Windows Phone 7 Series

[Trippy]

Microsoft's new phone OS with a name* only Steve Ballmer could love. Won't be available until the end of the year. AT&T is the provider in the US 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/cmpn/windowsphone7series/default.mspx

* I love how they can't even keep straight whether or not "Phone" is supposed to be capitialized or not.

[WayAbvPar]

My buddy in the biz tells me this is pretty much a complete reset from Windows Mobile (which I have on my phone and hate with the fire of a thousand suns). If this is a miss, then MS is pretty much going to be irrelevant in the wireless market going forward.

[Trippy]

My buddy in the biz tells me this is pretty much a complete reset from Windows Mobile (which I have on my phone and hate with the fire of a thousand suns).

It is. None of the existing Windows Mobile apps will run on the new OS.

[schild]

Good, because they're all effectively shit.

[lac]

Good riddance Windows Mobile. The phone actually looks pretty good but their product launch site has that fake enthusiasm feel all over it again. You'd think somebody would have told them by now.

[Quinton]

I'm undecided if the hyper-minimalism is brilliant or braindamage.  Need to actually play with one and see how it feels, I guess.

The giant titles that consume 1/4 the display and don't fit (so you're scrolling through contacts in your "eopl" list) have me scratching my head a bit.

Definitely wins points for not doing exactly what everybody else is...


That said, we might as well all go home, since Nokia and Intel are combining the unstoppable power of maemo and moblin into meego!  Look out, mobile industry.

[Trippy]

That said, we might as well all go home, since Nokia and Intel are combining the unstoppable power of maemo and moblin into meego!  Look out, mobile industry.

Are they going to hire Jar-Jar or Gollum* as their official spokes-uh-thingy?

* "Meego" rhymes with "Smeagol" in my head.

[TripleDES]

Nokia and it's Maemo have been pretty irrelevant up until now, apart from a few retarded Debian freaks, Moblin even less so. What exactly are they expecting to gain from this? I haven't heard of any phone manufacturers even contemplating the use of Moblin. If at all, if they're not going Android, they're inventing their own shit (see Samsung). And Maemo's not getting anywhere but Nokia, which seems to suck royally at the smartphone game right now.

As for the WinMo7 UI. Well, yeah, it looks flashy, but whether that's longterm usable, remains to be seen.

[Salamok]

their product launch site has that fake enthusiasm feel all over it again. You'd think somebody would have told them by now.

Like an Enzyte commercial without the humor.

[Baldrake]

I'm actually quite excited about WP 7. My core phone use is business. Neither iPhone nor Pre cut it because they don't handle Outlook/Exchange sync adequately. I'm currently using Windows Mobile 6, which actually meets my needs pretty well, but I have enormous envy of people with shinier phones. I wonder if a core market for WP 7 will be people in my situation.

MS has a tough road to follow, though. Most every young person is in the iTunes/iPod world, and convincing them to move to the Zune is going to be a hard sell. With an older audience, the Zune-style music subscription might be a hit - so much simpler. And older people still listen to radio, which WP 7 supports.

The variety of hardware is in their favour. Some people really want a physical keyboard, for example.

If they can get really good games out, that may push sales. But hard to believe WP 7 games or infrastructure will be dramatically better than what's being sold on the iPhone.

I really don't know why they announced this close to a year in advance, though. It's an awfully long time to keep interest up.

[Ingmar]

Windows Mobile and iPhone use pretty much the same ActiveSync thing for Exchange, so it shouldn't really be much of a difference.

[Baldrake]

iPhone has a half-assed calendar app and no task app to speak of. You can't sync to functionality that isn't there.

[Ingmar]

I have been an Exchange admin for close to 10 years and you are the first person I have ever talked to who uses Tasks!

In that case you're better off with a Windows phone or an Android running Touchdown, yeah. Or possibly a Blackberry if your company runs a Blackberry server.

[Baldrake]

Yeah, I live by the task manager. Among other things, it's great for getting email out of your inbox and into dated actions. I don't understand how people get by without something similar. Maybe my job just involves a lot of multitasking.

I was really close to getting a Pre a while back, but ... lousy task app. I'm hanging onto my WinMob 6 phone until WP 7 comes out.

[Baldrake]

I fear I am the only person who cares about this at all, but Engadget has posted their enormous summary of all things related to Windows 7 phone series.

[KallDrexx]

I don't understand why Microsoft thinks it's OK for words (Like February) are OK to have extend off the screen.....

It boggles my mind.  If it wasn't for the Zune I wouldn't mind but they did that crap on the Zune HD as well.

[Tebonas]

Whats up with the UI? In the videos it felt awfully slow.

[schild]

The Zune UI is pretty damn slow. /shrug