Posts by Jim Coleman 524 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Sep 2007
Me too, just pre-ordered the 64GB one with the touch cover, and a 64GB microSDXC card to pop into the card slot. Looking forward to all that touchy-feely goodness and full integration with my Windows Phone. Will be upgrading my desktop and laptop to W8 too, they both have touchscreens :)
Speak for yourself, plenty of people are finding Windows Phone to be a better experience. WP bashers are becoming an endangered species. Trawl the net and you'll see tons of pro-WP articles and comments. You're already starting to look a bit pointless with this kind of baseless drivel.
The reason the cheaper phones have an SD card socket it because, to be cheap, they come with a lot less on-board storage. But realizing that some customers will want more room, they put in a cheap-as-chips socket so people can spend more money on upgrading. The more expensive ones have enough memory that the socket becomes redundant. As an early adopter of Skydrive, I have 25GB of free storage on there. Combined with my Nokia 920, I'll have a total of 32+25 = 57GB which is pretty darned good for £300 (the first pricing details are starting to emerge now)
Why would HTC want to put Android on their Windows Phones? They already make Android phones. All this "Windows Phone sucks!" drivel is becoming increasingly ridiculous in the face of the barrage of evidence to the contrary. MS will be revealing some really game-changing WP8 features next month and you will be forced to chow your own words.
"...they took their eye of Android and wasted their engineering resources on the failed Windows Phone..."
HTC have been producing windows phones for what, 15 years? If anything, they took their eye off Windows and wasted their engineering resources on Android. And that's when their share price started to drop.
Actually, although a limited company is itself liable for its debts and the directors are not, as this was a breach of the law, the directors are liable personally for the fine, IIRC.
Fines, imprisonment and other remedies always apply to the directors, as long as they are personally held accountable. Only if the directors were shown to be ignorant of the crime their company committed would they get away with it, but even then I suspect some other employee would be held to account.
Basically a limited company is only a protective shield against legal debt - criminal punishments are always meted out to individuals. Regulatory fines are another issue as they are not dished out by the criminal courts - they would normally become corporate debt so could theoretically be dodged by dissolving the company.
So the question here then becomes whether this fine is criminal or regulatory. Sorry for rambling.
"By now we know that any positive comments about WinPho quickly get slammed with downvotes"
Yep, always the way - it's as if all the Fandroids feel so threatened by WP8 that they have to do everything in their power to diss it, e.g. by downvoting a pro-MS post, which is the nearest they can get to shooting at their enemy.
I've not downvoted the pro-Android posts. Not because I agree with what they say, but because I'm confident enough in my choice of mobile OS that I just don't feel any need to.
"...try emailing a PDF that you've just downloaded from the web. In Android it's Share->Gmail from the Adobe Reader app"
So you are criticizing an OS because a particular app lacks a certain feature in WP? Blame the app developers, not the OS.
I refer you to the "Smoked by Windows" campaign where WP has won 98% of all the challenges against both Android and iPhone.
"... and there are no apps, no developers making apps"
There are over 100,000 apps and WP reached thet figure faster than Android. Developer interest in WP8 is soaring.
"... the Microsoft lockin and guaranteed security problems."
What lockin? More so than Apple or Android? Why? Oh and WP7 is more secure than Android and WP8 will be even better with on-board encryption, bit-locker support etc.
"... and they will leave you in the lurch when Windows Phone 9 arrives with another new app format."
Bullshit. WP7 got "left in the lurch" if you like, because it rested on the old WinCE kernel. Now that WP8 uses the NT Kernel, same as the desktop, there will be no more "left in the lurch". And don't tell me Android users don't ever get "left in the lurch"!
"Thats assuming of course that Windows Phone 8 phones are actually good. That's unlikely"
Oh really? You've obviously not read any press on the matter.
Please please please get yourself more informed before you come on here spouting your rubbish.
Given that WP7 is effectively reaching end-of-life as a development platform, and WP8 hasn't even launched yet, these figures are hardly surprising.
The interest in Windows 8 will translate across to WP8, because there's a 90% code re-use factor for Metro apps between the two. So I would expect that once both W8 and WP8 are out in the wild, developer interest for Metro as a whole will surge.
As this is a pro-MS post, Register readers are obliged to downvote it, so off you go. And don't forget the "happy to oblige" replies too, you can't help yourselves.
"As for WP 7.8, how long will that be supported for with apps?"
All current apps will continue to run, plus any new apps written for WP7 will work in both WP7 & 8 so initially at least, devs would be best off continuing to write for WP7 until WP8 usage takes off. I expect that by the time WP7 app creation stops, most people would have upgraded their phone anyway.
"With no official upgrade path past WP 7.8 it leaves the owners pretty screwed"
No it doesn't, their phones will still work, still have access to the marketplace, still be able to download new apps. The presence of WP8 does not suddenly make all the WP7 phones stop working. I think you overestimate the importance of updates to your average punter. My wife and daughter, for instance, refuse to upgrade their phones to Tango because they can't be bothered and the phone "works fine as it is".
I personally like to keep up to date, but then I'm a techie and I upgrade my phone every year, so I'll be getting the Nokia flagship WP8 phone when it launches in a couple of months.
Actually the latest version of Windows Phone is Tango. Fact. I have it on my HTC Titan right now and it is, as I said, being made available for 100% of existing WP devices.
You're getting your knickers in a twist over a version of the OS that isn't even available yet! Heck, even WP7.8 isn't here yet, and even THAT is coming to 100% of Windows Phones.
You can throw your toys out the pram as much as you like when WP8 finally gets released, but don't pretend WP8 is the current version of WP, that is still Tango.
Actually Microsoft only specified the MINIMUM hardware requirements, manufacturers were free to do better if they wanted - same as with Android.
And if you think the state of affairs with WP is so amusing, have a look at this...
http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
This pie chart shows that 10% of Android phones have the latest version.
In contrast, 100% of Windows Phones are getting the latest version.
Sorry to rain on your parade.
Oh keep your shirt on!
Existing WP7 phones received the Nodo, Tango and Mango updates and soon will get ANOTHER update to 7.8 which brings the v8 interface and other stuff which hasn't been announced yet. The reason 8 isn't coming to existing handsets is for a similar reason that newer versions of Android or iOS don't support older hardware, i.e. the hardware isn't capable of supporting it. 8 supports NFC, higher screen res, removable SD cards, multicore processors etc etc so of COURSE you're going to need a new phone. Existing WP7 phones are no more obsolete than any other existing smartphone that won't receive an upgrade to the latest OS and there are PLENTY of those. At least WP7 phones will get another update to 7.8.
So quit your moaning, what MS are doing here is no worse than what anyone else does.
One of the great things about the Sonos system is that it creates its own Wifi mesh network, using each station in each room as a transceiver, so you get a really strong signal all over the house. Most houses have just one Wifi router and if this gadget relies on that for its signal, it's not going to work very well if the house has any black-spots (my kitchen seems to be dead to my own Wifi, but the kitchen Sonos works perfectly as it is fed by two other neighbouring Sonos stations).
so as a house-wide system, I suspect this won't be hugely reliable - at least not as reliable as the Sonos system.
I really think you are wrong. Nokia's next Lumia 900-series phone (910 maybe?) will run WP8. The reason for the hardware upgrade this time around (wasn't necessary for the 7 to 7.5 to 7.8 upgrades) is mostly the change in Kernel to match the desktop. Now that desktop and phone carry the same kernel, there's no need to force hardware upgrades further down the line, any more than anyone's forced to upgrade their PC when a new version of Windows comes out. Plus, let's be honest here, many Android phones never receive the latest version, ICS isn't coming to every phone, so Android users often find themselves left out in the cold as well. iPhone....well quite often new features are denied to older models, Siri being one. To berate MS for new hardware requirements without rattling the sabre at the competition is hypocritical.
Well I bought an HTC Titan late last year so am looking for a phone upgrade (I upgrade every year as I'm not on a contract) - I can wait a couple more months for Nokia's flagship Windows Phone 8 device (Lumia 900 series, presumably), it looks like it will be a bit of a barmstormer. And yeah I'll probably get a Surface, and an XBox 720 next year. I do like the idea of a unified UI across all devices. Makes sense to me. Can't speak for everyone else, of course. Perhaps Halo will come to WP8 together with support for the XBox controller, now that would be awesome sauce.
And even though this post es filled with happiness and light, I expect it to get downvoted because it is pro-MS. Ah well.
It perplexes me how Android is the only OS of the top three that has phones available that aren't either already on the latest OS version or immediately updatable to the latest. Both iOS and WP phones always ship with the most up-to-date OS version, in fact sometimes WP phones ship with a version that hasn't quite been released to existing phones - for instance the Lumia 610 shipping with Tango which is due out shortly for all existing handsets.
Having said that, the dominance of Android in the sales charts appears, oddly, to suggest that your average punter doesn't actually give a shit about the version of their OS or indeed whether it's upgradable. Ho-hum.
"...you have the option of having several other tasks running in the background without impacting the core system."
Never had that problem, TBH. I seem to be able to have Tunein Radio streaming away, content synching with the cloud, live tiles updating themselves, all happening in the background while I surf the net, and no UI slowdown at all. On a single core. Ah well. Works for me. *shrug*
"Winpho runs fine on a single core because Microsoft won't let you do anything with it"
Funnily enough they let me do anything I want
"it doesn't need extra umph because there is nothing on it"
There are 136 apps on mine...
"...and when Winpho get 10000 apps that use extra umph, like Dead space, Mass effect 3 or shadow gun, you will be regretting that it isn't single core."
Well I'm running plenty of great games so I'll wait for that to happen I guess, lol
"Want to put a background on your front page? No."
No I don't. The start screen is covered with live tiles, there's no need for a background, it would just clutter things up.
"Want to remove some of the stupid icons / hubs, tiles or whatever MS PR call them, completely from your front screen? No."
I can remove any/all live tiles that I want to.
"Want to develop your own apps and put them on when and where you want? Without MS saying yes? No."
I don't develop apps so will leave that for someone else to answer. All the apps I want are in the marketplace.
"The galaxy's only short coming is the plastic case. Not sure I trust that over an aluminium one."
I'd say having a mobile OS that needs four CPU cores is a bit of a shortcoming. Hurts now that the shoe is on the other foot, doesn't it?
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