
I'm Regretting Going WP7 - johns
http://www.theleagueofpaul.com/im-regretting-going-wp7
======
d_r
Sorry to the OP. Many people I know swear by their iPhones. And with those for
whom iOS doesn't fit (for whatever reason: Apple's idiosyncrasies,
carrier/phone choice, app/OS choice, etc.), Android is an excellent
alternative where Angry Birds runs just as well.

WM7, on the other hand, still sounds like a black sheep, so I'm always curious
to hear how someone decides to opt for this choice. I think the most common I
hear is "I was waiting for a long time, and I was hoping _this_ time Microsoft
got it right."

Signed, a former loyal Microsoft customer/fan who one day stopped waiting.

~~~
trotsky
I own both an iPhone and a couple of Android phones. I think both platforms
have some pretty significant issues. From my perspective, I don't appreciate
the lockout of competitive applications on iOS (browsers, etc.) and Apple's
attempt to leverage their platform to force their content businesses to the
forefront (required in app purchases, etc). Android seems to have bred a
pervasive ecosystem of spyware, and has big issues with keeping the OS
upgraded on most phones. Both platforms suffer from serious delays in
addressing vulnerabilities in the OS and webkit browsers.

Which isn't to say that I expect(ed) WP7 to be any better in those regards,
though there was always hope. I didn't go out and buy one/start developing for
them, but I can certainly understand how someone might come to choose door #3.

There is always no better choice until suddenly there is one.

~~~
admiralpumpkin
Apple doesn't restrict other browsers on iOS.

~~~
trotsky
Unless I've missed something serious, alternate browsers on iOS can't run
javascript. In today's game that doesn't qualify as a browser.

~~~
gkefalas
You have. For example: <http://www.icab.de/mobile.html>

Maybe this was a restriction in the past, I'm not sure, but I've been happily
running iCab Mobile for quite some time and enjoying it's more grown-up
featureset.

~~~
trotsky
Note that that browser apparently uses Safari/Webkit objects to display
content and interpret javascript. So you're still effectively using the iOS
safari browser, albeit framed and with a different UI and some management
features.

<http://www.icab-mobile.de/faq.html>

 _Each Tab is creating a WebKit object, which eats up additional memory._

Here is what someone from Mozilla said rather recently:

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/firefox-iphone-2/>

 _First, he gave the obvious and fairly well-known official answer, “We have
no plans to release the full Firefox browser for Apple iOS devices,” Brubeck
wrote. Why? Because the current iOS SDK agreement forbids apps like Firefox
from including their own compilers and interpreters, Brubeck explains.

But he continues on to note that there are a couple of ways to work within
Apple’s system, notably what Skyfire is doing (using Apple’s own build-in
WebKit libraries) or what Opera Mini is doing (using a proxy server to execute
their JavaScript). “Mozilla could create a browser that did one of those
things, but it wouldn’t be related to Firefox in any way,” Brubeck explains._

------
Jarred
I'm afraid I agree with this post. I bought a Samsung Focus on Black Friday
with AT&T's Buy One Get One Free deal. What I like about it is the nice
looking user interface and the web browser. (As a phone itself Samsung Focus
is awesome). The actual Windows Phone 7 OS is awful. I put in a 16gb memory
card a few months ago and it's incredibly slow. Everything takes a long time
to load. By "long time to load" I mean 5+ minutes to open an app. All of the
apps are tremendously slower after installing that memory card. That's most
likely due to the memory card itself, but it's practically unheard of for
phones to have dramatic performance reductions after installing a memory card.
That makes me believe it's the software.

I really bought it because A) I like to try new things and B) I like
developing with .NET/Silverlight because of the awesome development tools.

I had a G1 before and although not as slow as that was (I updated it to 2.2 at
the time), this OS isn't a good buy.

The phone itself though is really nice, it has a high resolution screen
(480x800) with a 5 mega-pixel camera and it's really light.

~~~
zentechen
Here's a thread on xda-developer forum of working MicroSD cards list

<http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=834144>

Confirmed Working(Data remains after soft reset):

Centon 8GB Class 6

Kingston 4GB Class 4

Kingston 16GB Class 4

Microcenter 16GB Class 2

Patriot 16GB Class 2

PNY 8GB Class 4

PNY 16GB Class 2

SanDisk 8GB Class 2

SanDisk 16GB Class 4

Currently Unstable/Unsure:

Kingston 8GB Class 4

Kingston 32GB Class 4

SanDisk 16GB Class 2

SanDisk 32GB Class 2

Confirmed Not Working(Data gone after soft reset):

A-Data

A-Data 4GB Class 6

A-Data 8GB Class 6

A-Data 16GB Class 6

Lexar 16GB Class 6

Transcend 8GB Class 6

Transcend 16GB Class 6

Also, just found Patriot 16GB Class 4 on Amazon, it now claims it works on
Samsung Focus

[http://www.amazon.com/MicroSD-Memory-Samsung-Mobile-
MicroSDH...](http://www.amazon.com/MicroSD-Memory-Samsung-Mobile-
MicroSDHC/dp/B004CO6FQI)

~~~
Jarred
Thanks for the list.

When I bought a memory card from Fry's I just picked a cheap 16GB one

Which happens to be that Patriot 16GB Class 4.

I did perform the reset and all of the setting up upon initially putting it in

I do also have a lot of music, my phone has around gigabyte or two of leftover
space on it but it should never be this slow.

------
credo
It isn't great that Telstra customers have to wait for their operator to
approve WP7 updates. Of course, this still sounds better than the Android
model (where many customers can never get upgrades for their phones).This is a
case where Apple has a clearly superior and more user-friendly model.

However, aside from that, the post just seems to have a laundry list of minor
complaints about the marketplace. Some of these problems have existed on
itunesconnect as well. (For instance, on one occasion, I had to use Firefox
for a part of the app submission, because Safari couldn't do the job)

I'm surprised that these issues are the cause of his regret. (Note: I say this
an iOS developer, who considered WP7, but decided against it).

~~~
zyphlar
Apple has a superior update model? Sure in theory, but I'm not aware of many
significant updates to an iDevice that would be comparable to the Android
update history. It seems like each phone gets one significant upgade before
being phased out 18 months later, same with Android except with Android you
have the flexibility of complete customization (and the customization is what
causes update delays.)

------
aeoth
Err, post author here...

@d_r: Had Android, just last week my Milestone finally got Froyo. The dev
tools - particularly UI - just don't exist. I like to be able to program for
whatever I have. That's not going into how bug riddled either Android or far
more likely Moto's Android implementation was - including gems like rebooting
far more often than WP7, played music at random times without touching it,
having to reboot the phone if it was put into flight mode to get signal back,
etc. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good things about Android, but
wasn't for me. v3 (when its on phones), might be though - the improvements and
more attention to UI/consistency are looking really nice.

Yes, there was certainly a fair bit of "I hope they got it right this time" to
it. If they hadn't lied and delivered the updates when and how they said
originally, it may be a different story.

@credo: they're more the most recent issues that have caused regret. As a
developer, getting my (few) apps up there has been a nightmare, even with help
from MSFT AU's DPE trying to speed things up.

~~~
TillE
The Milestone is utter crap, and the reason I will never buy another Motorola
product again (it took them _how_ long to finally release Froyo, months after
Gingerbread was available on other devices?). There's a port of CM7, though,
which is a significant improvement:

<http://android.doshaska.net/cm7>

Can't fix the defective headphone jack in software, though.

As far as I'm concerned, the only Android devices worth talking about are the
Nexus phones. Everything else is a second-class citizen. And yeah, going with
Java and shoving XML everywhere...ugh. Fortunately the NDK is now good enough
to develop a game entirely in C++, so it doesn't bother me.

------
worldvoyageur
I guess web apps are the only viable way to cut out the petty bureaucrats and
actually get product to customers.

~~~
zmmmmm
Umm, curious why you're ignoring Android in this assessment?

Once you've paid your $25, believe me there is little bureaucracy in the
process of submitting an Android app.

~~~
ryanhuff
I wonder how long that will last though. Google just hasn't seem serious about
developing and nurturing the Android Market. If somebody like Amazon came
along and relieved Google of the burden, would Google take them up on the
offer? Amazon would run it more like Apple runs the AppStore, albeit without
the competitive restrictions.

~~~
jkincaid
You do know that Amazon just launched its own, competitive Android Appstore
right? amazon.com/appstore

------
seanalltogether
"1. Don't submit an app with anything but IE."

This same holds true with IOS dev center and Safari. For all of apples talk
about html5 and standards and all that, their own internal pages don't appear
to be tested on anything other then safari.

~~~
gcheong
I haven't used anything other than Firefox and so far have not had any
problems. Do you have any specific examples?

~~~
seanalltogether
I've had buttons in both the provisioning portal and itunes connect simply do
nothing unless i was using safari.

------
zentechen
WP7 got its merits

Development tools and technical documentations are outstanding. Visual Studio
has excellent WP7 support. The submission process was actually quite smooth.
Never had problem except, yes, IE only. Shame on MS. The phone user experience
is called Metro, the icons are actually Tiles, original design and different
from the icon-based iOS and Android. I would say, for once, MS tried to not be
a copycat.

What's bad

My biggest headache, the phone build-in search is useless. The Marketplace
search is also useless, and it crashes a lot and had to restart the phone to
be able to use the Marketplace again. Little apps available in Marketplace,
10,000(WP7) vs 150,000(Android) vs. 400,000(iOS), though this will changes
over time as WP7 picks up momentum. No copy & paste. NoDo is supposed to add
this feature ,but the roll out is WAY TOO SLOW (my Samsung Focus is the last
device on the list). Overall, I am still anxious to see how WP7 will do in
2011.

------
alexqgb
So much for turning a late entry into an advantage by taking notes on the
pioneer's struggles, and avoiding all their big mistakes.

An experience like the one described would have been par for the course in
2007 or 2008. But 2011? When it really has to be humming from Day 1? WTF times
a million.

If this is what's going to save the ghost of Ericsson, they're toast.

~~~
hollerith
>If this is what's going to save the ghost of Ericsson, they're toast.

Do you mean Nokia, the company that just abandoned their own software
platforms and signed a deal with Microsoft?

~~~
alexqgb
Yes, I did. But I didn't notice my error before the 'edit' option expired. ;-)

------
Ruudjah
Html5 is the new app platform. Microsoft trying to push silverlight is really
just another way of their triple E strategy (embrace, extend, extinguish). In
this case, embracing web apps, extending it by their .NET platform, then
trying to extinguish html5 using Silverlight.

This time, it won't be so easy as IE6: Google bets on html5, Apple (although
somehwat), and they both have very good browsers already.

Nice try MSFT.

~~~
regularfry
It really is a shame. The guts of Silverlight are _really_ nice, and the dev
tools are well above par.

It's just a shame it's shackled to Microsoft's marketing machine.

------
nigelsampson
Some of these I think are valid points, the update process needs to be
improved. Currently it feels like the WP7 update process sits somewhere
between iOS and Android, all the problems of both and the benefits of none.
Smaller updates released more regularly would go a long way to solve these
issues.

The marketplace update process I've never had a problem and I've used both
Firefox and Chrome never IE. I'd love to hear some of the marketplace rules
that he feels are broken. Most to me seem pretty up front.

------
csomar
From what I read, all his problems are with the Marketplace? We have read
about that crappy update more than once and for requiring your to use IE, I
don't find that quite abusing, since Apple itself requires that your install
QuickTime to watch movies on their website.

~~~
rbanffy
He also complains not all phones will be upgraded to the newest WP7 releases,
varying with device, carrier and country.

If WP7 becomes too problematic, why bother with it. It's not like the devices
are flying off the shelf anyway.

~~~
alex_c
Do we know any sales numbers so far?

~~~
rbanffy
Wouldn't we if they were flying off the shelves?

~~~
alex_c
Good point.

------
sliverstorm
iOS and Android didn't exactly come out of the gate rockin' the party either.
In fact, copy/paste was one of the very initial complaints about iOS.

Not that it excuses it, but if the competitors are anything to judge by, don't
expect the One Ring to Rule Them right off the bat.

~~~
danieldk
Maybe, but iOS has supported copy/paste for a while now, and iOS is the
standard that people expect from a smartphone.

~~~
poloniculmov
Symbian and Windows Mobile supported copy/paste for a good period of time
before iOS and Symbian/Windows was the standard that people expected from a
smartphone.

~~~
danieldk
True, but iPhone + iOS was a smoother experience in nearly every detail (from
the capacitive touchscreen to intuitiveness), that people accepted the lack of
copy/paste.

From what I have seen of WP7, it is nice, but not nearly the revolutionary
step ahead that iOS was compared to Symbian/Windows.

~~~
poloniculmov
The iPhone at launch was a great dumb phone with a cool touchscreen. I
remember that my boss got an Iphone 2g and was pleased with the interface but
he missed apps.

------
jcr
aeoth, I didn't get a chance to read the article yet due to...

    
    
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...(intentionally snipped)... Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework
Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1

My email address is in my profile. Please contact me.

------
wslh
Wait 2 years. The time for the commoditization of the mobile phone/tablet
market.

