Romit Mehta

What I Wish Today’s Microsoft Announcement Will Be

#

Microsoft has a “major” announcement to make at an unspecified location in Los Angeles. My hope list for what may be announced.

What I Wish Today’s Microsoft Announcement Will Be

Windows Phone Native Social Features Keep Getting Updated Quietly

#

Some quiet updates on Windows Phone related to aspects of Twitter. Sign of things to come?

Windows Phone Native Social Features Keep Getting Updated Quietly

Nokia Provides More Evidence of Being the “real” Windows Phone Maker

#

Nokia announces partnerships with major brands to bring their apps to Lumia and other Windows Phones. Is Nokia really the “real” Windows Phone maker?

Nokia Provides More Evidence of Being the “real” Windows Phone Maker

iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User: Screen

#

In my series comparing iPhone 4S to Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 800), I look at the amazing Retina display.

iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User: Screen

iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User: Out Of the Box Experience, Setup

#

In my series comparing iPhone 4S to Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 800), I compare setup and out of the box experience.

iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User: Out Of the Box Experience, Setup

New Series: iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User

#

I start using iPhone 4S as my primary phone to compare the experience to my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. I document what I like and what I don’t like.

New Series: iPhone 4S Used by a Windows Phone User

Priyanka Chopra conducts the "Blown Away by Lumia" competition

#

If you are not aware of the “Blown Away by Lumia” contest, it is the Nokia’s version of “Smoked By Windows Phone” contest started by Ben Rudolph of Microsoft, at the 2012 Consumer Electornics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Nokia took that contest global, and here are some videos of former Miss World Priyanka Chopra competing with challengers with various smartphones and beating them. Quite cool, although she comes off as a bit too chirpy.

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

www.youtube.com/watch

Nokia’s Roller Coaster Fortnight

#

Nokia’s had a roller coaster fortnight. What matters though, is the Lumia 900 seems to be selling well. Is it enough to mark Nokia’s comeback? Time will tell.

Nokia’s Roller Coaster Fortnight

The Problem with Reviewing the Nokia Lumia 900

#

Nokia Lumia 900 reviews are out. A look at why Nokia and Microsoft have a problem with the device and the platform when it comes to reviews and reviewers. Perception is reality, right? The Problem with Reviewing the Nokia Lumia 900

Plex for Windows Phone is out

#

Plex, the “media center” software application built for a multitude of devices, has a Windows Phone app now. They wrote up a blog post about it and while I am excited that there is a WP7 app now, it was heartening to see the praise they had for WP7 both from a user’s perspective as well as from a developer’s perspective.

There are so many gems in that post, I felt compelled to not only write this blog post, but highlight a bunch of the gems from the post:

Android phones never managed to capture my interest. They just looked and felt like bad photocopies of the iPhone, and didn’t offer anything new I was interested in, like the ability to install a custom theme that looked even uglier than the default, or download torrents on my phone, or play a Matrix animation in the background, or remove my battery, or spend time killing random processes, or over-clock my CPU, or any other beardy sort of thing.
Fast-forward to this January, I ordered a second hand Samsung device to help with development, and promptly fell in love with it.
As much as Android felt like (poorly) recycled ideas and bad new ones, Windows Phone felt original, well designed, and fun to use.
The performance was great, really smooth in a way iOS is and Android isn’t even in ICS.
[Ice Cream Sandwich, or Android 4.0, from a Windows Phone User's Perspective (my Techie Buzz post from earlier)]
The “pivot” and “panorama” UI concepts were fresh and a great way of making good use of a small screen in portrait mode. The typography was clean and brazen.
The integration of Facebook and Twitter made them feel like first class citizens, not an afterthought.
The live tiles on the home screen were a great way to make the phone feel alive.
But the iPhone felt staid, for lack of a better word. I wanted to be able to pin a few email folders to my home screen and watch them update live. I wanted to see all my social updates in a more integrated way. I missed being able to go to a contact (which I could also pin to my home screen), and easily see the conversations (Facebook, or SMS) I was having with them, and recent photos they’d uploaded.
The iOS development environment is quite good, with the weakest link being Objective-C, which has a steep learning curve and feels like it stepped out of the 80s with a cocaine hangover.
Android, oh, Android, I don’t mean to pick on you once again, but your edit-build-deploy cycle is long enough to make a grown man cry, and then stab himself in the eyeballs, and then cry some more. Java is fine, but the surrounding environment and piss-poor emulator makes it much harder to develop for than it should be.
So how is the Windows Phone development environment? It’s scary good. C# is a great language, .NET is a solid framework, XAML is a really nice way to design user interfaces, and the edit-build-deploy cycle is fast.
We were able to write the [WP7] app from start to finish in two months, between two engineers working part time, which is almost an order of magnitude faster than it took for the iOS and Android app.
Related (linked to from the blog post):
My last thought on Windows Phone is that it’s got all the ingredients it needs to be successful: It’s a fun, useful, well-designed platform, with sexy (Nokia) hardware, and it’s as good for developers as it is for users. It deserves much more marketshare than it has, and Microsoft seems to be making most of the right moves (about time).
Since I use WP7 all day and follow a bunch of WP7 developers on twitter, I am very well aware of all these benefits. I am glad the folks at Plex thought of putting all these thoughts on their blog.

Hope to see many others release their WP7 apps. Are you listening, Instagram?

Windows Phone and iOS pound Android in PCMag's Readers' Choice Awards

#

Wow. Just wow. PCMag’s Sascha Segan just tweeted some astounding results from their Readers' Choice Awards for smartphone OSes:

As you can see, I was a bit skeptical about the Android bit because Verizon Wireless, especially, has sold a ton of Android phones, of all shapes and sizes. Turns out, Android owners don’t quite like their phones/OS. It’s not surprising, most Android phones start out cool (or “not iPhone”) but they deteriorate over time with battery issues, lags, etc.

Windows Phone and iOS on the other hand, have extremely high satisfaction rates, and it shows through these Readers' Choice Awards. Another interesting thing, on AT&T, the Samsung Windows Phones rated higher than the iPhone. Whaaaa?

Regardless, as an unabashed fan of Windows Phone, I am delighted with this!

Calm Down, Windows Phone Developers. Tango is Good for You!

#

Does Tango restrict developer capability so apps can target lower-end (256MB) devices? Per Justin Angel, Principal Engr at Nokia, not really.

Calm Down, Windows Phone Developers. Tango is Good for You!

One Year On: Nokia Has Come a Long Way, Still Has a Very Long Way to Go

#

It has been a year since Nokia announced it was adopting Windows Phone as its smartphone platform. A review of the past year.

One Year On: Nokia Has Come a Long Way, Still Has a Very Long Way to Go

Windows Live Now Connects to Google Contacts: Google Talk Coming to Windows Phone and Windows 8?

#

Windows Live now allows you to connect to Google to keep contacts in sync. Is this is prepration for native support of Google services in WP7/W8?

Windows Live Now Connects to Google Contacts: Google Talk Coming to Windows Phone and Windows 8?

Hands on with Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport

#

Hands on with Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport, two location-based apps which come with Nokia Windows Phone devices.

Hands on with Nokia Drive and Nokia Transport

Nokia Windows Phone ESPN App Walkthrough

#

Video of the ESPN app for Nokia Windows Phones.

Nokia Windows Phone ESPN App Walkthrough

#Nokia Lumia 710 and 900 ads #WP7

#

Budget smartphone with free built-in turn-by-turn navigation and 2D/3D maps ($100 value, at least)? Check. The Nokia Lumia 710. For $50.

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDECIwJPWBk?wmode=transparent])

 

Sexy, large-screen, 4G LTE-enabled, dual-camera boasting smartphone? Check. The Nokia Lumia 900. Coming soon.

 

[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1qurHPAeDA?wmode=transparent])

Nokia Lumia 900: My Hands-On from CES 2012

#

I was able to get some pictures of the Nokia Lumia 900 at the Nokia booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Nokia Lumia 900: My Hands-On from CES 2012

Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph with Yet Another Cool Campaign (#smokedbywindowsphone): Smokes Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4S, Others

#

Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph runs yet another awesome campaign to show non-Windows Phone users how they phone is slower than Windows Phone. Puts $100 on it!

Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph with Yet Another Cool Campaign (#smokedbywindowsphone): Smokes Galaxy Nexus, iPhone 4S, Others

Windows Phone Executive: It’s “Business as Usual” with Windows Phone Updates

#

After a blog post created large-scale uproar, Microsoft clarifies the state of Windows Phone updates. It’s business as usual.

Windows Phone Executive: It’s “Business as Usual” with Windows Phone Updates

Windows Phone Updates Are Now Completely Opaque

#

Windows Phone engineering team did a fantastic job after NoDo update fiasco - increased transparency and forced carriers/OEMs to synchronize. Sadly, that story seems to be ending.

Windows Phone Updates Are Now Completely Opaque

My 2012 Wish List for Windows Phone

#

My wish list for Windows Phone for 2012.

My 2012 Wish List for Windows Phone

#Droidrage count: 3,200 tweets in 30 hours

#

Wow. The #droidrage promo that Ben Rudolph ran a couple of days back, got 3,200 tweets in about 30 hours! That's 2 tweets per minute!

I guess Android owners are not too satisfied with their phones, eh? Must be the low-class nature of their existence? (I keeeeed, I keeeeeed!)

 

Of USPs and ecosystem lock-ins

#

Manan Kakkar just blogged about how some of Microsoft's iOS apps are a bad thing for Microsoft, and how the SkyDrive app for WP7 is useless to him. I'd like to use this blog post as a response to some of his remarks, criticisms and rants.

Kinectimals for iOS leaves no USP for the Microsoft ecosystem in the living room

I agree with Manan that there was an implicit promise of Windows Phone working very closely with Xbox and Windows in a way that iOS and Android could not and would not. At the same time, you have to remember - Microsoft is clearly pitching Xbox as a platform. If they want the Xbox to become a platform, they will need many more consoles out in homes. At the same time, the reality is that most Xbox users are most likely users of iOS devices of some shape or form.

Giving a taste of how a mobile device can work tightly with the Xbox gives Microsoft several wins:

  1. Exposes a Microsoft Studio game (in this case) to iOS users. If they don't have an Xbox and they like the game, they may start thinking about it.
  2. Shows how Microsoft can integrate the mobile phone into its console. "With Windows Phone, the experience would be even tighter" could be the carrot.
  3. If the iOS user already has an Xbox, they may be tempted to look at other add-ons for the game, perhaps other games, other content, etc. In other words, fueling the increased use of the console, leading to potential increase in revenues related to Xbox content.

All of these create the vicious circle of creating a bigger market for the console as well as selling more content off the console. For a platform company, is there a better recipe?

Microsoft is at a very interesting stage in its history. For the first time since it became the most dominant company in the world, it is facing a world where its operating system (note: not "software") may not be the most popular system. The world is moving towards smaller, lighter computing devices where so far, we have not seen Windows at all. Until we see Windows 8 succeed, we will continue with the argument that Microsoft is not a player in this new world where PCs will be outsold by smart devices which do not run Windows.

Why should I own a Windows Phone and not an iPhone, if the Xbox integration is going to be so tight with the iPhone?

First, I don't think every game is going to be made available on iOS. Kinectimals is one of those games Microsoft may be toying with, to see if there is any sense in pursuing that market.

So from a user perspective, you can be assured that Windows Phone will continue to have Xbox LIVE games which won't be on any other platforms, it will be the only platform with Xbox Achievements, and if there are games which get on iOS, Windows Phone will get them first for sure. It may not be a convincing argument, but frankly, if it were a convinving argument, Windows Phone would have sold way more than it has already.

Clearly, users don't really care much about Xbox on their phones enough to keep it a strict exclusive.

You bring one game, you have to bring all

I am not sure why they should be forced to bring every game with such tight integration. They chose this game just like EA Games or Pop Cap Games chose to bring one or two games to Windows Phone. I don't see any logical reason to bring every single title to iOS necessarily.

WP7 SkyDrive app is useless

This one confused me. Not because there is no basis for Manan's point. WP7 after all has an extremely efficient concept of Hubs which in fact avoid the need to have separate apps for each service. In that regard, my SkyDrive pics/vids can, and are available in the Pictures Hub. Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote can, and are available in the Office Hub. So I'd call the new SkyDrive app redundant in some ways, but not useless.

Hubs are meant to make it easy to see and share stuff that you care about like Pictures, Music, Office docs, etc. The purpose of the SkyDrive app is not to just let you browse the stuff, but also allow it to be selectively shared with others.

Finally, I believe Manan has concluded that the app is useless because it does not serve two of his wishes (more than being really useless) - being able to save an attachment to SkyDrive, and being able to see files on other PCs and devices from SkyDrive. The former is a missing feature of the Mail application and perhaps of the OS itself (not exposing the file system) and the latter is a missing feature of SkyDrive the service. Neither is a shortcoming of the SkyDrive app.

By having an app, Microsoft can also rev it faster than the OS updates, much like Google's apps on Android which are now de-coupled from the OS itself.

I feel bad having the need to write a long response but twitter's 140 characters were just not enough to make my point.

Manan, cheers :-)

Windows Phone Executive Shakeup: Andy Lees Out, Terry Myerson In

#

Steve Ballmer moves Andy Lees out of his position as President of Windows Phone. Terry Myerson takes over for Andy Lees, who moves to an interesting role.

Windows Phone Executive Shakeup: Andy Lees Out, Terry Myerson In