HeartBurnKid: king_nacho: I'm interested to see how that plays out, but to me that isn't much different than android. I wasn't able to officially upgrade my android phone until AT&T got around to it, which was several months after samsung would get around to it. so 8-9 months after google would release it, i'd be able to install it, and that was assuming they wanted to fool with it. They aren't putting 4.0 for my Galaxy S at all. I finally got to 2.3 on it.

Yes, but the vast majority of apps developed for Android these days will run on 2.3 or 2.2, even if 4.0 is the current standard-bearer. Once WP8 comes out, Silverlight goes bye-bye; any app developed for WP8 will not work on WP7, period. This is an important difference; this effectively means the entire WP7 ecosystem has about 6 months to live.

Very true. I would hope MS makes the WP8 code available for the newer devices (Nokia 900, HTC Titan II). But the reason i went to windows phone in the first place wasn't the apps. I knew going into it that the app landscape would be in flux for a while, but then again i'm probably not the average consumer, I wanted the UI, and to try something new. if in a year there is a new better phone, i'll threaten to cancel my plan with AT&T until they let me upgrade for the reduced rate.

Thrakkerzog: king_nacho: impaler: king_nacho: Microsoft figured out that if they included a TCP/IP stack with every computer, and made it easy to use, the people would get on to the internet.

Say what now?

in the early/mid 90s when most people were using AOL or some other service, MS stuck a TCP/IP stack and a dial up networking stack directly into the OS. They also included the IE in 1995, which i think was the first "free" web browser. Even Mosiac had a cost for commercial use. with the browser built in, and networking built in, you could get much cheaper internet from a local ISP, and many more people starting jumping on.

O_o?

Even Windows 95 didn't initially come with winsock. It was an add-on that you had to obtain separately. Microsoft initially missed the internet bandwagon, suggesting that it was a passing fad.

By the time MS got around to including Winsock with the OS, it was already late to the game, passed up by BSD, Linux and Mac OS System 7.5 (1994 -- it was available well before that, but you had to pay for it).

Windows 3.11 (windows for workgroups) came with Winsock in 1994. Win95 shipped with it, but it wasn't installed by default, you have to manually add it in if you wanted to use it. Win95 did not have IE, that you had to get through the MS Plus pack

HeartBurnKid: tgambitg: HeartBurnKid: I'm aware of that. It's also the last Moto phone anybody gave a shiat about.

The new RAZR MAXX is actually a very decent phone, so I'll have to disagree with you. It proved that you can have long battery life in a slim package, with a beautiful screen.

Hell, even the other iterations of the MotoDROID line (D2, D2-R2D2, D2G, D3, and D4) are all decent phones, but are niche phones due to the slide out keyboard. (Though the choice of screens on the D3 and D4 are bad choices compared to the RAZR)

OK, I'll admit the RAZR made a few waves, but really, how many phones has Moto had that have really captured public attention like the Samsung Galaxy line, or, more recently, the HTC One? The Atrix was interesting from a technical point of view, but nobody bit on it, and the rest of Moto's line just feels way too me-too.

They're still better than Sony Ericsson was, though, I'll give 'em that.

Remember the startac?

Piizzadude: Mad_Radhu: Unless they are planning to release some new cheap/free tools to develop and deploy apps through the Marketplace in preparation of the Windows 8 launch. With major overlap between Win 8 Metro apps and Win Phone 8 apps being likely, its really possible that they are going to release a unified development studio for both, and could be planning an option for students and hobbyists like with Visual Studio Express

If you read my link they have it, for $99 per year. I don't think the casual developer who is looking only doing apps for fun and to make just a bit of cash is going to pony up anything for winmo since you can make an Android and an Apple app for free...

Don't you need a Mac to develop for iOS? That adds quite a bit to the "free" development costs.

And at the end of the day, its not those homebrew apps that are going to make or break the platform. It's things like HBO Go, Hulu, banking apps, Tivo remote apps, and other tools from big companies that people are asking for. The problem with Win Phone isn't development costs, it's the tiny current install base, which creates a chicken and egg problem. Customers don't buy into the platform because there are no apps, and developers don't code for the platform because they don't see a big enough market to be worth their time. What it really comes down to is getting over the hump and getting customer and developer acceptance. IOS and Android succeeded in getting that acceptance, while WebOS and Symbian failed. If there is a big enough customer base, developers will gladly put down $99 for developer access.

With Win Phone, you have two things that can put them over the top and make them a credible third ecosystem. One is Nokia's push to create marketshare rapidly, which seems to be adding badly needed numbers in the critical US market. The second is Metro apps on Win 8. If there is enough in common between developing those and Win Phone 8 apps, then you'll have developers targeting the huge Win 8 customer base that may be able to create Win Phone 8 versions of the apps with minimal effort, which would open the floodgates of Win Phone apps.

xsarien: I seriously wonder how it feels to be so completely wrong.

Probably feels a lot like that video where the guy stuck a large bottle rocket in his ass expecting it to fly out...and we all know how that turned out.

Kar98: king_nacho: Calendar, notes, e-mail are perfect, my email/calendar/notes are all in exchange so obviously being a MS product that part is great. But i also have it setup with my gmail account and the calendar and email work great there too. The contact list from both, as well as facebook and twitter are seamless, but in a good way

That does sound like a great improvement over previous iterations.

I will also say, that Bing on Windows Phone is far better than Google was on my android. It has a built in song identifier app, barcode scanner, as well as character recognition and can translate text from a picture.

HeartBurnKid: Mad_Radhu: With Win Phone, you have two things that can put them over the top and make them a credible third ecosystem. One is Nokia's push to create marketshare rapidly, which seems to be adding badly needed numbers in the critical US market. The second is Metro apps on Win 8. If there is enough in common between developing those and Win Phone 8 apps, then you'll have developers targeting the huge Win 8 customer base that may be able to create Win Phone 8 versions of the apps with minimal effort, which would open the floodgates of Win Phone apps.

That's great for WP8, but the problem is, Metro apps aren't developed on Silverlight (and neither will WP8 apps; WP8 looks to use the same framework as WinRT/WOA/whatever it's called now). Silverlight is a dead-end, the WinCE kernel is a dead-end, and Microsoft's stonewalling seems to indicate that the current crop of WP7 phones are going to dead-end with them. This is probably the worst possible time to buy a WP7 phone, which is why it's so baffling that AT&T has chosen to market the shiat out of one now.

The probably have piles of inventory they are trying to dump before they become bricks.

/just a guess
//don't know squat about smartphone dev.

HeartBurnKid: Mad_Radhu: With Win Phone, you have two things that can put them over the top and make them a credible third ecosystem. One is Nokia's push to create marketshare rapidly, which seems to be adding badly needed numbers in the critical US market. The second is Metro apps on Win 8. If there is enough in common between developing those and Win Phone 8 apps, then you'll have developers targeting the huge Win 8 customer base that may be able to create Win Phone 8 versions of the apps with minimal effort, which would open the floodgates of Win Phone apps.

That's great for WP8, but the problem is, Metro apps aren't developed on Silverlight (and neither will WP8 apps; WP8 looks to use the same framework as WinRT/WOA/whatever it's called now). Silverlight is a dead-end, the WinCE kernel is a dead-end, and Microsoft's stonewalling seems to indicate that the current crop of WP7 phones are going to dead-end with them. This is probably the worst possible time to buy a WP7 phone, which is why it's so baffling that AT&T has chosen to market the shiat out of one now.

At the same time, keep in mind that the latest "Tango" update for Windows Phone was designed around making the OS capable of running on lower end hardware so Microsoft would be able to expand their marketshare in China and India. After all that work to optimize the OS for lower spec hardware, it doesn't make any strategic sense to follow that with a Windows Phone 8 that makes top of the line quad- and dual-core hardware mandatory. Unless they are planning to completely abandon their push into emerging markets, you will either see one of two things happen: 1. support of more modest hardware in Windows Phone 8, but with some advanced functionality disabled, similar to how some apps won't work on the lower-spec hardware designed for Tango (which will allow for compatibility with existing handsets) or 2. Windows Phone 7 development and updates continuing alongside Windows Phone 8, with Windows Phone 7 continuing to be sold in emerging markets and in low-cost prepaid phones. Either way, it seems unlikely that you're going to see the current set of Windows Phones becoming obsolete overnight, because that would be stupid and shortsighted even for Microsoft.

jclaggett: Kar98: Thrakkerzog: Also, wasn't Win3.11's winsock ethernet only? As in, it didn't work with modems?

That actually made me shudder.

/remembers

Wasn't it umich that had a DOS based PPP dialer that would create a virtual eternity device? I know someone did, and it worked better than the 3rd party dialer that you could get for Windows. I think you had to have WfW to go online, but that was no biggy.

with 3.1 you could use Trumpet, 3.11 had integrated TCP/IP but it didn't have a built in PPP tunnel to make it work for a dial up connection. win95 was the first OS to have the PPP, TCP/IP and all of the integrated without paying extra.

TCP/IP over PPP, those were the days. I remember in college when cable companies first started offering dedicated high-speed internet connections. Went from 56kbps that tied up the phone line, to dedicated 500kps* overnight. Today, a 10mbps Ethernet LAN would be a bottleneck.

*rough guess, can't remember the speed.

impaler: TCP/IP over PPP, those were the days. I remember in college when cable companies first started offering dedicated high-speed internet connections. Went from 56kbps that tied up the phone line, to dedicated 500kps* overnight. Today, a 10mbps Ethernet LAN would be a bottleneck.

*rough guess, can't remember the speed.

the first DSL we offered, and we were one of the first in the country to offer it was 256k download, can't remember the upload speed. within a year we were doing 768k.

trippdogg: "The iPhone will not substantially alter the fundamental structure and challenges of the mobile industry."

...and it hasn't. The industry is still being driven by a bunch of nitwit consumers that need constant ego re-enforcement and are willing to pay top dollar for it.

I would say before the iPhone data transfer speeds, 3G, 4G, LTE and all of that stuff were nowhere near as big of a concern as they are today. The iPhone was the catalyst, i'm not saying another devices wouldn't have come along to force the same issues. But the iPhone was the initial device that pushed consumers into the smart phone category.