Ah, Windows Mobile 7. For once, Microsoft decides to be tight-lipped about an upcoming product, not saying a thing about it anywhere, and right then, of course, the rumours start to run rampant. You think the Apple tablet stuff was too much to bear? Trust me – the Windows Mobile rumours are much worse.
If you want a decent summary of the rumours currently flying around the net, Ars Technica has done a great job. It’s full of rumoured delays, partners, launch dates, phones, unicorns, empty coffee cups, and, of course, the obligatory rumoured empty newspaper pages with letters printed in pink on the backs.
Yes, you’re not the only one who’s confused.
Let’s focus on the interesting ones. As we all know, Windows Mobile hasn’t been doing very well. She’s been ill for years now, first surpassed by the new kid in town (iPhone – by the way, I have the feeling many people miss the heartbreaking sadness in The New Kid In Town), which only led to more new kids running straight past (Android, webOS). While these new kids may not have a bigger market share at this point (I have no idea), the mindshare is obviously lost. Windows Mobile is an ageing beast whose interface and paradigms are outdated, and are a downright pain to use (I had a WM phone for a year). It has scars and stitches that no amount of nose powdering can cover up.
So, hope is set for Windows Mobile 7 to shake things up and finally deliver a Windows phone experience that doesn’t resemble shoving shards of broken glass underneath your fingernails. An obvious product from Microsoft to draw inspiration from is the Zune, especially the Zune HD variant. Its hardware and interface have been very well received in the press, and it would make sense for Microsoft to inject some sort of logic into their mobile offerings (as in, the same software on both the Zune HD and mobile phones).
The latest set of rumours implies Microsoft is doing just that – of course, with the necessary Microsoftisms attached. This latest set of rumours also explains some of the contradictory stuff that has come before. WMExperts claims that Windows Mobile 7 will simply be called Seven, and that it comes in two versions: Business and Media. Those may not be the definitive names – they’re just indicative of what they offer.
The Business version is stripped down, and will be the OEM variant, meaning companies like HTC get to put their custom user interfaces on top if it. It will simply contain less “flash” than the Media edition, allowing it to eat less resources which makes the battery last longer. It also comes with business-oriented features like cloud syncing and collaborative document editing. The minimum resolution for Business is supposed to be WVGA (800×480), and the current HTC HD2 can already run it. It will become available for that phone in October/November 2010.
Now, the Media edition is supposedly the real deal, the one that will woo consumers away from the new kids in town. This won’t be a Zune phone, but the experience will be much like it, according to WMExperts. It will have HD video, Silverlight, Mediaroom , XBox Live (possibly gameplay), Facebook and Twitter interfaces, Zune Music integration, and more. Media is not as complete yet as Business, so it will arrive later, possibly in 2011. This is the version that might be shown off coming Mobile World Congress next month.
WMExperts has a whole load of more stuff, rumours, and even a whole boatload of specifications for two Seven phones, so be sure to give it a read. Note, of course, that it’s all rumours.
Is it just another smartphone with similar capabilities as a Iphone, pre, android, mameo phone? Or is there anything really uniquely compelling about it?
I think you’re missing the point of the article: nobody knows, but everyone will tell you.
I’m not sure I am. Those “Crazy Rumors” don’t sound crazy, nor do they sound that attractive to me.
Is that just me?
The only crazy thing that would entice me is an unlocked price of sub $200. Or possibly bundled with an xbox for $500.
Businesses may, depending on the level of compatibility with the full versions of Windows.
This is the second time I saw a heading with Windows Mobile 7 in the last 2 days. The last time was in 2009, and ever since then I have been disappointed that no phone had it.
I just bought a Zune HD. I had to let it ship over from the US since they don’t sell them here in Holland but it took me a long time to decide whether I would go for the Zune HD or the iPod touch.
I can tell you, I absolutely love it. First question that raised me was: Why doesn’t Microsoft use the Zune HD OS for their mobile platform? And now I’m reading that they are, that is great news. All I want is to call with my Zune HD now which is of course not possible but will be in about a year.
I have a Blackberry Bold 9000 right now and it’s great but I’m very curious about Seven, if it’s as good as the Zune HD or even better it might be my next phone, who knows.
MS does. Zune’s OS is just Windows CS 6.0.
So Microsoft’s ‘solution’ to a crappy mobile browser is Silverlight? Joy.
On my Windows Mobile phones I can install any software I want, including the best.
<A> http://www.opera.com/mobile/download/
Silverlight is going to probably be used to develop applications. They would be massively reinventing the wheel if they did not (and in fact all their job postings indicate such a thing).
Silverlight includes resolution independence, hardware acceleration, multitouch support, rich databinding, robust sandboxing models.
Windows Mobile is an open platform, and coming from the closed POS environment that is the iPhone, you are free to choose your browser.
The HTC HD2 consistently bests the iPhone in webbrowsing experience. Opera really is a sight to behold.
Ah, good point. Certainly good for app development, but why do I get the creeping suspicion that Microsoft would rather change the whole web to use Silverlight than change their browser to suit the standards.
Well, in the end, it are your colleagues who make that decision. Your fellow web developers are the ones falling for that proprietary crap every time.
IE6, Flash, and now Silverlight.
You can’t really blame Adobe and Microsoft for trying to do what they think is best for their company – but you CAN blame web developers for actually falling for that crap.
Nobody forces web developers to use Flash and Silverlight, and yet, they do. Smart bunch.
If you were a developer you would know why. If a company provides an excellent development environment (Visual Studio) or a way to do something that can’t be done in any other way (Flash, when it came out) that can have a pretty big effect verses the “use open standards” argument. If a developer can develop something in an hour in a closed standard or in 9 hours in an open standard… well, you get my point.
Damn Microsoft for making development easy! Damn them straight to hell!
ha ha :-O
They’ve taken positive steps towards standards support, and in their defense, IE8 is a hell of a lot better than IE6. They’ve done a 180 in terms of standards support, however they are constrained by (what probably are overly bloated and monolithic) release cycles and the suits and ties up at Redmond.
Silverlight is just a runtime. It can be used on the web or off the web (for e.g. desktop apps), so Silverlight in Windows Mobile has nothing to do with web standards support.
And I will never understand how you hypocrits like to talk about standars and put HTML5 as an example when is not even a standar yet.
http://blogs.msdn.com/giorgio/archive/2009/11/29/ie8-and-html-5.asp…
Please enjoy.
There are no standards, just implementations. And for that matter, I’m writing HTML5 for IE8 right now, so I would know.
edit: s/in/for
Edited 2010-01-20 08:51 UTC
Not that this has much to do with anything, obviously. Silverlight is a browser plugin and could work with any browser that Microsoft chooses to support.
I’m quite excited about this.
I got a Android (HTC Hero) last summer, and quite frankly its terrible, slow, crashing alot, but Nice UI.
And from what i have read (and can hope for) WM7 will sort out the UI issues on WM, and provide the consumer features that consumers what.
And if the reports are correct, the first ones will appear in September this year, just in time for my upgrade in December
Should be better if you wait for the next version of Nokia N-series with Maemo.
‘Just in time’?!? Are you kidding here? The article claims the new version of the OS won’t arrive until 2011!
Apple is just about to roll out iPhone OS 4. By the time this OS arrives apple will probably be up to OS 5. And that release will essentially be the 1.0 product.
Microsoft is going to release a product to compete with the iPhone 4 years after the first generation iPhone came to market. That’s a huge failure on Microsoft’s part.
Problem is, you might get exactly the same experience with a new Windows phone. Those things are never a part of rumors, or official marketing for that matter.
Newsflash: Corporation says the upcoming product will do everything better than the current one.
I don’t believe a word of that until I see the final version.
Due to the large size of Microsoft it’s clear to see why the UI of their products is so varied.
Windows Mobile was built around two flawed / outdated practices.
The first was to drive and fit the Windows desktop metaphor to a mobile device with a small screen. I understand why they done it, to give users a interface they were familiar with, however as demonstrated by nokia and palm of that era, the general public is not stupid and will generally work out how to use a product.
The second was to continue the use of the stylus, some people still like using a stylus however for the vast majority of users this is cumbersome and a slow method of interactive with a mobile device. From experience, ive had to stop walking or moving to be able to tap with a stylus, however with my iphone, i can walk and type and interact with the device without any problems.
As mentioned earlier by another poster with a Zune HD, this interface is a perfect fit for the media device and is a clever device, this ui would also fit neatly with a mobile phone device, however it seems that the two departments of zune and windows mobile are unable to collaborate. Again the UI of Windows 7 is very good and has pushed the desktop futher in the productivity that can be accomplished, but then you fire up some windows server applications such as DPM and the UI is a mess and looks very alpha/beta quality.
I don’t think it matters too much when Windows 7 arrives as the damage has already been done (i.e. slip in market share). It’s really important that Microsoft first and foremost implements a solid and consistent UI. The next is that some of the underlying technology needs to be better implemented, when i last used a windows mobile phone, there was a limit on the number of processes that could run (I think it was WM5), this really highlights the age of the core of Windows Mobile. Im not saying they should rewrite the whole thing from scratch, but really apply the same development process as was used for Windows 7. Buff up some parts and perhaps recode some other parts and really shine it up.
They have to work hard to compete against Apple, Google, palm and to a lesser degree nokia. I say a lesser degree for nokia as i feel that their UI could do with a large refresh.
Nokia just refreshed their UI, it’s called Maemo version 5.0.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=maemo+5+screenshots&FORM=IGRE
That’s not exactlyl true. They’ve been developing the maemo platform for some time on their N700,N800 or N810. The Maemo 5 (fremthale) is the updated version for their kind “flagship”/experiment on the smartphone world without using Symbian. It’s kinda wierd ’cause they’ve made a mix between gtk and qt although they’re totally focusing on the Qt way…
Anywho, the fact is that the interface is pretty good: easy to play with and (and most importantly) it is friendly to the finger as well to the style *and* the keyboard (which I find really important for such a device).
Microsoft 7 will probably get attention because, you know, *it’s* Microsoft. However, I’m pretty confident that linux (Android,Maemo, PalmOS are all linux based) has come to this market to stay.
Just my two cents though