All Things Windows Phone - Apps, Phones, and Discussion

As you can see from my extremely original title, this is meant to be the WP7 hub of NBR, similar to the android thread.

I have always been intrigued by windows phone, as I loved watching the evolution of the zune interface to the metro UI. I recently ordered a Samsung Omnia 7 so I can finally experiment with WP7.

Post anything WP7 related in here... that means you HAL!

Moderator Edit: With the upcoming Windows Phone 8, the title of this thread has been changed to include Windows Phone 8 and WP 7.8 as well. See Mitlov's post on WP8 here.

 

I have been using an Omnia 7 for about 6 months now and it's awesome! Screen is amazing and its very snappy! It will be even better when mango is released in the next few months!

 

This ought to be an interesting thread...

I know there's got to be more WP7 users on NBR... what particular devices are you guys using? So far we have... All Samsung's. LOL.

2x Omnia 7's
1x Focus

 

I have a Zune HD and would have jumped on a W7 Phone but I use Boostmobile. Does anyone know if a W7P app/game will work on a Zune HD?

 

Given MS has a ~1% and falling worldwide smartphone market-share, I'm not so sure that's true...

 

True, but also not true. We're not your everyday citizens. We're tech conscious.

I'll bet there are well more than the three of us here on NBR...

 

WP7 apps are not compatible with the Zune HD

 

I bet four

And you don't count anyway

 

Just a note, I will be a lot more active in this thread once my Omnia 7 arrives on Saturday. Very excited, and glad to have a temporary replacement for my nexus one.

 

Hah! You finally got it, very nice!

If WP7 was more hackable a'la Windows Phone Classic, I'd be willing to try it. (OT phone thread veterans remember me waffling back and forth over it when it was announced )

Doubly so if the LG Quantum was Verizon's choice...that keyboard looks heavenly.

 

Worst. Windows Phone. Ever.

 

I mean I don't really think it is necessary for WP7 to go the hackable route... android has kind of filled the hacker/ enthusiast OS spot.

Thats why I am really excited to have wp7 for the awesome polished experience, and eventually the GS2 for all my hacking and tinkering needs.

 

But how do you really feel?

 

I'll most likely be getting an HTC Arrive sometime around the 19th, although I originally planned on getting one back in March, but lack of hours at old job caused me to rethink that; and new job is a lot more stable.

 

If you are planning on making WP7 your main device, you may want to wait until September when Mango devices launch.

 

Aren't all the current phone upgradeable to mango though? Most I'd probably get is better specs or something

 

All the current phones will be upgraded to Mango... but IMO the arrive really is a lackluster phone. With nokia phones, and a new samsung with (rumored) similar internals to the galaxy s2 coming out... I think it is worth the wait.

 

Hmm... Let me see...

@Blaze-Senpai - If it will be your primary phone, then yes, I agree with mrXniick. You should probably wait till the Mango devices debut. They're pretty nice, trust me. The main reason I have the Focus now was because it was a gift, though I almost pulled the trigger on it myself several times. Though considering it's only first generation Snapdragon hardware inside (QSD8250/Adreno 200), it is shockingly smooth and polished, and really makes you wonder what more horsepower under the hood will allow for... The MSM8255 really is a great chipset, its just that HTC seems to cheapen it out, components wise, and go for a more attractive unibody shell.

The new Samsung device running the MSM8255 is quite a speed demon.

 

I like this. I make a general statement with not too much detail, and you bring in the technical expertise/detail. I definitely get the easier role here. lol

 

LOL. It's what I'm here for. :GEEK:

 

"September" better not be the last week of September then, this is what happened last year |:

 

This one isn't chiseled on a stone tablet anywhere...

 

No what I meant was that last year I wanted to get one of the Windows Phones, but they took forever and a day in releasing them and I needed a phone when I got it. Its kind of the same thing at this point in time... only a year later

 

I know... I was basically saying that there's no promises. If all goes how it should though, Mango and the new phones should flow freely at that point. There certainly won't be any shortage of chipsets...

 

Really? That sucks. I liked the look of it. Hmm....wonder if they're cheap enough on the used market to be worth buying as an iPod touch esque device. Prob not.

Good point. That tweakability had some downsides and a lot of the people who were win mo to tinkerers switched to android already. The wp7 experience is awesomely smooth though, your right.

Awesome. The arrive's keyboard looks better than the quantum's and a proper TP2 successor. The mytouch slide devices are the only ones that come the closest on the android side.

 

Yes. And it's mostly because LG didn't seem to take the device seriously. It's got a seriously subpar LCD panel, camera module, and the slider is meh. Otherwise it's got decent build quality. Another thing was we had TON of returns... faulty hardware.

Meanwhile, those of you that have Windows Phones, I'll tell you how to load Mango on them in a bit. I need to perfect my guide.

 

So glad you got a Samsung focus... you will make life a lot easier for me lol

I received my Omnia 7 a few hours ago, and overall I am extremely impressed with the device. Build quality is great, it may be my favorite phone from an aesthetic/ and feel standpoint. Also, as HAL mentioned in the android thread, it does seem like color temperature is just right on the SAMOLED panel on WP7 devices. The screen just looks better than that of my sister's captivate and my friend's nexus S.

Also a pleasant surprise... the amazon listing said it was the 8gb model... the one I got is 16gb

I am really glad to have the phone, it is amazing how fluid it is. Looking forward to toying around with it.

Edit: Can't believe how much I love the Omnia 7 hardware. It really is a beautiful device.

 

actually it rising up to 7.5 % in 2011 from 5% last year and it will rise more in 2012 with the upcoming mango update and Nokia Devices, Samsung, HTC, ZTE, Fujitsu, Huawei, Acer and LG

i have samsung focus i might sell it and buy nokia windows phone 7 if i find something interesting

 

And we have our fourth member! HAL was right, definitely more than 3 users on NBR

 

And I thought updating Android was a task... LOL. This is going to be fun.

The thing about updating WP7 is that not everything is the same from user to user.

@ Everyone wanting to install Mango... Make sure you have Zune Client Software version 4.7 installed... not the latest consumer release v4.8. The 4.7 client can be found here:

Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - Zune Software 4.7

If you've already installed 4.8, uninstall it, then re-install 4.7. You may have to disable your network connection to keep the installer from searching for and installing updated software during install.

More coming...

EDIT:

Spoiler

 

I got impatient...

 

Very nice.

Let me know what you think of it! Personally, I'm LOVING the Twitter integration... the the new IE, and the new multitasking...

Tremendous update.

Also, I must say, the Netflix app for WP7 completely apes Android/iOS's client.

 

I am extremely impressed with Mango. It made an already polished and fluid OS even MORE polished and fluid. Love some of the small tweaks to the music player, and various other animation tweaks throughout the OS. I have only played with it for about 15 min, so I will post more impressions later as I use it more. I am extremely impressed so far, and will definitely still use WP7 sometimes after buying the GS2

Once the final build is out, and multitasking is fully integrated, this really is going to be pretty awesome.

 

Quoted from the press release in this article.

Maybe in the US MS has a market-share in the mid-to-high single figures but funnily enough the world, which is what I was talking about before, is much bigger than just 50 states


Also, the idea that Nokia will save WP7 is still laughable.
Nokia are inept, if they weren't they wouldn't be having to resort to using WP7 in the first place.

 

Nokia might be somewhat inept, business wise... But Microsoft isn't a company that just abandons a brand new platform. (kin excluded)

Windows Phone 7 is a great mobile OS. Mango improves on that. Market share might be pretty dismal at the moment, but come hell or high water it will succeed. Microsoft has finally figured out that their company is in question if they can't deliver. Now you're seeing the big guns with Mango. Microsoft will have almost every major OEM manufacturing WP7 devices, except Apple of course. Once they figure their advertising out, it ought to get really good. Personally, I remember the Zune ads and I wish Microsoft would throw a few ad dollars to that agency. They had creative, colorful ads that were a lot better than what's on air now.

 

let me know you when you decide to debate like humans

 

It's nothing to do with WP7 as an OS, I'm sure Mango will help sales as will a wave of new, higher-spec handsets ( though they really need to get a move on, every day is a day Android powers ahead).

But Nokia are not going to make the difference, they have very little to bring to the table.
There's no innovation in Nokia, no brilliant new technologies being brought to the market. All they have going for them are their decent-but-nothing-special 'Clear Black' AMOLED panels and Ovi Maps, neither of which are compelling reasons to purchase a Nokia handset.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's downright hilarious that people in the US are the ones who are looking forward to their WP7 handsets.
There's a reason people in Europe couldn't care less. We know better.

We weren't debating, you were just wrong.

 

Search for Hotels in Atlanta, GA with Android you get The Omni at CNN Center. On WP7 you get the Ritz Carlton.

Hmmm..

 

On average, those with WP7, what has your data usage looked like?

I'm seeing much higher usage than Android.

 

Interesting. Paul Thurrott's commenters and others noted this phenomenon: data usage | Search Results | Windows Phone Secrets

If Yahoo! Mail isn't the culprate for you, I wonder what could it be? Is there any way to adjust the polling time for things like Facebook and Twitter updates?

 

Nope, it's not Yahoo! Mail... it could be the built in client though, but I doubt it. I have error reporting over WAN turned off, automatic photo uploading is off... I mean there's really nothing besides the OS running. I have Mango installed, but none of the apps I have are "background aware", meaning none can run as background processes.

My suspicion is that it's Zune. I use the Zune app a LOT to play music wherever I might be and Zune will download album/graphic art to display onscreen during playback. It has the album art above the progress bar, but also has background art.

And no... there's no way to set update schedules and that's really bugging me. It's keeping a VERY close sync on my email accounts because just a few seconds after I read an item in my browser GMail, the phone reflects the message has been read. It usually takes a few minutes for me to see that with Android.

All in all, I LOVE the OS and I don't pay for my data so that's no biggie. It's just interesting is all.

 

Mango RTM FTW!

Just updated a minute ago.

 

What is better about mango? Are WP7 phones worth it to get? WP7 vs. Android? I'm in the market for a new device. I was thinking GS2, but I like WP7. Personal input from those I trust is always better than random reviews online... and no one i know personally owns a WP7 device.

 

Well, really, WP7 and iOS compete more with each other than they do with Android. At times I feel like I'm a bird stuck in a cage on WP7... I guess I'm just used to being able to do or change anything I want on Android (like sync schedules ).

WP7 Mango adds a ton of API support along with multitasking, newer hardware drivers/firmware, new modem support, support for the MSM8x55 45NM Snapdragon SoC, seamless threaded IM/SMS messaging, and TONS more. Basically it brings it up to speed with iOS (almost). There's still more API support on iOS.

All in all, if you're not going to be tinkering with your phone WP7 is a really awesome platform. Everything just works, it has wonderful typography, smooth animations throughout the ENTIRE UI.... it makes iOS look stale, IMO. Plus you get Zune, with the Zune Pass (if you have it).

 

I'll probably just be sticking ~200 songs (my favorites autoplaylist) on mine when I get it, I don't have a Zune pass since I don't listen to anything on it s:

Does it let you play music doing everything besides a phone call?

 

Pretty much agree with everything here. WP7 is more of an iOS competitor, while android provides the flexibility that I enjoy since I like to tinker.

That being said, I have absolutely been loving wp7 on my Omnia 7. It really is a very stable, smooth and fluid OS. It is amazing how fluid it is on older hardware. I will still get another Android handset (either GS2 or the next Nexus) but I am enjoying my time with WP7, and will keep my omnia round to play with.

Also, Mango has been awesome. One thing that I think is horrible in Mango though is turn by turn navigation. "You went the wrong way, tap if you want new directions"....

 

Yep. The music player in Mango is now a background process. Well, the Zune app was always a background process, but now all apps (including audio apps) are background aware.

The wonders of native code... If Android weren't stuck on top of a Dalvik VM it would be probably as smooth as WP7. But alas, it isn't.

LOL @ the navigation. I don't use my phone for navi, so I would have probably never seen that.

 

Ironically, using Bing turn by turn on Windows Phone Classic is vastly superior to the current implementation on Windows Phone 7. The voice is real-time like Google Maps w/ Navigation instead of "tap to hear." Last I heard it was some sort of licencing thing. *shrugs*

I know that 95% of you know all about Mango, but for those wondering, here's a great intro:

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The IE9 demo is pretty interesting and shows the power of hardware acceleration.

Question for Hal and others who might know: Because TouchWiz equipped phones have a hardware accelerated browser...would they perform much better than the Atrix in the "HTML 5 Speed Reading" test that Joe used in the demo?

 

That's a very informative video!

About hardware accel... What Samsung did was add in custom libs and frameworks for a "make-shift" hardware accelerated browser. It works, but it has it's share of issues. Though that simple flip-letter HTML5 animation would probably run much faster on, say, a Galaxy S 1/2. They've done wonderful things with the Adreno 200, but it's still the Adreno 200 and the SGX540 would ape it even with non-native code.

There's a basic differentiation in the way Android renders UI vs WP7. The way WP7 works is the entire OS is run on 2 threads... the CPU is used as a sort of prefetch/processing unit supplying drawable UI information to the Adreno 200 GPU on-the-fly. So you could say hardware accelerated UI runs to the core of WP7. On Android everything is deferred through the Dalvik VM, then to the GPU for rendering. While Samsung has the leisure of Exynos being as powerful as it is, it's a very inefficient way of doing things. I've thought for a LONG time now that if Google would drop legacy support of ARM11 devices going forward and implement a hardware accelerated UI, it would GREATLY benefit Android. They would have to drop anything based on the MSM7x27 and that is a good deal of low end phones. The low end chipsets can't handle more than one OpenGL instance at a time...

 

Can someone explain to me why you are excited about WP7? I'm really curious what niche it fills with the iOS / android saturated market.