We just spent some quality time with the
MIX10 build of
Windows Phone 7 Series running on the same prototype hardware sourced from Garmin-Asus that we saw at
MWC -- and apart from a few Murphy's Law-style demo hiccups, we loved what we saw. One thing that immediately caught our attention was the fact that lists of items "compress" slightly once you've reached their end -- something we hadn't noticed before. In general, it's pretty impressive how much attention Microsoft is paying to the finer aesthetic points of the platform, from the slight "tilts" of items that you've pressed to the 3D effects you encounter as you flip through photos. Another thing we've confirmed here is that the test units
do have accelerometers, refuting an earlier rumor that had been spreading out in Barcelona -- we know this because the display auto-rotated while viewing a photo. Check out the full video -- along with a shot of the phone resting alongside its
Zune HD cousin -- after the break.
posted Mar 17th 2010 1:22PM
Win7 interest is already beginning to wane thanks to recent information. That's a pretty impressive drop.
Nice work, Microsoft.
@steel Agreed. Supersonic here I Cum.
@steel
Really? I feel like I'm in an unhealthy relationship with it right now. I was first pretty excited, then I heard a whole bunch of bad things about the OS then we see the video that shows some pretty damn cool and innovative things (I love the People hub and the beginnings of Office).
It's like you're stuck in between what you've been told and what you've seen and want to believe.
Keep it up, Microsoft, I want to be won over.
@steel Agree, and it's really a shame too because I really love the UI
@steel I still want a Zune Phone based on its looks. The Zune is a nice looking piece of hardware.
@steel
You realize that the target audience for this device is NOT Engadget readers right? I've asked several of my more techie friends about their opinion on WP7 and they hadn't heard anything about it. 99.9% of America doesn't even know it's coming.
So yeah, the uber geek technology crowd may not be thrilled with what has been announced so far (even though we have 6 months before the device launches) but that hasn't had any impact on the target audience.
(On a personal note I am extremely disappointed with many of the rumored "features". I had really hoped that MS would give users a choice. Set the defaults so that they target the consumer market. Open up features through options that enthusiasts can tinker with).
If the iPhone has taught us anything it's that most people don't care about specs or things like multitasking or copy and paste. They want eye candy. Like WP7 or not, it is simply a beautiful UI that will attract tons of attention as it prepares to launch.
@steel
Yeah, very impressive work.
No multitasking, no compatibility to older apps, apps only via Marketplace, apps can be remotely removed, no open filesystem, no filemanager, no Flash (yet), no customizable themes, no memory cards, no volume up/down buttons, very lagging menu on a 1Ghz Smartphone and about 512MB RAM. The only thing WP7S can is looking nice and being showed on a very, very sexy demo device.
If is true that WM7 won't have multi-tasking ability and copy and paste,
the person who made that decision should be fired.
@steel
i bought an iphone when it released, i will buy this when this releases, 6 months is a decent amount of time assuming ms is interested in fixing some of the not so good "news"
@Gwanatu I feel the opposite. I think the UI is trying to be too flashy, and could work to its disadvantage at being a bit too counter productive. For me, I just don't like this swiping across tiles (yet it seems like they're zoomed in too much, and at times, words like "What's New" show up as "What's Ne---" cut off. I don't know, the UI is not to my taste. It looks nice, but not something I would personally want in my phone. Given all of Windows Mobile 7's other drawbacks, I'm good to stay away from this.
@Gwanatu The UI is horrible. I laugh when I look at it, it's lame web 2.0 which is lame 2006.
@Niklasnick
You need to watch the video, it does the types of multitasking I would want. It will run IE loading a page in the background, play music while you do other things, not stop your application because the phone rings.
I don't need to run SETI while I browse the web and listen to music.
@Niklasnick
Half those gripes can be said for the iPhone, and look how well that's selling.
The other half you don't know the answers to. You assert no volume but you've never seen production hardware. You assert laggy interface but you've never used it, and the software is still in development. I suggest you take a wait and see approach before asserting any more.
@Niklasnick
You do realize that the mandate that you may only have those 3 face buttons. You can have volume buttons you fool. You can also have memory cards as well. They just mandate that you must have 8 GBs of flash memory. The only bad things I really see is copy and paste (cmon MS) and no true multitasking, even though I understand why they did that (battery life is a problem for phones today, when that goes up, true multitasking will be just another thing). Everything else is awesome.
@SubZedox
That's not even true. They mandate a camera button, and volume buttons. If you go back and watch the opening video for MIX, with Joe Belfiore, he mentions volume buttons.
As for multitasking... I assume most people use multitasking on their phones use it to play music and load webpages away from those specific apps.
@derX
I really want to be won over too but if W7S really wont support copy &paste; nor multitasking it must really have some other great tricks up its sleeve to convince me to prefer it to the latest Android incarnations (specially those wearing Sense UI make up)
Besides, in my humble opinion, my HD2 is already just about perfect, it only miss (very much) some good and free apps to download from the deeply depressing win mob. marketplace.
I already preordered my new HTC Desire to replace my Hero, but I'm gonna hold tight to my HTC HD2 (business phone) too.
If win7 series aims to be better than the HD2 without multitasking and copy & paste it's gonna have a tough job waiting for it, but hey, I love nothing better than being surprised (sometimes)
@maxxorz
You do realize that we said the same thing.
@bjsguess They did that with Windows Mobile; consequently, it had major software splintering problems and huge organization issues.
am i the only one that doesnt like the big square boxes on the home screen?
@unknownsolo Yes.
@unknownsolo
No
@unknownsolo I would hope it lets you adjust the sizes of the boxes so you can use your home screen more efficiently. I use SPB Pocket PLus and SPB Phone suite to make WM functional and efficient - which I don't think you'll be able to do any alternate home screens with WP7S.
@unknownsolo I completely agree with you... I think its ugly compared to other smartphone ui (Droid, iPhone, etc...)
@boe From what I understand the box sizes can be changed. It was reported earlier either on here or gizmodo
@unknownsolo
Nope I hate them too.
@unknownsolo
No - hideous!
@unknownsolo When you have a fresh out of box Zune HD and you have just the placeholder boxes they're ugly, once they're replaced with icons of your cover art it's quite nice. I assume these will look quite nice once they're actually scrolling the pictures on them and showing that live updating data.
@unknownsolo This UI is very ugly. I'm really hoping that that clean this up before it comes out. If you can resize the boxes then it might make it a bit more functional but right now its just odd looking and not in a cool way. When he flipped to the programs to the right of the home page it looks like they are just thrown in a big list, wow that's real user friendly. They are trying to pretend that this OS is revolutionary but its just so not, it seems very ass backwards to me at least. I'm waiting for a supersonice, Android isn't great but I can't imagine having to read the 300 page users manual that will come with a WinPho7 device will be a great joy, "Now where do you dial numbers? O its buried under 18 other tabs"
@B3ASTx3 Boxes on the home screen are ugly? Have you seen the iPhone UI, hate to break it to you but Its pretty much all boxes.
On another note I worry about the text list. As any one who used windows before, knows that text list and get big and cumbersome to search though. Hope the phone comes out good though. They still have a little while to tweak it.
@unknownsolo
No. I liked it a lot when MS presented the first mockups a few weeks ago, where you see the full 'page' with the phone over the part that would be visible, great marketing stuff. But the more I saw of it, and particularly the home screen, the more it started to put me off. Now that I've seen it actually being used and moving I'm starting to hate it. Too much stuff moving around on the home screen, too much different colors and shapes, too much weird effects that don't add to the usability (what the heck is up with the compressed lists??), choppy scrolling, transition effects that slow you down getting where you want, it's all too much.
I like a sleek design and I like eye candy, and I don't even care if it doesn't really add to the usability of the interface. But what I see in the video is just too much of everything, it seems to distract from the phone functions and work against usability. And it seems slow and unresponsive, but hopefully for MS they will fix that in the final builds.
@budice4ever
oh stop trolling, as a owner of a zune HD which this OS is based off of, youre wrong in every simple way.
@budice4ever I concur, also where is the onscreen keyboard? How come that is never demoed?
@TheGr8t1
It's been demoed several times. You obviously haven't been looking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mX3Pd5KbV4
Fast forward to 2:20
@budice4ever Does anyone really actually dial numbers anymore? There are the people you know in the people hub, their phone numbers will be stored there, or you're trying to call someone whose number you don't have and you'll probably get that number from the web and that number wouldn't have to be dialed because the phone would know that it's a phone number and you could just call it, right?
I'm certainly not crazy about the lack of cut/copy/paste but I'm not willing to write the OS off just yet. The UI seems relatively fresh, certainly different, and I like it and from what I've seen so far believe I would find it intuitive to use but I'm quite aware that these things are often very subjective.
@CJ3
the lists are okay... i mean you have to have them in some form. on my zune hd, there is nice fast kinetic scrolling... i can scroll through all 500 songs in 5 flicks...
@drange
i think its all functional... on my zune HD it seems imposing, but after flicking through it, you realise that it makes sense and looks cool. as for lag, they'll fix that. my zune HD running a 600mHz tegra processor is really fast and responsive
@unknownsolo
I hate that Internet Explorer logo Between them
i like the big square box. maybe u havent had a chance to own a winmo 5 or 6.
Three things that could make WP7S successful -
1 - put back copy and paste - what are you stupid?
2 - include voice command - a seriously needed feature.
3 - support multiple exchange mailboxes with Activesync - it would help sell these phones to a lot of my clients who hate using pop for their secondary or third e-mail account with different companies.
@boe Oh - one more thing - get flash working before you release it.
And my working, I mean it opens a web page and doesn't crash - unlike IE8 on W7.
@boe Honestly who really uses voice commands? They hardly ever work, and its so much easier to type information rather than speaking it slowly so the device can understand.
@boe Copy & Paste is officialy coming in a futre update after launch:
http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2010/03/17/copy-paste-function-coming-to-windows-phone-7-series-in-future-updates/
@steakman I drive about 2 hours each day. I dial about 10 numbers each day by name as well as voice mail. It let's me dial people directly even if they have extensions without having to type in the extension.
Is it 100% accurate - no. How often do I have to say cancel and dial the name again - about once every few days. Still a critical app for me. You may be using an old version of Voice command or you may not have your cadence down but I couldn't use a phone that doesn't have a a voice command type app for dialing.
@boe agreed, I don't understand the difficulty of allowing more than one exchange account on a device especially when a lot of people sync with Google and their work accounts.
@Vigo Thanks!! that is a relief. I still think they'd be smart to get it working by launch though along with Flash.
@boe
it will actually support multiple exchange accounts, Joe Belfiore said it himself
http://live.visitmix.com/videos/
watch CLo1 WMVHigh
and he said it at about 23:15 minutes in
@boe
I thought multiple exchange mailboxes was already in?
@lennie22 Thanks - technically WM6 supports multiple exchange accounts as I can use activesync for one and pop for another. However if it supports multiple exchange accounts using activesync for all that is HUGE!!! Hopefully that is what he means!
@boe
in that same video Joe same it himself that the operating system is a full multitasking operating system.
however, I think they're going to limit that at launch
or maybe it will be granted based on App type and developer request from microsoft same way they're going to do native Apps where the developer has to request the ability to do so from Microsoft.
I think this approach would be much better than to have all the apps multitask all willy-nilly without a care in the world.
@steakman
I use VoiceComamnd EVERY DAY and it works fantastic out the box. 95% accurate except for those hard to pronounce names. but it works vastly better than most other voice recognition software and requires no training.
I have 800+ contacts. I would die having to look up contacts by keyboard only. I use VC to dial telephone #'s (including those NOT in my address book), look up contacts, listen to a quick overview of my day agenda or quickly switch the phone between silent/ring--ALL WITHOUT HAVING TO STARE AT THE SCREEN AND NAVIGATE THROUGH PAGES.
With the mandated 3 button limit, WP7 absolutely NEEDS VoiceCommands. It's been available since 5.x and standard in Windows Mobile 6.x.
This would be an a** backward move by MS if they don't include this.