Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
engadget.com
Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#2There's some unfinished, but clear documentation on this page:
http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/
In particular, this PDF gives a great flavor of designing for Windows Phone 7:
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252
Overall, I'm quite impressed. They've aimed at a similar target as Apple did with the original iPhone. Make it fast, clean and strip away as many features as you dare.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#3I don't know...
Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS.
There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#4I don't know... Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS. There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
>There is nothing intuitive about the OS
Could you elaborate on this?
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#5There's some unfinished, but clear documentation on this page: http://developer.windowsphone.com/windows-phone-7/ In particular, this PDF gives a great flavor of designing for Windows Phone 7: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9713252 Overall, I'm quite impressed. They've aimed at a similar target as Apple did with the original iPhone. Make it fast, clean and strip away as many features as you dare.
That would all be impressive if this was 2006, unfortunately, they are largely copying the iPhone with just a different graphic design theme. It is symptomatic of bigger problems in Microsoft's innovation lag.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#6I wonder how the apps are going to play out. XNA is used for the games and there are plenty of shops out there creating for xbox. It looks like porting existing XNA games to the phone will be fairly straightforward. I'm expecting Windows Phone 7 to be a big player in handheld gaming because of XNA/Xbox.
I'm primarily a .Net/Silverlight dev myself so I'm biased but the core development experience is better than Apple/Google IMHO. They do need to get off their asses and release more controls (like the pivot) or they aren't going to have standardized UI across apps.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#7Is it a surprise to anyone there is nothing awesome or especially compelling about the Win7 phone?
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#8I don't know... Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS. There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
>There is nothing intuitive about the OS Could you elaborate on this?
when you are a few layers deep i'm thinking you would be pretty lost. nice if you could zoom out.
but its not that bad reminds me of sony's PS nav.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#9I don't know... Unless MSFT starts paying phone manufacturers or developing their own hardware, I don't see this catching up as much as Android or IOS. There is nothing intuitive about the OS and honestly very underwhelming, I doubt a consumer who is aware of IOS and Android and have the option of choosing either one of the three will end up with Windows7.
>There is nothing intuitive about the OS Could you elaborate on this?
Sure.
The UI doesn't follow a conventional way how people use UI in any form of mobile devices. There are differences in IOS, Android, Blackberry and PalmOS but those differences aren't huge. If you use either of those devices/OS who should be able to pickup any of the other devices relatively easily. At least this has been my personal experience with Android, IOS and WebOS. What Windows Mobile 7 is doing is a fundamentally different way of how you use a mobile device. You could argue that when IOS was first introduced it was also a different way of how people uses mobile phones. But it was different in the sense that it was not confusing, it was very intuitive.
In contrast Widows7 mobile UI is a confusing mess and very bland to be honest. There no "Wow" factor. Who thought big blocks of animated tiles taking up huge screen real-state to be a good idea? I think this is also a good example of different design philosophy with MSFT and Apple. IOS with its new update introduced folder with the goal of giving you more screen real-state so that if you have a lot of apps you don't have to keep sliding and MSFT adds huge block of tiles (and animated!) that will require you to slide around to find what you need.
It would have made an interesting showcase for concept design that car manufacturers always make, but I don't see this being much practical at all.
Re: Windows Phone 7 in-depth preview
#10Interesting - I wonder why the difference exists; Engadget seems to like Win7 (though they are not ecstatic), whereas other sources seem to despise it. I wonder where the difference lies.
I do hope MS the best - the more competition we have in this sphere the better, and if the responsiveness/performance of the OS is as good as Engadget says, there will finally be some hard competition for the iPhone (Android is great, but I've yet to use one where the UI isn't sluggish, and it really detracts from the experience).