Anyone going to buy a Windows Phone 7 Device?

[stlaural]

Just found out that from all the HTC 7 phone's only the "Surround" will be available in Canada at launch
I really don't need that huge speaker, I usually use some earbuds when I listen to music or video anyway.
Guess I'll have to wait, or grab the LG Optimus, any comment on that phone ? (the phone itself, not the OS)

[ImDaFrEaK]

Got mine yesterday and I had high hopes for this phone. With all honesty it has exceeded my hopes. This phone rocks, simply rocks. Nothing else to say. Coming from iPhone, Android, and WM 6.5 experience and none hold a candle to WP7.

[baja_yu]

What's so good about it (compared to others)?

[techgnome]

Well, for starters... it doesn't require to be held using the grip of death. Also, from what I hear, the tiles update themselves automatically, so you don't need to actually open the app to get the updates. I'll probably give them a look once the hoopla has settled down some. I still have a year left on my contract, so I'm in no rush at the moment.

-tg

[kleinma]

One thing I could imagine would make people on this forum want this phone is the fact that you can use VB to write apps for it.

[baja_yu]

The death grip problem on iPhone is hardware so I wouldn't take into consideration when comparing OS' and widgets on Android also show updates without having to open apps. I'm not attacking anything here, I'm genuinely asking for comparisons as I used all except WP7.

[gep13]

One thing I could imagine would make people on this forum want this phone is the fact that you can use VB to write apps for it.

At the minute, there isn't direct support for writing in VB. The current tools only allow you to write in C#. VB.Net is coming though.

[gep13]

The death grip problem on iPhone is hardware so I wouldn't take into consideration when comparing OS' and widgets on Android also show updates without having to open apps. I'm not attacking anything here, I'm genuinely asking for comparisons as I used all except WP7.

Hey,

My colleague at work has the HTC desire, and I have the HTC HD7. We sat side by side and did a comparison of the two, and in short, there isn't a lot that one can't do that the other can. So I think it really comes down to personal preference.

There are a couple issues with WP7, as I have mentioned, i.e. not being able to allocated a static IP address, copy and paste etc, however, it is still a relative youngster OS on the market, and I would expect these additional functionality to come out as it matures.

If you want ease of integration with the Windows Live services, then definitely WP7.

Gary

[baja_yu]

Form what I've read about WP7, the most surprising part was the multitasking limitation and their policy that only MS apps can run in the background. That's total crap. Hopefully they will realize that and change it in a future release.

[kleinma]

At the minute, there isn't direct support for writing in VB. The current tools only allow you to write in C#. VB.Net is coming though.

While there is currently no XNA support for VB on Win7 phone (since XNA doesn't currently support VB), there are Win7 phone templates for VB.NET for regular apps (aka silverlight based ones)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...load+Center%29

[kleinma]

Form what I've read about WP7, the most surprising part was the multitasking limitation and their policy that only MS apps can run in the background. That's total crap. Hopefully they will realize that and change it in a future release.

You say that until you use a phone that does have multitasking, and find out it totally kills your battery. On my droidX, there are apps I don't want, but can't uninstall, and they run always in the background, even if I kill the task. They just start back up again, and suck battery life. Apps I will never, ever use or have a need for, but there they are. For example skype came preinstalled on my droidx after I got the 2.2 update, and it exhibits all the issues described above.

[stlaural]

You say that until you use a phone that does have multitasking, and find out it totally kills your battery. On my droidX, there are apps I don't want, but can't uninstall, and they run always in the background, even if I kill the task. They just start back up again, and suck battery life. Apps I will never, ever use or have a need for, but there they are. For example skype came preinstalled on my droidx after I got the 2.2 update, and it exhibits all the issues described above.

Talking about battery life, how is it actually ? do you need to charge it every single day ?

[kleinma]

Really depends on how much you use it, and what you are using it for.

If you use it just like a traditional phone, meaning just calling and sending some txt messages, etc.. then it will last a pretty long while. However these things are mini computers, and they have all sorts of things that make you use it much more frequently.

So if you turn on GPS, that eats battery, if you turn on Wifi, that eats battery, if you are on the phone playing games for hours or surfing the web, that eats battery.

Since these phones all use standard usb chargers, I have one at home, one at my work desk, and one in my car, so I don't really worry about not being able to charge it. Likewise everyone else (other than iPhone owners) who are getting smart phones also will have the charger that works, so you are generally never too far from a place to plug your phone in.

I can go a day with moderate use without charging the phone, but I do tend to plug it in when I am around a charger, just to keep the battery full.

[dilettante]

You say that until you use a phone that does have multitasking, and find out it totally kills your battery.

We've seen this apologist's answer for every platform that came out w/o multitasking support. It is true for poorly written applications that don't either (a.) sleep while in background, or (b.) use proper async programming based on events and callbacks.

Admittedly an awful lot of the stuff out there (for every platform) is poorly written in this manner. I cringe at the thought of the power consumption a lot of these SilverLight/XNA applications will have, not to mention the memory consumption. The latter alone may effectively preclude much useful multitasking.

A lot of the crap you can get away with on a desktop these days doesn't apply in an environment like mobile builds of WinCE where you have limited CPU cycles, memory, storage, and no lavish virtual memory.

If you find yourself using DoEvents or the equivalent a lot you're not ready for handheld programming. If you do a lot of explicit multithreading you're not ready for handheld programming.


Battery life is a function of usage and charging but can also vary with your use and charging pattern. Depending on the battery technoogy (both the chemistry and the smarts in the charging circuitry) there may be a battery maitenance regimen that will help extend life. Few users have the patience though, and some manufacturers don't even publish guidelines in their documentation.

[baja_yu]

I agree about Skype, it sucked so bad on Android that I uninstalled it after an hour. But I'm with dilettante when it comes to it. A lot of the problems are from poor coding on the apps part. Best example is Skype that stays loaded even if you sign out and exit explicitly. Once I figured out which apps were draining my battery I started getting two good days of use from my Desire. And to be hones one good day would be enough. It's not like I go with Bear Grylls on survival tours that I need it to last a week. I'm usually never more than a couple of hours from a power source, I can charge in the office, at home, in the car...

[techgnome]

I think a part of it is also the rush to market... wouldn't surprise me if there's organizations out there going "Oh, heck, it's based on Silverlight? Heck then, take our existing Silverlight app and just reconfigure it for WP7. That should work right?"


-tg

[dilettante]

One thing that really eats batteries are applications that use the radios extensively. Chatty polling for state changes (new data, etc.) is a good example.

[baja_yu]

Right. In one of the WWDC videos they mentioned that using cell radio is the most expensive operation in regards to battery. Furthermore, when you start data transfer, the radio is in high power mode and it remains there for some time before it lowers the power again (if there's no need for it), so they say that the data is best to be buffered to larger chunks and transfered in bursts.

[dilettante]

I've read that some experimentation has been done where applications queue/schedule outbound data that gets lumped with output from other applications, then fired in a bundle to a proxy which splits and delivers payloads to their destinations. Response traffic can be bundled in a similar reverse pattern. Sort of like using an SSH or VPN channel but with data clumping to reduce the amount of time the radio has to stay hot.

[baja_yu]

That's a very good idea. Most of the applications that do transfer/syncing in the background that don't require very frequent connection (like mail accounts, facebook, twitter, news, weather and such), which is basically the most of the stuff that keeps the connection alive on a phone could benefit from such a mechanism.

[dilettante]

I suspect we've dragged the discussion of into the weeds though.

I see Phone 7 (just as iPhone) as a PhoneTainment platform rather than a SmartPhone.

[gep13]

While there is currently no XNA support for VB on Win7 phone (since XNA doesn't currently support VB), there are Win7 phone templates for VB.NET for regular apps (aka silverlight based ones)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...load+Center%29

Hey,

Yes, I was aware that there were templates at the CTP stage, what I was meant was that there was nothing out of the box yet. I would imagine at some point these will be included in the Windows Phone Developer Toolkit.

Gary

[DeanMc]

First app in the works yay!

Check my sig!

[BillGeek]

I'd love to get a WP7 device, though I got the X10 about 4 months ago, so I have another year and a half to go.

About multitasking: Surely if an app has a "tile" on the home screen it will run in the background? I haven't read up on this, though on Android this is the case. I kill an app using Task Manager, and as soon as I go back home and open the Task Manager again, the app is running. Just thinking aloud here

[gep13]

No, this is not the case. When your phone goes into hibernate mode, or you switch into another application, your application gets "tombstoned". It can then be "rehydrated" but you have to add code into your application for resuming state. The Tiles are different, in that they connect to a push notification system, that is controlled by Microsoft servers.

Gary

[DeanMc]

Also looking at the docs for submissions there does seem to be a case where the app can continue in a limited capacity while the screen is locked.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'm gonna write something that busy waits on multiple threads simultaneously while pinging the tower steadily. I'll call it 'HandWarmer'.

[DeanMc]

I see a market for that!

[gep13]

Also looking at the docs for submissions there does seem to be a case where the app can continue in a limited capacity while the screen is locked.

Interesting. Have you got a link?

[Shaggy Hiker]

I see a market for that!

Either you need glasses or your market needs a clue.

[Lord Orwell]

Connecting the device in data mode, Windows sees it as a external memory storage, just like when you plug in a USB flash drive.

Have you tried choosing "cancel" on the phone? If i did that on my samsung, it would mount as a modem instead.

I believe CDMA Win7Mo phones are in the works... they just weren't done in the initial batch. If I remember right, I'd seen reports that a March time frame was what they were looking for? Verison and T-Mobile are supposed to be the carriers. As for who was responsible for that? The manufacturers... MS only supplied the software, along with the recommended and required hardware specs. From there it was up to the manufacturers. At least that's the way I remember reading it.

-tg

sprint's offering is in march. I may be switching from android. The reason isn't that there is necessarily any thing wrong with it, but some core apps i want just aren't available. Netflix comes to mind.

[baja_yu]

Have you tried choosing "cancel" on the phone? If i did that on my samsung, it would mount as a modem instead.

I don't have a WP7 phone, but from what I've read in reviews and docs, it's not possible at all. All transfers need to be done through the Zune software, it's just not possible to mount it as external storage.

[Justa Lol]

i like to think that a phone is a phone and not a portable computer so a normal cell phone is enough for me

[Lord Orwell]

You say that until you use a phone that does have multitasking, and find out it totally kills your battery. On my droidX, there are apps I don't want, but can't uninstall, and they run always in the background, even if I kill the task. They just start back up again, and suck battery life. Apps I will never, ever use or have a need for, but there they are. For example skype came preinstalled on my droidx after I got the 2.2 update, and it exhibits all the issues described above.

Don't get me started on crap/bloatware. Did your droid come with any demos you can't install? I had to root my samsung moment to get rid of bejeweled. Incidently, removing all the crapware doubled my battery life, although i also have a kernel mod. I wasn't getting a full day before. Today, i have had my phone unplugged for 14 hours so far in a poor signal area and it's still in the green. I highly suggest you root it, if for no other purpose than to let the led become a flashlight.

I don't have a WP7 phone, but from what I've read in reviews and docs, it's not possible at all. All transfers need to be done through the Zune software, it's just not possible to mount it as external storage.

it's not a deal breaker since it has a memory card. Anyway, i am sure someone will write an app for it. Even dropbox is on android. It's the easiest way i know of to get files to your desktop.

[techgnome]

This news should make a few people in this thread happy: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?t=634193

-tg

[dilettante]

I'll be happier when they tear down the ".Net jail" they've locked application development into on this platform.

[techgnome]

-edit- meh never mind, it's not worth the effort.

[gep13]

-edit- meh never mind, it's not worth the effort.

How do you mean?

[techgnome]

I had a lengthy reply, decided against it. Instead I'm just going to start ignoring certain people.

-tg

[gep13]

I had a lengthy reply, decided against it. Instead I'm just going to start ignoring certain people.

-tg

What did I do to deserve that?