than a tip of the hat to that super-high-end market spot and not a "superphone" that'll rescue Microsoft like Superman.
Apollo sounds like Apple. Well, the dung beetles at Apple probably won't listen, but their crap company will probably just better lay off their hairdresser/cosmetologists before they ruin their hairdo or realize that Microsoft would use an Apollo iFad name whenever, wherever, or an iFat, or a soFad.
The new Microsoft super-phone will come with lighter, shorter and smaller tin cans and two strings for messaging redundancy.
The problem with Microsoft is that its being run by accountants, who might be well intentioned but have the creative soul of MP3 player designers, you know the "deer in the headlight" guys who never got that people just wanted to listen to their music, not play with their devices endlessly just to go from one tune to the next. (I have a cousin who was that kind of "early adopter". He also used to drive his car high as a kite while playing with the MP3 player and flicking the ash off of his roaches. Distracted driving ads were written for and because of people like him.)
Anybody who can seriously come up with an ugly brown Zune or a brain-dead Kin in this day and age should be chased from design meetings with a friggin' bull whip and a flame thrower.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Xbox 360 is for applications that are games and use a gamepad. Windows is for applications that use a mouse and keyboard, or rarely a gamepad. Windows Phone 7 is for applications that use a touch screen. The input device feels differ so much among those that one style of real-time game isn't going to be very playable across all three, as anyone who has tried the classic console emulators for Android has discovered. The only games that stand a chance of being portable are the turn-based ones.
How big is Symbian in the English-speaking world? Not everybody wants to have to target the 23 languages of the European Union as their first market.
It's obvious what it would mean- Apple goes back to having a single digit market share again.
your fanboysm works on all apple carrier products
Yes, MS should've waited to release their latest release of their phone o/s.
Is 2018 too soon?
Try using WP7.
Do you mean try before I buy or buy before I try? I can't try before I buy because none of my local friends or relatives has a WP7 phone. I am unwilling to buy before I try because $1,440 on a new 24-month phone contract is more than my limit for an impulse buy.
The next logical step is a Zune phone (zPhone?), now that the Zune has kicked Apple's ass out of the music player market. I can't wait, and I'm sure it will be delivered on schedule and perform just as they say.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
The base version will be 1G GSM, with other network technology available as premium upgrades.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
What happen to Windows Mobile?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile
We can also check into "Way Back Web" to see the web sites as they were way back when.
So after 11+ years Microsoft is still struggling to solve the problem ... alias ... had there been a "Solved" page in the back of the book then Microsoft, i.e. Steve Balmer, might just have had a fighting chance.
Yet, there was none. And here we are today.
Whenever I hear the words Microsoft and smartphone in a sentence together I'm always reminded of this Internet classic where Ballmer laughs at the iPhone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U
Here are some choice quotes from this discombobulated silverback:
"$500 fully subsidized with a plan [while laughing like a wounded hyena] - I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine"
"I like our strategy I like it a lot"
"We're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year Apple is selling zero phones a year"
"In six months [Apple] will have the most expensive phone, by far ever, in the market place and let's see how the competition goes"
It's not just MS, it's almost any large company. It's something about humans and their organizational abilities: it's a very rare large company that's able to make great products and smart decisions with regularity. Most of the time, it seems companies grow to a certain size and then things start falling apart because they're just too big. The problem is, they're also so large and powerful that they can also crush their superior yet smaller competitors with unfair competitive practices; somehow even though they suck at making great products, they're really good at the crushing competitors unfairly part.
one phone for all bands? so you can get the phone and use it on any network with have to buy a ATT or sprint one like the iphone. No having the phone locked to the carrier you choose.
My iPhone 4S works with any carrier...
No. The iPhone 4S can work with any carrier in general, for the most part. A specific one cannot though, since there is a GSM model and a CDMA model. You either have the GSM or CDMA model in one phone, not both. You could however own both models...
Don't correct me when you clearly don't know what you're talking about and read the specification.
iPhone 4S - Technically Yes, actually NO. The modem will do both, however is locked out of the factory to a carrier and can't be changed. Plus, Sprint and Verizon only allows phones they sell on their network.
My iPhone 4S isn't locked to any carrier, I bought it unlocked from Apple. How much stupidity is one required to correct in a single thread?
I have the unlocked, unsubsidized version. Nothing special about it.
Microsoft Research pumps out some amazing stuff - much of which is not commercially viable, but amazing nonetheless.
In fact, it IS their corporate culture that prevents them from really pulling off some amazing stuff.
Microsoft is organized as a series of fiefdoms - you have various divisions that will NOT talk to each other. The Windows sub-teams may have SOME communication with each other, but they don't talk to the Office team. Neither talks with the online (Windows Live) team, and probably none of them talk at all with the Entertainment and Devices sub-teams (which includes Windows Embedded, Xbox, and Windows Phone). Oh yeah, and the IE team and dev tools (Visual Studio) teams...
At best, Microsoft is really just a set of independent businesses with their own schedules, releases, and own ideas of doing stuff. The only difference is that each team can access the source code of other teams.
An anecdote - a friend of mine was working on Windows CE, and he found a memory leak bug in the javascript interpreter. He went over to someone he knew on the IE team and talked to them about it. The IE project manager saw this and got pissed off, chewed out the Windows CE project manager over this, etc. In the end, no one on the IE team wanted to "own" the bug (it was an IE bug, after all) as it was for a product they've shipped and it doesn't concern them anymore when they're working on the latest and greatest.
In the end, the only way any sort of engineering communications goes on between teams (without filtering through the hierarchy of managers and other crap) seems to be through contractors. People would sit down and do nothing, other than routing questions between their team's developers to another contractor who can route the question to the right developer.
Hell, i could bet you could split up Microsoft along these team lines, and nothing would change - it's that bad.
But Google isn't offering anything revolutionary on their phones. Microsoft is trying to compete with Apple in the "innovative" space.
When apple releases a new product, few people know what will be in it until the day its released. When Microsoft releases something, everyone has known what would be in it for over a year.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Microsoft does have amazing talent working for them. There is no doubt about that.
Microsoft has done tons of innovation, the problem is that it takes them so long to get it out that by the time it's a real product, their competitors have had it in theirs for quite some time.
Vista was a great example of this. Microsoft demoed "wobbly windows" and other advanced UI acceleration, and Spotlight type search system back in 2002, neither of which made it into real products until 2007. Apple put them out in 2004.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I always read things like this on slashdot. People conveniently ignore all the innovations coming out of Microsoft. Try comparing office 2010 to office 95 sometime. Unlike Android, Windows Phone is not a copy of apple, but quite innovative. Windows 8 is bringing innovations that will change the face of computing in their implementation of Contracts. I don't think anyone has realized yet how huge a sea change the contract system is. The idea that my App can support social networks, data feeds, or other systems not even invented when I wrote it, is incredible. There have been hundreds of innovations sinc.e windows 3 that make the OS more intuitive and easier to use, as well as under the hood changes that people never see, like the back compat subsystem that actively patches old apps as they load.
In 20 years, linux has not managed to make a single desktop OS GUI I could teach my mother to use. Just because you don't see the innovations, doesn't mean they're not there.
4. CDMA available only if iPhone 4S is sold and activated for use on a CDMA network.
So don't slag people if you aren't willing to actually read the whole specification.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
1. Release cell phone with call quality that's equally as audible and free from noise and dropped calls as is a landline connection.
2. Profit!!
M$ are control freaks, they are talking about price competitiveness, hmm, easy guess. M$ are working on a bumb-phone a remote mobile terminal that only goes into their cloud. A phone that can just barely make a call and then be totally reliant on data the download which it present on the screen, no data connection and the phone might as well be a brick.
So will a mobile dumb terminal work, cheap entry price customers screwed on later on connection and data download costs. So smart phone users how much do you use your phones without making a connection. Of course if your looking to make your dumb-phone as a remote to control your appliances well your out of luck, can't get a connection and you've got a brick in your pocket and this thing is going to be a real data hog.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sybase sold Microsoft a copy of the ASE 10 series code mere months before they were planning to release ASE 11, which drastically changed the architecture and performance characteristics of the database.
The way I see it, Sybase suckered Microsoft into paying for obsolete technology.
The fact that Sybase marketing sucked and never made much inroads with the 11 or 12 series ASE databases outside their established markets was what killed Sybase, not some predatory behaviour by Microsoft.
I'm quick to blame Microsoft when they're at fault, but I'm not so naive as to let companies get away with shitty marketing or technology that they subsequently blame "monopoly abuse" for failing to win a place in the market.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Metro, Unity, and all these other "innovative" interfaces are nothing more than a desktop of big icon buttons and an attempt to force the user back to a single-tasking model from a windowing interface model that encourages multi-tasking.
It's not "innovative" -- it's a step backwards to the bad old days of green screen form processing, where you kept filling out screens and hitting submit to move through an application with no option to change the workflow from what the programmers built in.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I have an odd set of features I hope to find some day.
I have no interest in carrying a cell phone and being leashed to harassment by customers and employers 24x7. Leave a message on my landline or send an email -- I'll get back to you when I have time, not cater to your impatient demands for instant service impinging on my personal life.
Seeing as I don't want to carry around a phone all the time, what I want is a tablet device that will let me use a stylus to scribble notes and diagrams, a true replacement for pen and paper.
I want the option of having those scribblings analyzed for text content, graphical components, and an interface to clean up those scribblings and turn them into a proper document on my home/main system when I get back from collecting notes at a client site.
It might be nice to have 4G and phone connectivity from the tablet device, maybe even skype video conferencing support, but I'd rather just clip a bluetooth headset to my ear and have it talk to the tablet than deal with an actual cell phone.
If you want to get fancy, let me use the bluetooth headset to "command" the tablet through a voice interface. I don't mean being able to say "Select File. Select Save As. ..." type dialogs, but Siri Part II: Siri Meets Watson. With an actual tablet, the device has enough power to do the voice analysis and grammar parsing without resorting to a central server like Siri has to because of the low CPU power and memory of a cell phone.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
In short, I'm still waiting for someone to follow through and bring Alan Kay's ideas to market instead of trying to tell me that being able to play "Angry Birds" is more innovative and useful than being able to take notes.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
and particularly that he decides that he needs to share this information with an anonymous hoarde of Slashdot-readers, many of which are single men, unwed, and sadly (given the amount of ho-ho-hos and nervous heh-heh-hehs), unlaid.
You mean like the Volt? Great idea, insane price.
I can buy two Ford Focus cars for the price of one Volt. And despite the lack of an electric drive train, both of them will get better highway mileage than the Volt.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
($Version)-1 was crap but the new $Version is wonderful.
Yes, I heard that about WinME, MS Exchange 5.5, IE6 and a pile of other crappy products by MS standards before and since. Does that silly bit of doubleplusgood advertisingspeak actually convince anybody?
I've seen fanbois mention the higher revenue per phone as a selling point before, but to me as customer that means I've paid to much for the thing.
iPhones are a commodity with a certain amount of cache
Roughly 512KB, I should think.
So don't give customers/clients your cellphone number. I don't do that, I'l give them my direct corporate number and it will forward to my mobile for some time profiles or send a jabber notification otherwise. Calling customers from the mobile only happens through the corporate pbx using callthrough/back functions.
The closest device that matches your needs appears to be something like the Galaxy Note, though it lacks the voice driver capabilities I guess.
iPhone 4S - Technically Yes, actually NO. The modem will do both, however is locked out of the factory to a carrier and can't be changed. Plus, Sprint and Verizon only allows phones they sell on their network.
My iPhone 4S isn't locked to any carrier, I bought it unlocked from Apple. How much stupidity is one required to correct in a single thread?
quite a lot obviously, I'm not even from USA but I can tell you that no, you can't just pop a sim into your unlocked bought iphone4s and have it work on a cdma network, for it to work on that network it would need to be carrier locked and the carrier would have needed to sold you it.
I bet american carriers just hate that sim-cards even exist. otherwise they could just sell all phones. that's perhaps even carrying weight behind choice to keep using cdma.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Recently I wanted to go back to 2005. If I knew all it took was reading the comments of Slashdot's declining mobile section, it could have saved me a lot of time. I find it funny people commenting on reliability and security on a phone platform that isn't riddled with malware, viruses, and security holes, while people proclaim from the heights the crappy not-even-open source platform that has all of the above. BSOD? Not since 2005. Sorry, buck-o. MS has come leaps and bounds since they hit rock bottom with Vista over half a decade ago. Vista is workable, Win7 is fantastic, Win8 is still a mystery but the Metro UI is a great advance as far as touchscreen integration is concerned. The tile grid UI and resource-greedy widgets of yesteryear are hopefully going to die a swift death, but I assume the amount of hangers-on that I see in these comments will keep the past alive because of their general fear of the unknown. It's almost irony that the MS offerings in the cell phone market "just work", whereas the one chosen by the geek community requires all of the care, setup, and fixing that made them hate Windows in the first place. And then the world moved on without all of you, while you still live firmly in this echo chamber that has seen a 20% drop in web traffic over the past year. Judging by the outdated discussions going on here (Completely ignoring the medical advances that Kinect is promising, ignoring Surface and the fact there is nothing like it in the world, and ignoring the success and redemption Win7 has brought MS in the eyes of the general market), and judging the general hypocrisy (Down with Windows and its malware and crashes... but I use Android!) I can't imagine this will be met with "astroturfer" and "paid employee", because anyone that disagrees with Slashdots infinite pool of geriatrics is automatically paid to do so. Enjoy.
The 3GS is nearly 3 years old and falls behind every Android phone produced in the last year in terms of OS updatability (meaning you will never get iOS5 on it) versus almost every new android phone getting 4.0
Funny, iOS 5 installed just fine on my nearly 3-year old 3GS, and new 3GS being sold today come with iOS5 pre-installed.
And several Android phones released in the last year will NOT get the 4.x ICS upgrade, including the LG Optimus V (released Feb 1, 2011) and Motorola Atrix (Feb 22, 2011). Per LG's update plans from a few days ago, only 11 of their phones are officially slated to get ICS. I didn't bother checking the other vendors, but it's obvious not "every" Android phone in the last year can be upgraded to the latest firmware, while a nearly 3-year old iPhone can (and I'll bet very few 2-year old Android devices, never mind 3-year old ones, will get 4.x ICS).
Apple will continue to lose overall market share. It's of course inevitable when they control every aspect of it and are the only manufacturer that runs iOS, while anyone can make dozens of models of cheap Android devices. Limiting themselves to a new model and OS features every year is also a problem, despite the irony that Apple gets flamed by haters for releasing new models "too quickly" who ignore the dozens of new Android phones are released each year.
However, you can't just write them off as an "also-ran that doesn't know it yet". Comscore reports that by end of November, Apple increased its market share by 1.4% to 28.7%. Android increased by 3.1%, RIM was down by the same amount, and Microsoft lost 0.5%.
Another way to look at it ("rigging the stats" if you want) is that Android improved on existing market share by 7%, Apple improved by 5%, RIM declined by 15.7%, and Microsoft declined by 8.8%. If there's an also-ran in this bunch it's not Apple.
"Windows Super-phone "could mean it could fly out of my window in a single bound when I get the bill,find the bugs and hear the daily 'sploit reports.
Stickin' with my "not-so-smart-phone" for now thanks.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
There's nothing specific to the OS or anything MS when it comes to multi-band support, so as it's MS slides here I wouldn't expect anything new in this area.
If anything such multi-bands support would be on Nokia side, and the trade-offs are the same for all handset vendors. Adding more bands add cost and may call for some compromise in performance --- a wide band power amplifier is not as efficient as a narrow band one for example. Because of the tight grip US operators have on what's on their network it doesn't make much sense to support all on the same hardware: if the hardware is operator specific anyway, you might as well cost optimize the hardware and support only the operator bands. And add just a few more for international roaming for high end devices. Unless the US carriers open up their network a lot this won't change.
The above advertising trick was used to promote WinME by pretending Win98SE was rubbish (while the reverse was true) and some spectacularly bad versions of MS Exchange (as shocking as an open relay by default in 5.5 while the previous version worked OK).
Are you certain about that? I would think that for a phone to be GSM and CDMA it would need to have hardware for both on board... doesn't seem like a very cost effective way to manufacture.
Nonetheless, there are many phones which do simply have the hardware for both (there's presumably some degree of commonality which can be shared, so it's probably not exactly twice the hardware).
It's a fairly common feature on Japanese cellphones, targetted specifically at people who travel overseas...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
There is no separate GSM and CDMA model in the latest model. The 4S has both chips, although there is a software lock in place in America.
don't think anyone has realized yet how huge a sea change the contract system is. The idea that my App can support social networks, data feeds, or other systems not even invented when I wrote it, is incredible.
Wow, you mean they invented the programming interface, only about as old as programming itself? How amazing that they gave it a completely new name and pretend like it is something fascinating. Get back to work, Ballmer is looking to fire slackers.
Monstar L
Superphone = being able to call people through time and space like Rose's phone on Dr. Who.
Yay. I would really like to be able to talk to my dead relatives.
On that subject, have you ever seen anyone do something dumb in a smartcar?
There is no longer separate GSM and CDMA models, there is only on global model. You can have both Source from anandtech
I just couldn't get enough of that in Windows Mobile 6, looking forward to it in Microsoft's new superphone.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The problem as I see it is that Microsoft management has an absolute imperative to use the same code on all platforms. So the cell phone division has absolutely no choice but to run Windows. And Windows doesn't work well on a handheld device. But Windows is Microsoft's core competency and must run on all their platforms. It's a circular argument that will continue to dominate on the desktop and continue to suck everywhere else. They can't help it; it's built into the way the company does business.
In another thread, someone suggested that Microsoft could force corporate adoption of Windows phones by making the next version of Exchange work only with Windows PCs and Windows devices. Assuming that could even be done, what that means to me is that the previous version of Exchange would be the last version ever adopted by corporate. There just isn't any longer a business imperative to run Microsoft.
You're right in that they were early to market in this genre, mostly by blindly releasing devices with a "start" button and running some version of Office and Outlook and calling it good. And it wasn't. Part of being early is that when you get it wrong, you have to recoup your mindshare in some way, and I don't think Microsoft has done that in any significant way. Windows phones featured on TV shows isn't going to do it. And pulling out of CES is the consumer equivalent of making a movie and refusing to pre-screen. It bodes ill. Personally, I thought Microsoft pulled out of CES because they didn't want consumers to touch Windows 8 and find out how much it sucks. The strategy seems to be to go from very carefully controlled demos directly to sales. $$ Profit, we all live like kings.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Um, unless the special projects group finally got the bugs worked out of Microsoft Magic Wand, [1] the cost of putting in that kind of infrastructure would be prohibitive. They would have to buy an existing carrier, which is not, I think, what you meant.
[1] The biggest issue, as I recall, was how to incorporate a "Start" button.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All they have to do is click on that link to see that you've backdated it three years and pretended we were writing about the Tsunami three years before it happened. What an incredibly stupid and obvious lie.
The parent comment is identical to his comment to another poster. It's obscene, it's flamebait, it's a troll and it's reducndant. Why is the guy still sitting at 1? He should have been modded to oblivion yesterday.
Terjeber, why are you so focused on dicks? Are you female, or gay? At any rate, your fascination with male genetalia is troubling. Perhaps you should seek psychaitric help?
If you're still in high school don't bother, teenagers are normally insane (If you want a scientific study I can point you to at least one).
Free Martian Whores!
It's vastly complicated by the subsidy model in the US. If you purchase a Verizon or Sprint iPhone 4S, it has capability of connecting to GSM networks just fine, but it will not when operated domestically. If you go to Europe with it, though, it will work fine.