Windows Phone 7 Series Takeaway
by Brian Klug on February 22, 2010 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
Microsoft's App Store
Also among the hubs that were left unexplored were Marketplace/Applications and Office. There's just as much potential in the Office hub as there is in the Gaming hub. Apple surprised many with its focus on enabling iWork on the iPad. Windows Phone 7 Series should have at least an equal focus on productivity. More questions abound. Backwards compatibility seems unlikely to impossible at this point, which would mean an entirely new and different application marketplace from the existing catalog on Windows Mobile. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either. One could make the case that none of the application stores currently on any of the smartphone platforms have totally gotten the formula right; there's still room for innovation. To date, each of the manufacturers have placed different emphasis of openness, organization, and approval ease (or lack entirely).
Furthermore, Office will likely have to be completely rewritten to match the Metro design of the rest of the UI. To complicate this further, it appears that Phone 7 also does away with File Explorer as it existed with Windows Mobile 6.5.x. It's very likely that Phone 7 Series will take a nod from the iPhone's file management approach and create per-application stores for sandboxing files with specific apps. Whether applications will be allowed to access a common store of files (especially for suites like office) is yet to be seen. Will Phone 7 Series have copy and paste?
Even more interestingly, it remains to be seen what part "Project Pink" has to play with Phone 7 Series, if any.
Final Words
Windows Phone 7 Series illustrates that Microsoft still hasn't lost the ability to innovate. They've come up with a completely redesigned UI and a new vision for Windows on phones. Even more, they have the experience to back it up and potentially turn it into much more than another rebooted smartphone platform vying for market share. That said, essentially all we've seen so far is a new UI, not a completely rebooted platform complete with fleshed out details. To quote an overused adage; the devil is in those details. How open or closed the platform is, what liberties developers will have with tiles, backgrounding and pseudo-multitasking, what tools and SDKs will be made available, what form the marketplace will take; these are just some of the points that will need to be addressed before Windows Phone 7 Series is a clear contender.
An additional consequence of application stores on the current dominant platforms is that users of both Android, iPhone OS, and even WebOS have become invested in their respective platforms. The notion of switching platforms and waving goodbye to both those applications and the workflow behind them might not be a tough thing to swallow for AnandTech readers (especially those of you that have been through it before with other mobile OSes), it's a tough sell for casual smartphone users. Lack of backwards compatibility means that even existing Windows Mobile diehards have an opportunity to re-evaluate platform choice; one can just as easily pack up and move to any of the other platforms given the inconvenience.
The Windows Phone team needs to spend the next 9 months carefully carrying its fledgling platform to term. By then, it will be competing for attention alongside newly refreshed hardware from virtually all its major competitors. A lot still has yet to be unveiled; it's just too early to tell for certain. MIX 2010 will bring new information, answering some questions and likely making more.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this newly proposed platform is how much it represents a move toward a closed paradigm. While the Windows smartphone message is headed towards an iPhone-like approach, other smartphone contenders like Android are busily marching toward the kind of openness that Windows Mobile used to be favored for.
Further Reading
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/windowsphone/imageGallery.aspx#channel_contentListTop
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jms102285 - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
I'm pretty excited to see Microsoft go this route. I'm really wondering how Microsoft is going to plan out integrating this with Exchange servers. One of my pet peeves about my current WinMo phone is that it is unable to sync public folders from our exchange server and most of the information that is super important to me is there instead of in my personal folders. Also flipping through my tasks/e-mail/calendars is much too cumbersome, I'd prefer something as an All-in-One package.As far as what I'd love to see ideally:
- Mini or micro USB connection for charging/computer connection. Nothing is more annoying then proprietary charging cables.
- 3.5mm headphone jack for compatibility with all normal headphones
- Optional Wi-Fi
- Support for syncing public folders with Microsoft Exchange
I almost half wonder if the release of Wave 14 is going to play into this phone. Any word about that Anandtech?
- Consolidating Tasks/Calendar/E-mail/etc. into one program
jms102285 - Wednesday, March 10, 2010 - link
And I failed at proof-reading. Go me.krakman - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
I wonder if hooking up your phone to XP still deletes contacts at random, as is the case with 6.1.paulpod - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Wow, completely missing from the preview of this "phone" is any discussion of how easy it is to make/receive phone calls and send/receive simple text messages. (Especially when that task needs to interrupt all the other nonsensical functionality.)Would be funny if the thing comes out and they have to say "Woops, we forgot to put a phone in there."
But seriously, I was looking at Phone 7 as the first sophisticated phone OS that, in a "Windows-like" manner, considers practical needs like being able to set a permanently large font size for text messaging. Little hope for this type of feature when things like gaming support are taking all the resources.
nerdtalker - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Ironically, the reason I really didn't discuss much of the Phone side of Windows Phone 7 Series is because Microsoft admittedly hasn't fleshed out that experience yet.The dialer is extremely rudimentary (read: literally just a dialer, no smart dial, no lookup, no contacts, nothing), and the SMS application (which is probably what I'm most interested in) is largely placeholders that demonstrate rotation works.
There's so little that's been unveiled at this point. Agreed.
Cheers,
Brian
strikeback03 - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
lol, considering how poorly SMS (or even more, MMS) works on WM6, I would hope they would put some effort into this.nerdtalker - Wednesday, February 24, 2010 - link
Honestly, I would too. One of the big problems with the entire gamut of WM devices I've had (smartphone edition and Pro edition with touchscreen) is that the SMS subsystem will sometimes silently fail sending messages. Or, it'll fail and pop an alert box up under the dialog; you can't see it unless you quit messaging and look for it.There's no surer way to frustration because you think you've sent the message, only to discover that both you haven't, and the dialog has stopped notifications of new messages.
I agree; Phone 7 Series really will be defined by how the phone/messaging alert system interacts with an already abstract UI. Nothing has been shown there, and user-polling the tiles really isn't what I'm hoping for.
-Brian
strikeback03 - Thursday, February 25, 2010 - link
I guess since I am using TF3D and rarely leave the messaging program open I haven't had that problem. Though it will randomly decide to start notifying me a MMS message has failed to send, despite not having tried to send a MMS message. Since it does not integrate with Verizon's system of notification that the other party has actually received a message you never know what has happened though.Stas - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Who uses iPhone anymore? It died off around my area about 6 months ago. Those that still have theirs, are either waiting till the contract is up, or are looking for a buyer (good luck). Time to embrace progress people, Android is where it's at. I hope WinPhone 7 is good though, as I wouldn't mind better integration with my Windows PCs and good games. Google Voice is pretty much epic, there better be a similar Live! service :)kmmatney - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
You are truly talking out of your ass if you think the iPhone is going away...