Samsung sheds light on low-cost WinPho blower Samsung announced its latest offering based on the Windows Phone platform today, the Omnia M, a low-end alternative for those who want Microsoft's tile UI, but don't fancy one of Nokia's budget Lumia. Samsung Omnia M The Samsung Omnia M features a 1GHz processor and just 384MB of Ram. That actually means it's less powerful …
You and me may be prepared to spend £4-500 or sign up for a £35 a month 2 year phone contact. A lot of people aren't willing or able. The sub £100 smartphone PAYG market is enormous and probably more signficant longer term than the high end devices whether WP, Android or iOS. If Tango is approaching this feature phone replacement space, no need to sneer just because you can afford better.
So what if it gets no updates? As long as it works, and continues to get patches. It's only a cheap phone. Anyway, MS have actually made an effort to lower the hardware requirements of WinPho with this update, which means its possible they have some sort of plan not to abandon. Although it doesn't look likely.
If you buy a similar priced Android phone, your software, on your brand new phone, will be 18 months old! With no updates. And worse, Google will have abandoned you with no patches. Given how piss-poor Android support is, and the fact that Google update every 6 months, all Android phones are 6 months from obsolescence...
There are plenty of valid arguments for and against, but this ain't one of them.
None of the Nokia Lumias are getting it, they are all end-of-line, so it's pretty certain this is too.
http://betanews.com/2012/04/18/microsoft-nokia-dont-cheat-lumia-owners-of-windows-phone-8/
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/wininfo-short-takes-april-20-2012-142888
"There were some dueling stories about whether it would be possible to upgrade any existing Windows Phone handsets—including first-generation Windows Phone 7 devices and newer Windows Phone 7.5 handsets like the Lumia 900—to the forthcoming Windows Phone 8. Allow me to set the record straight. No. It won't happen. Not for the Lumia 900, and not for any other existing phone."
@Dogged Why are you even still trying to pretend? We all know what's happening here. Microsoft is deprecating their entire legacy base to get engaged in mobile and nobody outside of Redmond thinks it's going to work. They're going to ditch everybody who made them what they are, and stand alone in a field demanding that others gather 'round. But they don't have the draw they once did. That flag is old and torn.
I said it here before. You can trust me or you can wait and see. I really don't care which. At least I warned you so my duty is done. My duty doesn't extend to persuading you because I'm not responsible for this. It wasn't me who did this. When you're hurt by ignoring my warning find out who is responsible, and act appropriately. It won't be me. You will know that you were warned and some responsibility for ignoring that warning falls on you.
While that's true, there's also no evidence that it won't and conflicting accounts from the usual pundits (Thurrot, MSNerd etc) on whether it will or not.
Logically speaking, there is no reason why a system which can take advantage of dual-core chips can't address single-core chips (which is an argument I've see on this very site, retarded though it is) and also the publicity shot-in-the-foot MS and Nokia would get for selling the Lumia 900 with no upgrades at all indicates that it's likely that at least some phones will be upgraded.
Probably not my old HD7 (which I accidentally set fire to last week and it still works fine, although the case melted a bit) but that's okay. You can't expect consumer electronics to be immortal.
They tend to use the excuse that it is up to the OEMs to decide if they provide the update. Which basically means OEMs have to pay Microsoft a royalty and also do lots of testing to ensure it works. So basically no, it costs them money to provide an update.
Not that the situation is much different with Android phones, except that you can at least take a minor gamble and run community firmware which should work fine.
If you want to troll, do try to read back over what you've written before posting.. you just called your beloved Galaxy S3 a piece of shit.
In any case, based on the published specs, this is going to be priced around €100 before taxes and subsidy. Hardly in the same class.
ive seen some cheep androids similar to those you mention and they are shit, barely more functional than a calculator,
the HD2 has similar specs to this with older S1 snapdragon and it runs current gen wp7.5 super quick, this will be good if the price point is low enough
The San Francisco II is £100 and isn't bad spec for it at all. It's certainly not a "calculator" and is widely lauded as a decent budget smart phone. The point stands that if someone can produce a £100 PAYG device with 2x the RAM as this, then what's Samsung's excuse? I don't even know how much the Omnia M will cost under PAYG but I would be surprised if its less than £150. It seems such a penny pinching exercise when it disrupts the Windows Phone ecosystem in ways that just cutting storage wouldn't so nearly impact.
Jim, it still is dumb (to say the least). You don't use a strip so that your thumb won't hide a point? Really? And you pretend that is an advantage? And three other comentards upvote you?
Lol... And yes, I have a lumia 800. Check my postings for what I think of the interface and of the stupid limitations of wp7.5.
Yes that's right. Because ms UI designers know as much about making every pixel count as azure ones do about leap years. Hey, I know what - on a phone, which has a small screen anyway, let's waste a quarter of it right there on the fucking home screen with a big black bar showing nowt. And, if we then find we have to cut all the titles off halfway because there's, err, no room to fit them on like proper phones we'll just call it our "innovation". Our marketing dept pays enough shills to counter any common-sense arguments against this in al the popular forums, and as we've shown throughout our history, marketing beats quality every time.
Well, it always has so far ...
These things are meant to run Tango which is Microsoft's low memory version of Windows Phone. It doesn't support background agents and has restrictions on app switching and video playback as well as a few other things. It also requires apps on the appstore to explicitly declare support low memory devices otherwise they're filtered out.
So in other words this device is gimped. Less apps and less functionality than a regular Windows Phone which is hardly pushing the boat out in the first place. It's not even clear to me why Tango is even necessary just to save a quid or two on RAM.
It does seem a bit odd. Surely to up it from 380MB to 500 (and run the full OS) wouldn't cost that much, then it could run full WinPho7? Maybe they're going to sell it for £50 or something - and that couple of quid does matter.
Otherwise, surely a 4" phone should be running all the apps.
It's going to have to be cheap to compete with Nokia. I suspect they might be buying market share with the Lumia 710.
I bought a 710 last week. For £130. It's not al all bad. Actually, I'll change that, it's very good. Nice and fast, and easy enough to use. Big buttons, and big writing. If you're a power Android user it'll probably piss you off massively. If you want a smartphone that does phone, email, text, satnav and internet well, then it's great. There are a lot fewer decent apps available, and nowhere near as much tweaking to be done.
However, I was only using 5 or 6 apps on my Android phone, and 3 of those were to replace the rubbish stock browser, address book and text app. I was stranded on 2.2 though. I wasn't at all impressed by my experience of Android (including the tablets on 3 I've played with), though ICS may be better (now you can finally get kit that runs it).
It's a lot more customizable than iOS though. It's OK if you set it up, but try picking up someone else's iPhone/iPad and finding an app, amongst screens and screens of similar looking icons.
Maybe with Tango Windows mobile can do well at the lower end of the market? Where Apple don't play, and a lot of the Android phones are truly rubbish. Then build up enough customer-love to sell phones at the top-end. Or fail spectacularly. Who can tell...
I went to the Carphone Whorehouse.
I believe it's down to £170 on Vodafone, O2 and Orange direct or SIM free from CW. But £130 Pay-as-you-go with a couple of them in CW.
I think it was as low as £120 if you had an existing Pay&Go account, and wanted to upgrade it, but the staff didn't seem to be too sure about that. And I didn't anyway.
As their stuff is unlocked and doesn't have any of the operator's horrible software on it, I bought Vodafone Pay&Go, and bunged the work contract SIM in it.
It needs a bit of setting up. But you can delete the Ebay app without having to root the damned phone (hooray!). The text is enormous. Which gives low information density, but is great for reading without glasses.
It's also funny to see what honesty is like. Set-up is full of dire warnings about how you have to agree to sign your privacy away, and every move you make will be tracked from now on. It's alarming. No different from iOS and Android of course, it's just they're more sneaky about it.
Just capable enough to suck people into buying, crippled enough to make them regret it soon after.
WTF were they thinking with 4Gb storage, the cloud is not a good enough substitute even over WiFi, totally useless with typical 3G reception in most of the UK.
How many people will associate the cut down feature set here with WP7 in general. When you buy a low end Android phone it multitasks poorly - but still does it. It's easy to imagine the performance improvement an upgrade would bring to a feature you've directly experienced.
With this 'beginners edition' of WP7 it's less obvious to casual users what an upgrade brings - unless it's actually so crippled you're compelled to upgrade just to get a useful device - a well used Microsoft strategy on the desktop. Arguably the missing multitasking isn't exactly great in the full version anyway!
I can see a future where this sort of device is the 1st AND last WP phone large numbers of people buy.
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