Windows Phone 7: The AnandTech Guide
by Brian Klug on March 21, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Windows Phone 7
- Mobile
Hands on With WP7S - Phone and SMS
This being a phone, it's surprising how little there is to talk about with regards to the dialer, phone, and messaging applications. I've been paying especially careful attention to what Microsoft is ready to show of the call in progress screens, incoming call dialogs, and the dialer. Of note is that all of the interface demos shown thus far completely circumnavigate the dialer; calls thus far have been entirely initiated from contacts, search, or contextually linked numbers in UI. The reason is that although the dialer is there, it isn't finished. You can't fault Microsoft for not showing something that isn't done yet. At the same time, it needs to get the same kind of re-thinking that the rest of the UI got between Windows Mobile and WP7S.
We've seen a handful of glances of the call in progress screen, but these vary from build to build. Notably, we can see the carrier string at the top right, although in one build it humorously shows "AT&T/Cingular Wireless," despite Cingular no longer existing under that name. On newer builds, it reads simply "AT&T."
This is blurry because it was up for all of 3 seconds
As far as the "text" SMS/MMS application goes, the interface in here is reasonably well fleshed out, but still not finished enough that Microsoft would let me get away with a photo or two of it. Our demo phone showed an interesting error message about failing to back data up to the cloud, but this was entirely because the phone hadn't had a SIM in it until 10 minutes prior. I did get a brief chance to play with the interface, and it has nice landscape to portrait transitions and the same sort of look as the rest of the interface, but I didn't get a chance to actually send or receieve messages.
These are the things that are likely going to be first on the list for WP7S Microsoft developers to tackle in the remaining months before launch. This basically wraps up the hands-on I had with the platform. You can check out the gallery below for all the photos we've got. Now let's dive into the rest of the details.
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pcfxer - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Android is far easier to develop for than WM and iPhone. For my engineering project my team is developing a device for non-verbal users.pro5 - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Is android Java only? (I don't know) but if so that would reason enough for me not to develop for it. C# and objective C are 'bad enough' but java has always left me cold (I'm a C++ coder mainly).If it can use native C++ then great, still doesn't make up for it's other short comings. The only real advantage I see to Android is how 'open' it is, but really that's more of killer than a helper in the dev community (if money is your goal). How does the GPU compare to Winphone for example? Where is the 'standard' development target (screen size, hardware features). Stuff like iPhone and WP7 are 'easier' to develop for because you never need to 2nd guess the user's hardware config or screen size (ok 2 sizes in the case of WP7 in future)
Penti - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
Android has the NDK so you can run native code, you don't need to run your code in dalvik. That means C and C++. Just as any other Linux based Phone OS. Such as WebOS. Of course Maemo too. Bada too of course, and of course none Linux based Symbian.The shit runs at the same hardware so what's your problem? Nobody is forcing you to develop for free. That you can release your apps without review is not a bad thing. Apps such as Firefox (Fennec) are ported to Maemo and being ported to Android. There's an Alpha for WinMo too. Something that can't be done on iPhone OS or Blackberry. Or WP7. If you only want to develop for a specific phone thats fine, but then you miss millions of other users. Even if you do android apps you don't need to support every single phone there is. Old phones won't be upgraded to newer versions of Android OS any way. And it's really the software platform that should have the focus any way.
jms102285 - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
Hey Anand, I sent you an E-mail regarding what the implications of Microsoft Communications Server just before the release of the WP7 is.... I haven't heard anything back yet in over a week from anyone I mailed about it.Are you guys tight-lipped about it because of NDAs or something???
CSMR - Sunday, March 21, 2010 - link
Not really (http://jkontherun.com/2009/11/23/windows-mobile-vs...">http://jkontherun.com/2009/11/23/window...droid-wi... but hopefully it will be within a year.I'm hoping that it will get full, reliable exchange support (e-mail+calendar+tasks+scheduling meetings+search server etc.).