News - Microsoft admits WP7 could take 2 years to catch up with rivals

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...And declines to reveal sales figures.

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2 years? Seriously? By then it would be obsolete and superceded by android etc :s useless microsoft :P

I don't think you should read it that way, obviously he was referring to Microsoft's offering generally, whatever that is in two years, being a viable rival to Apple and Android. I'm genuinely supporting a Microsoft alternative, as competition is good and will drive advances forward, and keep prices in check. Beyond that I like the different direction they've taken with the UI. Big, bold and simple is exactly what a lot of users will want once the mass market takes up the smartphone as a standard device.

I think there's something to be said for a controlled eco-system at the current time to ensure apps are snappy, well optimised and the phone just works well without issues.

Having had my first play with Android on an Xperia X10 mini, there's a hell of a lot of screens and options. I'm comfortable navigating them, but I suspect the vast majority of users would be stumped as it's literally a mini-computer in your hands - hence a clean and simple interface with wizards galore and auto set-up might not be a bad thing for the general public. Android feels like a "tweak under the hood" Mobile OS, which I don't think will be for everyone.

You certainly can't accuse WP7 of just being an iOS copy cat. It really is a very different mobile OS than anything else out there. This is a good thing as cptwhite said :)

It's going to take a lot longer than two years. The last Windows based phone that I used and so far the only one was awful.

55 minutes talk time, and about 24 hour standby. And that was with the extented battery that doubled the size of the phone.

The kernel that runs the phones hasn't changed in four years, and the only thing that has changed is the fancy front end.

Personally I'll stick with my Curve 8900

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

It's going to take a lot longer than two years. The last Windows based phone that I used and so far the only one was awful.

55 minutes talk time, and about 24 hour standby. And that was with the extented battery that doubled the size of the phone.

The kernel that runs the phones hasn't changed in four years, and the only thing that has changed is the fancy front end.

Personally I'll stick with my Curve 8900

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Wait what?

The kernel is the latest windows CE kernel, this is about a year old.

I wonder which phone you had before, because those results are um, suprising!

But the point is, this is new, it looks different, it feels different, apps are developed VERY differently. Things like Rx are part of the core (even if they are a simplified version).

Amazing what people post sometimes - I had a stream of Windows Mobile phones over many years and not one of them had 55 minutes of talk time! Which phone? Seriously!

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

The kernel that runs the phones hasn't changed in four years, and the only thing that has changed is the fancy front end.

Personally I'll stick with my Curve 8900

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Slight bit of cognitive dissonance here. The Blackberry kernel etc are absolutely dire, and pretty neolithic - not much better than Symbian.

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

The last Windows based phone that I used and so far the only one was awful.

55 minutes talk time, and about 24 hour standby. And that was with the extented battery that doubled the size of the phone.

The kernel that runs the phones hasn't changed in four years, and the only thing that has changed is the fancy front end.

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A bad phone with the best OS will still be a bad phone, and I dont recall Microsoft ever actually making a phone.

These days, theres only really Apple, RIM and Nokia that could actually be blamed for this sort of thing, everyone else is pretty much someone elses OS on their hardware.

The phone in question was the Motorola MC35 and it was a pig. It had to be charged every morning or you had a dead phone. The talk time was about an hour, and that was the extended battery.

The whole interface and management of the phone was awful.

The hardware user experience was Motorola, the software was Microsoft. Both were horrible and was so detrimental to actually using the phone that no one wanted to use them.


As for the Windows 7 Phone kernel it is the Windows 6 Kernel that was released back in 2006 and has a few tweaks. Current tweak level is R3 that was released sometime in 2009.

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

The phone in question was the Motorola MC35

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That uses windows mobile 5... very ancient. Most 3+ year old mobile phone batteries don't work at all so 55 mins is actually quite good!

I'm still waiting to play with WP7, I like Android but for the majority of people its just too open, lets go back to the days where people would buy PC magazines that'd come with a CD full of crap on it, people would install all of the crap and then wonder why the PC was so slow, its the same kinda thing with android phones. Apple is too far the other way, closed. WP7 could sit in the middle nicely and be less open than Android but not as closed as Apple....

Could work well...

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

It's going to take a lot longer than two years. The last Windows based phone that I used and so far the only one was awful.

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

The phone in question was the Motorola MC35 and it was a pig. It had to be charged every morning or you had a dead phone. The talk time was about an hour, and that was the extended battery.

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I'm not sure why you're comparing a phone that was released over 3 years ago, to modern day W7 phone. They are different in both software and hardware.

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Originally Posted by Kevsta

-snip-

Personally I'll stick with my Curve 8900

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Funny you mention a blackberry, me and a few mates were bored in our electronics lab and decided to test how long boot ups were on our phones, somehow one person had about 3 phones on him, in total we tested:

A £10 LG phone (cant remember model, no slide/touch etc etc)
A Blackberry Storm 1 or 2
2x Blackberry Pearl 8120

and my HTC HD2

The black berry pearls and storms took about 7 minutes (no joke.), the LG took about 15 seconds and my hd2 took about 30seconds. Now tbh id rather a WM phone that doesn't last long than having to try and boot it during an emergency!


Sorry to go a bit off topic, but BB arent the best :P. WM has come a huge way, try out windows 6.5.5 and you will see that and obviously WP7 is a big step from that as well!.

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Originally Posted by SiM

That uses windows mobile 5... very ancient. Most 3+ year old mobile phone batteries don't work at all so 55 mins is actually quite good!

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That was when it was new.

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Originally Posted by Agent

I'm not sure why you're comparing a phone that was released over 3 years ago, to modern day W7 phone. They are different in both software and hardware.

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I'm wasn't comparing, what I am saying is that myself and a lot of other people have had very bad experiences with MS based phones, and there is no way that I'm paying for one. They have to prove that it is the best phone in the world before I would even consider it.

Once bitten, twice shy.