Buying them ironically doesn't count.

1) Does it allow me, (YET), to work with Office docs as Quickoffice does on Symbian

2) Does it allow me to automatically sync my phone calendar, contacts, etc with Outlook on my pc, directly over Bluetooth, *without* first having to pass through some third-party server 'in the cloud'?. Again as Symbian does, and the OLD 6.* Windows did.


Until it has the functionality the old version had, MS can go pound salt. Give me back the functionality you took away.

Same to you Nokia.

/You will have to pry my E5 from my cold dead hands

The thing I hate so much is all the social networking that's integrated into the OS. Let me add it if I want it, but don't include it in the OS, it's dumb.

Nothing worse than firing up a smartphone and the first core functions you see are twitter and facebook. Fark that.

Nice fluff piece a few days before the T-Mobile Nokia comes out for $50. I've seen the Windows phone in action and it's a nice piece of hardware. But I'm going to wait a few days so I'm not a very early Beta tester.

Microsoft is getting their shiat together, finally. Security Essentials is one of the best anti-virus programs out there and it's completely free, and Windows 7 was the first shot against Symentec with an enterprise imaging platform. In short, Microsoft has been rocking for a while, and starting to realize they can make money and sooth over a few issues by doing more stuff in-house.

That said, still a fluff piece.

Please tell me that people aren't still impressed by phone OS's. Apple got there first with the animated touchscreen stuff five years ago. There's nothing left you can beat them on. They have a huge pile of apps, the best touchscreen, the best battery life, and since they only make one model at a time their supply logistics cannot be competed with.

If Microsoft thinks they can successfully out-cool Apple, they've just started smoking pot. Give me a break.

Ah, integration of social networks. Something that most Android device makers have in place as well. And something to turn off since it uses a ton of data and sucks down the battery.

Terrified Asexual Forcemeat: Please tell me that people aren't still impressed by phone OS's. Apple got there first with the animated touchscreen stuff five years ago. There's nothing left you can beat them on. They have a huge pile of apps, the best touchscreen, the best battery life, and since they only make one model at a time their supply logistics cannot be competed with.

If Microsoft thinks they can successfully out-cool Apple, they've just started smoking pot. Give me a break.

Cough cough fanboi cough cough

RexTalionis: The Metro UI on the phones do look good and work well. It's a shame that putting it on PCs ain't quite so useful.

Metro UI is ugly imo, never got the love it got, a bunch of squares of varying size and tons of wasted space, don't get them putting it on PC and 360 too other than not getting the concept of "UI and hardware working in tandem"

Good, maybe this will finally make Apple see the market has passed them by since 2007. I love my iPhone, but if the next model is just another update to that same original phone, I'll pursue other options.

A coworker has a 4S. Number of times I've heard him use Siri, other than as a gimmicky demonstration to people: zero. The only thing he has over my 3GS is a faster processor and a battery that isn't fading.

That article might as well have been an advertisement. How much did Mircrosoft pay NYT?

deschinc: Cough cough fanboi cough cough

Oh, well when you spell it like that, it convinces me.

sgnilward:
I also agree they need to get the synching functionality back from the 6.x phones, but that is supposedly with WP8


I hope so. But I find it is stupid that they could not include basic functionality between their own products, that they already had in an older version.

I just hope they do not require syncing through a thrid party server the way ios and android do. I do not need my personal info, or my companies proprietary info, mined for marketing information by Redmond any more than I do by Cupertino or Mountain View


I say the same thing about Nokia's PC Suite and OVI Suite, where they took away one-way synch, which means you end up with your personal info sync'd onto your business PC.

Which is why I still use the E5, it is the last phone they made that still allows use of the old PC Suite, which has one-way and two-way sync options.

Hipster Ariel: It's an obscure OS, you've probably never heard of it.

/Uses Android but thinks WP7 does look pretty good

If the Twitter/Facebook stuff are really apps that can be uninstalled, then I may have to check out a Windows phone. I'm due to upgrade mine soon anyway.

The thing I hated about it, a least the version I had is that it wouldn't just let you copy files directly to the device through some file system interface, you had to do some bs sync, and even then it wouldn't let you sync Office documents, only pictures, and media.

It had most of the apps I wanted but the lack of apps was another negative. Even the youtube "app" was just a wrapper for the mobile youtube site.

I enjoy the Windows platform, but really felt burned by a bad phone running Windows Mobile 6 a couple of years ago. Gave it back after ten days. Damn thing kept resetting. I went Android on T-Mobile, and contract is up in a few months. I'll take a look then.

The design really is great. The problem is where are the damn phones?

sgnilward: By the way, windows phone is the only OS I know of where you can completely delete and uninstall all the stock applications. Let's see you do that with an Android...

Maemo. You can also delete and replace elements of the OS if you want. You can also run ARM Debian with full compatibility. And you can dual-boot Android on the N900.

I doubt you'll be able to top it for sheer flexibility. Sadly Nokia have pushed Maemo/MeeGo aside for Windows on their phones

StingerJ: Good, maybe this will finally make Apple see the market has passed them by since 2007. I love my iPhone, but if the next model is just another update to that same original phone, I'll pursue other options.

A coworker has a 4S. Number of times I've heard him use Siri, other than as a gimmicky demonstration to people: zero. The only thing he has over my 3GS is a faster processor and a battery that isn't fading.

You are funny. I heart u

jso2897: I have never had a smart phone - but if I were to acquire one, I would try Ios, WP8, and android before I made a selection - in all these discussions, I have never seen any compelling reason to choose one over the others, and I would need to experience them to make up my mind. 90% of the criticisms and praise that I hear sounds like highly subjective, personal, and mostly really petty stuff.

Smartphones are something most people have no compelling need for, so subjective, personal, and petty perfectly describe the main factors that go into the decision.

RexTalionis: StingerJ: Good, maybe this will finally make Apple see the market has passed them by since 2007. I love my iPhone, but if the next model is just another update to that same original phone, I'll pursue other options.

A coworker has a 4S. Number of times I've heard him use Siri, other than as a gimmicky demonstration to people: zero. The only thing he has over my 3GS is a faster processor and a battery that isn't fading.

I have a 4S. Believe it or not, Siri is useful, but not for the gimmicky "ask Siri stupid questions and hope for humorous response" uses. I use it because I am on the road a lot and I am precluded from texting or typing while I am driving. My uses for Siri usually comes down to this:

Using it to call someone (which the earlier iPhones have as well)
Setting up calendar and reminders
Using it to send a text message to someone
Using it to determine temperature
Using it to send emails

Something that every android has been able to do for a while, well of course minus those witty siri comebacks.

This is apple telling its hired writers to pay back MS for saving them in the 90s, it gives them some ammo to shoot at android who is eating into their market share at the app stores.

If I didn't already have an Android phone I might have bought a Windows phone. The one I saw at an ATT store (before the Nokia deal) had a great screen, the tiled OS was easy to use and it was intuitive. The big plus for me now would be that the Windows/Nokia phones have Ovi maps for offline use. I like Google Maps and I know you can pre-cache areas but you can't do an offline search on those caches. I used Ovi maps in Europe and it was awesome to navigate that way.

tomWright: 1) Does it allow me, (YET), to work with Office docs as Quickoffice does on Symbian

2) Does it allow me to automatically sync my phone calendar, contacts, etc with Outlook on my pc, directly over Bluetooth, *without* first having to pass through some third-party server 'in the cloud'?. Again as Symbian does, and the OLD 6.* Windows did.


Until it has the functionality the old version had, MS can go pound salt. Give me back the functionality you took away.

Same to you Nokia.

/You will have to pry my E5 from my cold dead hands

Not sure about 2, but pretty damn sure about 1.

RexTalionis: I have a 4S. Believe it or not, Siri is useful, but not for the gimmicky "ask Siri stupid questions and hope for humorous response" uses. I use it because I am on the road a lot and I am precluded from texting or typing while I am driving. My uses for Siri usually comes down to this:

Using it to call someone (which the earlier iPhones have as well)
Setting up calendar and reminders
Using it to send a text message to someone
Using it to determine temperature
Using it to send emails


Could you really not do that on earlier Iphones? I was able to do all that on my droid incredible almost 2 years ago. I know because I'm on the road alot as well and used to text and drive on my blackberry (i know i know) but couldn't do that when I switched to touchscreen. I guess I would have to press one button to open the app, rather than just voice command "siri", but most of my text, email, calendars, etc. were all taken care of. I never tried finding something for temperature and those things. Even google maps after opening it I would simply hit the mic button and speak my destination address.

I like how Apple made it more seemless to have everything bundled togethor and can be launched by vioce, something droids will probably now emulate, but it really isn't too far forward from existing voice to text technology that has been integrated on phones for several years now.

For what it's worth...

tomWright: 1) Does it allow me, (YET), to work with Office docs as Quickoffice does on Symbian

QuickOffice and Documents To Go have both been ported to Android. I haven't used either one extensively, but Amazon had both of them for free a while ago as part of their "free app of the day" offers.

Purchased apps, lol.

ChuDogg: Purchased apps, lol.

Why, you're saving TENS of dollars on those crappy, inferior apps! I wish I was as keen as you!

Good for them, if true. Every company should enjoy the experience of putting out a good product at least once.

sgnilward: The Zune music player that is built in allows one to put 12 gigs of music on and you aren't tethered to one music store either, I can put them on from any computer and transfer them to another just as easily.

Just wait until the RIAA hears about this!

meddleRPI: tomWright: 1) Does it allow me, (YET), to work with Office docs as Quickoffice does on Symbian

Not sure about 2, but pretty damn sure about 1.


anfrind: For what it's worth...
QuickOffice and Documents To Go have both been ported to Android. I haven't used either one extensively, but Amazon had both of them for free a while ago as part of their "free app of the day" offers.

Yeah, I figured that would be the first condition to be met by someone.

Condition 2 is the sticker. There is no reason the MS/Google/Apple or my boss need to know when I have a calendar note to check out the sale at the my little pony store after work.

ChuDogg: Could you really not do that on earlier Iphones? I was able to do all that on my droid incredible almost 2 years ago. I know because I'm on the road alot as well and used to text and drive on my blackberry (i know i know) but couldn't do that when I switched to touchscreen. I guess I would have to press one button to open the app, rather than just voice command "siri", but most of my text, email, calendars, etc. were all taken care of. I never tried finding something for temperature and those things. Even google maps after opening it I would simply hit the mic button and speak my destination address.

The point isn't that other phones have speech recognition - the point is that Siri simply does it better. Voice rec on the a droid always sucked. I would never use voice rec on a regular basis until Siri.

/don't get me started on the blackberry
//hopefully now google will improve the voice rec on Android - competition is good

tomWright: 1) Does it allow me, (YET), to work with Office docs as Quickoffice does on Symbian

2) Does it allow me to automatically sync my phone calendar, contacts, etc with Outlook on my pc, directly over Bluetooth, *without* first having to pass through some third-party server 'in the cloud'?. Again as Symbian does, and the OLD 6.* Windows did.


Until it has the functionality the old version had, MS can go pound salt. Give me back the functionality you took away.

Same to you Nokia.

/You will have to pry my E5 from my cold dead hands

1) Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Onenote has been built in from day one. You can create/edit Word/Excel/Onenote and you can view Powerpoint.

2) No, it doesn't have that functionality, and it never will. If this is a major requirement for you, then set up an Exchange server of your own, because Outlook sync is gone and ain't coming back. That's not just Windows Phone, but also iOS, Android, and anything new that comes along. Exchange Activesync is the de facto standard for PIM sync today, and USB/BT based Outlook sync is never going to be a baked in to the OS feature of any smartphone OS anymore.

So enjoy Symbian and stock up on E5s.

NewNole2001:
2) No, it doesn't have that functionality, and it never will. If this is a major requirement for you, then set up an Exchange server of your own, because Outlook sync is gone and ain't coming back. That's not just Windows Phone, but also iOS, Android, and anything new that comes along. Exchange Activesync is the de facto standard for PIM sync today, and USB/BT based Outlook sync is never going to be a baked in to the OS feature of any smartphone OS anymore.

So enjoy Symbian and stock up on E5s.

How do you know this? If true it would seem to be a major hole someone could fill. If need be I would pay for GOOD app that did this.

RexTalionis: The Metro UI on the phones do look good and work well. It's a shame that putting it on PCs ain't quite so useful.

I hate it on the Xbox 360.

bravian: The point isn't that other phones have speech recognition - the point is that Siri simply does it better. Voice rec on the a droid always sucked. I would never use voice rec on a regular basis until Siri.

The free phone I got with my first cellular contract in 2004 had good voice recognition technology for calling and texting. Siri added the ability to work with the apps on the smartphone and Google, but that's it.

Good voice recognition technology has been around for a long time, it's just that no one bothered to market it like Apple has. Back in the day it was done purely in the name of accessibility.

tomWright:How do you know this? If true it would seem to be a major hole someone could fill. If need be I would pay for GOOD app that did this.

How do I know this? My question would be how do you not know this? The fact that iOS, Android, and Windows Phone don't offer this feature which was part of older OSes should be enough to tell you not to expect it to be a feature of any modern smartphone OS. The simple fact is that the tech world has moved beyond local storage of PIM data. In a corporate setting, this data is stored on an Exchange server generally. In the consumer world, people store this data with their email provider and expect that data to be synced automatically to their phones. Those, like yourself, who only store this data locally in Outlook are a vanishingly small minority.

Also, the four major smartphone OSes are concentrating on making it so you never have to connect your phone to your computer for anything. Your music/pictures/videos are going to be synced between your various devices automatically "through the cloud."

You're not alone being uncomfortable with that, but most people like the convenience and built-in backup more than they dislike the thought of personal data being stored on Amazon/Google/Apple (which iCloud is currently built on Amazon and Microsoft's competing cloud services) servers.

RexTalionis: ChuDogg: RexTalionis: I have a 4S. Believe it or not, Siri is useful, but not for the gimmicky "ask Siri stupid questions and hope for humorous response" uses. I use it because I am on the road a lot and I am precluded from texting or typing while I am driving. My uses for Siri usually comes down to this:

Using it to call someone (which the earlier iPhones have as well)
Setting up calendar and reminders
Using it to send a text message to someone
Using it to determine temperature
Using it to send emails


Could you really not do that on earlier Iphones? I was able to do all that on my droid incredible almost 2 years ago. I know because I'm on the road alot as well and used to text and drive on my blackberry (i know i know) but couldn't do that when I switched to touchscreen. I guess I would have to press one button to open the app, rather than just voice command "siri", but most of my text, email, calendars, etc. were all taken care of. I never tried finding something for temperature and those things. Even google maps after opening it I would simply hit the mic button and speak my destination address.

I like how Apple made it more seemless to have everything bundled togethor and can be launched by vioce, something droids will probably now emulate, but it really isn't too far forward from existing voice to text technology that has been integrated on phones for several years now.

I didn't get it for the Siri. I got it so that my Apps purchases doesn't go to waste in the new phone (I used a 3GS and I really needed to upgrade due to battery issues).

... because Apple refuses to give users the ability to change their own batteries. Yes I'm sure thats also an awesome "feature".

Apple: because why pay microsoft half as much when you can buy half the features from us.

NewNole2001: tomWright:How do you know this? If true it would seem to be a major hole someone could fill. If need be I would pay for GOOD app that did this.

How do I know this? My question would be how do you not know this? The fact that iOS, Android, and Windows Phone don't offer this feature which was part of older OSes should be enough to tell you not to expect it to be a feature of any modern smartphone OS. The simple fact is that the tech world has moved beyond local storage of PIM data. In a corporate setting, this data is stored on an Exchange server generally. In the consumer world, people store this data with their email provider and expect that data to be synced automatically to their phones. Those, like yourself, who only store this data locally in Outlook are a vanishingly small minority.

Also, the four major smartphone OSes are concentrating on making it so you never have to connect your phone to your computer for anything. Your music/pictures/videos are going to be synced between your various devices automatically "through the cloud."

You're not alone being uncomfortable with that, but most people like the convenience and built-in backup more than they dislike the thought of personal data being stored on Amazon/Google/Apple (which iCloud is currently built on Amazon and Microsoft's competing cloud services) servers.

I can see a lot of people having a problem with this, once they realize the implications. Maybe not enough people to make a difference though. But I can hope.

Having your data on a third party server where it is out of your control more than if you keep it only on your own pc or phone opens you to a lot of potential hurt. Store some pics you took of your daughter on the beach last summer. Then have some blue-nosed anti-nudity protect-the-children fanatic from Family Services go fishing and see them. Jailarity results. Send some joking email to you buddies with politically incorrect humor in it, or humor that becomes politically incorrect a decade later, and have it held against you years later.

Yeah, that'll fly.

No, somehow I think this whole 'cloud' thing won't last too long.

Exchange server for businesses is a different thing, at least they own and control the server, I doubt any corporation would want to use G-mail for corporate correspondence.

I hope you are wrong.

RexTalionis: ChuDogg: Purchased apps, lol.

If I like the App and wish to give the developers some money to show my appreciation, then what's wrong with that?

I can dig it. There are a couple apps on my droid that I wouldn't have minded paying for. I think ad support is ok, though most of the time I click on the ads by accident. The ad-supported angry birds was horrendous, though. There were interstitial video ads and the in-game ads would cover the slingshot for a few seconds before each level started, so I'd load up all kinds of shiat.