Submitted by Make no mistake, Microsoft isn’t playing coy in the smartphone market any longer. The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed “Mango,” will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open.
…because more is better, always.
in this case, yes More features Does = better
To be fair, a good number of those should be marketed as ‘improvements’ rather than ‘features’ though as my current phone already does these things, Mango apparently just does it better!
WP7 was missing 1000 features, now it is missing 500 compared to iOS and Android.
What I really don’t understand is how they just try to go for what is state of the art when development starts and not even archieve that.
For example, their multitasking UI is OK. LOOOONG press Back, then swipe to the card you want and then select it. Not fast, not elegant, looks very bolted on and afterhouthty, just like the Iphones.
The N9 shows how it is done right: Just swipe and select. Even WebOS does it better.
IMO WP7 is second rate late comer that has no future, if only it did thing a lot better or simpler than other platforms.
Kinda reminds me of Meego.
True, but only for the (too) late comer.
But “Meego”(well Nokias Swipe interface) does taskswitching, app launching and notification a lot better than most other platforms and the buttonless interface is actually something new and a lot simpler than anything else.
Meego looks like a cheap knock off of iOS running on something that looks like an big iPod Nano. There is nothing exciting nor innovative about it.
I agree, the N9’s task switching (and in general bevel swipe) paradigm is perfect for multitasking. In fact, Windows 8 uses it in the exact same fashion.
Imo, Windows Phone should enforce gesture areas in the bezels, but keep the long back press. Sometimes I want to swipe to the very previous app. Other times I want to view an entire list of recent apps.
Yet to see a windows phone in the wild. Here in Canada the iPhone/iPad/iPod touch totally dominates (83% of non-computer internet traffic: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/06/24/technology-apple… ).
I wonder why Android devices are so unpopular here compared to the US. Walk through the mall and every carrier is hawking android phones, and yet people don’t seem to be buying many of them. Maybe because the recession didn’t hit as hard (yet) and consumers are less price sensitive?
Edited 2011-06-28 16:55 UTC
People DO buy lots and lots of Android phone, but they don’t use them for “internet” as much.
I’ve seen a few in downtown Montréal. The one I recognized was the HTC Surround.
Engadget has some of the WORST tech reviewers on the web. If you are going to Engadget for actual product reviews you’re doing it wrong. I just use the site for gadget news (and they even drop the ball on that a lot too) and go elsewhere for the reviews