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Even more, it's surprising to see this mentality on Hacker News. You'd think that we love technology and try whatever is best at this moment. I have never reall

Even more, it's surprising to see this mentality on Hacker News. You'd think that we love technology and try whatever is best at this moment. I have never really used Windows, but I like Microsoft's work on Metro and Windows Phone, so I also have a Lumia (besides being an Apple user in general).

harrytuttle 13y ago
Same for me. I spend most of my time on Linux these days but I have a Lumia (720). Great phone. Just works and can get through 3 days without a charge! The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have a decent ssh client but that is remedied by the fact it works as a tether and I can use my laptop with it. I don't like running root on a touch screen device either due to the massive danger mistyping as root and shooting something.
- networked 13y ago
  Today was my first real experience with Windows Phone (I set up a -- yes -- Samsung device running Windows Phone 7.8, the latest update to the previous release, for a relative). My first impression of it was that the UI and the core apps felt responsive and well-designed. Sadly, I ran into a error whereby Outlook.com refused to import an Outlook 2007 CSV file with contacts to sync with the phone. I soon figured out the reason behind the error was Office 2007's UI language being set to something other than English, which caused Outlook to generate a header for the CSV file with the field names listed in that locale, which in turn Outlook.com refused to parse. Disappointing, particularly in light of otherwise decent localization. Other than that, though, actually using it has more or less convinced me to consider a Windows Phone device as my next phone. AFAIK, WP8 doesn't rely on Zune the way WP7 does. Does it play well with Linux in practice? By the way, how do the privacy policies of Windows Phone and Microsoft Live services compare to those of matching products from Apple and Google? I have tried and failed to find a systematic comparison (i.e., a table) of how much data about the user the three mobile OSes and their vendors' apps collect and what they say about redistribution the data to third parties. I'd rather not try to perform this analysis myself (IANAL). Perhaps there's a market opportunity here.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    I had a windows 7.8 phone before this one (a Lumia 710). The entire core is wonderfully designed to the point that I only usually install 3-4 free apps on the device. These are currently Adobe Reader, Nokia Here Drive (which is the best app of any kind on any device), RPNCalc and YouTube. I'd go for a Nokia device if you do get one - they are superior simply due to the navigation provided and their build quality. That problem with outlook.com is not related to the phone itself nor the mobile platform so that is moot. I don't use outlook.com - I have an IMAP Server and work exchange server and they bot work perfectly on the device. WP8 does play well with Linux i.e. it doesn't require Zune any more to access the device. It doesn't however mount any disks on the device if you plug it in though, so I tend to yank out the SD card and poke it in my laptop. Apart from that it is an entirely self-supporting device that doesn't need machine connectivity at all so it's good enough for me. As I said, I don't use Windows Live services at all. We have a Microsoft Exchange 2010 system at my company. It talks to that perfectly fine. I did use it for a bit a while ago but SkyDrive has numerous problems where they delete your files so I can't rely on it.
    - networked 13y ago
      Sounds pretty good overall. All the more reason to try it. Nokia's map applications have been great since Symbian S60v3 was in its prime, so I'd love to see what their developers were able to do with them on a more capable platform. I would disagree that the problem with Outlook.com is not related to the phone itself or the mobile platform, though. It certainly does seem to me that Windows Phone is intended to be used with Windows Live by its average user. For example, using Outlook.com is the officially recommended way of getting Outlook contacts on your phone if you don't have an Exchange server [1]. The camera app is tightly integrated with SkyDrive, too. I understand that you cannot blame the developers of Windows Phone for this (given the sheer size of Microsoft the teams behind Windows Live and WP may well not share any personnel) but my initial experience as a user makes me wish they had paid as much attention to it as they did to the mobile OS itself. [1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991
      - 13y ago

harrytuttle 13y ago

Same for me. I spend most of my time on Linux these days but I have a Lumia (720). Great phone. Just works and can get through 3 days without a charge! The only thing that sucks is it doesn't have a decent ssh client but that is remedied by the fact it works as a tether and I can use my laptop with it. I don't like running root on a touch screen device either due to the massive danger mistyping as root and shooting something.

networked 13y ago
Today was my first real experience with Windows Phone (I set up a -- yes -- Samsung device running Windows Phone 7.8, the latest update to the previous release, for a relative). My first impression of it was that the UI and the core apps felt responsive and well-designed. Sadly, I ran into a error whereby Outlook.com refused to import an Outlook 2007 CSV file with contacts to sync with the phone. I soon figured out the reason behind the error was Office 2007's UI language being set to something other than English, which caused Outlook to generate a header for the CSV file with the field names listed in that locale, which in turn Outlook.com refused to parse. Disappointing, particularly in light of otherwise decent localization. Other than that, though, actually using it has more or less convinced me to consider a Windows Phone device as my next phone. AFAIK, WP8 doesn't rely on Zune the way WP7 does. Does it play well with Linux in practice? By the way, how do the privacy policies of Windows Phone and Microsoft Live services compare to those of matching products from Apple and Google? I have tried and failed to find a systematic comparison (i.e., a table) of how much data about the user the three mobile OSes and their vendors' apps collect and what they say about redistribution the data to third parties. I'd rather not try to perform this analysis myself (IANAL). Perhaps there's a market opportunity here.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  I had a windows 7.8 phone before this one (a Lumia 710). The entire core is wonderfully designed to the point that I only usually install 3-4 free apps on the device. These are currently Adobe Reader, Nokia Here Drive (which is the best app of any kind on any device), RPNCalc and YouTube. I'd go for a Nokia device if you do get one - they are superior simply due to the navigation provided and their build quality. That problem with outlook.com is not related to the phone itself nor the mobile platform so that is moot. I don't use outlook.com - I have an IMAP Server and work exchange server and they bot work perfectly on the device. WP8 does play well with Linux i.e. it doesn't require Zune any more to access the device. It doesn't however mount any disks on the device if you plug it in though, so I tend to yank out the SD card and poke it in my laptop. Apart from that it is an entirely self-supporting device that doesn't need machine connectivity at all so it's good enough for me. As I said, I don't use Windows Live services at all. We have a Microsoft Exchange 2010 system at my company. It talks to that perfectly fine. I did use it for a bit a while ago but SkyDrive has numerous problems where they delete your files so I can't rely on it.
  - networked 13y ago
    Sounds pretty good overall. All the more reason to try it. Nokia's map applications have been great since Symbian S60v3 was in its prime, so I'd love to see what their developers were able to do with them on a more capable platform. I would disagree that the problem with Outlook.com is not related to the phone itself or the mobile platform, though. It certainly does seem to me that Windows Phone is intended to be used with Windows Live by its average user. For example, using Outlook.com is the officially recommended way of getting Outlook contacts on your phone if you don't have an Exchange server [1]. The camera app is tightly integrated with SkyDrive, too. I understand that you cannot blame the developers of Windows Phone for this (given the sheer size of Microsoft the teams behind Windows Live and WP may well not share any personnel) but my initial experience as a user makes me wish they had paid as much attention to it as they did to the mobile OS itself. [1] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2844991
    - 13y ago