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First Impressions of Windows 8 Powered Nokia Lumia 920 and 820
Nerval's Lobster writes "Nokia CEO Stephen Elop first took to the stage at Center548 on New York City's West Side, where Microsoft had first unveiled Windows Phone 7 in late 2010, to claim that Nokia was becoming a 'more nimble competitor' thanks to several strategic decisions under his tenure, including the choice of Windows Phone as the company's primary smartphone platform. ... In terms of [the 920's hardware]: the battery is 2000 mAh; the processor is a dual-core Snapdragon S4, which was apparently selected for its energy efficiency; and the aforementioned wireless charging, based on the 'Qi' wireless charging standard. ... Despite the enthusiasm displayed onstage for Windows Phone 8, the new smartphone platform poses something of a conundrum for Nokia. The company invested heavily in Windows Phone 7, all but abandoning its homegrown operating systems — including Symbian, once a dominant player in the mobile arena — in favor of Microsoft’s platform. But those Windows Phone 7 smartphones won't upgrade to Windows Phone 8 software, and nor will they run Windows Phone 8 apps."
You just put it in the microwave and turn it on high for about 3-4 minutes.
The hardware itself does seem almost too good to be true... It seems like an aazing device, Though, I'd be much more inclined to purchase if there were an Android offering... Simply because of the lack of pre-existing apps/community support for windows 8, Especially on mobile devices. This will likely improve with time, but, at least for now, i think the software is killing an amazing device
/endrant
"...here's your complimentary knife in the back."
After the announcement, Nokia stock price has gone down 15 % from yesterday's closing value at OMX Helsinki. So, not the kind of announcement the market was expecting, it seems.
U+F8FF
And I thought you'd be getting a free one, what with working for Nokia ; ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Sounds like a nice piece of hardware, but does it run Linux (read Android or MeeGo)?
From TFA:
Nokia’s PureMotion HD+ is the company’s name for its tweaks to the display, including blur-free scrolling.
Why isn't this not only standard, but the only acceptable state these days? When will people (Android, I'm looking at you here) figure out that getting the basics so completely solid that nobody thinks about them is the kind of work that people should expect from their OS/Environment provider? Watching a video talking about how many cores the latest whatever has with jittery scrolling is just embarrasing.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
There won't be any developers. Developers want to code for platforms people are using--iPhone and Android. People want to use platforms developers are coding for--iPhone and Android. It's a self-feeding loop and Nokia is way, way too late to the party. Any phone that doesn't run iPhone or Android apps is dead, dead, dead.
What's that large $500 hole in my checking account in the distance, it looks like... iPhone 5.
FTFY
sudo make me a sandwich
Considering it's a shill, yes. Their first post to Slashdot is alengthy and gushing post about Windows Phone with a time stamp identical to the story's post time.
There doesn't need to be when it will run all apps from WP7.
Fact is, developing for Windows 8 is also developing for (for the most part) Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 RT, and probably in the future Xbox 720 (or whatever they call it). Whether you like Metro or not, Windows 8 will be shipping on all Desktops and Laptops in the Fall, and will be a viable platform with an immediate install base. As bad as Vista was, it still managed to find its way on more computers than Mac OSX. Developers *will* code for Windows 8, they *will* code for Windows RT, and if the marginal benefit is in their favor they *will* code for Windows Phone 8. Maybe that marginal benefit will not be there at first, but the scales will tip.
You have to have a Windows machine.
Listen, I like the Nokia phones, and that's what I was going to buy. I brought my Ubuntu laptop into the store to check it out, see if it was compatible, but it isn't. You absolutely must have a Windows install, and a virtual machine won't cut it. (This was the quite-new 610, but looking around online shows that the 700 and 900 have the same issue.)
It uses the Zune file system, and nobody but MS has been able to figure out how to mount it. You can't transfer files with Bluetooth. You can't put music on it. You can't sync to anything. It's a completely stand-alone device unless you're running Windows.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Oh man, I think SCO won that one.
from what i've read they will get most of the upgrades and will go to version 7.8
but even then it shouldn't be a big deal to code apps for 8 and 7. happens all the time in the app store where most apps now require iOS 4.x and will have some special iOS 5 features if you have the latest version
"Windows 8" != "Windows Phone 8." There is a huge difference.
/* No Comment */
To think that Nokia's own Symbian had more than 50% smartphone market share only three years ago and big plans for their Linux based highend OS, which was universally praised, and instead now going for an OS that not only locks the user down, but locks themselves in a position where they give away control of OS development, outsource all manufacturing (after shutting down most locations in Europe and firing loyal employees by the boatload) and need to contend with the likes of Samsung who do their own CPU, RAM, display etc. fabrication is just unfortunate. It's hard to not be cynical about this.
Microsoft obviously is pushing for positive publicity offering free samples to bloggers etc. but all the money in the world won't make the OS more attractive to the end-user, even with their new funky looking N9-like design. Functionality wise the it's lacking compared to Android and the restrictive Metro UI whether on your computer or on your phone is butt-ugly at worst and uninspiring at best.
On the other hand this might actually what MS alternatives have needed to become worth considering by more end users.
What would you call an app that is targeted for windws phone 8 and uses windows phone 8 features? I would call it a windows phone 8 app. That app will not work on windows phone 7. It is an accurate and true statement. saying it your way is just needlessly confusing and stupid. I think what you would like people to say is that very few applications will be written for windows phone 8. Therefore, it is not an issue.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Whether you like Metro or not, Windows 8 will be shipping on all Desktops and Laptops in the Fall, and will be a viable platform with an immediate install base. As bad as Vista was, it still managed to find its way on more computers than Mac OSX. Developers *will* code for Windows 8, they *will* code for Windows RT, and if the marginal benefit is in their favor they *will* code for Windows Phone 8.
I rather suspect they'll continue coding for Windows 7 or even XP so to have the widest install base. Enterprise clients in particular hate having to upgrade, so jumping in and making something that only works on Metro is a non-starter.
Unfortunately, this is simply false. There is a Windows Phone Mac Connector program that allows syncing to the Mac. As a Mac user, I can attest it works great. This of course leaves Linux users in the cold, but it is not a Windows-only solution.
More to the point, there is less and less requirement to sync to a PC at all. Photos auto-sync via Skydrive. Email is all cloud-based. Podcasts are directly synched without requiring a PC to download them. Music comes directly from your Xbox Music Pass. Apps are directly downloaded. Files can be shared via dropbox or Skydrive.
There are obviously still cases where you would like to sync directly with a computer, but they are becoming really infrequent.
Windows Phone 8 has SD card support for transferring any data you please to any platform you please. I'm not sure yet if this means plugging it in via USB will mount the SD card, but that's what Joe Belifore seems to indicate in his interviews. We shall see. Also updates are OTA in WP8. You can also alternatively sync files via SkyDrive which is available cross platform.
Windows Phone 7 isn't Windows only also; a syncing program has been available for OSX for a while.
If you're an Android power user, and you want to see reasonable OS updates, then you know to buy a Nexus device, that's the point of them. Google can't force the various carriers and handset makers push out updates, and it's not in their interests to do so since they want you to buy a new handset every year, so you should understand what's going to happen there. OTOH my Nexus S had ICS and Jelly Bean almost from day one, no hacks, and running perfectly, and that's a pretty old phone now.
Oh no... it's the future.
Where is the Start button?
Windows phone is really good to try out. I haven't tried windows phone 8, but WP7 was really quite interesting to see. I'm not sure it's good or bad but it's certainly different than the iPhone/Android setup.
Fact is, developing for a smart phone is a completely different thing from developing for a desktop or game console; the difference in screen size, input methods, memory size, processing power and battery restrictions make them utterly different. Windows 8 apps may be theoretically runnable on Windows Phone 8 (And I'm not convinced people will be writing them anyways--as has been pointed out elsewhere, people will be writing Windows XP apps for a while yet for maximum audience), but they won't be *usable* on Windows Phone 8. I'm not surprised that Microsoft doesn't understand this; the entire attempt to shoehorn Metro into Windows 8 shows that they don't understand that you can't run a cellphone interface on a desktop, and vice-versa.
Yes, it will. You misread the summary. WP7 will not run WP8 apps. The other way around will work as Microsoft has repeatedly stated.
Not in the 10k region but still - I appreciate the first post was a bit heavy on the enthusiasm - my guess is an enthusiastic MVP rather than anything more sinister..
A dual core CPU and a huge battery are pretty great hardware specs. Also a mechanically stabilized sensor mechanism could be very big news, especially if their software really does make innovative use of the available pixels. The point has been made recently that for PC usage (sharing on FB etc, 2MP is more than enough, for print 5MP is enough - IF THE QUALITY IS THERE.
I assume the stock has plummeted because until a few days ago everyone was hoping for a 20MP sensor and a new tablet to go with the phones. On the other hand - the markets are idiots - buy today, you'll be 10-15% richer by the end of the month if you sell at a time when they don't arbitrarily decide to mood swing again...
I am a bit disappointed that we loose the smaller screen model - the 820 doesn't really replace the 800, it's more of a slightly smaller variation on the 920 - which is a pity. I personally prefer to hold a smaller screen closer to my face... However, for the feature set that WP8 brings (NFC, more home/lock screen flexibility, better camera tech), I might just have to go larger.
Final comment as everyone takes a snipe at this. I have a lumia 800 and I'm looking forward to windows 7.8. I don't care that they're not giving me Windows 8 - the differences between 7.8 and 8 are the differences between the base specification of the current hardware and the next gen hardware (screen resolution, NFC etc). Microsoft are just being honest that their latest phones have features that their older phones don't support. Apple astroturf that fact and that causes heaps of faulty software that fails to cope well enough.
Love Windows Phone, like iPhone (though these days can't justify the cost), frustrated by having to sideload, hack and generally tweak Android whenever I use it.
I was hoping see some decent competition from MSFT to keep Apple on its toes but that is so weak. Why do they insist on that stupid flipping titles? People that I care about? If I want to see what "people that I care about" are doing, I can see notifications in the notifications bar pop up on my iPhone 4S or I can *gasp*, go into my facebook or twitter app instead of cluttering up my homescreen with their faces. Alternatively, I can alway "call" them. I hate the hub concept still and the flipping tiles are likely to give someone an epileptic seizure. It reminds me of some really badly designed website from the late 90's or early 00's.
Get it through your thick skulls MSFT, people like apps and they don't like distractions with flip-flopping tiles on the homescreen. I have to give you credit for trying to be original but give it a rest already. Also, nobody except fanboys like the "hub" concept. Stop trying to oversell your Xbox live and other services on the mobile platform.
BTW. Nice touch on slavishly copying Apple on the screenshot with the power and home button combo.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I know that I swim against the /. current here when it comes to Window Phone. I haven't drank of the MS or Apple or Linux koolaid. I use all three desktop OS flavors at work every week and they all have strengths and weaknesses. I never bought the first iPhone because of the soldered in battery. At the time I was using 2 batteries a day in the field. (not to mention the privacy concerns of not being able to REALLY turn off my phone). I had a miserable experience with the first Droid (randomly calling and texting). I went Blackberry for a while. Revisited iPhone, but the screen typing was horrid (large fingers). When it was time to upgrade in 2010 I went with the Samsung Focus and it just worked for me. I do like the Metro interface on the touchscreen, but always by-pass it when using Win8 on the desktop. Seems pretty useless on the desktop, but it would surely be useful on a tablet and possible a laptop with touchscreen.
The Nokia 900 WP7, had some advantages over the Samsung Focus S on the spec sheet. Bigger screen, bigger body (again... large hands), and the camera cmos appeared faster to me in the store. The other advantage is the Xbox Live connection. Love it! Games developed my interest in computers and I am a gamer at heart. My only complaint is that with the Case-Mate case I confuse the phone with my wallet when it's in my pocket sometimes, but I am working on the brain power required to recognize the difference.
I am only mildly concerned about not being able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 with my Nokia 900. If I feel like I'm missing out on some must-have super app before my 2-year upgrade comes around, I will bite the bullet and pay the phone price.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
I'm sorry, I only have my own experience to draw from, from real life. I really wanted to get the Lumia, but I had had enough of missing features with my Walkman, and I didn't want to play that game again.
If I was hallucinating at the time, I apologize. My dream-state, which looked surprisingly like a Best Buy, was unable to mount a Nokia Lumia 610 Windows 7.5 phone to an Ubuntu installation. Now, I was only there for about an hour, dreaming, but the phone and my computer together made it impossible to mount.
Perhaps there are instructions for how to do that. If there are, they aren't online anywhere.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
The New Sony Xperia S is now supported by AOSP.
Expect there to be nexus phones from most of the major players within the next 6 months.
Even a middling android device has nicer hardware than the current iPhone or these new windows phones these days.
Also, there's plenty of use cases for standard connectors and protocols. Why should I have to send a 1080p video clip (that this phone is able to take) to SkyDrive if all I want to do is to watch it once on my TV / PC? It will take forever for me to upload it to Microsoft's servers over wifi, and if I'm not at home, uploading it over 3G will be expensive (and even slower).
This phone has no SD card slot.
1% of a thousand times more would mean ten quality android apps for every wp7 app in existence. I like those numbers!
Mango apps resume instantly (they're suspended in RAM, that's all). If Rovio hasn't gotten around to recompiling Angry Birds for Mango I'd be surprised (it's literally a three-click process in Visual Studio) but I suppose that's possible. In any case, most games resume instantly after you switch back from the call interface, even if you're still on the call (games will usually resume in a paused state for obvious reasons, but that's just a convenience fo rhte user).
WP8 will run all WP7 apps, which presumably means it will continue to support instant resume. The increased amount of RAM on some models may also allow suspending more apps, which would be nice.
Also, you can totally use C/C++ for WP7 development. There are even some (few) third-party apps in the Marketplace which do so. You just have to either figure out the tricks yourself (homebrew developers did this almost immediately) or get Microsoft approval (OEM apps and the officially-sanctioned Adobe Reader app being examples where that permission was granted beforehand).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
You don't necessarily have to recode since WP8 is backwards compatible with WP7 apps.
Not without installing it yourself you didn't.
http://www.mobilebloom.com/verizon-galaxy-nexus-4g-jelly-bean-4-1-on-the-way-unofficially-already-out/2221143/
Promising delivery by the end of September...
"those Windows Phone 7 smartphones won't upgrade to Windows Phone 8 software, and nor will they run Windows Phone 8 apps"
My G1 can in fact run a very limited relase of Android Jelly Bean. The CyanogenMod guys keep doing this just because they can.
IOS 6 does run on a 3GS, albeit missing some features. Before that, I think the iPhone 3 is pretty much out of it, but that's what, 4 generations back? My G1 is at least 3 generations back...
But your Windows 7 phone, booting Windows 8? Nope. Not even for fun.
And this goes back past Windows Phone to the old CE releases.
Clearly Microsoft still doesn't get it. Or they want to continue to go forward, leaving the old behind.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Always follow the party line, no matter what. "Die partei, die partie, die hat immer recht"
Possibly an eye-opener: if Samsung slavishly copied Apple, who did Apple copy? The differences between Apples first attempt at a mobile phone and earlier phones from more experienced manufacturers are not that big, all the way from the basic shape (rounded cornered rectangle, screen dominated front, speaker and microphone at logical positions) through the basic interface (a grid of icons) to more specific features (slide to unlock, context-sensitive actions on text, etc). Literally all of this had been done before. Nobody had made an iPhone before, and nobody - other than Apple - has made one ever since. The same can be said though for, eg, the HTC Prophet. HTC never claimed they owned the basic shape of this device, nor did they claim to own the basic interface (a grid of icons). LG did not claim they owned the concept of a rectangular, rounded cornered screen dominated slab with a capacitive touch screen. Which is logical - they did not invent the capacitive touch screen, nor did they invent the rectangle or the colour black. You did not see any HTC or LG (or any of the other manufacturers') users claiming these things either. Samsung never claimed to own these things, even though they had several products which predated Apple's first phone while encompassing many of its features.
Oddly enough Apple does make these claims, and many Apple users parrot them.
Please take some effort to answer this question: who did Apple copy? If your answer is 'nobody, they invented all of this themselves' then I'm afraid you'll have to do some more studying.
Apple made a popular phone, which sold by the millions even though the price was inflated. It still sells by the millions, and these sales have made Apple a stupendous amount of profit (both because of the obscene profit margin on these phones as well as the sheer number of phones they sold). In other words, they made a successful product. Where they went wrong was when they started claiming to be the sole proprietors of the basic concepts behind this phone.
Please use some common sense before you parrot their statements. Have a look at the television wall in some electronics store to see what I mean. Look at the washing machines, or the calculators, or just about any other product. Look around you and see - nobody is an island. No company creates something out of nothing. This includes Apple. They, like everyone else, look around them and base their products on what they've seen. The difference between Apple and most other companies is that they then turn around and claim never to have looked, that they came up with it all by themselves. This is wrong, and you know it is wrong.
Don't just blindly follow the party line.
Think Different.
--frank[at]unternet.org
So as long as just about everything you need is in the Microsoft ecosystem, then you won't really need to sync. Great!
Speak for yourself. I transfer files to my Android phone over Wifi all the time. And I'm not alone - my mom just got a phone and she wanted to be able to pull pictures from relatives' phones without requiring both phones to have the same obscure transfer app. I told her she could do this natively on Android over Bluetooth, but it may only work with other Android phones since Apple likes to lock down Bluetooth (probably to make the record labels happy). So even non-techies are looking to do things that are not possible with these locked-down platforms.
big plans for their Linux based highend OS, which was universally praised
Not by developers it wasn't.
It might have been fine compared to how people used to develop apps for Nokia Phones, but the MeeGo stuff was awfully limited looking at it from an Android or iPhone developer standpoint.
The truth is that MeeGo was a good update for pre-iPhone OS's, but could not cut it in the new world which was why Nokia was forced to partner with MS. They just did not have the resources to bring it up to scratch in time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I do have to admit that visual studio is great but unfortunately it won't run on wine so I use something else, I wish i could find open source ide that has all of its features like built in gui designer.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
How is it impressive?
Compare to an S3 or a One X.
The Lumia CPU is outdated, and the screen is AMOLED. So if you think Super AMOLED is not for you neither is this.
I love my Galaxy Nexus, but if I had to make the same decision now I would not get it. At the time it was a great device, but the S3 or OneX or the Xperia are better choices these days. The first two if you will do your own updates the latter if not.
Photos auto-sync via Skydrive.
If you actually want to use Windows Live.
Ok, you got me there. If you don't want to use Microsoft's services, you indeed don't get access to Microsoft's services.
Email is all cloud-based.
For tiny little miniscule values of all...
Many of us keep photos on our home servers (my /media/Photos tree has 310GB of files) . Many of us keep emails either on the home server, or accessed from POP/IMAP servers using an email client.
If you want to have a subset of the 310GB of photos on your phone, you dump that subset in your Skydrive or Dropbox or put it up on Facebook or Flickr. Re mail - Windows Phone does support pop and imap as well as EAS. If none of those work for you, I'm afraid I'm going to call you an edge case.
The Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 is the same processor as in some versions of the S3 and One X: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapdragon_S4#Snapdragon_S4
As for Super AMOLED, the downside is the pentile (RGBG as opppsoed to RGB) pixel arrangement which induces fuzziness in text. Displays with this screen contain 1/3 fewer subpixels compared to RGB, but with the same resolution. Lumia 900 is a clear black AMOLED technology with RGB pixels and looks amazing. I haven't seen a 920 obviously, but if it's anything like the 900 it will be gorgeous.
As for other impressive hardware in the 920, you have NFC, wireless charging, advanced optics (floating lens image stabilization), curved glass display, unibody design, super sensitive touchscreen (can touch with normal gloves on or even fingernails), and at 1280x768 on 4.5 inches has a higher pixel density (332) than the S3 (306), OneX (312), and iPhone 4S (326).
What exactly have you been looking for? Are there Windows 8 versions of all of this? Oh wait, your account is brand new, you're obviously a shill. An actual "Android Power User" wouldn't care one jot about Windows Phone.. it's irrelevant really.
I'm an Android "power user" who thinks that Android is a terrible OS, less stable and mature than Windows 3.11. I think that iOS (with which I have experience as a user, but I've never fiddled with the OS) is at the same level as Android. I suspect that Windows Phone is probably also crap, but since it's the major smartphone OS I haven't yet tried I'm interested in giving it a shot before I declare all mobile operating systems garbage. I think that anyone who has spent real time with Android or iOS and has any experience with software or a remotely critical mind would be pretty interested in jumping ship, even if the life raft is probably just as leaky.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)