Right, that's exactly how you should cover Windows Phone news on Slashdot. Link one posting, by a blogger well known for poorly substantiated rants against Elop's Nokia. Link it twice as if referring to two sources. Cite a sales figure expertly pulled out of thin air by the said blogger, in preference to an officially confirmed higher figure. Ignore the fact that the phones have only been on the market for a couple of months at best in Q4 2011, so any sales projections, even were they based on verified data, may be widely off. Top up with a headline that recasts Elop's message into a negative emotional light (he was actually careful enough to avoid assigning blame). You are guaranteed a storm of responses from like-minded people, most of whom have never seen a Lumia or any Windows Phone in action, but are quick to disparage it, because it replaced a mythically great Linux-based platform that N9 was never intended to become.
What's interesting is that *all* the "review" comments for the Lumia are glowing, all praise the technical features, and all seem to be quite well informed about the features and have correct spelling and grammar. While the review comments on the LG and other phones are more typical bitching and griping about how the phone quit working because the screen broke when the user dropped it....
Meaning that WP users tend to be well educated, know what they want, and have the sense to write about things that matter? Or, maybe, it's all a giant marketing operation, which also explains the absence of drooling idiots and fanbois who come out of the woodwork whenever Android is discussed.
Heh, that's why comparing anything to "Europe" is pointless: one can always find nonsensical bathrooms and heating like in the UK, cash-only payment in half the places like in Germany, analog TV in a lot of places, Romania or Bulgaria for everything in general, and so on. Interestingly, none of this applies to Finland. Opening hours are our concession as a society to people who work these places (well, banks have it rather too easy; but then you don't need to drag your physical ass to the bank every so often, it's all now done over the net).
Well, this is a bit different from a single BNP Paribas review that only had a figure of 2% interested in Lumia among European customers, which was widely cited as proof that the new models fall flat in Europe.
Wow, there is somebody on Slashdot who sees the Meego history in realistic light.
And Elop just may be doing a few things right: we finally get sales figure estimates for Lumia not entirely pulled out of some banker's orifice, and they show some respectable numbers, this before US sales have rolled in.
Really? The history of bonch looks completely normal. BTW, I got mode points and bumped up one of his comments that was downmodded for being insightful the wrong way by the Android Defense Army, just like one of my comments in this thread.
Okay, I see, you wage a holy war against infidels who doubt that Android is The Only True Mobile OS. It's us or them. Don't let Slashdot fall for deceitful plurality of opinion and keep some touch with the real world.
Overpopulated or sparse, at least with android that is your choice. With WP7 you get this "pinned" apps screen, and a even worst scrollable list with all apps. Doesn't have the flexibility of widgets,
Well, those tiles are widgets, they show dynamic stuff.
no way to organize stuff in folders, nothing. Absolutely awful if you have more than a few apps.
As a former Symbian user, I hate app folders. I would just prefer to have less shit on my phone. I hear Microsoft requires from hardware vendors and ISPs to make their Windows Phone shovelware uninstallable, and I think this is a very good idea.
Almost every ad is obnoxious on a metered connection. I can tell you I see a huge difference when I use the Lumia's browser instead of the N1 browser. Pages take a lot longer to load, content is almost lost in the middle of ads, etc.
I dunno. The sites I use show one or two ads if any at all, and I think it's a small price for supporting them, as my broadband rate is not that expensive. I take care to use mobile-optimized versions of websites if I can, don't like panning and scrolling over full-sized web pages squeezed into the small screen.
Synchronization with Outlook - every Nokia phone until now had it, and at least HTC androids have it. Yes, it needs software on the PC. But one would assume Microsoft could do it for their phones.
They do, and it's called ActiveSync, right? It supported sync with desktop Outlook for ages with Windows Mobile devices.
What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM?
Probably run next year's version of the phone OS, with real multitasking?
That's not the answer. What would you use this for? My N9 supports multitasking on its single core OMAP just fine.
Or play more complex games?
What kind of games these should be, that I would like to play on the phone? I have a desktop PC for graphically intensive 3D games, a phone would be lousy for that anyway.
In the end, if a user can get better hardware for the same price, how can the less powered one be attractive?
Better, as in better data in the spec sheet? Why should I care about that, beyond the phone being powerful enough to be usable for the tasks I want to use it for?
Wow, so it's really convenient to accuse someone whom you disagree with of being a paid shill, and explain away legitimate-looking posts as masquerade tactics?
The last thing I would want for Slashdot is to be overrun with an army of Android-bigoted conspiracy nutjobs.
No standard USB connection, no uSD card; uSIM instead of regular SIM; everything seems to have been done to make life difficult. One has to use a iTunes clone to transfer videos and music into it, that or a dropbox clone that doesn't work with linux.
This is bad, I agree (except that I have no hard feelings about microSIM).
The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days,
I guess it's not supposed to grow too big; if it does, you are probably not a target Windows Phone user. Get an Android to fit your need for overpopulated app grids;)
You can't change the background, only the lockscreen background.
I couldn't care less.
There is no way to bind the search key to anything else, it is locked to bing. If you want to search in the market, you have to install an app to do the search.
Bad form, yes. BTW, is Bing really too bad as a search engine? Does Android support Bing as a search engine choice?
There is no alternative browser, only IE. No ad blocking or anything.
I never had the need to extend the browser on my phone. I guess I don't use it to browse sites that show obnoxious ads.
There is a limited list of apps in the market, and most are for pay only.
The reported 50000+ apps is still considered a limited choice? Which ones do you miss, other than Google's?
No google apps apart from search.
That's more of Google's fault. Or maybe, it's a tit-for-tat with Bing being locked to the hardware button. Either way, it's not some problem with the platform.
No synchronization with outlook, only with exchange,
What do you mean by "synchronization with Outlook"? What other phone can do it, without some supporting software on the PC side?
and only if your admins have enabled activesync.
What's the point in disabling efficient push email if you have mobile users? Outlook Web Access would be wasteful, and I guess Exchange does not support caldav really well.
No skype, fring or nimbuzz.
Pity. I guess Skype is coming full steam, so maybe even current WP7 phones will get it eventually.
No way to install applications except the market.
Yeah. iPhone users think it is normal, FWIW.
To top it, the WP7 phones are limited to "old" hardware. No dual core CPUs, only 512MB memory, screen resolution limited to 480x800, incapable of 1080p recording.
You say "old", somebody else could put it as "not ridiculously overpowered for the tasks it needs to perform". Obviously Lumia 900 or Titan II is not old hardware. What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM? I never felt disappointed by the 480x800 resolution in the Maemo/MeeGo devices I have been using. What phone has a camera good enough to record 1080p with actual benefits for image quality?
How can someone call this competitive? Really? It is competitive if you're comparing with 2010 android phones; but with anything more recent than that, forget it.
We have an HTC Sensation at home, I guess it can serve as an example. Both me and my wife find the UI mediocre, cluttered, and sometimes poorly usable. We never cared to mod it, or even install any significant number of apps. Geeks who read specification sheets like the holy scripture and care about things like USB mass storage access to the filesystem tend to forget what really matters to most people out there.
Well, with MeeGo they had a powerful partner who had a strong interest for Nokia to succeed.
Now you can see how that powerful partner helps Samsung succeed with Tizen.
Hint: they never, ever, released anything that could run on a smartphone. And their netbook UX was mediocre at best.
Nokia could have taken Cyanogenmod and set up their own apps market.
Well, that does sound like a sound decision on product development that could help them benefit from "the ecosystem" (of hobbyist basement dwellers?), doesn't it? They would be only, what, the 34th phone hardware manufacturer to try to strike gold with Android.
Can you point out instances of repeated postings by the user in question? I can't find anything in his history beyond what a somewhat opinionated poster would say apropos the topic... and face the Android fanboi army labeling him a Microsoft shill for, um, objecting to somebody else labeled a Microsoft shill by the same army.
Oh well, now the Transitive Microsoft Shill Label is coming my way in 3...2...1...
So you don't merely disagree for reasons that are very valid for you, you want the poster of a contrary opinion to shut up, because you don't like people posting such opinions. And you are modded +5 Insightful. Way to go Slashdot.
We all know there is no such thing as Slashdot groupthink, but It's funny to see how long can the crowd here avoid bringing up the first Windows Phone handsets that are truly, no holds barred competitive with top of the line smartphones for other platforms. It's like a million Android fanbois got butthurt in unison and fell silent.
I can't buy Windows 7 that is localized to our family's preferred language in stores in the country where I live, and Microsoft won't sell it to me on the website if I give my correct billing address. The reason is, Windows is priced much lower in Russia, I guess because of the "competition" from pirates and generally poorer customer base. So they can't allow it to be sold elsewhere, where they can make more money selling basically the same software. Their web stores are segmented by language choice, which also limits the product choice. So I'm in the long tail for having emigrated to another country. I'm contemplating whether I'd better switch the last PC in our home to Linux, and buy my kids a gaming console so they don't complain about the games. I can make a point to not buy an Xbox, too.
I have a cheap Samsung TV. Its software crashes a lot with a less usual language selection. I guess they program each TV model from scratch and their system software has fixed-size buffers for UI strings. But hey, it even got a software update over the cable, once. I think it's good that they took smartphone software from Google rather than developing it in-house (Bada, anyone?). But I will not buy a product that's any more complex than a microwave oven from Samsung again.
Cyanogen Mod 9 Alpha 11 is out now and is rock solid.
Between this and another poster whose only minor complaint was that his phone lasts 5 hours on the battery charge at best (are we back in 1985?), I suddenly realized why it is so fascinating to read every Android flamefest on Slashdot.
You don't see your smartphone as a device that helps you live your life rather than becoming an eminent part of it, do you?
For starters people don't see any future on the platform because Microsoft has chosen to have several distinct OSes across different devices. Its WP7 for phone. Windows 8 for tablets and desktops,
Who said that Windows Phone will not be updated to match Windows 8 (which is, reportedly, a scaled-up WP with backwards compatibility to desktop Windows)?
Windows CE for embed devices.
Why do you care about those? Windows CE is kind of dead on that market, too.
Many different kinds of devices coupled with one of the most open OSes in the mobile arena.
Don't most of these devices need an unofficial, warranty-voiding hack to make the OS truly open?
Slashdot Mirror
Wait, WP7 does not have Skype while Microsoft owns ... Skype? O_O
I guess you can't do everything at once even if you are Microsoft. It's rumored to arrive with the Tango update.
Right, that's exactly how you should cover Windows Phone news on Slashdot. Link one posting, by a blogger well known for poorly substantiated rants against Elop's Nokia. Link it twice as if referring to two sources. Cite a sales figure expertly pulled out of thin air by the said blogger, in preference to an officially confirmed higher figure. Ignore the fact that the phones have only been on the market for a couple of months at best in Q4 2011, so any sales projections, even were they based on verified data, may be widely off. Top up with a headline that recasts Elop's message into a negative emotional light (he was actually careful enough to avoid assigning blame). You are guaranteed a storm of responses from like-minded people, most of whom have never seen a Lumia or any Windows Phone in action, but are quick to disparage it, because it replaced a mythically great Linux-based platform that N9 was never intended to become.
Remember when OS X and thus Apple started to gain in users? Why was that?
It was because OS X was catering to the right people: The opinion leaders. To us.
The very same thing goes for mobile phones. It doesn't suprise me the least that N9 sales are better. It runs Symbian
I can't say what amuses me more: that you consider yourself an opinion leader, or that you don't know what are you talking about.
What's interesting is that *all* the "review" comments for the Lumia are glowing, all praise the technical features, and all seem to be quite well informed about the features and have correct spelling and grammar. While the review comments on the LG and other phones are more typical bitching and griping about how the phone quit working because the screen broke when the user dropped it....
Meaning that WP users tend to be well educated, know what they want, and have the sense to write about things that matter? Or, maybe, it's all a giant marketing operation, which also explains the absence of drooling idiots and fanbois who come out of the woodwork whenever Android is discussed.
Heh, that's why comparing anything to "Europe" is pointless: one can always find nonsensical bathrooms and heating like in the UK, cash-only payment in half the places like in Germany, analog TV in a lot of places, Romania or Bulgaria for everything in general, and so on. Interestingly, none of this applies to Finland. Opening hours are our concession as a society to people who work these places (well, banks have it rather too easy; but then you don't need to drag your physical ass to the bank every so often, it's all now done over the net).
Well, this is a bit different from a single BNP Paribas review that only had a figure of 2% interested in Lumia among European customers, which was widely cited as proof that the new models fall flat in Europe.
Wow, there is somebody on Slashdot who sees the Meego history in realistic light.
And Elop just may be doing a few things right: we finally get sales figure estimates for Lumia not entirely pulled out of some banker's orifice, and they show some respectable numbers, this before US sales have rolled in.
Really? The history of bonch looks completely normal. BTW, I got mode points and bumped up one of his comments that was downmodded for being insightful the wrong way by the Android Defense Army, just like one of my comments in this thread.
Okay, I see, you wage a holy war against infidels who doubt that Android is The Only True Mobile OS. It's us or them. Don't let Slashdot fall for deceitful plurality of opinion and keep some touch with the real world.
"I can't post under a nickname like someone I accuse of trolling did, and I can't prove my accusation either, so I resort to personal insults."
Overpopulated or sparse, at least with android that is your choice. With WP7 you get this "pinned" apps screen, and a even worst scrollable list with all apps. Doesn't have the flexibility of widgets,
Well, those tiles are widgets, they show dynamic stuff.
no way to organize stuff in folders, nothing. Absolutely awful if you have more than a few apps.
As a former Symbian user, I hate app folders. I would just prefer to have less shit on my phone. I hear Microsoft requires from hardware vendors and ISPs to make their Windows Phone shovelware uninstallable, and I think this is a very good idea.
Almost every ad is obnoxious on a metered connection. I can tell you I see a huge difference when I use the Lumia's browser instead of the N1 browser. Pages take a lot longer to load, content is almost lost in the middle of ads, etc.
I dunno. The sites I use show one or two ads if any at all, and I think it's a small price for supporting them, as my broadband rate is not that expensive. I take care to use mobile-optimized versions of websites if I can, don't like panning and scrolling over full-sized web pages squeezed into the small screen.
Synchronization with Outlook - every Nokia phone until now had it, and at least HTC androids have it. Yes, it needs software on the PC. But one would assume Microsoft could do it for their phones.
They do, and it's called ActiveSync, right? It supported sync with desktop Outlook for ages with Windows Mobile devices.
What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM?
Probably run next year's version of the phone OS, with real multitasking?
That's not the answer. What would you use this for? My N9 supports multitasking on its single core OMAP just fine.
Or play more complex games?
What kind of games these should be, that I would like to play on the phone? I have a desktop PC for graphically intensive 3D games, a phone would be lousy for that anyway.
In the end, if a user can get better hardware for the same price, how can the less powered one be attractive?
Better, as in better data in the spec sheet? Why should I care about that, beyond the phone being powerful enough to be usable for the tasks I want to use it for?
Wow, so it's really convenient to accuse someone whom you disagree with of being a paid shill, and explain away legitimate-looking posts as masquerade tactics?
The last thing I would want for Slashdot is to be overrun with an army of Android-bigoted conspiracy nutjobs.
Can't you just check his post history? He posted nearly exactly the same thing yesterday and it was all bullshit too
I can't see it. Prooflink?
No standard USB connection, no uSD card; uSIM instead of regular SIM; everything seems to have been done to make life difficult. One has to use a iTunes clone to transfer videos and music into it, that or a dropbox clone that doesn't work with linux.
This is bad, I agree (except that I have no hard feelings about microSIM).
The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days,
I guess it's not supposed to grow too big; if it does, you are probably not a target Windows Phone user. Get an Android to fit your need for overpopulated app grids ;)
You can't change the background, only the lockscreen background.
I couldn't care less.
There is no way to bind the search key to anything else, it is locked to bing. If you want to search in the market, you have to install an app to do the search.
Bad form, yes. BTW, is Bing really too bad as a search engine? Does Android support Bing as a search engine choice?
There is no alternative browser, only IE. No ad blocking or anything.
I never had the need to extend the browser on my phone. I guess I don't use it to browse sites that show obnoxious ads.
There is a limited list of apps in the market, and most are for pay only.
The reported 50000+ apps is still considered a limited choice? Which ones do you miss, other than Google's?
No google apps apart from search.
That's more of Google's fault. Or maybe, it's a tit-for-tat with Bing being locked to the hardware button. Either way, it's not some problem with the platform.
No synchronization with outlook, only with exchange,
What do you mean by "synchronization with Outlook"? What other phone can do it, without some supporting software on the PC side?
and only if your admins have enabled activesync.
What's the point in disabling efficient push email if you have mobile users?
Outlook Web Access would be wasteful, and I guess Exchange does not support caldav really well.
No skype, fring or nimbuzz.
Pity. I guess Skype is coming full steam, so maybe even current WP7 phones will get it eventually.
No way to install applications except the market.
Yeah. iPhone users think it is normal, FWIW.
To top it, the WP7 phones are limited to "old" hardware. No dual core CPUs, only 512MB memory, screen resolution limited to 480x800, incapable of 1080p recording.
You say "old", somebody else could put it as "not ridiculously overpowered for the tasks it needs to perform". Obviously Lumia 900 or Titan II is not old hardware. What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM?
I never felt disappointed by the 480x800 resolution in the Maemo/MeeGo devices I have been using.
What phone has a camera good enough to record 1080p with actual benefits for image quality?
How can someone call this competitive? Really? It is competitive if you're comparing with 2010 android phones; but with anything more recent than that, forget it.
We have an HTC Sensation at home, I guess it can serve as an example. Both me and my wife find the UI mediocre, cluttered, and sometimes poorly usable. We never cared to mod it, or even install any significant number of apps. Geeks who read specification sheets like the holy scripture and care about things like USB mass storage access to the filesystem tend to forget what really matters to most people out there.
Well, with MeeGo they had a powerful partner who had a strong interest for Nokia to succeed.
Now you can see how that powerful partner helps Samsung succeed with Tizen.
Hint: they never, ever, released anything that could run on a smartphone. And their netbook UX was mediocre at best.
Nokia could have taken Cyanogenmod and set up their own apps market.
Well, that does sound like a sound decision on product development that could help them benefit from "the ecosystem" (of hobbyist basement dwellers?), doesn't it? They would be only, what, the 34th phone hardware manufacturer to try to strike gold with Android.
Can you point out instances of repeated postings by the user in question? I can't find anything in his history beyond what a somewhat opinionated poster would say apropos the topic... and face the Android fanboi army labeling him a Microsoft shill for, um, objecting to somebody else labeled a Microsoft shill by the same army.
Oh well, now the Transitive Microsoft Shill Label is coming my way in 3...2...1...
Maybe they are also laying the groundwork for large font themes, which may resolve another litany of complaints.
So you don't merely disagree for reasons that are very valid for you, you want the poster of a contrary opinion to shut up, because you don't like people posting such opinions. And you are modded +5 Insightful. Way to go Slashdot.
We all know there is no such thing as Slashdot groupthink, but It's funny to see how long can the crowd here avoid bringing up the first Windows Phone handsets that are truly, no holds barred competitive with top of the line smartphones for other platforms. It's like a million Android fanbois got butthurt in unison and fell silent.
SharkLaser, bogaboga and tysonedwards are all sockpuppets managed by a Waggener Edstrom rapid response team.
You're arguing with a marketing committee.
I wonder how much do they pay for submitting something like this, as one of the abovementioned users recently did.
Oh crap, I've just made a hint that you might be wrong, so I must be labeled a sock puppet in turn.
This assumes that the paycheck amount (past a certain point, anyway) is the most important measure of career success for technically-oriented people.
I can't buy Windows 7 that is localized to our family's preferred language in stores in the country where I live, and Microsoft won't sell it to me on the website if I give my correct billing address. The reason is, Windows is priced much lower in Russia, I guess because of the "competition" from pirates and generally poorer customer base. So they can't allow it to be sold elsewhere, where they can make more money selling basically the same software. Their web stores are segmented by language choice, which also limits the product choice. So I'm in the long tail for having emigrated to another country. I'm contemplating whether I'd better switch the last PC in our home to Linux, and buy my kids a gaming console so they don't complain about the games. I can make a point to not buy an Xbox, too.
I have a cheap Samsung TV. Its software crashes a lot with a less usual language selection. I guess they program each TV model from scratch and their system software has fixed-size buffers for UI strings. But hey, it even got a software update over the cable, once.
I think it's good that they took smartphone software from Google rather than developing it in-house (Bada, anyone?). But I will not buy a product that's any more complex than a microwave oven from Samsung again.
Cyanogen Mod 9 Alpha 11 is out now and is rock solid.
Between this and another poster whose only minor complaint was that his phone lasts 5 hours on the battery charge at best (are we back in 1985?), I suddenly realized why it is so fascinating to read every Android flamefest on Slashdot.
You don't see your smartphone as a device that helps you live your life rather than becoming an eminent part of it, do you?
Somehow, I can't help thinking you are a virgin posting from your parents' basement.
And doesn't require Windows and/or OSX to activate.
Do Windows Phone or iPhone require a desktop computer? That's news to me.
For starters people don't see any future on the platform because Microsoft has chosen to have several distinct OSes across different devices.
Its WP7 for phone. Windows 8 for tablets and desktops,
Who said that Windows Phone will not be updated to match Windows 8 (which is, reportedly, a scaled-up WP with backwards compatibility to desktop Windows)?
Windows CE for embed devices.
Why do you care about those? Windows CE is kind of dead on that market, too.
Many different kinds of devices coupled with one of the most open OSes in the mobile arena.
Don't most of these devices need an unofficial, warranty-voiding hack to make the OS truly open?