Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
The latest All About Windows Phone Insight Podcast is live. Rafe, Steve, David, and myself cover: In brief: HTC Titan reviews, ZTE Tania on SFR, Nokia at CES, Infinite Flight, Ministry of Sound goes free (for Nokia handsets), 40,000 apps, Google Search, Handy Safe, 4th and Mayor and MehDoh. [audio:http://mediafiles.allaboutwindowsphone.com/aawp_20111124_004.mp3] Show notes on AAWP, The RSS feed also available.
And quietly, in the corner, Microsoft continues a successful roll-out of Windows Mango, now available to roughly half of the Windows Phone smartphones (and those of you who know you can “cut the cord“). It may be a smaller footprint of devices, but they still have to navigate a number of different models, manufacturers, and network requests. Samsung Focus aside, Microsoft has learnt from the NoDo update at the start of the year, and given that, what else do you think they might have learned. With Palm’s WebOS effectively off the table, Research in Motion in decline, and Symbian loosing
Skipping to the end of Chris Ziegler’s look at Windows Phone Mango for the money quote: …this platform still has an enormous uphill battle to climb to carve out its stake of the market… at no point while using this year-old hardware did I feel encumbered or out-of-date — in fact, I usually felt like the software was taking better advantage of the available processing power than the much more muscular Android handsets I’ve been testing over the last few months. Put simply, regardless of your preconceptions, Windows Phone finally deserves an honest look the next time you’re ready to
The Windows phone has the best user interface experience, although the onscreen keyboard is problematic just as it is with the other phones I used. The Windows interface is intuitive, simple, and has a liveliness that I find appealing. Voice call quality was good, and battery life seemed good too. I declare it the winner compared to my iPhone 3GS with AT&T and my HTC EVO 3D with Android on the Sprint network. However, the intangible coolness factor is impossible to ignore. Even the names Microsoft and Windows feel dated. And the home screen of the Windows phone is great
Fancy that… 1 million new devices a month is a pretty good number for a totally new phone. It’s way below Samsung Galaxy S2 sales, but it is in line with the original Galaxy S sales at launch. And if Nokia manages to actually sell those 2 million “not in volume” Windows Phones in Q4, when they do start shipping “in volume” – the numbers should be pretty good.
Microsoft shows off the People hub on Windows Phone (Mango) with Twitter and LinkedIn now available alongside Windows Live and Facebook (YouTube video link). It’s looking very swish, and I hope they have support for Twitter lists – no matter what they’ll likely fail the Scoble test for user numbers – but a bit more filtering wouldn’t go amiss. They’ve also opened up a new App Hub developer portal, alongside the news that 35 territories are open to developers, new price tiers with more options in the $5 and under category, and the expansion of Microsoft’s in-app ad system, pubCenter,
