iphone

Dance*Cam Mobile also coming to iPhone and Android

January 21, 2012 | By Surur

We posted recently that Microsoft has confirmed they will be bringing Xbox Live and a number of their titles to other platforms.

The above promotional video shows that Dance*Can Mobile, the mobile companion to the Kinect Dance*Cam game, will also be coming to multiple platforms, including iPhone and Android.

While we think Microsoft should be using their Xbox property to give Windows Phone an advantage, Microsoft’s recent Financial report, which showed that Xbox has become a major leg of the Microsoft business ($4.2 billion in revenue vs $4.7 billion for Server and Tools and Windows and Windows Live) makes it pretty clear Microsoft is not going to jeopardise this segment on their business just for the embryonic Windows Phone business.

The big problem with this of course is that success in Mobile is seen by many, including investors, as the most important priority for Microsoft, leaving Microsoft with the Innovators Dilemma – how to move forward when it may mean cannibalizing your existing revenue structure.

We don’t have the answers for Microsoft but we suggest they examine their priorities, not just for the next quarter, but the next 40.

Thanks Cyk for the tip.

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Prediction: 2012 Will be the Year of Windows Phone

January 18, 2012 | By robtiffany

Windows Phone 7.5 is running fast out of the gate for 2012. The stunning mobile operating system from Microsoft was the talk of CES in Las Vegas this year. The accolades streaming in from the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, reviewers, and tech bloggers are unprecedented.

The Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award in the Smartphone category and it’s no surprise. Before listing off the impressive specs, just look at this gorgeous piece of hardware. Looks matter…trust me. Windows Phone is already the most elegant mobile operating system. Breathtaking industrial design is the other half of the equation. When paired with iconic hardware, it’s like pairing your favorite Walla Walla Cabernet with your favorite steak.

I can’t count the number of reviews and comments stating that Windows Phone on the Lumia 900 has surpassed the iPhone. If you follow the U.S. wireless market, then you know that things like 4G LTE network speeds, large screens, front-facing cameras, and dual-core processors are the current drivers of smartphone sales. The Lumia 900 addresses three of those drivers with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, and a front-facing camera for video calls. It’s powered by a single 1.4 GHz processor and if you’ve paid attention to all the reviews in the press, you’ve heard that Windows Phone runs circles around its dual-core competitors. Better software design, better engineering, more efficient algorithms, and optimized coding techniques means you can do more with less. Last but not least, the Lumia 900 comes with an amazing 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The HTC Titan II came to the CES party guns-blazing with a monster of a smartphone. It tics all the required boxes needed for sales by delivering a massive 4.7 inch screen, support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and a front-facing camera. The 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 2 processor gives this superphone all the horsepower it needs.

Joining the camera arms-race with the Lumia 900, the Titan II comes equipped with a whopping 16 megapixel camera that can capture 720p video. If you’re looking for a giant phone that can go head-to-head with the Galaxy Nexus, this is your device.

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year with compelling hardware matched-up with Windows Phone 7.5, but what else does this platform need to make my prediction come true? Oh yeah, apps. Do you remember back in the 80′s when DOS-based PCs from IBM and Compaq gave Apple IIs and Macs more than they could handle? It might not have been eye-catching, but DOS had more apps that allowed consumers and companies to be successful. In the 90′s, Windows ran away with the computing market with the Mac, Linux, NeXT, and OS/2 unable to compete in the app department. Why do you think this was the case? I know a big reason was because Borland and Microsoft made better and easier-to-use development tools for Windows.

With 50,000+ apps in the Marketplace, Windows Phone is surging forward and now sits in third-place behind the iPhone App Store and the Android Market. Aside from developers betting on the success of a platform, they need development tools, emulators, and programming languages that make it easy for them to be productive. When I look at the velocity at which new apps are being added to the Windows Phone Marketplace, it tells me that Visual Studio is making a big difference.

In my job, I have to work with the development tools for all the major smartphone platforms and I can tell you without drinking any Kool-Aid that the competition isn’t even close. Most iPhone developers I know find that learning Objective-C from the NeXT operating system to be a daunting task compared to modern, high-level languages like C# and VB. While the world is full of Java developers, the complexity of cobbling the necessary tools together needed to build for Android apps is a real productivity killer. Just running Eclipse on JDK 1.6 sucks the life and performance out of my fast Windows 7 laptop. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone is free and the emulator + SDKs all download and install together making the whole process fast and simple. Apps get access to all phone sensors, a local database (SQL Server Compact), and Metro design.

Better productivity means faster time-to-market which means more apps for Windows Phone.

If you’re a web designer/developer, Internet Explorer 9 is alive and well on Windows Phone 7.5. This means you’re no longer held hostage to the highly-fragmented WebKit mobile browser platform. You get a hardware-accelerated, amazingly fast browser with support for more “fully-baked” HTML5 standards like Web Storage, Geolocation, Canvas, Audio and Video.

The lightning fast-Chakra JavaScript engine supports ECMAScript 5 which means your DOM interactions and Ajax web service calls will blur the lines with native apps. When you retrieve data from the cloud or your on-premise servers via Ajax, you’ll now be able to persist it offline in Web Storage. Support for CSS3 means things will be beautiful, 2D transforms will occur, and media queries will give you responsive design.

So here we stand with the best smartphone operating system, best hardware, best development tools and the best mobile web browser. I’m certain that Windows Phone with its army of app developers, OEMs and Mobile Operator partners will be marching to victory this year.

Be fearless,

Rob

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Samsung mocks iPhone buyers

November 23, 2011 | By Surur

There is a very real war going on between Samsung and Apple; in the market, where Samsung recently overtook Apple as biggest smartphone shipper, and the courts, where Samsung is uniformly being hammered.

Samsung has now taken it to the airwaves, with a commercial mocking dedicated iPhone buyers who actually queue for each new iteration of the device, even if its only marginal, like the iPhone 4S.

While Samsung is not promoting anything Windows Phone in the ad, I think our readers can appreciate running into both Android and iPhone users who would never dream of trying a Windows Phone, despite the better experience, simply because of their allegiance to their current OS.

Do our readers think Microsoft should be running a similar campaign, or would it make Microsoft look bad? Let us know below.

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Charming article on choosing Windows Phone

November 11, 2011 | By Surur


iPhone offers notifications, but what’s actually going on remains a mystery.	Android offers widgets, but their implementation is a mess.	Windows Phone offers live tiles, which are windows, not just into the phone, but into the big wide world.

Trevor from the Spillwaybrain blog has written a rather charming article explaining why he chose Windows Phone 7 over iPhone and Android after having tried all three. While he is not taking part in our contest, I think his would have made a pretty good entry.

In the end it came down to Windows and Doors. While the other operating systems only offered doors to other experiences (apps), Windows Phone 7 offered, via the Live Tile user interface, Windows into data and applications which could be reached without having to go into and out of applications, and which did not destroy your system like the widget overload on Android phones.

Trevor writes:

It’s a better way to do it. It really is the evolution of the Windows brand, and fundamentally it gets back to what Windows was all about in the first place. Letting you look into your technology, or out into the wider world.

And the whole ecosystem is going this way. Windows Phone, Xbox, and Windows 8 – all are going to Metro UI, all adopting live tiles and connectivity in a way that makes it easier to immediately gain access to information and interact with technology.

So why do I like Windows Phone? Because it gets back to the original Windows philosophy, the idea that charmed me back in the beige box days. I want to see something open when I look at my technology—not just a bunch of closed doors.

The article, which contains many more illustrations, is definitely worth a read here.

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Navigon iPhone vs Windows Phone 7 (video)

November 1, 2011 | By Surur

Pocketnow have posted this video comparing the features of the Navigon GPS Navigation app on the iPhone and also Windows Phone 7.

The biggest differentiator Pocketnow notes is that navigation continues when the screen is off, which tends to be a simple “Run under lock screen” option on many apps on Windows Phone 7, and that directions continues during phone calls on the iPhone. They also note that due to in-app purchasing the iPhone app includes a store of maps, voices and other enhancements, which is missing on Windows Phone 7.

Of course a major differentiator is that on Windows Phone 7 there is the option to have a much larger screen, with the 3.5 inch screen on the iPhone looking pretty pokey in that video.

Siri on the iPhone 4GS compared with Android and Windows Phone

October 14, 2011 | By Surur

Engadget have given the voice command feature on the iPhone 4GS a run down and compared it to Windows Phone 7 and Android.

The video does show Siri to be in a different class compared to the the other operating systems, but not in a way that’s unreachable with more development.

Do our readers think Windows Phone should strive to incorporate the same features, or are voice control a feature that is not of interest at all? Let us know below.

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Digitimes:Android, Windows Phone smartphone vendors to expand market share on disappointing iPhone 4S

October 6, 2011 | By Surur

Cost-conscious consumers will get to chose between a Windows Phone with a WVGA screen, 5 megapixel rear and also a front-facing camera and HD video recording, and a 3 year old iPhone with none of those features.

Digitimes reports that industry sources expect Android and Windows Phone 7 vendors to benefit from the release of the disappointing iPhone 4s, which has no cosmetic improvements compared to the iPhone 4.

They note “the newly released iPhone 4S lags behind some mainstream smartphones as far as specifications are concerned” as the device “comes without a larger display and with a download speed of only 14.4Mbps for HSPA, and does not support LTE and NFC technologies”.

Samsung, HTC and Nokia however have mainstream models with LTE, NFC and 3D standards and with larger displays, which will enable those models to differentiate themselves from iPhones, the sources added.

Lastly they observe “although Apple also launched an entry-level 8GB iPhone 4 and cut the price of its iPhone 3GS, the effectiveness of such tactics will be limited as iPhone fans will still prefer to buy new models and the low-priced iPhones will not be able to compete with Android phones in the entry-level segment.”

The last element is in fact quite crucial. While many expect the cheaper and free on contract iPhone 3GS to hugely expand and even double the iPhone market, many forget how old the technology in the iPhone 3GS, which has a 320×480 resolution display and 3.2 megapixel camera, is compared to low-cost mainstream handsets which often at minimum have 5 megapixel cameras and WVGA screens. Consumers will face the stark choice of a 3 year old iPhone or a cheap 2011/2012 phone running an alternate OS or a very old iPhone design dating to 2007, and I suspect the choice will be very clear for most.

Via Digitimes.com

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The iPhone 4s is trying to catch up to Nokia camera phone quality

October 5, 2011 | By Pradeep

Yesterday, during the iPhone 4S launch event Apple showed its new 8 MP camera with its typical marketing words such as “All new Optics”, “Custom lens with five precision elements”, “backside illumination sensor”, “The you-can’t-believe-it’s-on-a-phone camera”. If you are carried away by those words from Apple, you can read the camera technology in already on sale device Nokia n9. Its obvious that the following technology will also be carried on to upcoming Nokia Windows Phones.

Industry-first imaging sensor which is FULLY optimised for BOTH 16:9 AND 4:3 images

Industry-leading Carl Zeiss optics

Super wide-angle optics – the widest in the industry. Up to as much as 60% more viewing area than other broadly comparable devices

f/2.2 aperture – largest ever in a mobile device and Focal length of 3.77mm / 28mm.

Extremely responsive, especially switching from stills to video and vice-versa and shot to shot

Touch AF for both video and stills

Full time continuous AF in BOTH video and stills plus face detection

HD video with stereo audio (still one of very few devices that provide high quality audio recording in video)

Seamless workflows optimised for speed or editing & sharing

Zoom in to images directly in the post capture view, edit and share all without leaving the camera – the most seamless mobile imaging experience

Non-destructive editing of images – go back to the original image at any time. Undo or redo edits even months later

New high power dual LED flash – 20% more powerful than our previous most powerful LED flash despite its compact size

Geo tagging with place names rather than just co-ordinates

AMBR – Automatic Motion Blur Reduction

Not forgetting the touch to share of images between handsets using NFC technology

You can find more on Nokia N9 camera here. For what its worth, the Nokia N8 which was released a year ago still boasts one of the best camera in the smartphone world which was followed by Nokia N9. Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S also features backside illumination sensor along with wide range of imaging capabilities that iPhone 4S can’t do.

I’m excited about the upcoming Nokia Windows Phone and its imaging capabilities. Are you ?

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Lets Talk About Apple’s New iPhone 4S And iOS 5

October 4, 2011 | By Pradeep

Is this the iPhone 4 from 2010 or the iPhone 4S from 2011? Does it matter?

The whole event in one word; Disappointment.

Today Apple today revealed its next version of the smartphone OS and the hardware device. At the event Apple started with some poor stats comparisons and then taught us how good they are at selling products, Well done Apple. Leaving the small updates to its iPod line up, it was all about iOS 5 with iCloud and iPhone 4S. Take a look at the new iPhone 4S above, sounds familiar right? Its same as iPhone 4, but new specs inside. Now it has faster graphics and CPU with 8mp camera. You can add all marketing words before those specs to make it look magical ! ! As a result of the bump in specs, you lose about 100 hours of battery standby life.

On the software side, iOS 5 is exactly what they demoed at WWDC, all those features derived from Windows Phones, Android and Blackberry. There is no compelling reason for iOS 5 update other than iCloud. iCloud is the Windows Live service for iPhones with some Apple gimmicks. One thing that stood out of the whole event was, Siri. Siri is the intelligent voice assistant for iPhone that comes from the technology that Apple acquired last year. Siri allows you to ask questions such as “What’s the weather in paris”, “Will it rain today", etc, like questions for which it will answer by fetching answer from the Internet. Apple uses Yelp for local listings and Wolfram Alpha was other definition like questions. Now it will allow iOS users to respond to SMS completely by voice as we do in our Windows Phone Mango. The service is still in beta stages, but an impressive attempt by Apple.

Of course what Apple does not say is that Siri is just a version of Voice Actions introduced by Google two year ago.

iPhone 4S will start from $199 on contract from Oct-14th. Overall, its an nice update for iPhone platform after almost more than a year. But its clearly not a game changing device or OS that anyone would expect from a market leader.

In fact today marks the point where Apple stops leading, and is merely trying to catch up.

There are lots of better spec’d mobile devices for even cheaper prices with more integrated software experience. I’m personally happy about Apple’s announcements that will give Windows Phones more room to breath in the tough smartphone market segment. Its time for Microsoft and its OEM partners to accelerate Windows Phone market to more consumers by means of good marketing.

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Lync app being released for WP7, other platforms “in the coming weeks”

September 23, 2011 | By Surur

Kirk Gregersen, senior director for Lync in Microsoft’s Office division, said Lync for Windows Phone 7 is still coming this calendar year.

Lync has been a sleeper hit for Microsoft, seeing rapid enterprise adoption by providing a number of collaborative services, including messaging, videoconferencing, presence, and microblogging.

The next big update is a patch that will allow desktop users to make Internet calls directly from within Lync to any landline or mobile device in collaboration with VoIP specialist Jah Jah. The service will eventually integrate with Skype also.

The Lync client will also be rolling out for Android and iPhone, and will work for both Mango and NoDo handsets

"We want to be where our users are," said Gregersen.

Analysts confirm Windows Phone 7 as the 3rd ecosystem, but remain guarded

August 27, 2011 | By Surur

Sorry RIM and Symbian, but both of your ecosystems have already been counted out.

Despite lack of rip-roaring sales figures, the steady progress of the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem in gathering developers, OEMs and distribution has prompted analysts to name it as the 3rd mobile ecosystem, after the iPhone and Android.

“Windows Phone has a good chance to become the third ecosystem but the question is how far it will be from the two leaders,” said Michael Vakulenko, research partner with London mobile consultancy VisionMobile, quoted in Bloomberg.

“People will take Windows Phone 7 as the third one to go for but I don’t think it’s going to stop many people from building iPhone or Android apps,” said Hume of Future Platforms.

Vakulenko echoed similar thoughts, saying “Any developer who decides to invest in Windows Phone 7 needs to consider alternatives and that’s always Android and iPhone.”

“App publishers we’re working with seem to be much more enthusiastic about Windows Phone 7 than Symbian,” said Offscreen Technologies CEO Harri Myllynen. “Still, Apple and Android are number one and this will be a long-tail platform. I’m not aware of any developer investing in a big way yet.”

Stephen Elop has emphasised with the purchase of Motorola by Google, OEMs should be paying even more attention to Windows Phone 7.

"The very first reaction I had was very clearly the importance of the third ecosystem and the importance of the partnership that we announced on February 11, it is more clear than ever before," Elop said.

"By adopting Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform we believe we can deliver a global ecosystem that goes beyond what exists today in terms of hardware, software, services and apps," Elop said.

"Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race."

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Zune desktop agent uses less memory than iTunes Helper, Samsung Kies or RIM Launcher

August 27, 2011 | By Surur

The iTunes client is famously a resource hog on Windows, which makes it an unsurprising reason why some people choose not to go down the iOS ecosystem route.

SaudiWP7 have taken a hit for the team by actually loading a synchronization client for all 4 major smartphone OSs on their desktop – iPhone, Samsung Kies for Android, Blackberry and Zune for Windows Phone 7.

As can be seen from the screen shot, the the Kies launcher is the heaviest at nearly 20 MB, followed by iTunes Launcher at 3 MB. RIM’s client uses a minimal 1.4 MB, and the Zune launcher a tiny 1 MB.

While the memory usage of the sync client is likely inconsequential to most people, it does show that the care and attention the Microsoft dev team lavished on the phone has extended to the desktop client also.

Via saudiWP7.com

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Windows Phone 7 wins developer speed race at TechEd NZ

August 25, 2011 | By Surur

Two teams of developers were challenged to create from scratch a cross-platform chat app for Windows Phone 7 and the iPhone, and rather predictably, due to the better tools available on Windows Phone 7 platform, the Windows Phone 7 team finished well before the iPhone team did.

Windows Phone 7 has won similar races before in a more neutral environment that TechEd, and many companies have reported that developing for Windows Phone costs lot less because it needs less staff for less time.

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