msmobiles.com/f

msmobiles.com_robot · Joined: 23 Mar 2004 Posts: 16777215

Times have changed: while previously Windows Mobile had to fight with Symbian (i.e. Nokia's puppet) first, these days Symbian is not even mentioned in press articles about top smartphones, like this one from today...

Read more at http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/7708.html

jaja · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 39

"However the bigger part of the blame lies on manufacturers, that should deliver capacitive displays that does not require applying any pressure on the touchscreen to interact with the phone"

sorry, you are completely wrong here. There is only one culprit and that is Microsoft. It is a hard requienment of Windows Mobile 6.x Pro Licenses to feature a Touchscreen that can be controlled by stylus - so you are stuck with oldshool resistive. This is meant to make sure that asian handwriting is suported. The carious Manufactuers have proved that the can build phones with capacitive Touchscreens. Proofs anyone?

- HTC G1
- Samsung F480
- LG PRADA II
- SonyEricsson C902 (Symbols only)

Appart from that it is MSFTs failure to deliver an UI that is free from any micro on screen controlls. Even if you "had" a capacitive screen you still coud not change the actual clock on WM6.1 with your finger

EJR · Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 2629

kaz911 · Joined: 30 Sep 2006 Posts: 6

is an outdated operating system

I have HTC Touch Pro, had several High Res WinMo's and the main problem is not that you cant get High Res phones / but that the OS does not work very well on high res screens.

What does it help you have a "layer" on top like Touch 3D - well it makes the phone look better in the optimized applications. But as soon as you leave Touch 3D the UI is terrible and unusable and oversized on high res screens.

2nd problem - battery life is just to bad on WinMo phones. I get 3-4 days on my E90, 4-7 days on my E71 (E90 and E71 have same battery) and if I'm really lucky - 24 hours on my HTC Touch Pro. But mostly only about 12-16 hours before it cries "charge me"

Try SlingPlayer.. On symbian - i get about 3 hours full video on E90. On WinMo I get maybe 1 hour max before battery is completely dead.

Then use phone as modem... My Touch Pro gets so hot you cant handle it - but at least it charges. But when it gets hot it starts loosing connections. By placing it on a "stand" so it gets better ventilation - you keep you data connection for a lot longer before it breaks down.

My nokia e71 and e90 - first disconnect you get is when battery is flat.... and since it does not charge via USB that happens in 3-4 hours.

VoIP? WinMo clients stinks. E71 shines and is almost perfect - E90 is "okay"...

jaja · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 39

LordDeath · Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Posts: 9

You should now that reading the "Bild" newspaper in Germany means that you dont' have any clue about the world and you are doomed to be stupid. Rolling Eyes

But sometimes the naked girl on page one has some sweet tits Wink

jaja · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 39

but still it prooves that Symbian is doomed. No Symbian Phones near t~#$ - that does it for Nokia

LordDeath · Joined: 15 Sep 2008 Posts: 9

Symbian has one big advantage:
Even people, who don't know anything about smartphones can buy a symbian device and they will never say that operating this phone is too complicated.
Symbian S60 is the only platform which achieved this goal to put lots of features into one system and make it still as easy to use as possible.

Apart from this touchscreen trend Symbian has no real smartphone competition. But its newest release with touchscreen GUI looks really bad...

kaz911 · Joined: 30 Sep 2006 Posts: 6

which one of you dimwits dont know symbian has a market share a lot higher than the rest combined? Just how is that "doomed?"

We talk 47% plus.... world wide

jaja · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 39

learn the concept of irony before you call someone a "dimwit". Its just MSMobile that thinks poorly of symbian and triys to proof that by quoting a stupid tabloid comparison.

EJR · Joined: 18 Mar 2004 Posts: 2629

indiekiduk · Joined: 03 Dec 2004 Posts: 198 Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Interesting that the games graphics library Gapidraw just dropped Symbian support in their latest version.
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ghl · Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 97

I would agree that the most fundamantal problem of contemporary WM incarnations is a "lack of responsiveness".
But what is the reason for that ?
Can it be blamed on a slow hardware ? Question: Can e.g. 640 MHz really be called to slow to react on human inputs (meaning inputs exercised in 1s or 1/2s or the range) ?
Or is this rather attributed to carelessly coded and non-optimized API's of Windows Mobile in addition to non-use of hardware acceleration (e.g. due to saving of license costs) ???
There are enough indications for the second explanation.
So there is the risk that MS is just going to "brush up" the looks of WM in version 7 at the expense of a further decrease of responsiveness.
(Like with Vista: Everything looks so cute, but for the same result you get with XP you need far stronger and more expensive HW. But why wasting HW performance just for making the OS a little bit more "cute" ?)
If MS goes in this direction they will kill their own WM platform.

On the other hand part of the responsibility is also with the HW vendors, which decide whether or not to apply HW acceleration (and get license costs covered by a higher device price).

The most respinsive WM device I know is the Samsung Omnia (SGH-i900).
Unfortunately I have to say even the 2G iPhone is more responsive Sad

Although I wouldn't like to exchange my Omnia against a 3G iPhone Smile

I wonder how fast the Omnia could be if it applied true HW acceleration and bit-optimized WM API's. One can only guess...

Regarding the Samsung Omnia:

I am sure Samsung will continue this success story by soon launching the "Omnia II" /like HTC did with its TyTN II).

There are some manageable improvements that could transform the Omnia into a dream machine without using rocket science:

1. Apply true HW acceleration (or at least make it optional for the end-user by e.g. a license key with an extra charge)
2. Provide a free "Widget Construction Kit", allowing also a user without programming expertice to safely create simple Widgets allocatable to applications; incorporating also an "Expert Mode" for advanced users allowing serious refurbishment of the GUI. (Yes, create Samsung development costs, but would pay back multiple by customer satisfaction and loyalty in staying with Samsung's products !)
3. Provide a standard Mini-USB interface for charging and synchronizing !!! I really hate this proprietary anachronistic plug, which is meanwhile the exception for WM devices.
4. Deploy also a small touch pad at the left top side, serving as a "scroll pad" and invaluable for browsing the internet. This could tremendously improve the usability of the Omnia !!!

Anything else I would call only "minor improvements".

I know this is a bit off-topic and we should discuss it elsewhere on msmobiles.
I hope though someone from Samsung is following this thread. With greetings to Korea Wink

farnold · Joined: 18 Apr 2004 Posts: 31 Location: Sydney, Australia

Good lord, we now need to look into BILD to understand what differences between OSes era and why this one is better here and worse there. Give me a break. BILD in Germany knows about technology as much as they know about journalism - nothing Laughing

Can somebody please post my 90-year-old grandma's diaries as well. That gives a perfect source to discuss technology. But hang on; actually this is not nice for my grandma - she understands more than BILD.
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Synced · Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 20

As a developer who works on all mobile devices in the company I work for it's pretty simple to understand what the lacking problems are on Windows Mobile. Many are being addressed in WM7 however already.

1. Stylus designed UI. Previous to the iPhone this UI was critisized but not NEARLY as much as now. iPhone was a game changer. Consider the game changed. So is the next upcoming UI.

2. Windows Mobile is a suite of shell/apps/apis ontop of Windows CE. Nothing stops HTC/Others from writting more replacement apps that are UI friendly. Listen. Companies sit around and want MS to make them boatloads of cash while all phones are "clones" of each other. That worked in the PC industry in 1990's but no longer cuts it. You need to create a compelling product. Hire a 10 man R&D software team and make it happen. Make your product better than the rest.

3. HW accelerated UI. The iPhone / BlackBerry / Windows Mobile phones are essentially the same platform minus some chipset differences. The difference is in the software. Windows Mobile is like Windows XP. It was GDI rendered. Not sleek, not fast at all. Especially on a 600mhz cpu. In Vista this changed to DirectX. Even the lowest end gpu can render 100x quicker than the cpu can. This is KEY.

4. APIs. Give the developers these rich APIs like they did on Vista so that we can leverage beautiful and intuitive applications.

Like I said many of these things are already coming, but since the WM5/6 is the incarnation we have had for several years now, these are the problems with it.

Even if Microsoft releases the 100% ideal OS we all dream, manufacturers should still push to innovate their hardware/software product ontop of it. Microsoft builds platforms. Manufacturers build products.

The problem is the Windows Mobile platform is aging and the developers are stuck doing some nasty things to give the impression of richness.

With API's like .NET 3.x etc the capabilities sky rocket in comparison to what us developers have now.

For the record I work on 3 major phone platforms and as far as developer support, API's and tools, the Microsoft toolset is by far superior.

Hopefully with the new upcoming APIs we get more rich capabilities in our hands to go with a great core API we have now.