Windows Phone 7 Series - Not Too Excited About It

Posted by Timothy • Topics: Tech Monday, March 15, 2010 09:44 PM

I have always been a huge fan of Windows Mobile. It is (was?) literally a computer in my pocket. A barrage of less-than-spectacular devices combined with long periods between (small) updates left the platform behind its newer competitors -- the iPhone and Android. Now, I won't get into a deep discussion of what happened in the past, but let's just say that thanks to the efforts of HTC, Windows Mobile/Phone stayed fairly competitive, all things considered.

Now Microsoft has introduced Windows Phone 7 Series. They want to get back into the game big time. What initially looked so freaking awesome has turned out to be Microsoft's version of the iPhone -- a heavily locked down device with a supposed "focus on consumers." Apparently a focus on consumers means telling consumers how they are supposed to enjoy their devices and maybe cutting them a break and giving them some third party apps that absolutely cannot run in the background. That's the straw that broke the camel's back for me. As a developer and power user, I can't buy a Windows Phone 7 Series device if I can't tweak the hell out of it like I can my current device, a HTC Touch Pro 2, running Windows Phone 6.5.

So, what few Windows Mobile fanboys still exist out there, read the following article and cry at the end of an era. And also plan your next Android purchase. God, I hate Java. But what can I do? Microsoft has left me with no choice.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361377,00.asp

So supposedly in the future multitasking will be available when they figure out how not to impact the user experience (wtf? never heard of a priority queue? mutltitasking is not rocket science). If and when they do, I might be back on board. Until then, with no unmanaged code, no memory cards, no multitasking, and a load of other "nos" where Microsoft forces us to use our devices their way and not ours, I'm not buying a Windows Phone 7 Series device. Very sad considering how cool it looks. I mean Silverlight UI and XNA games? Hell to the yea! But it's no longer a minicomputer. It's just a Zune with a phone. I'm not interested.

So, I hope their commitment to the 6.5 platform is not lip service, because I'm relying on that while I watch to see what happens with Windows Phone 7 Series. I'm hoping that by "7.1" it will still look smooth as silk, like it does now, but will be back to being a mini-computer, like its in-spirit predecessors.

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Comments (8)

8 comments on article "Windows Phone 7 Series - Not Too Excited About It"

Grant

3/17/2010 1:37 PM

I agree 100%. I've got a 6.5 custom ROM on my touch pro and love that I can do almost anything with it. I too, am looking to an Android phone next for the same reasons.

Timothy

3/17/2010 1:53 PM

From what I've been reading, there are tons and tons of developers in the "underground" (ie, custom ROM, warranty voiding) community that are extremely upset. I vigorously defended them when they said "no backward compatibility." I vigorously defended them when they said "no alternate shells." I draw the line at multitasking. Beyond that, I can't support them!

I've calmed down a little since I wrote that article up there. I'm now eagerly awaiting the first hacker at XDA to crack it open and run the first piece of unmanaged code. It's Windows CE, afterall. So it still has the capability to run .EXEs. :-)

But I'm not buying one until I am 100% certain I can use the phone MY WAY!

On a side note, I looked a lot at Android development. It's a foreign world! It's been a long time since I did anything remotely Java related, and then Android has its own differences ontop of that! That's holding me back from jumping on Android as soon as my contract expires. I may have to wait it out on 6.5 for several years.

Ah well. It's not worth fretting over. I have nearly two years left on contract and a ton of cool 6.5 apps I'm working on. I need to dedicate myself to that and just enjoy the show. Planning two years in advance is going to drive me crazy. ;-)

Mahomed

3/20/2010 8:50 AM

I came across a link to Windows Phone 7 just a few days ago and had a look at some articles. To say I was shocked and stunned to learn that it had no multi-tasking and no copy & paste is an understatement.

I immediately started thinking about getting an android phone too. Although I admit the iPhone looks good, all the restrictions was one of the reasons I didn't go for one.

You'd think Microsoft would have learnt something from Apple, or maybe they have. Maybe they are trying to repeat the whole Vista/Win 7 scenario i.e. Release something that looks good but turns out to be rubbish, then release something that is actually good and hit all the early adopters twice.

Or maybe they are just looking to drum up a load of fuss and publicity about what a mistake they are making, then change at the last minute making them look like they do actually listen.

Oh well, whatever the conspiracy theory is, I hope they wake up as I'll be looking for a new phone early next year.

Dispair

4/13/2010 1:37 AM

Friends, you are not alone. It borders on unbearable just to hear of the hefty changes to the platform in an effort to clearly make it less useful and less interesting for developers. What $#%! genius decided to adopt the iPhone "no copy/paste" thing. It's like designing a CPU with a built-in math co-processor and then later releasing a "SX" version that offsets the deficiencies with a bigger box and heaver advertising...wait...now I'm drifting...drifting...uuh.

All I can say is OMG! Maybe it's time to begin ReactOS/Mobile? Sigh...

Don Burnett

5/17/2010 11:12 PM

I have used Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices forever.. I had one of the first CASIO monotone devices and my last windows mobile phone was a windows mobile 6.1 device..

I would just tell you that I own an iphone these days and it's much much more functional than any of the PDAs or Windows Mobile phones that I owned.

I am also a Microsoft Expression Blend MVP and I worked on the original phizzpop.com website. I do silverlight and have been doing XAML and WPF since 2006.

Frankly put, the apps and the market for them on other platforms were passing windows phone behind. There are no consistant UIs and Microsoft couldn't convince any of the web based companies doing mobile apps to move to windows mobile..

Silverlight is a much much better option and UI choice than was was available with the previous winforms/compact framework. It's also easier and more capable. Microsoft also went to a more "social/content" interface which is innovative.

While they can't make everyone happy I will just say if old windows mobile developers don't want to write for it, that's okay it just makes room for us independent guys already doing silverlight apps in Expression Blend.

There is still framework goodness and now XNA underneath the UI.. A good example of why it can be successful is the social bent of Microsoft's low end "Kin" phones. It moves the UI to the content the user wants to know. Something better than the iphone..

Honestly, if your getting out of development and I hope you are not. I am kind of impressed with what I see you have done in the past, maybe you just need to give it a chance.. For every old school windows mobile dev I know getting out, I know 10 silverlight developers who are getting in.. I have an iphone and a droid device and I am more impressed with WP7 everytime I sit down to do app dev for it.. Give it a chance join your fellow devs it's different but I think it will be better than you think it will.. I have done a few oldschool windows mobile apps too for fun a while ago too..

Don Burnett

5/17/2010 11:19 PM

By the way, iphone didn't have cut and paste until this year, and it's not really needed for most apps. Silverlight has cut a clipboard, (and where would you use it in XNA??).. As for the multi-tasking, do you know about silverlight and worker processes if you are not a silverlight guy then I suggest some research there.. I would just say it would be easy to put silverlight over another kernel or something that multi-tasks better. Personally everytime I used a winmo/ce device it ate memory like crazy and you couldn't really multi-task with most of the apps anyway which swallowed all the memory/drive space. I was constantly (in the old win mobile) defragging memory.. Not something people want to deal with as a consumer..

Timothy

5/18/2010 9:35 AM

Multithreading != Mulitasking. I know you can run multiple threads -- that's old news. But you can't run multiple apps.

Apple not having cut-and-paste for a year is no excuse for Microsoft not having it for a year. I hate it when people bring up that argument! It reminds me of kids when they say "my friend's parents let him do [whatever]!"

How would I use it? How about in Word editing a document, in Outlook editing an email, in Excel, editing a spreadsheet, in OneNote editing notes, in my browser copying a portion of a web page, or in any third party app in the universe that has a textbox field?

The problem with Windows Mobile was that many "power" users (irony quotes) felt they had to tweak every single aspect of it to attempt to gain the tinyest bit more RAM or CPU. The truth is, if you just left it alone with the stock ROM, and didn't tweak the hell out of it, you didn't run into nearly as many issues (a few buggy devices notwithstanding). I've found time and again that most crashes are due to aggressive tweaking and aggressive memory managers. In that sense, it's good that WP7 is locked down. It's bad for the true tweakers that knew what they were doing, but a simple "escape code" that could lead to power user mode would fix that. In other words, a "jailbreak" without having to hack your device.

Let's see... I currently have six apps open on my TP2, no stability issues and about 65MB free. Not to mention two third party services (ones I wrote), a custom screen locker, Mobile Shell 3, exchange OTA activesync, etc.

I'm glad the silverlight developers are going to WP7. I'm sure there will be many cool little time waster apps, just like on iPhone. Meanwhile, I'll probably be going to Android where all the hardcore system developers/tweakers seem to be going. I checked the Android market over a year ago and htere wasn't much interesting stuf. Now suddenly there's a ton of good stuff! All the stuff I need! Office suites, remote desktop, exchange support, a plethora of awesome desktop widgets, misc services and tweaks that WP7 can't support by design currently. And I can write my own. And they can run in the background. And I don't have to ask Microsoft's permission to distribute the apps (you can trade APKs without the android market).

It's pretty weird. I thought Android was a terrible WM clone when it came out. And to be frank, the first version was pretty terrible. But since then, it has outgrown WM in features, flexibility, and stability. You don't need to lock users down to get stability. Google did the app sandbox the right way. Each app has a set of permissions it needs to access certain aspects of the OS. And the user has control in that decision. Not Google!

Timothy

5/18/2010 9:37 AM

I'm still a while away from upgrading my phone contract, but that looks to be the direction I'm heading unless there is some drastic changes to WP7 in the interim. But that is appearing to be less and less likely as time goes on. MS is interested in the iPhone's consumer market. They aren't interested in power users. Android is basically market agnostic. It's up to the OEM to decide how to market the phone. And that seems to be working. Android collectively outsold iPhone last month. That's a huge feat for an open tweakable OS. It could have been WM, if MS would have given us what is 6.5.3 now two years ago.