Windows Phone 7 Launch Thread

evolutionqy7

Who knows Maybe the next update will be the jumping point for me
http://pocketnow.com/windows-phone/windows-phone-7-to-get-major-update-soon

hightower1

Got an omnia7 on meteor on Friday.... wow. Pretty slick alright, it really is a smart phone in the truest term. It changes the apps and look depending on what you put into it. Coming from android its a steep learning curve, android was a mass of settings and customization but this is nothing like it or any mobile OS I have used before. The SOMLED screen is mind blowing. All in all very good considering its a fresh platform and can only get better with more apps + updates.

evolutionqy7

hightower1 wrote: »

Got an omnia7 on meteor on Friday.... wow. Pretty slick alright, it really is a smart phone in the truest term. It changes the apps and look depending on what you put into it. Coming from android its a steep learning curve, android was a mass of settings and customization but this is nothing like it or any mobile OS I have used before. The SOMLED screen is mind blowing. All in all very good considering its a fresh platform and can only get better with more apps + updates.

Well hence why i think Windows Phone has most potential over iOS or Android because its only the beginning. Something that starts has space to develop further.

Though look on the app side i wanna jump across just because app quality seems far better than android.

Also the simplicity of it is because theres less options. Once thing i want to see is some quick way of turning wifi/bt/silence on and off.

Btw hows the battery life. I remember some people reporting that they used to get decent 2 days battery life out of the LG Panther. So i would expect most phones go around the same consumption since they all run the same and all the hardware is nearly identical.

hightower1

evolutionqy7 wrote: »

Well hence why i think Windows Phone has most potential over iOS or Android because its only the beginning. Something that starts has space to develop further.

Though look on the app side i wanna jump across just because app quality seems far better than android.

Also the simplicity of it is because theres less options. Once thing i want to see is some quick way of turning wifi/bt/silence on and off.

Btw hows the battery life. I remember some people reporting that they used to get decent 2 days battery life out of the LG Panther. So i would expect most phones go around the same consumption since they all run the same and all the hardware is nearly identical.

I found the battery to be brilliant, I have location services off but thats it. Wifi and data services on and I was using the handset a fair bit considering its the first few days. on "normal" use I would say 2 days would be a fair estimate.

The app store is a bit quiet alright but the quality is much better as you say. Things like IMDB and face book apps look very well polished. Considering the age of the OS and the stage they are at its mind blowing. I find it on par with most other smartphones and right now its actualy in very early days territory! Still love the UI... so very slick. I would say though if you can get a handset with the SOMLED screen do, its beautiful and combined with the sharp lines / vivid colours of the metro styled OS its something else.

evolutionqy7

hightower1 wrote: »

I found the batter to be brilliant, I have location services off but thats it. Wifi and data services on and I was using the handset a fair bit considering its the first few days. on "normal" use I would say 2 days would be a fair estimate.

The app store is a bit quiet alright but the quality is much better as you say. Things like IMDB and face book apps look very well polished. Considering the age of the OS and the stage they are at its mind blowing. I find it on par with most other smartphones and right now its actualy in very early days territory! Still love the UI... so very slick. I would say though if you can get a handset with the SOMLED screen do, its beautiful and combinded with the sharp lines / vivid colours of the metro styled OS its something else.

yeah too bad samsung cut of HTC's samoled supply. Im still a HTC Fan

and i like big screens i just hope by the time the 1.1 will be ready the new dual core processors will be out its kinda the main reason why i didnt get HD7 because it still the same hardware as HD2 just with a different phone shell

btw theres 2500+ apps on the market thats ok considering its only a while since it started

jiminho

Though look on the app side i wanna jump across just because app quality seems far better than android.

Also the simplicity of it is because theres less options. Once thing i want to see is some quick way of turning wifi/bt/silence on and off.

Btw hows the battery life. I remember some people reporting that they used to get decent 2 days battery life out of the LG Panther. So i would expect most phones go around the same consumption since they all run the same and all the hardware is nearly identical.[/QUOTE]

I haven't read the entire thread but by the sounds of it you haven't jumped ship yet. My recommendation would be to wait a couple of months. The quality of the phones available are not as good as they should be. For Ireland, LG optimus (No, because it's LG), HTC HD7 (terrible battery life, poor quality phone) and then theres the Samsung Omnia 7. I have played with it a good bit and I have to say I like it but again battery life isn't quite and its only 8gb. 8gb is nothing, you will fill that up quite fast if you plan on putting many songs and xbox games on it.
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/phones/mobile-phones/samsung-omnia-7-900360/review
Thats a pretty good review of the phone. I personally think i will wait till March when apparently the second wave of WP7 will happen. Supposedly this second wave will all be allowed to have memory expansion capabilities, and I'm pretty sure Samsung will make a new phone just for this added capability. And also dont forget about dual core proccessors

But I guess its up to you guys. January is expected to have a big update for WP7, which has been said to be "like a brand new platform". But I think i will wait for a bit......if only for a few months

Murilloinf

Must thank the person who put the omnia offer, getting one for free, let you know how I get on.

liamog

Murilloinf wrote: »

Must thank the person who put the omnia offer, getting one for free, let you know how I get on.

So did you pick up the phone yet? If you did hows it working out for you. I always wonder if my pro Microsoft view is clouding my judgement.

Murilloinf

Using it to type you this message.
Pretty impressed, some details really remind me the iphone ( the browser has the same clearing the image as the iphone).
The integration (facebook account) work brilliant well, I'm still a bit confused and missing the widgets in android, however I must say that it's the biggest step-up that I have seen in the mobile OS market in long long time.
But again, the OS standard was already there, they didn't reinvent anything...

evolutionqy7

Yeah well the goal was to update the windows phone to today's standards. Still.miss the freedom windows mobile used to offer

evolutionqy7

http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-begins-pushing-out-copy-paste-windows-phone-7-update-to-developer-devices/

Copy paste being pushed in developers handsets

liamog

I'm wondering if they'll update the marketplace to support podcasts in the Zune Desktop app. I can add them via the feed URL but it would nice to have the directory like they do in the states.

evolutionqy7

yeah its a disgrace ms is so US orientated and basically gives the rest of the world the finger. bing is still beta in Ireland

spark1976

Got myself a HTC HD 7 and so far i'm well impressed with it.

The first thing that strikes you when you handle the phone is the size of it.. its huge, really lovely. There are no physical buttons on the phone at all other than the on/off switch, camera switch and volume control. Phone is very sturdy, not as tough as the iphone id say so anyone that buys it dont go dropping it!!

Windows 7 is fantastic, coming from an iphone 4, its a bit confusing at first. Everything of importance is on the first screen, the second screen that you access by scrolling to the right holds all the other apps.

The tiles themselves are pretty cool, the people tile i think is one of the best things i've seen on a phone, you can sycronise all your facebook, hotmail, gmail, twitter, outlook contacts.. it turns the people section into one big phonebook full of information...it works really well for me. For example, if you select a person on your contacts it will then show all the latest posts from them on facebook, twitter etc, you smart link various contacts together...its just done right.. the title itself is animated which i thought was pretty cool..

I have only tried a few apps, apparently there are about 3000k plus apps, very very small compared to the iphone apps, but its a new phone and it will eventually get there, installing the apps was painless.. no issues at all. I must say i'm well impressed with the facebook app. Its a must for anyone thats into social stuff..

Xbox live is great, you can see all you achievements, gamerscore, change your avatar details, view your friends etc.. all works great. This i'm expecting to expand over time. MS has a hit on their hands if they really drive the xbox section, it could end up being the xbox handheld if done right. Played one or two games,The Harvest is one of them... i'm not that far into it but so far its pretty solid, great graphics.. that was unexpected..

I got to end with Zune. Disapointingly the Zune pass ive been hearing so much about is not available to ireland at this time. A friend of mine had it and raved about it. I really like the Zune interface, much much better than the itunes one, its great for music and films. Really easy to set it up and transfer my albums to the phone

Great phone and fantastic effort from MS, it can only get better with updates. I really hope they support the phone, i thought i'd miss my iphone but i'm glad i did the switch!!

chrislad

Apparently, according to a Microsoft rep, we should have Zune Pass in Jan or Feb.

Oafley Jones

I was really impressed when I got to play with the omnia 7 recently. I was kinda shocked how much I liked it, having never cared for the videos I'd seen of it in action.. so much so that if they fix a number of the issues I could see myself leaving Android for it.

liamog

chrislad wrote: »

Apparently, according to a Microsoft rep, we should have Zune Pass in Jan or Feb.

Any source for this because that would be brilliant, or was it an off record conversation

gizmo

Thinking of picking up an Omnia 7 from Meteor during the week and at this stage, factoring in the news regarding the forthcoming updates, my only worries now are the lack of mass storage support/file explorer. Quick question for those who have a WM7 phone so, is the Zune software required to transfer any files onto the phone?

danger_mouse_tm

from what i am told you need zune to transfer files. I haven't tried it yet because vodafone wont push an upgrade through until january. However i have been following the windows weekly podcast on the twit network where the author of windows phone secrets gives some great tips about using the phone. Www.winsupersite.com

gizmo

danger_mouse_tm wrote: »

from what i am told you need zune to transfer files. I haven't tried it yet because vodafone wont push an upgrade through until january. However i have been following the windows weekly podcast on the twit network where the author of windows phone secrets gives some great tips about using the phone. Www.winsupersite.com

Thanks for the link!

I saw this piece in relation to the myrid of registry hacks which enable mass storage support on the phone and it doesn't particularly excite me.

"Windows Phone is not a mass storage device," Joe Belfiore told me. "The data on the phone must be kept consistent. Under the covers, they are essentially Zune devices, and we need to be able to ID and verify what's in the storage, match music to cloud data so we can ID songs, and so on. The user isn't doing that manual stuff, copying files to memory cards or whatever. Some may want to, we know. But in general, a sync system that is simple and easy and does meta data mapping is the better choice. And that's what we did."

I can only hope they do something about this or at the very least Dropbox bring their client to the device so that there is some drag and drop functionality present.

danger_mouse_tm

the memory expansion is interesting because some sd cards work and some dont -even ones of the same brand. The phone also uses the sd card for its os. Replacing the card will reset the phone. I can live with 8 gigs once i can get the pc to put a random music playlist on the phone every couple of days.

wheresmybeaver

gizmo wrote: »

Thanks for the link!

I saw this piece in relation to the myrid of registry hacks which enable mass storage support on the phone and it doesn't particularly excite me.

I can only hope they do something about this or at the very least Dropbox bring their client to the device so that there is some drag and drop functionality present.

I've had my HD7 for over a month now, and the solution I'm using for now is http://m.dropbox.com, which works perfectly with the WP7 browser. I drop PDFs, wallpapers, PNGs etc into that folder on my laptop, and download on the HD7 (ideally via WiFi) pretty much immediately.

JPGs, PNGs and GIFs can be stored to your Pictures hub (long press and select Save when you open the file from dropbox). PDFs are opened and saved for later in the Adobe Reader app. Word and Excel files only appear to be opened and cannot be saved for later (as far as I can see). The Office hub on WP7 seems to be best experienced via a Sharepoint server, but I have no idea how that works or how to set one up, so I'm skipping past that for now.

I believe one of the two updates due in January and February will feature tight integration wih skydrive across all the apps, so I'm fairly certain I will move over to that when it becomes available.

gizmo

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

I've had my HD7 for over a month now, and the solution I'm using for now is http://m.dropbox.com, which works perfectly with the WP7 browser. I drop PDFs, wallpapers, PNGs etc into that folder on my laptop, and download on the HD7 (ideally via WiFi) pretty much immediately.

Hmm, that'll work in the meantime alright. As a matter of interest, have you used Android phones previously and if so, how do they stack up against WinMob7? At the moment I'm torn between the Omnia7 as I mentioned above and the Galaxy S.

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

JPGs, PNGs and GIFs can be stored to your Pictures hub (long press and select Save when you open the file from dropbox). PDFs are opened and saved for later in the Adobe Reader app. Word and Excel files only appear to be opened and cannot be saved for later (as far as I can see). The Office hub on WP7 seems to be best experienced via a Sharepoint server, but I have no idea how that works or how to set one up, so I'm skipping past that for now.

And herein lies my issues with not having a file explorer.

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

I believe one of the two updates due in January and February will feature tight integration wih skydrive across all the apps, so I'm fairly certain I will move over to that when it becomes available.

Ah, I wasn't aware the Skydrive integration had been mooted for this round of updates.

evolutionqy7

got to play with omnia 7 at work today for a bit

not bad the whole UI is smooth and consitant colors on the screen are perfect and for a change the Samsung has quite nice and sturdy feel in hand vs galaxy though quite heavier than other handsets

battery life is approx 1 with full screen brightness and wifi on all the time

tbh it looks alot nicer IRL than it looks in pictures and reviews. I thought it was an ugly phone in the start.

chrislad

liamog wrote: »

Any source for this because that would be brilliant, or was it an off record conversation

It was just a conversation with a rep from Microsoft who was visiting stores to plug his wares. I brought up the lack of essential features, though I do really like the OS, and he said a new update is due in Jan/Feb and will bring Zune to Ireland.

It's not the most solid information, but it ties it, update wise, with what has already been said, and it makes sense as Ireland is one of the few launch markets that got Windows Phone 7, and it doesn't have full functionality.

wheresmybeaver

gizmo wrote: »

Hmm, that'll work in the meantime alright. As a matter of interest, have you used Android phones previously and if so, how do they stack up against WinMob7? At the moment I'm torn between the Omnia7 as I mentioned above and the Galaxy S.

My last 2 phones were Winmo 6.5, but I experimented with booting android on my last one (xdandroid) to get a feel for the OS before deciding on my next purchase. Although there was a lot of potential, the arrival of WP7 highlighted what I think are the main pitfalls of Android at this time; too many flavours and iterations, total lack of consistency (across both the OS itself and its apps), and a "hassle" factor that I don't think I'm interested in any more. I suppose at this stage I just wanted a smartphone that works out of the box with minimal tinkering ("just works") and has a compelling interface / design. WP7 ticks those boxes for me at the moment. There seems be an aesthetic here of "lets just keep this simple and uncluttered" which I like.

Put another way, if you're the kind of person that desperately needs to see the battery indicator measured in single percentage increments, WP7 may not be for you! There is a community of hackers etc building up around WP7, but you may never see the level of customisation with WP7 that you would have ever seen with Winmo 6.5 or android.

chrislad wrote: »

It was just a conversation with a rep from Microsoft who was visiting stores to plug his wares. I brought up the lack of essential features, though I do really like the OS, and he said a new update is due in Jan/Feb and will bring Zune to Ireland.

It's not the most solid information, but it ties it, update wise, with what has already been said, and it makes sense as Ireland is one of the few launch markets that got Windows Phone 7, and it doesn't have full functionality.

If this actually happens it would be great. As it is, we already have access to movie purchases and rentals through Zune but I'm really hoping there'll eventually be a flat-rate TV Shows service in the future too.

liamog

chrislad wrote: »

It was just a conversation with a rep from Microsoft who was visiting stores to plug his wares. I brought up the lack of essential features, though I do really like the OS, and he said a new update is due in Jan/Feb and will bring Zune to Ireland.

It's not the most solid information, but it ties it, update wise, with what has already been said, and it makes sense as Ireland is one of the few launch markets that got Windows Phone 7, and it doesn't have full functionality.

Cool thanks for that, I signed up using dreamspark to their developer program so if anybody has idea's for apps mention them here. If they ever get around to verifying my ID then I plan to make a dart/rail app as I'm also a train commuter.

wheresmybeaver

liamog wrote: »

Cool thanks for that, I signed up using dreamspark to their developer program so if anybody has idea's for apps mention them here. If they ever get around to verifying my ID then I plan to make a dart/rail app as I'm also a train commuter.

Great to have another Irish developer on the scene. We already have a DART app, an Irish Fuel app (pumps.ie) and a Cabbage (free texts) app.

If you want a challenge can I suggest a basic app that collects data from routes.tomtom.com - this website provides live traffic data for the entire country and would make a handy app to warn of traffic in a particular location before you hit the road. It could be location aware and list the traffic alerts within, say 30 km of your current location (ie no need for a map or anything), just a list of traffic alerts). It doesn't seem likely at this point that Tomtom will develop a WP7 app unfortunately, so you may have the market cornered Alternatively, an app that would parse data from AA Roadwatch would be an invaluable tool before heading out in the car in the morning.

Best of luck anyway

liamog

Thanks, will give the AA Roadwatch one a go. As hopefully it shouldn't be too difficult. It took me about two weeks but finally got marketplace verified so can actually start testing apps that I attempt to write.

chrislad

They really need to disable the search button if an app or game doesn't use it. I have lost track of the amount of times I have had a game restart because I accidently touched the button.