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Can new handsets, Windows 10 Mobile and Continuum save the platform?
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Can new handsets, Windows 10 Mobile and Continuum save the platform?
This email from Microsoft just came in:
"From today, UK customers will be able to pre-order Microsoft’s Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL on contract, just in time for Christmas.
Lumia 950 (5.2") and Lumia 950 XL (5.7") are the latest premium smartphones from Microsoft, designed to work like your PC, and provide a seamless and consistent experience across all Windows 10 devices.
Both devices have stunning displays and the latest in processing power provided by Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. The Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL also offer great battery life (up to 18hr / 19hr talk time respectively) and lightning quick charging – with wireless technology baked in.
The phones are built to take full advantage of Windows 10, and are the first to feature ‘Continuum’ - delivering a familiar and consistent experience that extends across your Windows devices and key apps. Both Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL come with the latest Microsoft Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote) built in as standard and are designed for easy-use and improved functionality on the screen. You can also plug your 950/950 XL into the Microsoft Display Dock, an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, and use it like a PC*.
Both handsets also deliver an ultra-powerful photo experience, with 20MP AF Pureview cameras allowing any budding photographer to capture the perfect images, whatever the conditions.
Powerful, performance-driven and innovative, the Lumia 950 (from £449.99) and Lumia 950 XL (from £529.99) are currently available to pre-order SIM-free from the Microsoft Store, or on contract from today on O2, EE, Carphone Warehouse , Amazon and Clove."
I think this is a shame. Windows Phone is pretty decent now, but unfortunately it's difficult to persuade consumers to join an ecosystem that doesn't have all of their apps available. Likewise, it's difficult to persuade developers to support the platform where the consumers don't exist. Vicious cycle.
The ecosystem is massively restrictive, and those apps listed are available on Android and iOS as well (indeed my Samsung phone came with Office "built in as standard").
Continuum is a nice idea, but you need to carry the dock around with you - you might as well carry that ChromeBit stick, or another compute stick device instead.
I would love to move to Windows phone but I need:-
Banking apps
Parking apps (for paying for parking)
Sonos controller
Everything else I can live with / without
Not unexpected really...
Worth noting 950 is available for £419 and the 950 XL is available for £469 at Carphone Warehouse.Quote:
Originally Posted by mtyson
I am on my second windows phone and don't see me changing any time soon.
For budget phones they are so much slicker than android phones at the same price.
As for apps, it does everything I want but I will admit I mostly use my phone as a phone and have apps for everything else I want but can imagine some people are much more invested in apps than me.
Shame its not gained more market share as it really is a solid platform.
Microsoft aren't helping themselves by creating 'tier 1 apps' like office on the other platforms and in some cases not even making the same apps for windows phone. They could have at least been targeting the business end of the market if nothing else.
It's even more stupid when it's pretty clear that Google are deliberately not helping support on Windows with things like youtube/gmail.
Then they bring out the latest 'top of the line' phone and price them at premium prices but the phones lack the 'premium feel' of say an iPhone or metal cased android phone by being plastic. I don't dislike plastic it's just in the 'image obsessed' world we live in it's just not good enough and it's not like MS can't do decent hardware look at the Surface range.
MS needs to produce a premium phone using metal and then get key apps like snapchat (I don't use it but it's popular) to build them apps.. maybe even stop supporting os-x/android if they want to get marketshare back.
Well short of weird, I noticed a trend among many friends toward the windows phones, I will abandon android for it as well on my next device for sure, I'm just fed up with android's operating system.
Windows phones work great and lag free, from the cheaper device to the better one, I can't say this for android and since I can't go for a high end android I will jump ship to something that "just works".
The problem I have is MS are largely copying what is already on the table.
I really can't see what they are offering that we haven't already got or that would make me want to switch.
lag free operation in lower devices, performance in low end androids is really a pain, I have a 4 core with 1GB ram and android just doesn't prioritize the system performance over whatever may run in the background. This is a deal breaker to be honest, I haven't installed half the apps I wanted to keep a good experience with my phone.Quote:
Originally Posted by AGTDenton
You're missing the point of a Windows phone. The only reason you need apps for banking, etc, on an Apple or Android device is because the standard browser offerings are a million miles away from even being capable of handling the feature sets required by these websites, or the mobile rendering makes the experience completely unusable. You don't use apps for this stuff on your PC, so the existence of apps on those devices is merely papering over a shortcoming in those products. For the longest time you've needed apps for Youtube, etc, because Safari just didn't have the nuts to play video within a browser frame. With Flash finally being dragged to the curb Apple and the like are finally beginning to catch on, but in terms of browser capability Windows phones are light years ahead.Quote:
Originally Posted by SciFi
The Windows phone browser is much closer to a desktop browser such that using the regular desktop variant of a website is actually possible and therefore negates the need for many apps, especially banking and parking apps. When did you last use Safari and wish you could click on a link to a photo or video or some other random file and just download it and store it on your phone for later like you can on a regular Windows PC?
No, I don't think it weird. And I'm going to agree 100% that Windows Phones "budget" experience is just a whole lot better than any Android one, (Apple don't do "budget"). Actually I'll go further than that and suggest that perhaps Microsoft should give up altogether on the "high end" market - since they're up against better spec'd iOS and Android devices there. Which means, in Android's case, they can throw hardware to make up for software ... deficiencies. No, if I was CEO I'd be looking seriously at Huawei etc and maybe some of the manufacturers supplying the Indian market.Quote:
Originally Posted by nitro912gr
Personally I wouldn't consider a Windows Phone for myself at the moment because (a) there's certain apps that I need, and (b) unlike you nitro912gr I've found that my LG actually runs pretty well - then again it's lacking the bloat that comes "as standard" with the market-dominating Samsung devices.
For WP to succeed it needs more developer support and more manufacturers than Microsoft themselves making hardware. One of my kids got an HTC 8S and that's a decent OS held back by some breathtakingly stupid decisions by HTC. On the other hand my wife's Lumia 620 (with similar specs to the HTC) is pretty smooth and trouble free.
well I think they keep the higher devices because if they got people satisfied in the low end, eventually those people may want to get something more. I could love to go for the higher available if I could afford it when I will change phone.Quote:
Originally Posted by crossy
As for the LG yes, they do a great job in keeping it clean, I had a galaxy s1 and it was nearly garbage, I had to root it to give it another year of life before change it. Now I have the LG L90 and it is nice and clean. The only problem is the android itself, as I said it is allowing the background apps go wild and it does not prioritize the system over them, so from a point on when I get many apps the phone is lagging a lot. So the main selling point of "tons of app in play store" is going the way of the dodo, because I have to keep the apps that I absolutely need to keep my phone experience smooth (and using greenify to kill some background things). I even switched to facebook lite, ofc facebook is to blame but android is to blame as well for letting it grab so many resources.
Anyway I hope MS will keep trying with their phones, this 950 that you can connect on pc peripherals and use it look promising, I wish we will reach a point when I could have a dock in my office and another in my home and just get the phone on them to use my pc.
This year Microsoft started lot of initiatives outside their traditional way of working. Delivering free Windows10 upgrade, and windows as service oriented platform, Pushing the Cloud first, Mobile First approach, Openness in mobile App development to support both iOS & Android apps,etc.
These are good things to impress the user community and will give positive impression going forward.
But the competition is very tough with iPhone fans and the very diverse Android ecosystem. To gain strong market share, Microsoft has to create a strong fan base for Windows mobile. They need to create kind of create a hybrid approach to pull users from iOS & Android community.