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I'm Regretting Going WP7
- zentechen 16y agoWP7 got its merits Development tools and technical documentations are outstanding. Visual Studio has excellent WP7 support. The submission process was actually quite smooth. Never had problem except, yes, IE only. Shame on MS. The phone user experience is called Metro, the icons are actually Tiles, original design and different from the icon-based iOS and Android. I would say, for once, MS tried to not be a copycat. What's bad My biggest headache, the phone build-in search is useless. The Marketplace search is also useless, and it crashes a lot and had to restart the phone to be able to use the Marketplace again. Little apps available in Marketplace, 10,000(WP7) vs 150,000(Android) vs. 400,000(iOS), though this will changes over time as WP7 picks up momentum. No copy & paste. NoDo is supposed to add this feature ,but the roll out is WAY TOO SLOW (my Samsung Focus is the last device on the list). Overall, I am still anxious to see how WP7 will do in 2011.
- Jarred 16y agoI'm afraid I agree with this post. I bought a Samsung Focus on Black Friday with AT&T's Buy One Get One Free deal. What I like about it is the nice looking user interface and the web browser. (As a phone itself Samsung Focus is awesome). The actual Windows Phone 7 OS is awful. I put in a 16gb memory card a few months ago and it's incredibly slow. Everything takes a long time to load. By "long time to load" I mean 5+ minutes to open an app. All of the apps are tremendously slower after installing that memory card. That's most likely due to the memory card itself, but it's practically unheard of for phones to have dramatic performance reductions after installing a memory card. That makes me believe it's the software. I really bought it because A) I like to try new things and B) I like developing with .NET/Silverlight because of the awesome development tools. I had a G1 before and although not as slow as that was (I updated it to 2.2 at the time), this OS isn't a good buy. The phone itself though is really nice, it has a high resolution screen (480x800) with a 5 mega-pixel camera and it's really light.
- CrazedGeek 16y agoIt definitely is the memory card- WP7 isn't designed to have removable memory, and Samsung apparently didn't get that memo: http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-mess-the-full-story-and-how-nokia-ca/ http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/17/windows-phone-7s-microsd-...
- kogir 16y agoThe slowness is the memory card. I have a Focus with a high end memory card and it's great. WP7 software RAIDs (kinda) the SD card with the internal flash and treats it all the same. One nice thing about it is that unlike my Nexus One, all storage is first class storage. Apps, music, photos, video - All of it can go anywhere, with no special casing. The bad thing is that if your SD card is slow, everything is slow. That said, Microsoft should have known OEMs would expose the card slot, and that users would put in slow cards. They should have gracefully handled it, or had the OS ignore/reject crappy cards, like they did with ReadyBoost on Windows.
- underwater 16y agoAs others have said, you're not supposed to replace the memory card for WP7 mobiles. I have a LG Optimus and I've never had any slowness issues. I was concerned about the lack of upgradable memory before the purchase but it's nice to not have to worry about switching in and out cards and worrying about exactly where anything is saved. I did make sure I purchased a 16MB model though, being stuck with 8MB would suck.
- zentechen 16y agoHere's a thread on xda-developer forum of working MicroSD cards list http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=834144 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=834144 Confirmed Working(Data remains after soft reset): Centon 8GB Class 6 Kingston 4GB Class 4 Kingston 16GB Class 4 Microcenter 16GB Class 2 Patriot 16GB Class 2 PNY 8GB Class 4 PNY 16GB Class 2 SanDisk 8GB Class 2 SanDisk 16GB Class 4 Currently Unstable/Unsure: Kingston 8GB Class 4 Kingston 32GB Class 4 SanDisk 16GB Class 2 SanDisk 32GB Class 2 Confirmed Not Working(Data gone after soft reset): A-Data A-Data 4GB Class 6 A-Data 8GB Class 6 A-Data 16GB Class 6 Lexar 16GB Class 6 Transcend 8GB Class 6 Transcend 16GB Class 6 Also, just found Patriot 16GB Class 4 on Amazon, it now claims it works on Samsung Focus http://www.amazon.com/MicroSD-Memory-Samsung-Mobile-MicroSDHC/dp/B004CO6FQI http://www.amazon.com/MicroSD-Memory-Samsung-Mobile-MicroSDH...
- d_r 16y agoSorry to the OP. Many people I know swear by their iPhones. And with those for whom iOS doesn't fit (for whatever reason: Apple's idiosyncrasies, carrier/phone choice, app/OS choice, etc.), Android is an excellent alternative where Angry Birds runs just as well. WM7, on the other hand, still sounds like a black sheep, so I'm always curious to hear how someone decides to opt for this choice. I think the most common I hear is "I was waiting for a long time, and I was hoping this time Microsoft got it right." Signed, a former loyal Microsoft customer/fan who one day stopped waiting.
- CrazedGeek 16y agoI got a WP7 phone (the HTC HD7) after realizing that I had a top-of-the-line Android phone (the HTC Evo) and, even with CyanogenMod, it still felt really slow. Almost worse than an iPhone 3G. For me, WP7 feels a lot better than Android or iOS.
- GeneralMaximus 16y agoHave you tried CM7? One hour after installing the CM7 release candidate, I found I was in love with Android. It's like upgrading from a cheapass Windows XP netbook to a MacBook Pro with an SSD.
- CrazedGeek 16y agoYeah, I was running CM7 stable. Still felt sluggish.
- asdfaoeu 16y agoCM7 isn't stable there is just a rc out. So you must have been running CM6 which is based off 2.2 not 2.3.
- CrazedGeek 16y agoHmm, maybe it was the RC. Also, I may be completely overstating how slow it was. It definitely wasn't unusable, but it felt slower than it should have been. This was after multiple wipes to multiple ROMs too.
- worldvoyageur 16y agoI guess web apps are the only viable way to cut out the petty bureaucrats and actually get product to customers.
- zmmmmm 16y agoUmm, curious why you're ignoring Android in this assessment? Once you've paid your $25, believe me there is little bureaucracy in the process of submitting an Android app.
- ryanhuff 16y agoI wonder how long that will last though. Google just hasn't seem serious about developing and nurturing the Android Market. If somebody like Amazon came along and relieved Google of the burden, would Google take them up on the offer? Amazon would run it more like Apple runs the AppStore, albeit without the competitive restrictions.
- jkincaid 16y agoYou do know that Amazon just launched its own, competitive Android Appstore right? amazon.com/appstore
- credo 16y agoIt isn't great that Telstra customers have to wait for their operator to approve WP7 updates. Of course, this still sounds better than the Android model (where many customers can never get upgrades for their phones).This is a case where Apple has a clearly superior and more user-friendly model. However, aside from that, the post just seems to have a laundry list of minor complaints about the marketplace. Some of these problems have existed on itunesconnect as well. (For instance, on one occasion, I had to use Firefox for a part of the app submission, because Safari couldn't do the job) I'm surprised that these issues are the cause of his regret. (Note: I say this an iOS developer, who considered WP7, but decided against it).
- zyphlar 16y agoApple has a superior update model? Sure in theory, but I'm not aware of many significant updates to an iDevice that would be comparable to the Android update history. It seems like each phone gets one significant upgade before being phased out 18 months later, same with Android except with Android you have the flexibility of complete customization (and the customization is what causes update delays.)
- sliverstorm 16y agoiOS and Android didn't exactly come out of the gate rockin' the party either. In fact, copy/paste was one of the very initial complaints about iOS. Not that it excuses it, but if the competitors are anything to judge by, don't expect the One Ring to Rule Them right off the bat.
- danieldk 16y agoMaybe, but iOS has supported copy/paste for a while now, and iOS is the standard that people expect from a smartphone.
- poloniculmov 16y agoSymbian and Windows Mobile supported copy/paste for a good period of time before iOS and Symbian/Windows was the standard that people expected from a smartphone.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- statictype 16y agoThis. There are lots of people who seemingly never used a smart phone before the iPhone came out[1] and seem to think that everything that existed in iOS was always the first of its kind. Nokia's smart phones did copy/paste fairly well and long before the iPhone even existed. Yes, the iPhone set the bar higher for many features but it was certainly not the first to do many of them. [1] It's debatable that you could even call the first iPhone a smart phone since you were basically stuck with whatever preloaded apps came on it - though it was obviously a very good phone nevertheless.
- danieldk 16y agoTrue, but iPhone + iOS was a smoother experience in nearly every detail (from the capacitive touchscreen to intuitiveness), that people accepted the lack of copy/paste. From what I have seen of WP7, it is nice, but not nearly the revolutionary step ahead that iOS was compared to Symbian/Windows.
- alexqgb 16y agoSo much for turning a late entry into an advantage by taking notes on the pioneer's struggles, and avoiding all their big mistakes. An experience like the one described would have been par for the course in 2007 or 2008. But 2011? When it really has to be humming from Day 1? WTF times a million. If this is what's going to save the ghost of Ericsson, they're toast.
- Ruudjah 16y agoHtml5 is the new app platform. Microsoft trying to push silverlight is really just another way of their triple E strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish). In this case, embracing web apps, extending it by their .NET platform, then trying to extinguish html5 using Silverlight. This time, it won't be so easy as IE6: Google bets on html5, Apple (although somehwat), and they both have very good browsers already. Nice try MSFT.
- regularfry 16y agoIt really is a shame. The guts of Silverlight are really nice, and the dev tools are well above par. It's just a shame it's shackled to Microsoft's marketing machine.
- aeoth 16y agoErr, post author here... @d_r: Had Android, just last week my Milestone finally got Froyo. The dev tools - particularly UI - just don't exist. I like to be able to program for whatever I have. That's not going into how bug riddled either Android or far more likely Moto's Android implementation was - including gems like rebooting far more often than WP7, played music at random times without touching it, having to reboot the phone if it was put into flight mode to get signal back, etc. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about Android, but wasn't for me. v3 (when its on phones), might be though - the improvements and more attention to UI/consistency are looking really nice. Yes, there was certainly a fair bit of "I hope they got it right this time" to it. If they hadn't lied and delivered the updates when and how they said originally, it may be a different story. @credo: they're more the most recent issues that have caused regret. As a developer, getting my (few) apps up there has been a nightmare, even with help from MSFT AU's DPE trying to speed things up.
- TillE 16y agoThe Milestone is utter crap, and the reason I will never buy another Motorola product again (it took them how long to finally release Froyo, months after Gingerbread was available on other devices?). There's a port of CM7, though, which is a significant improvement: http://android.doshaska.net/cm7 http://android.doshaska.net/cm7 Can't fix the defective headphone jack in software, though. As far as I'm concerned, the only Android devices worth talking about are the Nexus phones. Everything else is a second-class citizen. And yeah, going with Java and shoving XML everywhere...ugh. Fortunately the NDK is now good enough to develop a game entirely in C++, so it doesn't bother me.
- csomar 16y agoFrom what I read, all his problems are with the Marketplace? We have read about that crappy update more than once and for requiring your to use IE, I don't find that quite abusing, since Apple itself requires that your install QuickTime to watch movies on their website.
- rbanffy 16y agoHe also complains not all phones will be upgraded to the newest WP7 releases, varying with device, carrier and country. If WP7 becomes too problematic, why bother with it. It's not like the devices are flying off the shelf anyway.
- jcr 16y agoaeoth, I didn't get a chance to read the article yet due to... Server Error in '/' Application. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. ...(intentionally snipped)... Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1 My email address is in my profile. Please contact me.
- wslh 16y agoWait 2 years. The time for the commoditization of the mobile phone/tablet market.
- seanalltogether 16y ago"1. Don't submit an app with anything but IE." This same holds true with IOS dev center and Safari. For all of apples talk about html5 and standards and all that, their own internal pages don't appear to be tested on anything other then safari.
- gcheong 16y agoI haven't used anything other than Firefox and so far have not had any problems. Do you have any specific examples?
- seanalltogether 16y agoI've had buttons in both the provisioning portal and itunes connect simply do nothing unless i was using safari.
- nigelsampson 16y agoSome of these I think are valid points, the update process needs to be improved. Currently it feels like the WP7 update process sits somewhere between iOS and Android, all the problems of both and the benefits of none. Smaller updates released more regularly would go a long way to solve these issues. The marketplace update process I've never had a problem and I've used both Firefox and Chrome never IE. I'd love to hear some of the marketplace rules that he feels are broken. Most to me seem pretty up front.