13 ms·

Windows Mobile 7 Series

78 points by glymor 17y ago

mdasen 17y ago
What I would have really liked to see in the video was any new capabilities of Mobile Internet Explorer. Is it going to have the capabilities that we're used to from the iPhone, webOS, and Android? The web browser is probably the most important part of these phones since almost everything has a web interface. The XBOX Live and Facebook apps look nice, but there's no guarantee that Windows Phone 7 Series will take off and get lots of developers on board. However, a good web browser means that I can still get what a lot of what I want without apps.
- glymor 17y ago
  From http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/live-from-microsofts-windows-phone-7-series-windows-mobile-press-event-at-mwc-2010/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/live-from-microsofts-wind... "Here's a look at the browser. This is a much more advanced browser then we've ever shipped. It's based on the desktop version of IE, so it's highly compatible with lots of webpages." And there's a few pictures.
  - tomh- 17y ago
    That browser better has to support the exact same features as webkit for android and Iphone else I don't think this phone can match up against the iphone and android phones due to the lack of developer interest in developing for this browser. Developers are fed up for years with Microsoft's browsers and here they can safely ignore it because it doesn't have a huge market share.
    - dangrossman 17y ago
      If it's based on the rendering engine in IE8/7, then pretty much everything on the web already works for it. No mainstream sites are "safely ignoring" Internet Explorer.
      - tomh- 17y ago
        Well regular mainstream sites aren't, but mobile web applications/sites are making use of css3 and html5 features not present in IE8/7. In the mobile industry Microsoft has such a large marketshare that it will be safe to ignore the browser of Windows Mobile 7 (for now).
      - blasdel 17y ago
        They spent the last couple years talking about how WM7 was going to be based on IE6!
ThomPete 17y ago
Hmm not sure what to make of this. The interface looks very limiting. For instance where do I overview my apps?
- junklight 17y ago
  I get the impression they don't want it to be app centric - presumably "apps" now add functionality to the "hubs" - of course that assumes everything can be neatly categorised
  - ThomPete 17y ago
    Yeah you might be right. Then again, they can call it what they want. People still need to get to those "hubs" of functionality. Don't seem to well suited for a store let alone any ecosystem thinking.
- johns 17y ago
  http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ Click on the phone for the video demo and watch the first segment. You can swipe to get your full list of apps.
  - ThomPete 17y ago
    Thnx That is pretty bad IMO. If that swipe direction is occupied for getting to your apps list then I must say FAIL. They have either removed the option of swiping left or right for browsing through pictures in any specific application. Or they have made an extra unnecessary step to get to my applications. No matter what it's pretty bad. But of course there might be details I don't know.
    - johns 17y ago
      I'm guessing here but I think that app swipe is just from the 'Home' screen, not within apps. And I'm pretty sure you can customize the 'tiles' to put the most frequent ones on the main page and then just have the rest a swipe away. That's pretty much how I use my iPhone right now.
pavs 17y ago
I hope I am not one of the few who didn't like the interface. It looked too much like "flash interface" you see on some websites. Not a big fan of sideways sliding. I applaud having more choices in interface, but I am more interested in better choices as opposed to having just another choice. Hard to draw any solid conclusion just by watching that video, but not very impressed so far. IMO YMMV
- johns 17y ago
  You won't be the only one. However, I know a lot of Zune owners (mostly that won them, not bought them) that thought they would hate the interface and ended up liking it a lot. I don't know if I would like it until trying it. I thought for sure I would like the iPhone UI but it often drives me crazy.
glymor 17y ago
Steve Balmer from the press conference: "...the innovation of developers is important. We build a new foundation with a rich set of development tools which we'll discuss at MIX next month. [...] we want to take a very big step forward on [development tools]." I wonder if this is just WPF/Sliverlight. This seems a lot like the Palm WebOS announcement; similar reboot/new platform and breaking of backwards compatibility (unconfirmed).
- johns 17y ago
  With how much they've been talking about taking Silverlight mobile since last year's MIX (at PDC most notably) I would almost guarantee that it will be Silverlight.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- godDLL 17y ago
  It's the Zune HD marketplace, and the accompanying SDK.
akshat 17y ago
The phone does not seem simple. My mom was able to figure the iphone out. I doubt about this one.
- cujo 17y ago
  Is your mom the target audience for this phone/os? I don't know, but my point is that not everything should be geared towards people who aren't interested or can't keep up with tech.
  - pohl 17y ago
    Which demographic has the greater profit potential?
    - andrew1 17y ago
      Maybe you could make one phone for each demographic.
      - elai 17y ago
        The tech demographic can do just fine with the phones designed for the mom demographic.
        mquander 17y ago
        Not as long as those phones are hard to run my own code on, I can't.
        protomyth 17y ago
        If your talking about the iPhone, then getting your code to run on yours is easy. Getting distribution of your code to other phones is the hard part.
  - akshat 17y ago
    Microsoft is definitely not looking at this short term. When they talk about a billion devices they are talking about being everything to everybody. So my guess would be that they would want my mom and everyone else all to use it. The other point about the "mom" argument is directly related to the "facebook login" issue, where complexity is not anything that anyone wants to deal with.
topbanana 17y ago
About time too. As .Net developer, I've been frustrated watching the Windows Mobile car crash develop in slow motion. Let's hope they get the ecosystem right too
- stcredzero 17y ago
  M$ can do a SDK. The question is whether they'll stomp 3rd parties as they've done in the past. If they just get the things right that Apple got really wrong, they could even come off as heroes.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Funny how a lesser villain can look like a hero...
pistoriusp 17y ago
Because of the side scrolling nature of the UI you've got some content on the right side that isn't relevant to what you're doing right now. (It takes away from what you're doing.) The UI appears to lack any boundaries, rather relying on typography. It's interesting. I don't know how I feel about it, I'll reserve that kind of thing for the experts. It's certainly refreshing. I see they've also created depth by having certain object scroll slower (or less.) Further removing the boundaries. (By boundaries I mean gradients, lines, blocks and buttons - I believe these objects give a UI a form of tactility?) http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MdDAeyy1H0A&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MdDAeyy1H0A&feature=player...
- godDLL 17y ago
  The "experts" would say that the phone does not "get out of the way", because of this messy typography thing and the minimum of three hardware buttons required for navigation.
  - pistoriusp 17y ago
    One thing that I noticed is that whilst the interface would like to be one without boundaries they can't get away from it. (See screenshot: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/7serieshands6.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/7serie...). The person's name stops abruptly a little bit below the title "eople." ;)
    - gdee 17y ago
      Seeing how it consistently happens on the horizontal, I think it's by design. It probably tries to suggest with some degree of subtility that the UI goes on in that direction.
      - godDLL 17y ago
        It'd do good to subtly suggest what parts of this typographic info-graphic are tappable.
halo 17y ago
The UI makes both the iPhone and Android look incredibly dated. I have a few questions about discoverability and usage in practice and it looks a tad laggy in places, but on the whole it looks very nice. The downsides are that it shares many of the problems with the iPhone - the lack of multitasking, no Flash, and I bet it requires iTu--the Zune Software. There's also unknowns on WM7 as a development platform, and whether it requires you to use the App St--Windows Mobile Marketplace. That said, from what has currently been shown I think the good massively outweighs the bad. One feature I'm particularly happy to see is Wi-Fi Sync. I hope this gives Apple the kick up the backside they need to include it in the iPhone.
- brandonkm 17y ago
  This new refresh of the windows mobile line is a very bold move by Microsoft. I'm really surprised they threw out all the existing winmo architecture and started fresh. The carrier network that supports WM7 will mean lots of choices for consumers as well. Not only that, they seem to really be emphasizing consistency across devices with the three buttons (start, search, back). This is undoubtedly uncharacteristic of how the winmo division has previously operated. Most of all, todays announcement shows me they get it. I had always written off windows mobile as an OS, and after looking at things a bit, I'm considering WM7 for my next phone OS.
  - cma 17y ago
    Will this phone play Microsoft Plays-for-Sure (TM) branded Microsoft DRMed music? Songs purchased for the original 5GB iPod will play on the iPhone.
    - dannyr 17y ago
      Plays-For-Sure is almost dead. Even the Zune doesn't support it.
      - Zak 17y ago
        I think that was the point. Can we trust MS to maintain their platforms such that money spent now on media and applications isn't wasted when the device is replaced?
evlapix 17y ago
With regards to the interface I have to vouch for Windows.. I have a Zune HD. I love it. The UI is anything but limiting and amazingly intuitive. My girlfriend would ask "How do I do XXX" and before I could remember how I would accomplish the objective, she had explored her way to the solution. Obviously a phone will have more strenuous requirements, but the interface I'm using on the Zune seems like it may be the exact outlandish interface that changes the way we think about buttons, and menus for interactive portable devices.
JunkDNA 17y ago
"...the first handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year." Kudos to Microsoft for realizing they need to be bold here and re-invent things. I'm encouraged by the lack of the "Start" bar. They have an incredibly brutal hill to climb if the handsets are only available at the end of the year. They should really have had a device out the door at the same time as the Palm Pre. It has taken Android a considerable amount of time to get to where it is today, and that took a no small amount of effort from Google. RIM, Google, and Apple are not going to be sitting on their hands this whole time milking their lead (well, RIM might ;)). Assuming the time frame holds true (a big assumption), by the time any appreciable number of users have these devices in their hands (early 2011), Apple alone will have released a major new OS update as well as hardware update, and be halfway to the next one. I expect Google will be similarly aggressive.
mercurio 17y ago
[Microsoft is] dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices (a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration), and doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz. That's right -- there will be a single Windows Phone identity regardless of carrier or device brand. So all Windows phones will look the same and work the same. I'm skeptical that hardware manufacturers will be enthusiastic about Microsoft turning their products into commodities again. Unlike the situation with PCs, this time they have a viable alternative in Android.
- seshagiric 17y ago
  There are lot of so called 'hubs' in the windows phone - photo hub, office hub... By customizing or packaging these hubs, I think network providers to design phones for a specific purpose or package a service: - enterprise user (package ms office + data plan) - consumer (package social n/w + music/video plans)
- blasdel 17y ago
  The partners are probably just happy that they didn't get fucked over by a 1st party Zune Phone. Microsoft has had several such projects in their recent stable of inept Mobile OS + hardware dev teams (along with several non-phone Zunes, WM6, WM6.5, several reboots of WM7, the Sidekick, etc.). Google's doing a ton of meddling with their hardware partners, as they can withhold their apps (Maps, Gmail, Voice, etc.) to get their way, but even then they keep getting fucked on basic stuff like putting the hardware buttons in the same order, much less the insane issues with backporting software updates! It looks like MS is trying to dodge all of that up front.
forgotAgain 17y ago
1) There is no phone yet. This was just a very superficial first look behind the curtain. Right now it looks like a modified Zune. 2) Delivery of devices by the end of the year seems a very tight schedule. That gives them basically 8 months to get to RTM. They haven't announced developer tools yet. I would expect a very basic 1.0 release this year if they make it at all. 3) It would be good if they succeeded. It's to no one's benefit to replace one 800 lb gorilla (Microsoft) with another (Apple). A counterweight is needed and Google Buzz has caused me to do a complete re-eval of that firm's worthiness.
jsz0 17y ago
I'm no fan of Microsoft in general but it looks like they made some good choices here. It's refreshing to see a GUI that's not just an iPhone clone or yet another awkward facelift on a dated product. I think it will be successful. SmartPhones don't have the same level of legacy baggage that prevent users from jumping to another platform easily so I don't think Microsoft is out of the game at all. It'll be interesting to see where their market share comes from. I'm thinking RIM & Nokia more than Apple & Android.
dannyr 17y ago
I love my Android but I have to say I'm impressed with Windows 7. I have a Zune and I dig the UI a lot. Adding XBox Live games is definitely a big plus. The games give it a big advantage over Android. Apps will again be key and this is where Microsoft strengths lie. Microsoft has the best developer tools on the market and they have legions of engineers on the .Net platform. My only worry is that it may be a year or two late for Microsoft. I don't really want to count them out because of what they did with the XBox versus the Playstation. However, the phone is a tougher market. It would be harder to convince people to switch phones. Phones are much more personal than gaming consoles.
- trezor 17y ago
  People switch phones much more often though, maybe even once a year. Consoles is something you buy for a five year period of time.
  - dannyr 17y ago
    True. I would switch phones but very likely it will still be an Android phone. I don't know that many people switching from IPhone to Android and vice-versa. My online life is tightly integrated with Google's services so it will be tough to switch to a new platform.
stuntmouse 17y ago
Microsoft got the memo.
stuntmouse 17y ago
A couple of things I noticed that haven't been mentioned here: Wi-Fi syncing will be great, the animated XBox Live icon is a little annoying.
liquidben 17y ago
It will be very interesting to see what XNA support is like on the final model. There's a strong community of developers accessing these tools for free, which would allow Microsoft to roll out a full and lively app store quickly. I would be highly optimistic about Microsoft's ability to run an app store service, based on experiences with Xbox Live, Xbox Indie Games, and Rock Band Network. Since they're building from scratch, they could analyze and avoid legacy issues present in Apple's iTunes App Store ecology. Converse to their potential strengths at running an app store, Microsoft has a difficult decision posed by marketing. There are a lot of people out there addicted to Xbox Live Achievement points. If MS allows you to earn achievement points via games on it's new mobile phone, it will get a tremendous boost in market share. The risk present here is that the achievement points system requires additional overhead and review by MS, in order to prevent system breaking games. There's no feasible way for them to populate their app store with indies and approve achievement points for all of them. In order to have their cake and eat it to, MS needs to be able to differentiate achievement point games from indie games, but without turning indie games into an unshopped ghetto (see Xbox Indie Games). My best resolution would be to offer a small differentiation to icons on the store, specifically take those icons for games with points and apply a smaller logo to the corner, much like on a shortcut icon. Perhaps make it a little gold medal with a green ribbon falling in an X shape ;)
gxs 17y ago
I'm curious to see how it handles emails and .doc and .ppt files. Whether we like it or not, a lot of day to day business activities happen through word, outlook, and now, powerpoint. If windows mobile displays those files types cleanly, I assure you it will be a success. Blackberrys let you open those filetypes but I think they handle it pretty clumsily. For me it would be a huge plus if I could go through a deck or read a long word document without having to always be at my desk.
rbanffy 17y ago
Funny how it looks like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0
- elblanco 17y ago
  I would still like to use that interface.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    All we have to do is to convince the Gnome Foundation. Or the KDE folks. But would we have to use Spice Girls (is it?) music to go with that?
aresant 17y ago
Refreshing user interface yes. But did we forget all the lessons of the "readwriteweb facebook login debacle" of last week? This UI seems substantially less user friendly than iPhone or Android for your average end user. Who is now, incidentally, trained on the "iphone clone" UI if they've had a smartphone in this generation.
- mhansen 17y ago
  Why do you think it seems less user friendly?
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I think they've struck on something that Android has been ignoring: fun. The original iPhone was full of fun, interesting usability tidbits - the momentum-based flicking, the bounce you get when you hit the bottom of a list, the turning of album covers... etc. How "fun" your UI is directly contributes to discoverability. Android's UI is very dry, and IMHO it makes the UI harder for a novice to pick up and learn. You can inject a lot more features that aren't immediately obvious, and must be learned - but you must make your platform "fun" enough for users to actually bother discovering these things. Given what I've seen so far, I think MS has realized this also, and I think they're on the right track.
Groxx 17y ago
I must say, that's surprisingly clean and not in-your-face. A nice change for Microsoft. I've seen very similar styles of interfaces (concepts) for a few years, but they're certainly the first big-player to back it with a product. We can hope it won't be that slow-scrolling (largely seen in other videos). People get annoyed with shiny things that slow them down. One thing that's bugged me about the touch line of iProducts is the amount of wasted space around the icons (though I understand the reasoning behind it, and it would encourage an entire icon remake if changed).
jsz0 17y ago
Wondering how it effects the SmartPhone industry... RIM/Nokia: Should be worried. They're jockeying over last place in the SmartPhone modernity contest these days. Hasn't hurt them much yet but it's hard to see how that lasts forever. Nokia is probably in better shape than RIM here. Palm: Good try. Consider Open Source and/or licensing before it's too late. Apple: Probably not much to worry about for now but they shouldn't get complacent with the iPhone platform. My biggest question here is how big of a distraction the iPad was for Apple internally. Do we have a major iPhone revision and a strong software update in the works or another minor hardware bump with a merely evolutionary OS update? If they stay off Verizon for another year (at least) it could really start to hurt iPhone sales. The iPhone is no longer so far ahead of the pack that you'd suffer with bad coverage to use it. Android: Not much for Google to worry about but I think a lot of third party handset makers will put some resources back into Windows Mobile devices. Even more so with the existence of the N1.
stcredzero 17y ago
Seems like M$ has re-prioritized. Backwards compatibility is no longer sacred. Now it's alright to forge ahead and tack-on backwards compatibility afterwards. (I'm also thinking of Vista and Windows 7 here.)
- shrikant 17y ago
  Backward compatibility with their absolutely massive install base of WinMo 6.1?
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    Good point. But why were they carrying the suckage forward for so long?

78 points by glymor 17y ago

What I would have really liked to see in the video was any new capabilities of Mobile Internet Explorer. Is it going to have the capabilities that we're used to from the iPhone, webOS, and Android? The web browser is probably the most important part of these phones since almost everything has a web interface. The XBOX Live and Facebook apps look nice, but there's no guarantee that Windows Phone 7 Series will take off and get lots of developers on board. However, a good web browser means that I can still get what a lot of what I want without apps.

glymor 17y ago
From http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/live-from-microsofts-windows-phone-7-series-windows-mobile-press-event-at-mwc-2010/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/live-from-microsofts-wind... "Here's a look at the browser. This is a much more advanced browser then we've ever shipped. It's based on the desktop version of IE, so it's highly compatible with lots of webpages." And there's a few pictures.
- tomh- 17y ago
  That browser better has to support the exact same features as webkit for android and Iphone else I don't think this phone can match up against the iphone and android phones due to the lack of developer interest in developing for this browser. Developers are fed up for years with Microsoft's browsers and here they can safely ignore it because it doesn't have a huge market share.
  - dangrossman 17y ago
    If it's based on the rendering engine in IE8/7, then pretty much everything on the web already works for it. No mainstream sites are "safely ignoring" Internet Explorer.
    - tomh- 17y ago
      Well regular mainstream sites aren't, but mobile web applications/sites are making use of css3 and html5 features not present in IE8/7. In the mobile industry Microsoft has such a large marketshare that it will be safe to ignore the browser of Windows Mobile 7 (for now).
    - blasdel 17y ago
      They spent the last couple years talking about how WM7 was going to be based on IE6!

ThomPete 17y ago

Hmm not sure what to make of this. The interface looks very limiting. For instance where do I overview my apps?

junklight 17y ago
I get the impression they don't want it to be app centric - presumably "apps" now add functionality to the "hubs" - of course that assumes everything can be neatly categorised
- ThomPete 17y ago
  Yeah you might be right. Then again, they can call it what they want. People still need to get to those "hubs" of functionality. Don't seem to well suited for a store let alone any ecosystem thinking.
johns 17y ago
http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ Click on the phone for the video demo and watch the first segment. You can swipe to get your full list of apps.
- ThomPete 17y ago
  Thnx That is pretty bad IMO. If that swipe direction is occupied for getting to your apps list then I must say FAIL. They have either removed the option of swiping left or right for browsing through pictures in any specific application. Or they have made an extra unnecessary step to get to my applications. No matter what it's pretty bad. But of course there might be details I don't know.
  - johns 17y ago
    I'm guessing here but I think that app swipe is just from the 'Home' screen, not within apps. And I'm pretty sure you can customize the 'tiles' to put the most frequent ones on the main page and then just have the rest a swipe away. That's pretty much how I use my iPhone right now.

pavs 17y ago

I hope I am not one of the few who didn't like the interface. It looked too much like "flash interface" you see on some websites. Not a big fan of sideways sliding. I applaud having more choices in interface, but I am more interested in better choices as opposed to having just another choice. Hard to draw any solid conclusion just by watching that video, but not very impressed so far. IMO YMMV

johns 17y ago
You won't be the only one. However, I know a lot of Zune owners (mostly that won them, not bought them) that thought they would hate the interface and ended up liking it a lot. I don't know if I would like it until trying it. I thought for sure I would like the iPhone UI but it often drives me crazy.

glymor 17y ago

Steve Balmer from the press conference: "...the innovation of developers is important. We build a new foundation with a rich set of development tools which we'll discuss at MIX next month. [...] we want to take a very big step forward on [development tools]." I wonder if this is just WPF/Sliverlight. This seems a lot like the Palm WebOS announcement; similar reboot/new platform and breaking of backwards compatibility (unconfirmed).

johns 17y ago
With how much they've been talking about taking Silverlight mobile since last year's MIX (at PDC most notably) I would almost guarantee that it will be Silverlight.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
godDLL 17y ago
It's the Zune HD marketplace, and the accompanying SDK.

akshat 17y ago

The phone does not seem simple. My mom was able to figure the iphone out. I doubt about this one.

cujo 17y ago
Is your mom the target audience for this phone/os? I don't know, but my point is that not everything should be geared towards people who aren't interested or can't keep up with tech.
- pohl 17y ago
  Which demographic has the greater profit potential?
  - andrew1 17y ago
    Maybe you could make one phone for each demographic.
    - elai 17y ago
      The tech demographic can do just fine with the phones designed for the mom demographic.
      - mquander 17y ago
        Not as long as those phones are hard to run my own code on, I can't.
        protomyth 17y ago
        If your talking about the iPhone, then getting your code to run on yours is easy. Getting distribution of your code to other phones is the hard part.
- akshat 17y ago
  Microsoft is definitely not looking at this short term. When they talk about a billion devices they are talking about being everything to everybody. So my guess would be that they would want my mom and everyone else all to use it. The other point about the "mom" argument is directly related to the "facebook login" issue, where complexity is not anything that anyone wants to deal with.

topbanana 17y ago

About time too. As .Net developer, I've been frustrated watching the Windows Mobile car crash develop in slow motion. Let's hope they get the ecosystem right too

stcredzero 17y ago
M$ can do a SDK. The question is whether they'll stomp 3rd parties as they've done in the past. If they just get the things right that Apple got really wrong, they could even come off as heroes.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Funny how a lesser villain can look like a hero...

pistoriusp 17y ago

Because of the side scrolling nature of the UI you've got some content on the right side that isn't relevant to what you're doing right now. (It takes away from what you're doing.) The UI appears to lack any boundaries, rather relying on typography. It's interesting. I don't know how I feel about it, I'll reserve that kind of thing for the experts. It's certainly refreshing. I see they've also created depth by having certain object scroll slower (or less.) Further removing the boundaries. (By boundaries I mean gradients, lines, blocks and buttons - I believe these objects give a UI a form of tactility?) http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MdDAeyy1H0A&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watchv=MdDAeyy1H0A&feature=player...

godDLL 17y ago
The "experts" would say that the phone does not "get out of the way", because of this messy typography thing and the minimum of three hardware buttons required for navigation.
- pistoriusp 17y ago
  One thing that I noticed is that whilst the interface would like to be one without boundaries they can't get away from it. (See screenshot: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/7serieshands6.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/02/7serie...). The person's name stops abruptly a little bit below the title "eople." ;)
  - gdee 17y ago
    Seeing how it consistently happens on the horizontal, I think it's by design. It probably tries to suggest with some degree of subtility that the UI goes on in that direction.
    - godDLL 17y ago
      It'd do good to subtly suggest what parts of this typographic info-graphic are tappable.

halo 17y ago

The UI makes both the iPhone and Android look incredibly dated. I have a few questions about discoverability and usage in practice and it looks a tad laggy in places, but on the whole it looks very nice. The downsides are that it shares many of the problems with the iPhone - the lack of multitasking, no Flash, and I bet it requires iTu--the Zune Software. There's also unknowns on WM7 as a development platform, and whether it requires you to use the App St--Windows Mobile Marketplace. That said, from what has currently been shown I think the good massively outweighs the bad. One feature I'm particularly happy to see is Wi-Fi Sync. I hope this gives Apple the kick up the backside they need to include it in the iPhone.

brandonkm 17y ago
This new refresh of the windows mobile line is a very bold move by Microsoft. I'm really surprised they threw out all the existing winmo architecture and started fresh. The carrier network that supports WM7 will mean lots of choices for consumers as well. Not only that, they seem to really be emphasizing consistency across devices with the three buttons (start, search, back). This is undoubtedly uncharacteristic of how the winmo division has previously operated. Most of all, todays announcement shows me they get it. I had always written off windows mobile as an OS, and after looking at things a bit, I'm considering WM7 for my next phone OS.
- cma 17y ago
  Will this phone play Microsoft Plays-for-Sure (TM) branded Microsoft DRMed music? Songs purchased for the original 5GB iPod will play on the iPhone.
  - dannyr 17y ago
    Plays-For-Sure is almost dead. Even the Zune doesn't support it.
    - Zak 17y ago
      I think that was the point. Can we trust MS to maintain their platforms such that money spent now on media and applications isn't wasted when the device is replaced?

evlapix 17y ago

With regards to the interface I have to vouch for Windows.. I have a Zune HD. I love it. The UI is anything but limiting and amazingly intuitive. My girlfriend would ask "How do I do XXX" and before I could remember how I would accomplish the objective, she had explored her way to the solution. Obviously a phone will have more strenuous requirements, but the interface I'm using on the Zune seems like it may be the exact outlandish interface that changes the way we think about buttons, and menus for interactive portable devices.

JunkDNA 17y ago

"...the first handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year." Kudos to Microsoft for realizing they need to be bold here and re-invent things. I'm encouraged by the lack of the "Start" bar. They have an incredibly brutal hill to climb if the handsets are only available at the end of the year. They should really have had a device out the door at the same time as the Palm Pre. It has taken Android a considerable amount of time to get to where it is today, and that took a no small amount of effort from Google. RIM, Google, and Apple are not going to be sitting on their hands this whole time milking their lead (well, RIM might ;)). Assuming the time frame holds true (a big assumption), by the time any appreciable number of users have these devices in their hands (early 2011), Apple alone will have released a major new OS update as well as hardware update, and be halfway to the next one. I expect Google will be similarly aggressive.

mercurio 17y ago

[Microsoft is] dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices (a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration), and doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz. That's right -- there will be a single Windows Phone identity regardless of carrier or device brand. So all Windows phones will look the same and work the same. I'm skeptical that hardware manufacturers will be enthusiastic about Microsoft turning their products into commodities again. Unlike the situation with PCs, this time they have a viable alternative in Android.

seshagiric 17y ago
There are lot of so called 'hubs' in the windows phone - photo hub, office hub... By customizing or packaging these hubs, I think network providers to design phones for a specific purpose or package a service: - enterprise user (package ms office + data plan) - consumer (package social n/w + music/video plans)
blasdel 17y ago
The partners are probably just happy that they didn't get fucked over by a 1st party Zune Phone. Microsoft has had several such projects in their recent stable of inept Mobile OS + hardware dev teams (along with several non-phone Zunes, WM6, WM6.5, several reboots of WM7, the Sidekick, etc.). Google's doing a ton of meddling with their hardware partners, as they can withhold their apps (Maps, Gmail, Voice, etc.) to get their way, but even then they keep getting fucked on basic stuff like putting the hardware buttons in the same order, much less the insane issues with backporting software updates! It looks like MS is trying to dodge all of that up front.

forgotAgain 17y ago

1) There is no phone yet. This was just a very superficial first look behind the curtain. Right now it looks like a modified Zune. 2) Delivery of devices by the end of the year seems a very tight schedule. That gives them basically 8 months to get to RTM. They haven't announced developer tools yet. I would expect a very basic 1.0 release this year if they make it at all. 3) It would be good if they succeeded. It's to no one's benefit to replace one 800 lb gorilla (Microsoft) with another (Apple). A counterweight is needed and Google Buzz has caused me to do a complete re-eval of that firm's worthiness.

jsz0 17y ago

I'm no fan of Microsoft in general but it looks like they made some good choices here. It's refreshing to see a GUI that's not just an iPhone clone or yet another awkward facelift on a dated product. I think it will be successful. SmartPhones don't have the same level of legacy baggage that prevent users from jumping to another platform easily so I don't think Microsoft is out of the game at all. It'll be interesting to see where their market share comes from. I'm thinking RIM & Nokia more than Apple & Android.

dannyr 17y ago

I love my Android but I have to say I'm impressed with Windows 7. I have a Zune and I dig the UI a lot. Adding XBox Live games is definitely a big plus. The games give it a big advantage over Android. Apps will again be key and this is where Microsoft strengths lie. Microsoft has the best developer tools on the market and they have legions of engineers on the .Net platform. My only worry is that it may be a year or two late for Microsoft. I don't really want to count them out because of what they did with the XBox versus the Playstation. However, the phone is a tougher market. It would be harder to convince people to switch phones. Phones are much more personal than gaming consoles.

trezor 17y ago
People switch phones much more often though, maybe even once a year. Consoles is something you buy for a five year period of time.
- dannyr 17y ago
  True. I would switch phones but very likely it will still be an Android phone. I don't know that many people switching from IPhone to Android and vice-versa. My online life is tightly integrated with Google's services so it will be tough to switch to a new platform.

stuntmouse 17y ago

Microsoft got the memo.

stuntmouse 17y ago

A couple of things I noticed that haven't been mentioned here: Wi-Fi syncing will be great, the animated XBox Live icon is a little annoying.

liquidben 17y ago

It will be very interesting to see what XNA support is like on the final model. There's a strong community of developers accessing these tools for free, which would allow Microsoft to roll out a full and lively app store quickly. I would be highly optimistic about Microsoft's ability to run an app store service, based on experiences with Xbox Live, Xbox Indie Games, and Rock Band Network. Since they're building from scratch, they could analyze and avoid legacy issues present in Apple's iTunes App Store ecology. Converse to their potential strengths at running an app store, Microsoft has a difficult decision posed by marketing. There are a lot of people out there addicted to Xbox Live Achievement points. If MS allows you to earn achievement points via games on it's new mobile phone, it will get a tremendous boost in market share. The risk present here is that the achievement points system requires additional overhead and review by MS, in order to prevent system breaking games. There's no feasible way for them to populate their app store with indies and approve achievement points for all of them. In order to have their cake and eat it to, MS needs to be able to differentiate achievement point games from indie games, but without turning indie games into an unshopped ghetto (see Xbox Indie Games). My best resolution would be to offer a small differentiation to icons on the store, specifically take those icons for games with points and apply a smaller logo to the corner, much like on a shortcut icon. Perhaps make it a little gold medal with a green ribbon falling in an X shape ;)

gxs 17y ago

I'm curious to see how it handles emails and .doc and .ppt files. Whether we like it or not, a lot of day to day business activities happen through word, outlook, and now, powerpoint. If windows mobile displays those files types cleanly, I assure you it will be a success. Blackberrys let you open those filetypes but I think they handle it pretty clumsily. For me it would be a huge plus if I could go through a deck or read a long word document without having to always be at my desk.

rbanffy 17y ago

Funny how it looks like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPDT21oEhW0

elblanco 17y ago
I would still like to use that interface.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  All we have to do is to convince the Gnome Foundation. Or the KDE folks. But would we have to use Spice Girls (is it?) music to go with that?

aresant 17y ago

Refreshing user interface yes. But did we forget all the lessons of the "readwriteweb facebook login debacle" of last week? This UI seems substantially less user friendly than iPhone or Android for your average end user. Who is now, incidentally, trained on the "iphone clone" UI if they've had a smartphone in this generation.

mhansen 17y ago
Why do you think it seems less user friendly?
potatolicious 17y ago
I think they've struck on something that Android has been ignoring: fun. The original iPhone was full of fun, interesting usability tidbits - the momentum-based flicking, the bounce you get when you hit the bottom of a list, the turning of album covers... etc. How "fun" your UI is directly contributes to discoverability. Android's UI is very dry, and IMHO it makes the UI harder for a novice to pick up and learn. You can inject a lot more features that aren't immediately obvious, and must be learned - but you must make your platform "fun" enough for users to actually bother discovering these things. Given what I've seen so far, I think MS has realized this also, and I think they're on the right track.

Groxx 17y ago

I must say, that's surprisingly clean and not in-your-face. A nice change for Microsoft. I've seen very similar styles of interfaces (concepts) for a few years, but they're certainly the first big-player to back it with a product. We can hope it won't be that slow-scrolling (largely seen in other videos). People get annoyed with shiny things that slow them down. One thing that's bugged me about the touch line of iProducts is the amount of wasted space around the icons (though I understand the reasoning behind it, and it would encourage an entire icon remake if changed).

jsz0 17y ago

Wondering how it effects the SmartPhone industry... RIM/Nokia: Should be worried. They're jockeying over last place in the SmartPhone modernity contest these days. Hasn't hurt them much yet but it's hard to see how that lasts forever. Nokia is probably in better shape than RIM here. Palm: Good try. Consider Open Source and/or licensing before it's too late. Apple: Probably not much to worry about for now but they shouldn't get complacent with the iPhone platform. My biggest question here is how big of a distraction the iPad was for Apple internally. Do we have a major iPhone revision and a strong software update in the works or another minor hardware bump with a merely evolutionary OS update? If they stay off Verizon for another year (at least) it could really start to hurt iPhone sales. The iPhone is no longer so far ahead of the pack that you'd suffer with bad coverage to use it. Android: Not much for Google to worry about but I think a lot of third party handset makers will put some resources back into Windows Mobile devices. Even more so with the existence of the N1.

stcredzero 17y ago

Seems like M$ has re-prioritized. Backwards compatibility is no longer sacred. Now it's alright to forge ahead and tack-on backwards compatibility afterwards. (I'm also thinking of Vista and Windows 7 here.)

shrikant 17y ago
Backward compatibility with their absolutely massive install base of WinMo 6.1?
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Good point. But why were they carrying the suckage forward for so long?