The UI makes both the iPhone and Android look incredibly dated. I have a few questions about discoverability and usage in practice and it looks a tad laggy in places, but on the whole it looks very nice.
The downsides are that it shares many of the problems with the iPhone - the lack of multitasking, no Flash, and I bet it requires iTu--the Zune Software. There's also unknowns on WM7 as a development platform, and whether it requires you to use the App St--Windows Mobile Marketplace. That said, from what has currently been shown I think the good massively outweighs the bad.
One feature I'm particularly happy to see is Wi-Fi Sync. I hope this gives Apple the kick up the backside they need to include it in the iPhone.
That's a really interesting interface... my first impression is that it looks really cool. Finally someone is _not_ cloning iPhone.
One thing that is interesting is the comparison between (Mac, iPhone) and (Windows, Windows Mobile). On the Mac, it's unusual to have a window maximised, but on the iPhone that's the only mode of operation. On Windows, it's unusual to have more than one window on screen at a time, but WinMo7 seems to have completely abandoned the concept of windows. Interesting...
I'm going to second this, in a way. Some parts of this look nicer than my iPhone (e.g. bringing up a list of letters to skip around in your contacts), and the entire interface is their own creation (i.e. they're not aping Apple or Android in the visual style).
The contacts thing I don't know how practical it would be (it interrupts the flow of skipping to a contact vs. the iPhone's index sidebar), and I don't like the interface (compared to the Pre or the iPhone), but I have to give them credit for being original at least.
This new refresh of the windows mobile line is a very bold move by Microsoft. I'm really surprised they threw out all the existing winmo architecture and started fresh. The carrier network that supports WM7 will mean lots of choices for consumers as well. Not only that, they seem to really be emphasizing consistency across devices with the three buttons (start, search, back). This is undoubtedly uncharacteristic of how the winmo division has previously operated.
Most of all, todays announcement shows me they get it. I had always written off windows mobile as an OS, and after looking at things a bit, I'm considering WM7 for my next phone OS.
I think that was the point. Can we trust MS to maintain their platforms such that money spent now on media and applications isn't wasted when the device is replaced?
I think it is more of a point of the success of the platform. Plays-for-Sure was a failure, so it is being fazed out.
You have the same issue with any DRM'd media. I can only put my iTunes music to x number of mac devices. You bought a license, not the media. This is the whole reason why DRM sucks.
I disagree. From these screenshots it looks like Zune interface, which I always thought was ugly as hell (Especially that damn font). But that is my very short judgement. Some of these interface elements look really cool though (the viewport kind of thing especially)
The impression I get is actually that they couldn't figure out how to fit a decent mobile UI on the screen. It looks good in the photos where the rest of the content is shown, but I don't think it would be so nice to actually use.
I think that it is okay. I definitely see some inconsistencies when it comes to the UI. For instance, you have the home screen which is the blocks, then the zune-linke text-based interface, then you get into the trunks (cant remember exactly what they were called, but the games is an example) area and it is kinda zune, but it is missing the heading tabs. One has to assume that there is content to the left or right of the current view.
Now the iphone isnt perfect, but at least the interface is consistent across its built-in apps allowing people to to easily use them. As a matter of fact, if you use a mac, the iphone is very familiar visually. the same cannot be said about this 7 series, and windows 7.
But that is an opinion based on just some pics and vids, i need to use the thing.
Because of the side scrolling nature of the UI you've got some content on the right side that isn't relevant to what you're doing right now. (It takes away from what you're doing.)
The UI appears to lack any boundaries, rather relying on typography. It's interesting. I don't know how I feel about it, I'll reserve that kind of thing for the experts. It's certainly refreshing.
I see they've also created depth by having certain object scroll slower (or less.) Further removing the boundaries. (By boundaries I mean gradients, lines, blocks and buttons - I believe these objects give a UI a form of tactility?)
Having some content from the next page showing at the edge of your screen is an interesting way to avoid having to waste screen space on scrollbars. I do have to wonder how well it works in practice. How can you tell the difference between a web page that simply doesn't fit, and an app that is indicating that there is more content (but not necessarily relevant to what you're currently looking at)? Also, it seems like this would be a constant reminder of how frustratingly tiny your screen is, and that's not a good thought for a mobile UI to engender.
The "experts" would say that the phone does not "get out of the way", because of this messy typography thing and the minimum of three hardware buttons required for navigation.
Seeing how it consistently happens on the horizontal, I think it's by design. It probably tries to suggest with some degree of subtility that the UI goes on in that direction.
"...the first handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year."
Kudos to Microsoft for realizing they need to be bold here and re-invent things. I'm encouraged by the lack of the "Start" bar. They have an incredibly brutal hill to climb if the handsets are only available at the end of the year. They should really have had a device out the door at the same time as the Palm Pre. It has taken Android a considerable amount of time to get to where it is today, and that took a no small amount of effort from Google. RIM, Google, and Apple are not going to be sitting on their hands this whole time milking their lead (well, RIM might ;)). Assuming the time frame holds true (a big assumption), by the time any appreciable number of users have these devices in their hands (early 2011), Apple alone will have released a major new OS update as well as hardware update, and be halfway to the next one. I expect Google will be similarly aggressive.
With regards to the interface I have to vouch for Windows.. I have a Zune HD. I love it. The UI is anything but limiting and amazingly intuitive.
My girlfriend would ask "How do I do XXX" and before I could remember how I would accomplish the objective, she had explored her way to the solution.
Obviously a phone will have more strenuous requirements, but the interface I'm using on the Zune seems like it may be the exact outlandish interface that changes the way we think about buttons, and menus for interactive portable devices.
About time too. As .Net developer, I've been frustrated watching the Windows Mobile car crash develop in slow motion. Let's hope they get the ecosystem right too
M$ can do a SDK. The question is whether they'll stomp 3rd parties as they've done in the past. If they just get the things right that Apple got really wrong, they could even come off as heroes.
1) There is no phone yet. This was just a very superficial first look behind the curtain. Right now it looks like a modified Zune.
2) Delivery of devices by the end of the year seems a very tight schedule. That gives them basically 8 months to get to RTM. They haven't announced developer tools yet. I would expect a very basic 1.0 release this year if they make it at all.
3) It would be good if they succeeded. It's to no one's benefit to replace one 800 lb gorilla (Microsoft) with another (Apple). A counterweight is needed and Google Buzz has caused me to do a complete re-eval of that firm's worthiness.
I hope I am not one of the few who didn't like the interface. It looked too much like "flash interface" you see on some websites. Not a big fan of sideways sliding.
I applaud having more choices in interface, but I am more interested in better choices as opposed to having just another choice. Hard to draw any solid conclusion just by watching that video, but not very impressed so far. IMO YMMV
You won't be the only one. However, I know a lot of Zune owners (mostly that won them, not bought them) that thought they would hate the interface and ended up liking it a lot. I don't know if I would like it until trying it. I thought for sure I would like the iPhone UI but it often drives me crazy.
[Microsoft is] dictating rigid specs for 7 Series devices (a specific CPU and speed, screen aspect ratio and resolution, memory, and even button configuration), and doing away with carrier or partner UI customizations such as Sense or TouchWiz. That's right -- there will be a single Windows Phone identity regardless of carrier or device brand.
So all Windows phones will look the same and work the same. I'm skeptical that hardware manufacturers will be enthusiastic about Microsoft turning their products into commodities again. Unlike the situation with PCs, this time they have a viable alternative in Android.
The partners are probably just happy that they didn't get fucked over by a 1st party Zune Phone.
Microsoft has had several such projects in their recent stable of inept Mobile OS + hardware dev teams (along with several non-phone Zunes, WM6, WM6.5, several reboots of WM7, the Sidekick, etc.).
Google's doing a ton of meddling with their hardware partners, as they can withhold their apps (Maps, Gmail, Voice, etc.) to get their way, but even then they keep getting fucked on basic stuff like putting the hardware buttons in the same order, much less the insane issues with backporting software updates! It looks like MS is trying to dodge all of that up front.
I'm no fan of Microsoft in general but it looks like they made some good choices here. It's refreshing to see a GUI that's not just an iPhone clone or yet another awkward facelift on a dated product. I think it will be successful. SmartPhones don't have the same level of legacy baggage that prevent users from jumping to another platform easily so I don't think Microsoft is out of the game at all. It'll be interesting to see where their market share comes from. I'm thinking RIM & Nokia more than Apple & Android.
What I would have really liked to see in the video was any new capabilities of Mobile Internet Explorer. Is it going to have the capabilities that we're used to from the iPhone, webOS, and Android? The web browser is probably the most important part of these phones since almost everything has a web interface. The XBOX Live and Facebook apps look nice, but there's no guarantee that Windows Phone 7 Series will take off and get lots of developers on board. However, a good web browser means that I can still get what a lot of what I want without apps.
"Here's a look at the browser. This is a much more advanced browser then we've ever shipped. It's based on the desktop version of IE, so it's highly compatible with lots of webpages."
That browser better has to support the exact same features as webkit for android and Iphone else I don't think this phone can match up against the iphone and android phones due to the lack of developer interest in developing for this browser.
Developers are fed up for years with Microsoft's browsers and here they can safely ignore it because it doesn't have a huge market share.
If it's based on the rendering engine in IE8/7, then pretty much everything on the web already works for it. No mainstream sites are "safely ignoring" Internet Explorer.
Well regular mainstream sites aren't, but mobile web applications/sites are making use of css3 and html5 features not present in IE8/7. In the mobile industry Microsoft has such a large marketshare that it will be safe to ignore the browser of Windows Mobile 7 (for now).
Is your mom the target audience for this phone/os? I don't know, but my point is that not everything should be geared towards people who aren't interested or can't keep up with tech.
Microsoft is definitely not looking at this short term. When they talk about a billion devices they are talking about being everything to everybody. So my guess would be that they would want my mom and everyone else all to use it.
The other point about the "mom" argument is directly related to the "facebook login" issue, where complexity is not anything that anyone wants to deal with.
Android's already got the geek market. And it's a small market, so who would be silly enough to fight over the Apple scraps like that? Besides, how could this be a geek phone with no multitasking? And, that UI looks like it was designed by an impressionist painter with no regard to actually using the damn thing, so no normal phone user is going to like it. Way to exclude both user bases, Microsoft.
Again, Android is not in the Geek market. It just happens that their aesthetics seem to appeal to geeks. Google would love my mom to be using an Android Phone.
I love my Android but I have to say I'm impressed with Windows 7.
I have a Zune and I dig the UI a lot. Adding XBox Live games is definitely a big plus. The games give it a big advantage over Android.
Apps will again be key and this is where Microsoft strengths lie. Microsoft has the best developer tools on the market and they have legions of engineers on the .Net platform.
My only worry is that it may be a year or two late for Microsoft. I don't really want to count them out because of what they did with the XBox versus the Playstation.
However, the phone is a tougher market. It would be harder to convince people to switch phones. Phones are much more personal than gaming consoles.
"...the innovation of developers is important. We build a new foundation with a rich set of development tools which we'll discuss at MIX next month. [...] we want to take a very big step forward on [development tools]."
I wonder if this is just WPF/Sliverlight.
This seems a lot like the Palm WebOS announcement; similar reboot/new platform and breaking of backwards compatibility (unconfirmed).
With how much they've been talking about taking Silverlight mobile since last year's MIX (at PDC most notably) I would almost guarantee that it will be Silverlight.
It will be very interesting to see what XNA support is like on the final model. There's a strong community of developers accessing these tools for free, which would allow Microsoft to roll out a full and lively app store quickly. I would be highly optimistic about Microsoft's ability to run an app store service, based on experiences with Xbox Live, Xbox Indie Games, and Rock Band Network. Since they're building from scratch, they could analyze and avoid legacy issues present in Apple's iTunes App Store ecology.
Converse to their potential strengths at running an app store, Microsoft has a difficult decision posed by marketing. There are a lot of people out there addicted to Xbox Live Achievement points. If MS allows you to earn achievement points via games on it's new mobile phone, it will get a tremendous boost in market share.
The risk present here is that the achievement points system requires additional overhead and review by MS, in order to prevent system breaking games. There's no feasible way for them to populate their app store with indies and approve achievement points for all of them.
In order to have their cake and eat it to, MS needs to be able to differentiate achievement point games from indie games, but without turning indie games into an unshopped ghetto (see Xbox Indie Games). My best resolution would be to offer a small differentiation to icons on the store, specifically take those icons for games with points and apply a smaller logo to the corner, much like on a shortcut icon. Perhaps make it a little gold medal with a green ribbon falling in an X shape ;)
Wondering how it effects the SmartPhone industry...
RIM/Nokia: Should be worried. They're jockeying over last place in the SmartPhone modernity contest these days. Hasn't hurt them much yet but it's hard to see how that lasts forever. Nokia is probably in better shape than RIM here.
Palm: Good try. Consider Open Source and/or licensing before it's too late.
Apple: Probably not much to worry about for now but they shouldn't get complacent with the iPhone platform. My biggest question here is how big of a distraction the iPad was for Apple internally. Do we have a major iPhone revision and a strong software update in the works or another minor hardware bump with a merely evolutionary OS update? If they stay off Verizon for another year (at least) it could really start to hurt iPhone sales. The iPhone is no longer so far ahead of the pack that you'd suffer with bad coverage to use it.
Android: Not much for Google to worry about but I think a lot of third party handset makers will put some resources back into Windows Mobile devices. Even more so with the existence of the N1.
I must say, that's surprisingly clean and not in-your-face. A nice change for Microsoft. I've seen very similar styles of interfaces (concepts) for a few years, but they're certainly the first big-player to back it with a product. We can hope it won't be that slow-scrolling (largely seen in other videos). People get annoyed with shiny things that slow them down.
One thing that's bugged me about the touch line of iProducts is the amount of wasted space around the icons (though I understand the reasoning behind it, and it would encourage an entire icon remake if changed).
I'm curious to see how it handles emails and .doc and .ppt files.
Whether we like it or not, a lot of day to day business activities happen through word, outlook, and now, powerpoint. If windows mobile displays those files types cleanly, I assure you it will be a success. Blackberrys let you open those filetypes but I think they handle it pretty clumsily.
For me it would be a huge plus if I could go through a deck or read a long word document without having to always be at my desk.
I think they've struck on something that Android has been ignoring: fun. The original iPhone was full of fun, interesting usability tidbits - the momentum-based flicking, the bounce you get when you hit the bottom of a list, the turning of album covers... etc.
How "fun" your UI is directly contributes to discoverability. Android's UI is very dry, and IMHO it makes the UI harder for a novice to pick up and learn. You can inject a lot more features that aren't immediately obvious, and must be learned - but you must make your platform "fun" enough for users to actually bother discovering these things.
Given what I've seen so far, I think MS has realized this also, and I think they're on the right track.
Seems like M$ has re-prioritized. Backwards compatibility is no longer sacred. Now it's alright to forge ahead and tack-on backwards compatibility afterwards. (I'm also thinking of Vista and Windows 7 here.)
I get the impression they don't want it to be app centric - presumably "apps" now add functionality to the "hubs" - of course that assumes everything can be neatly categorised
I'm guessing here but I think that app swipe is just from the 'Home' screen, not within apps. And I'm pretty sure you can customize the 'tiles' to put the most frequent ones on the main page and then just have the rest a swipe away. That's pretty much how I use my iPhone right now.
The downsides are that it shares many of the problems with the iPhone - the lack of multitasking, no Flash, and I bet it requires iTu--the Zune Software. There's also unknowns on WM7 as a development platform, and whether it requires you to use the App St--Windows Mobile Marketplace. That said, from what has currently been shown I think the good massively outweighs the bad.
One feature I'm particularly happy to see is Wi-Fi Sync. I hope this gives Apple the kick up the backside they need to include it in the iPhone.