Posts by l3v5y

The 'experts' who never see BBM will never understand RIM

Perhaps it's a UK thing? UK teenagers love BBM, American ones (where all the dull people telling us about the state of the industry they don't understand live) aren't so hot on it I think.

Nokia on 'brink of failure', warns analyst

So the common bitch about ecosystems goes away when you use Symbian, that now has 5 third party developers and no point?

The processor speed and general efficiency of hardware is something WP7 does very well, hence having previous generation processors. Since when was being efficient bad?

Re: Costs too much :-(

$99 is the same as Apple, and compared to Android there's at least some quality control before flooding the market with crapware.

Re: The most pitiful thing about all this...

Obviously the Lumia 900 is crap, which is why it's AT&T and Amazons top rated phone at the moment.

Re: WP8 compatibility

Clearly Microsoft are terrible at backwards compatibility, I mean, it's not like you can run a Windows 95 program on Windows 8. Oh, yes you can.

Re: The problem is

WP7 apps will run on WP8, that much is fact.

I agree with you on Metro on desktops (and even tablets that you want to be productive on) but on a phone, it works very well. If you'd tried it, you'd know.

Re: @garcyc2011

No, that techincally is multitasking. Multitasking is running multiple threads/applications/tasks at the same time. It might not be multi-window, but this is a phone!

Also, Spotify and a few other apps demonstrate background audio streaming, you can be playing music whilst playing a game, and I think that matches even your broken definition of multitasking.

Windows CE as an operating system is also a fully multitasking OS, you might want to read what multitasking actually means before complaining about the lack of it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking)

GiffGaff gaffe charity spaff to quell miffed riffraff

Maybe they've done the calculations, and not buying redundancy is the more sensible and cost effective decision? Yes, backups are good, and data centres explode, but there's no point in doing the calculations in the first place if you're just going to buy redundancy anyway!

Also, given GiffGaff don't own the majority of the network (O2/Telefonica do), they're not the ones that are in charge of most of the redundancy, so judging them on that makes no sense whatsoever.

Windows Phone 7 gets cut'n'paste, other tweaks in update

is good, but

Zune is excellent, but having the option of not having to have it run wouldn't be a bad thing...

Apple=Control

I have a feeling the reason Apple don't seem to have this issue with carriers is that they start certification a lot earlier than they announce release dates, so the updates are already pretty much ready when they start to announce when they'll hit devices. MS don't have this luxury, as people are clamouring/demanding updates far more than Apple users.

I also suspect Apple have a lot more control over carriers than Microsoft, the pricings, roaming, tethering etc, are mostly Apples choice, with carriers just doing as the Lord Jobs commands.

It doesn't really matter

As WM6.X shows, functionality doesn't actually matter in the mobile space.

Absolutely everything you can do on an iPhone could be done on WM6.X, and very little changed between 2003 and 6.X (the interface a little).

What matters is how the function (or lack of) is presented, and WP7 does a much better job of that than WM6.X, even if it can't multitask (and as far as I know, WM6 is still the only platform to do it both properly and well, android stutters and falls over running itself, let alone with other things going on).

Windows Phone update wallops Omnia 7

20 mins isn't bad

Bear in mind WP7 does a full backup (of the internal flash and SD card), so 8-16GB, and this is sent over the simplest interface it's possible to get driving USB for reliability.

20mins really isn't that bad.

The device boots

Well, clearly the devices are capable of booting, and most are capable of being updated without issues. That to me would imply the ULDR is functional (and that samsung have bollocksed it up)

The fact that only one ULDR gets altered during a flash procedure makes it pretty difficult to break, and from all the reports I've seen, it's a lack of the firmware image required being available that makes the devices useless, and not the update mechanism itself.

If anyone happens to see a *.ffu for the Omnia7, that's what's needed to recover it.

Not a brick, just stuck

There's a significant difference between a brick, and a device stuck in ULDR.

I'm going with a device stuck in ULDR is far more likely, and is probably what happened.

Zune doesn't have access to the images required to get a device out of ULDR, so recovery is more complicated than just plugging a device in, but the device isn't a brick.

Failsafe Updating

WP7 uses a pair of ULDRs (Update Loaders) to prevent real bricking.

One ULDR is flashed during the update process, and during the first boot, if it fails, the other is used to boot in to and flash the rest of the firmware. When the device successfully boots, it overwrites the non-updated ULDR with the updated one.

Unless a user has deliberately circumvented this, there will always be enough code to boot the device in to a state in which it can be recovered rather than being properly bricked.

Superphones: A security nightmare waiting to happen

Superphones?

By my reckoning, pocket PC devices have been capable of what you reckon to be "superphone" things since well before the iPhone.

Since the first versions of Pocket PC with phone support, there's been multimedia playback, WiFi access, full multitasking and whilst there may not have been integrated appstores, there's been massive amounts of third party software easily accessible.

In my opinion, the ability to download software outside of a walled garden is more of a smartphone feature than having a lock down on the content you can access and use.

The security risks have always been there. It's entirely possible to write an application for PocketPCs that copies all your PIM data and then emails it away, and in fact, it's possible to do a lot more with the older (and far more open in terms of what you can run on them) devices than it is on your definition of a "superphone".

The integrated software store limits massively the potential for malware, since it's mostly checked (and if you're using an Android device for sensitive information handling, it serves you right), and if it's on the marketplace and gets reported, there's always a killswitch.

Microsoft steers OEMs away from putting Phone 7 on Tablets

Don't quite follow the logic...

I can't quite see how stopping OEMs using a phone OS on tablets instantly creates a new tablet focused OS?

The MS line is that tablets should use W7, since it does more. If it meets the minimum specs for WP7 (and 800x480 is the only resolution currently supported) there's no particular reason it wouldn't pass certification, but WP7 is a phone OS. It's in the name.

Android is a jack of all trades, and from the massive amount of fragmentation that has happened, either Google will have to control the OS a little, or it will fail, because developers won't have time to support that many variations of the OS.

Google are also saying that Android isn't right for tablets, and that OEMs should use ChromeOS, so you can hardly get at Microsoft for pushing an already very heavily established OS in to the tablet sphere, when Google are pushing yet another pointless OS at the problem.

Inside Windows Phone 7: ghost of Zune

Iris and native code

Iris is the UI/UX framework. Native code is done in C++/Win32, and uses the Iris framework which gives the MS internal applications their Metro look.

Everything Everywhere unveils contrary figures

Branding

I believe for a while at least, the two will be "Orange, an Everything Everywhere company", and "T-Mobile, an Everything Everywhere company". That is, until they've got enough brand awareness of "Everything Everywhere" to ditch the two fronts.

iPhone devs' riches exceed expectations

Right...

"Markets from BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Nokia were scored worse by more than 20 per cent of the respondents."

Umm... So 80% of respondents rated them better?

The Camel: Nokia unveils user designed phone

Looks like...

... WM handles some of those complaints. WM does proper multitasking (unlike iOS ever will, and unlike Android does without some tweaks). Problem is, WM has a lot of bad press for no real reason.

Windows Phone 7 misses big-business support tools

Thing is...

...do IT departments ever like supporting V1.0 of anything at all?

The iPhone didn't have many things that are considered critical, and then as they were added it became more popular.

WP7 has a lot of things that will be implemented in future builds, and WM6.5 is nowhere near end of life yet (oh, and WM6.6 and Embedded Handheld should fit in to the WM6.5 shaped hole).

iPhone 4: Perfect for everyone, except humans

Weak signal?

If you were in a weak signal area (in doors for example), odd reflections can confuse the radio circuitry, so it things there's more signal than there is. If you actually try something, that situation can change, and cause the bars displayed to change.

Umm...

There's another video showing a massive drop in data rates when touching the phone differently.

The bars are pretty meaningless, there is a correlation between faster data and more bars, but it's not an exact science and depends on a lot of things.

Testing in cases?

I have a suspicion that in early testing, when the device is wrapped up in those cases that make it look like a 3GS, it would have been missed.

Why would you want to make calls? I thought the only reason was to have one next to your face shouting "I HAVE A ****ING IPHONE! I'M BETTER THAN YOU BECAUSE STEVE TOLD ME SO!".

Superslim iPhone 4 enough to fend off Android?

Umm...

A few years ago, every smartphone released outside the US had a forward facing camera. Lots don't know, as it's utterly pointless!

iPad's brain not so unique

ARM Cortex A8

The ARM reference design is used in a lot of processors, so that's not surprising. What's of real interest is what's different. The GPU, and other hardware makes a lot more of a difference.

Windows Mobile 7 feature details mined

WM6.5.X

WM7 alphas have been out for ages. Snapdragon will probably be supported by WM7 (there's a BSP for it anyway).

There may well also be more WM6.X builds between now an WM7 (there's WM6.5.1 for a start).

WM7 is a completely new OS, and is very different to WM6.5.X.