Be Excellent To Each Other

Only for your phone, not for the 360.

Will existing devices get updates to WP8? Who knows!

I am going back to the iPhone when the next one is announced. WP7 has been good and it has certainly been interesting being there from the beginning (as I was with iOS), but every time I use my iPad I'm wishing more and more that my phone did the same kind of things.

Whereas every time I use my Touch I wish it behaved and felt like my Lumia.

Versus this which calls shenanigans on that verge story.
Edit: Wait, something Gizmodo linked to that story, which called shenanigans.

I like what I've seen of my work colleagues W7 phone, and I think my little Android phone is great for what it's cost me but come November I'll be getting an iPhone I think.

Oh, and it seems bizarre to me that Microsoft would be putting huge effort into streamlining WP7 to enable lower hardware specs and prices, only to immediately replace it with something requiring higher specs than the current crop. It's either that or the equally baffling choice to be changing the hardware platform radically enough to require a rewrite of the kernel while at the same time building an emulator to run existing apps (which appears to have been confirmed. Ish).

Edit: But Oh, the guy who said it was confused.

...Which suggests there won't be upgrades, or he would have said "oh yes, there'll be upgrades".

If upgrades were simply just going to work, then MS PR wouldn't be giving press the runaround when they ask simple questions.

It's going to kill Nokia if it's true*. Apple might be able to get away with it, but Google and the Android manufacturers can't, so MS are stupid to think they can.

As I said, it doesn't make sense to me.

* Maybe Microsoft want to be a phone builder and spy a cheap way in? Maybe Ballmer had a Nokia that didn't work and couldn't get a refund?

Nor to me -- but between one firm making the hardware and another firm making the software (and all the other firms that used to make the hardware -- I guess companies like Samsung and HTC are still licencees, even if they've retreated from actually selling it) there's a lot of room for planning snafus.

Maybe they are going for crippled WP7* on cheap hardware, and shiny WP8 on more expensive hardware - they could feel first time around they hit nowhere land between cheap=volume and lustworthy=margins and are trying again.

I still don't understand it.

* I've read the SDK docs - it is being crippled for cheap, low-cost phones in significant ways.

On that note, I have it on almost the highest authority possible that the small RAM footprint on the Lumia 610 is a royal pain in the arse for devs.

Yeah, I just edited to mention that -There're severe limitations on background agents, too. Edit after double-checking: Yep, they're disabled completely.

Sure they can. 99% of people getting a phone don't care about that sort of thing.

Coincidently I've just seen the results (from a quite small sample set, admittedly) of people answering questions about their smartphone and 12% of Nokia owners are running either Android or iOS. 3% of iPhone users are running Symbian, and a whopping 22% are running Android (on their iPhone). As for version numbers? Forget about it.

Coming back to my iPod touch because my lumia turned itself off - it's Too thin, and the scrolling feels really 'sticky'. And on wp7 if you hold shift for a bit longer it shift-locks, which apparently ios doesn't (says the Too). Or didn',t given I'm stuck on 3.1.4. The hold-to-place-cursor is better in wo7 too.

None of this changes the fact wp7 is going to lose hard, obviously

If you mean for typing, double-clicking shift should work.

Disagree with pretty much all of that, and I've tried really hard to love WP7!

Pac-Man Kart Rally released today, £3.99.

Multiplayer for the first time, but only for two people on the same Wifi network... the kicker being that there's an achievement for winning 50 multiplayer races.

I think I'm done with WP7 gaming!

Hehe.

Burn the Rope (79p) has the best use for an accelerometer in a phone game I've ever seen.

Lulz (@Cras)

I just found out that you can't send files over Bluetooth, even to a Windows PC.

What the fuck.

That's alright, you can always email video clips to people rather than bluetooth them?

Oh... except you can't.

You can however upload them to SkyDrive and share them from there.

Can you though? The only options I have for videos is "pin to start" and "delete".

The only way I can move them is through Zune.

Just tried. In camera roll - after tapping on it - I've got share and share on Facebook available.

But in Zune and the camera roll overview, it's like you say.

I get to share it via email, Facebook and SkyDrive. Maybe I'm just awesome.

Hang on a sec.. you're right. I've just gone in through camera roll and I can share via email and Skydrive.

I really should start using Skydrivve more. It seems less hassle than Dropbox on my phone.

Microsoft in making their own cloud storage system easier to use with their own OS shocker.

Which is what is pushing me towards it.

Now, if only it didn't automatically resize pictures for me....

No WP8 for any WP7 devices. Instead there will be a WP7.8 which will provide some of the features to WP7 phones.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/micr ... y-devices/

The tiles on the screen of WP7, how customisable are they? Does everyone see the same set or can you add or remove them to only see the stuff you're interested in? Looking at the articles this morning about Windows Phone made me realise I don't know a lot about it's interface.

Oh, and here's some good detail of what's going to be in WP8 when it arrives:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/20/30966 ... in/2865586

Hardware spec increases
New start screen with smaller icons and ditching the blank space on the right of the screen
Skype integration
IE10
Proper SD support
Support for apps developed using native code, not just .NET

You can have whichever ones on there you want. You can pin webpages, contacts to the start screen as tiles as well.

you can add remove and rearrange ones for installed apps, but you can't resize them or make your own - there are loads of twee little tools on marketplace that cut up a photo into tiles, and let you assign shortcuts yo other tools in them.

Cool, what about live tiles? Are those only for built-in apps like email or can third party apps create live tiles as well (thus presumably being something like Android's widgets)? I am Googling this stuff but, believe it or not, finding it difficult to get a straight answer. Filtering out the info about what WP7 does in this respect and the upcoming change for WP8 isn't helping matters.

The Orange 241 app puts the code on the tile, so I assume any app can.

Third party apps can create them too.. I think the interface is lovely.

Cool, I do like the look of Windows Phone and that level of customisation puts it head and shoulders above iOS which is nice to know. Now all they need to do is stop being massively behind in the app race...

The apps let it down in a big way. The iOS/Android equivalents of all the ones I use are light years ahead. I don't know if that's because of the API MS let their devs use, or what.

One of the main draws was using it as a mobile Xbox device, but the majority of the games have been a bit disappointing. There have been some gems, but in the main it seems to be endless puzzle games where you have to get gold medals/stars/etc. Where's the mobile Crackdown, Forza, Gears of War? Probably coming in WP8.

In the Windows 8 announcement presentation, Microsoft said they were making a big commitment to mobile gaming...

...then proved it by saying they were partnering with Gameloft.

I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Uh...

You mean the tower defence game that got pulled because the servers didn't work properly? I meant a proper Crackdown.

Where by "some" you mean "the different tile UI". It's hardly ground breaking.

So to recap, Microsoft have:

0) sent one of their VPs over to become the CEO of Nokia
1) partnered with Nokia, which bet the firm on WinPhone
2) waited until Nokia was running out of cash and staff
3) made an announcement that none of Nokia's current phones will get new hotness
4) made an announcement than the new hotness won't appear until the autumn

What the fuck are Nokia supposed to sell between now and then?

If Microsoft had a mastermind plan to ruin most of Nokia then buy what's left for a song, then this is exactly what it would have done.

Yeah, I'm fairly sure MS are planning to buy Nokia. I bet we'll see a Lumia tablet too.

The Lumia 900 came out last month in some territories. Astounding.

Yep. Nokia have been totally shafted. I think they'll carry on selling more than you think though. The people that walk into shops and walk out with a Nokia WP7 because it's the shiny one will still buy them, because they have no idea that there's a WP8 coming.

The counterpoint is that their intention, I believe, is to carry on making and shipping 7.5/7.8 handsets. It'll become the new 'low-spec' device once 8 launches.

I believe Nokia is on the record saying they are making a WinRT tablet.

It's insane. Even apple don't obsolete hardware this quickly, and they only get away with it because they're Apple.

What they should have done, of course, is make this kernel change before launching WP7, then this wouldn't be necessary. I think they're on record saying they fucked up by not doing that, but didn't have time and had to get a product to market.