Windows Phone 7: The AnandTech Guide
by Brian Klug on March 21, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Windows Phone 7
- Mobile
The State of Cut and Paste
Microsoft stated explicitly and rather abruptly during a Q&A session during day two of MIX10 that there will be no copy and paste support in Windows Phone 7 Series. The annoucement was as simple and unambiguous as that; current plans are that Windows Phone 7 Series hardware shipping holiday 2010 will not have cut and paste support.
This is relatively ironic, considering Windows CE and Windows Mobile have had copy and paste support since day one. Furthermore, Windows Mobile users long cited lack of copy and paste support as a fundamental shortcoming present in other competing OSes. Obviously, having no support for clip-boarding or copy and paste is a step backwards. At this point it's a decision backed up by what Microsoft cites as a number of use studies which show people don't really use copy and paste. Microsoft left the door open slightly, noting that it "isn't sure when it will be added," but then later clarified and noted that it would likely not be included in the current release.
The reasons for this decision are ultimately puzzling. Microsoft cites a number of use studies mentioned earlier where users generally focus on a few predictable forms of information: addresses, phone numbers, or snippets from a web page. Instead of letting users copy and paste this information, it's hoping that users long-press on context-highlighted text and take action from there. "People often want to take an address and view it on a map, highlight a term in the browser, and do a search or copy a phone number to make a call. Instead of the user manually doing a copy and paste in these scenarios, we recognize those situations automatically and make them happen with just one touch," said Casey McGee, a senior marketing manager in Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business group.
The implementation is relatively similar to what we've seen already on iPhone OS. Text the OS recognizes as being a semantic match for either a phone number or address is highlighted. Tapping on those launches either the dialer, or Bing maps, as expected.
Note the orange text - these are clickable
Longer presses on almost anything result in another dialog appearing. From here, you can forward through SMS or email if the selection is text (or a URL), or save to the photo library or MMS if it is a picture.
Microsoft hopes this intelligent data-recognition process mitigates lack of copy and paste, but in practice there are many more use scenarios where true copy and paste support is advantageous.
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nerdtalker - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Noted and fixed! Thanks!Cheers,
-Brian
StormyParis - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
It seems so close to the whole iPhone thing, that if I were MS I'd be embarassed... a lot of pride swallowing must have been going on.My issue is, I can't find a good reason to want these phones. Even Office integration doesn't cut it, because the hardware is so gimped that I'd never, ever, want to do any office work with it. The rest is just regular smartphone stuff. As with Apple, I lose a whole lot of freedom of features (forced to use IE ? IE ??? back to web 0.8, guys). And my personnal guess would be that for the same loss, I get less in exchange, in terms of ease of use and features.
Hopefully Google and Nokia will manage to keep their ecosystems open, because those "censored apps, censored hardware, no extensions nor upgrades" e-dystopias have me worried and slightly despondent.
NJoy - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
avid user of WM for last 5 years, now I'm so disappointed, it's even depressing. They just have killed everything what I liked about WinMo. SadCSMR - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Extremely disappointing to be given a locked down system from Microsoft, missing essential capability that's been around for over a decade.Instead of continually expanding features and technology, and providing a better user interface, we have a locked down system with a long list of basic missing features. Windows Mobile has been downgraded from an operating system to firmware with this release.
Even the user interface, supposedly "stylish" is almost everywhere an inefficient use of space to present information. It's fine to pander to customers who want that... but now there's no way to customize it to something better.
Other features removed: No microSD cards, incredible! No file system access! Anyone who understands what a file is should avoid this system.
I can see the benefits for the computer-illiterate, but for us and for business users why not make an open "Windows Mobile 7 Business" version without the limitations?
wolrah - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
The carriers need the shiny new phones to attract customers, not the other way around. The consumer cares more about the thing they're carrying rather than the network it's on (see iPhone and AT&T). With that in mind, the experience of a mobile phone OS should be about the user, not the carrier.The ability for carriers to screw with phones is almost universally a bad thing. The CDMA carriers' love of BREW on dumbphones, Verizon's obsession with crippling devices, AT&T's lockdown of the Backflip and the previous heavy limits on "bandwidth intense" iPhone apps, etc. I don't think I need to go on to show that the carriers should never be allowed to influence phones in the slightest. I can not come up with a single example where carrier modifications were a benefit for the end user even on dumbphones, much less on smartphones.
The bit about appeasing carriers worried about becoming "dumb pipes" is the problem in a nutshell. They are dumb pipes, that's the point. They provide the spectrum and backhaul lines that connect my phone to the PSTN and Internet. Saying that telecom carriers don't want to be dumb pipes is like saying that Ford doesn't want to be a car company. It just doesn't make sense, since that's exactly what they are.
trochevs - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
I agree with you. Unfortunately we have two serious obstacles here. First is the brainwashed US consumer who thinks he/she is getting better deal by getting locked phone from US carrier for free or discounted price from artificially inflated price of unlocked phone.The US consumer are scripted so well and never stop to think for a minute. Just notice poor sales figures in USA for unlocked phones from Nokia, Sony and Google are.
Second is the monopolistic behavior of US carriers. For many years they did not allowed unlocked phones on their networks. Only when real threat of regulation become evident they start allowing it. But they pile your phone bill with extra fees that makes you think twice. Not only that, but they keep charge you exact same monthly service fee even when everyone knows that this fee includes the price of the phone.
anactoraaron - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
not to mention the monopolistic reality of government agencies allowing these carriers to buy out all of the smaller, local companies. There is this trend of broken economics going on here and we, the "end users," are the ones paying for it (literally). Once where I live here there were 4 smaller companies my "unlocked" phone would work on.... now "unlocked" phones are almost all just ATT and T Mobile.trochevs - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Well. Thanks Brian for great article and thanks AnandTech for great coverage of Windows Phone 7 so far.From what I see WP7 is targeted directly against Apple iPhone not Google's Android. Apple is attacking HTC to hurt Android, but looks like Steve jobs did not learn his lesson. The real hit will come from Microsoft again. MS is taking advantage that all mobile operators are not happy with Apple keeping iPhone away from them. It will be slow switch for many iPhone users, but MS has the financial power to keep the WP7 alive for a while.
Google's Android has own problem now. Google compromised their relationship with open source community in order to meet the US mobile operators and handset manufactures demands, but now Android is facing the real possibility that US carriers are going to use Android as bargaining power to get better deal from MS. Just like Asus and other OEM did with early versions of netbooks and using have-baked Linux distributions. So Google needs to decide between Open Source community or discontinue Android in the long run and accept that US carriers will hold the key and can lock out Google if they want to.
So the key would be. How well Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt have learn the lessons form recent and not so recent past. It will be fun watching. And the key player could turn to be Intel with their MeeGo.
FITCamaro - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
They're definitely going to have to allow applications like Pandora to run in the background or no one will buy the phone. I use Pandora on my Droid. If it killed Pandora any time I wanted to check my email, send a text message, or browse the web, I'd be be pissed.DigitalFreak - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Unfortunately, it looks like they're going down the iPhone route and locking everything down. App store, no SD cards, etc. Really not surprising I guess when you look at how they handled the Xbox 360.