yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 General] Ineedtoys:
Have to agree - and TV advertising doesn't help. At least two of my acquaintances just decided they wanted (and got) "an HTC". They were oblivious to the fact that didn't necessarily mean Android, nor did they really care.

Good point. Gone are the days when a smartphone was something special. I used to get really excited about convergence (landmark developments like the Nokia Communicator, Handspring Treo, and iMate JAM were first in class real life-changers). Now you can do all that on a budget PAYG phone, everything else up the price scale is all about schoolyard GHz/MB/Pixel bragging than radically improving core usability.

But at least MS went back to the drawing board with WP7 and dared to do something different and task efficient - which is evident as soon as you first use it.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
you answered your own question. I don't care about cloud because it relies on a data connection.

there are plenty of phoNes that come with 16g + s card or massive amounts of internal storage. No giving us that choice is not our loss, but theirs.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] morpheus1982:
Did I spell a mans name lol. Thought it didn't look right.
[Windows Phone 7 General] MartyLK:
That's the Lane on the other side of town. In the other version of Superman ;)
[Windows Phone 7 General] drokkon:
Wow, great point! It never really clicked, but before my Dad got his Aria, all he could talk about was how he was "getting an HTC." Sure, I loved my HTC Tilt and told him how great it was, but when WP7 came along, I happily jumped to Samsung, realizing that it was the OS and hardware features that were important. You're right: I think the less techy someone is, the more likely they are to be OS agnostic and be drawn to a brand (probably conditioned to do so since the iPhone is one and the same). My wife definitely made mention that her Samsung Focus was the same brand as her previous phone, a Samsung feature phone, but she at least knew WHY she wanted WP7, and I explained to her why the Focus was probably her best choice (she picked it over the HTC and LG).

True enough. Back then, people would say "you paid $300 for a PHONE?" We have Android to thank for opening up smartphones to the masses. It's probably more cost effective to toss Android onto a cheap feature phone at this point than to develop a proprietary UI on a per-phone basis. :) I s'pose I do miss the days when people were like, "your phone can do WHAT?!?"

---------- Post added at 09:30 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:15 AM ----------

Totally agree. I always thought they should leverage all of their brands into the phone, maybe ending with Windows. In other words, a Live Tile next to the word "phone" that swipes from "X-Box" to "Zune" to "Office" to "Windows." It IS the X-Box Phone, the Zune Phone, the Office Phone, the Windows Phone. It would be a logical transition from those crappy WM6.5 commercials right there at the end...

One of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0

I was leery of the locked down OS too, but I'm 100% on-board now. WP7 gave me my life back. :D

The capacitive buttons have always been my biggest pet peeve too. Honestly, how many times have you handed your phone to mom or GRANDMA, and their face looks all strange. You lean over to see why they're not smiling at the baby video you were trying to show them, and it's because they're staring at the Bing photo, having pressed the search button as you were handing it to them.
[Windows Phone 7 General] hwangeruk:
The name is dreadful: Windows Phone 7

Compare:

iPhone : Little Apple Icon

Android : Little Robot Icon

Blackberry : Silly flag (Blackberry "name" is the key)

Windows Phone 7 (or is it 7.5, or Mango) : What is the logo?

The name, and the logo are just wrong, so wrong.

Windows Phone 7 has suffered from Microsoft stupidity and dogmatically trying to "link" the Windows Desktop familiarity and experience. It doesn't work.

Xbox works in the console market with "linking" to Windows in a marketing sense.

The phone shouldn't either.

They should have come up with a catchy, standout, new, PHONE focused "brand". Instead, they bodged it up. Thank crikey the OS itself is stellar.

I'd love to go over there and "do a Steve Jobs" on them. Beat some execs round the head. :)
[Windows Phone 7 General] Aphasaic2002:
The WP7 logo is the same as the Microsoft logo.

I agree they should have tried to separate the brand more. The Xbox 360 won it's own branding and became "cool" by distancing itself from MS; you don't think of your windows pc when you play xbox (well i don't either).

Really though, they should have tried to distance themselves from the old windows mobile OS. Most people seem to assume that WP7 is a continuation from WM6.5, and why wouldn't they? Only geeks know there was an OS re-write. Should have been a full re-branding done, but too late now.
[Windows Phone 7 General] species5618w:
I actually think it's very important that MS kept the Windows name. Next year, we will have Windows 8 on PC, Windows 8 Metro on ARM and WP8 on phones. It creates a uniformed platform for developers and consumers.
[Windows Phone 7 General] nicksti:
Remember when some pundits claimed HD-DVD was going to have the leg up on Blu Ray because people were familiar with the DVD and HD name and Blu Ray lacked this familiarity. Boy were they wrong.

We are overthinking this. By a longshot.

You just finished exercising. You have your Gatorade in your hand and someone comes up to you are says "here drink this instead." It looks different. You ask some questions:

"Will it taste better than my Gatorade?" No, but after a few updates it will.

"Will it quench my thirst better than my Gatorade?" No, but after a few updates it will.

I know it is a silly little scenario that is wrought with issues, but the point I am trying to make is the consumer is unlikely to change his/her behaviour unless compelled to do so. Windows Phone currently does not compel the average smartphone owner to make the switch. Not yet.
[Windows Phone 7 General] rabbbit:
good idea

good ideagood ideagood ideagood ideagood idea
[Windows Phone 7 General] anseio:
I've been going into the AT&T store in downtown Seattle a lot lately, to check out the Android phones. Yesterday, I went in and checked out each of the WP7 phones. One of them was still on build 7004 and the others, whate still on NoDo.

Seriously, what's the effing point of having a phone for sale if it's so poorly represented. You can't sell a WP7 device on 7004 and expect someone to love it. You can't even do that with NoDo in contrast to the major advance that is Mango.

I had some free time last night while in U-Village, so I stopped into the MSFT store, directly across from the very busy Apple store. So many pretty WP7 phones all running Mango. What was specially nice was the excitement of the employee I was talking to when I was showing off my HTC HD2 and how it dual boots between Mango and American Android.

Those at the cell phones stores could give a rats a$$ about having to actually work to sell a product. I hope that the Nokia launch in the US will have the same massive marketing push that it's going to have in the rest of the world.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Droidcyborg:
Im using android at the moment but always go back to my HD7 that I won from t-mobilee during a competion of who could sell more of the device and no one really pushed it so I easily won, I have several friends that work for other wireless carriers and they dont know much of wp7 or care to learn so they dont sell it. I love how its unique and not cluttered, it has exclusive features like x-box and microsoft office but still no skype and other games like words with friends getting angry birds is a win but just needs more time for full app support but I believe wp7 has great potential its not as fragmented as android and not the dictatorship like apple but not having wifi hot spot hurts me that why I have to go back to my android.
[Windows Phone 7 General] JVH3:
Do you live in a hole with no WiFi access?

You don't need a data plan to sync with Sky Drive if you keep data shut off but only use WiFi for your internet access.

But, seriously, get a data plan. It's only about $25 a month. Without a dataplan you will not ever really experience the true benefits that any of the platforms bring, since you will be bound to WiFi and not able to really do any modern functions on the go virtually anywhere.

The vast majority of users never swap out a SD card during the entire ownership of a phone. Most exceptions are when moving from one phone to another. It is the extreme minority that ever switch to a different card, because one is full. I have yet to personally know anyone that swaps out SD cards. Any photographer would get a real camera, since no phone's camera is anywhere even near high end.

With my AT&T Fuze and Tilt 2, I only had a 4GB SD card and never had a problem. You just transfer data to your computer when or if it fills up. In my case, it was typically ROM images that filled it up.

With my LG Quantum, I have not missed being able to remove the storage, since it has 16 GB of space.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
I just had to go to the website (jn the phones browser) to set something to recur weekly on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Usability failures like that doesn't help.

Metro is cute but I dread having to use a combo box control on this phone, too :-(

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] anseio:
I agree, the calendar is lagging in development. I love love love the Business Calendar app for Android. I hope that the WP7 month view won't be such a waste in the longrun.
[Windows Phone 7 General] feygor:
I'll be honest, i'm reserving judgement on windows 8. The whole thing seems to good to be true. If we could run full operating systems on tiny ARM processors, we would have done it by now. I know they have shown demos of the product, but all of the demos have been on uber-equipped tablets with 4gb of ram and unbelievable graphics capabilities. Your average £300 ($500) tablet will not run windows smoothly.

Anyway i'm not saying that windows 8 will be a fail, i'm just saying, given the track record, i'm gonna be pessimistic about it release.
[Windows Phone 7 General] ohgood:
Moving an entire phones contents (ala nandroid full image) is a good example of why swapping sdcards is a good thing. Breaking a phone, swapping the sdcard to a new phone and having an identical device as before (including ALL SETTINGS AND SMS/HISTORY ETC is a very nice thing indeed.

Would any photographer buy a camera that didn't allow for swapping out a larger/faster sdcard ?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Swapping cards is a good thing but there are caveats. Ever wondered why Nexus One won't get ICS? Among other things, there's not enough space in the system partition. And it's tricky to resize it because you don't know how much space is used up by user's apps. Also, SD cards are slower than NAND flash. And their quality is inconsistent (mostly they are crappy). So yes, it's a big convenience. But it's not free.

That being said, current offerings by WP7 OEMs are hugely disappointing in terms of built in flash sizes.
[Windows Phone 7 General] anseio:
Why would any photographer by a smart phone for the sake of photography?
[Windows Phone 7 General] lumpaywk:
This whole sd card thing is getting ott. The reason you cant swap out sd cards is because the way it formats them so even if you did take it out put it in a new wp7 it wouldnt work.

The reason for formating it this way is speed and at the end of the day i think it was the right choice. As stated above bar say about 5% of users that are super users how many ppl ever swap out there cards? I agree the batch of phones need more built in and i am quite shocked the L800 didnt have more but i bet once it gets to the us it will have 32gb at least.

As for backups isnt it better to backup your phone to your pc then backup your pc as in a lot of cases when a phone goes pete tong so to does the card ie loseing your phone data coruption etc.

As for storage if you have that many apps to fill it ask yourself do i really use all these? and pics do you really look at them all on your phone or could they go to the skydrive or pc? Music is the big one but as i always say get an mp3 player and save your phones battery.

So in summary sdcard = margenal benefit - massive speed and reliability issues

if the l800 had 32/64gb it would be untouchable as it is i will still shoot my mum in the face for one and tbh most of us still have 6 months left on our contract anyways i know i do and thats with just an 18month one i am having to buy out so if you hold onto your device till then you WILL have 32/64gb nokia handsets. This is just the start.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Ineedtoys:
Agree, it was a kick in the ribs when Alex from WebIS said they wouldn't be doing Pocket Informant. That would have won over a whole load of ex-WM professional users. But it's not his fault that MS don't (yet) provide the necessary APIs to read and insert calendar and task records.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Can't set recurring tasks, either =(

Lol @ person above. I forgot some people live in a world where the atmosphere is composed of WiFi signals. My bad, guy.

T-mobile has terrible service right now with full 3g I can't even hit 1mbps download nevermind decently stream YouTube it even slacker...

And you want me to depend on the cloud?

I'm just gonna ignore you because I don't want to asphyxiate myself with laughter at the response (which I will not read).

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Additionally, the speed of the sd card isn't the issue. My vibrant had as much internal storage ad my HD7 that id just ad fast as typical NAND storage. Any data that needs to be there can simply be put there, however I can still put my 32gb card in there to hold all of my media and saw recorded videos and camera images there by default.

Swapping is not an issue because apps default to writing their setting data to internal storage, no the external sd which is simply mounted as a subfolder of the internal storage.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] nicksti:
I know I must sound like a broken record, but I never understand which angle is being argued.

Are people on this board complaining about the lack of SD card and the small built in flash because it is not enough for them, or they believe it is unacceptable for a phone period?

Because I keep having to mention iPhone 8GB 3GS and its massive sales and the iPhone 4 and 4S 16GB and its massive sales. I understand that perspective usually is personal, but some comments do seem to suggest the manufacturer just should not be making 16GB no SD card phones, when clearly everyone wishes they sold as many 16GB phones as Apple.

Edit:

Here is a website showing the iPhone 4S 16GB model selling out. Claims 32GB and 64GB are still available. Seriously guys, the world is a pretty big place outside of here and our living rooms. Link
[Windows Phone 7 General] Ineedtoys:
I admire your tenacity. Especially with Board Express. What an appallingly bad piece of software that is.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
I don't even want to start with board express. I've taken to using TapaTalk on my touch but Verizon is taking forever to get my internet hooked up... Once that's some, I'll go back to using that device.

Not buying any paid WP apps again until the dev display they're willing to actually support the platform, not just get in early to make a quick buck and forget about it. I don't think any have, not even Microsoft keeps their apps and Xbox Live branded games updated. Well, except MSN Videos or whatever that crap is called...

The TapaTalk people need to make their own app,imo. This app is terrible.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Oh, and ill be done with T-Mobile as soon as I find a good device not on their network. I just moved 1300+ miles so it's lower on priorities, but I was in the carrier stores the other day playing around. I tend to like to spend a few weeks playing with phones in the stores before I make a purchase. I like to be more informed, unlike it seems the majority of people who argue on this forum.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] Ineedtoys:
Plenty of good regularly updated apps to make up for that though, e.g. Wonder Reader, Fuse, Skymap, SqueezeRemote, Media Buddy, ShopSavvy. Board Express is singularly the worst example you can find, so don't judge the platfrom just on that. Appflow is quite good for seeing what's trending in the marketplace.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
ShopSavvy is useless with Goggles or Bing Vision so I could care less for it. I'm talking about the apps I have paid for. Support on this platform is terrible. I use 3 OSes daily. I see the disparity maybe you aren't clued in yet.

I'm not an appholic. I don't need trends. I get what I want and use that. Especially with this vertical, non-configurable app list.

Verizon hooked my Internet up today so I won't have to bear using that app anymore, thank God.
[Windows Phone 7 General] feygor:
Lumpaywk is spot on there, those who have tried to upgrade their phone will have found that it is simply a microSD card hidden within the device. The reason it is hidden and not upgradable is for a few reasons, they all contribute to making the device faster.

The main reason is so that all of the files are stored in one place, system files, apps, messages, contact etc, having 2 different places to install programs caused many problems in WM6.5, one such being what happens if an app is installed on an sd card and you eject it.

The second reason is inconsistency and unreliability. So they let you swap the card for a bigger one, everyone rushes on ebay and buys a class 10 32gb microSDHC that's described as 'genuine' 'reliable' 'compatible with windows phones' and all the other taglines. They get it to find either it is low quality, it isn't actually 32gb, it's actually a class 2, or all of the above. Most people don't run a benchmark on their purchased card, they put it in the phone and experience crashes, slowness and data loss. They blame the phone.

The next reason is the format. Consider most SD cards to be using a simple FAT format. It's slow but you can yank it at any point during a data transfer and you lose nothing (apart from half transferred files). To speed things up, the card is formatted in a much more efficient file system, similar to NTFS. The speed sacrifices the stability, and yanking the card without safely removing it can cause huge data loss, and in worst case scenarios damage the file system. Simple solution, make the card non removable.

So there are the factors that contribute to the decision to have a 'non-removable storage'. The last question is why don't they do 16gb or 32gb models of the phones? My guess is again to keep a standardised speed (the bigger the card, the slower the read speed is, just because there is more to read). I don't think we'd notice a huge difference in speed by upgrading to a 16gb, but who knows. If there is anyone who has put a 16gb card in their phone, please let me know, how does it compare to the speed of standard card?

Hopefully 16gb model will be released in the future, but at the moment I stick with keeping about 4gb of music and using things like Zune pass and Last fm if I want something new...
[Windows Phone 7 General] kotaro_14:
Maybe Windows 8.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
We don't need micro SD for apps. We need it for data, cause a 16g phone really only has about 14.5g free after formatting and a bit over 12gb with the OS and apps on it. Add music, videos, pictures, email attachments, PDFs, kindle books, large games (can be 200+ Mb for so.e games) and hug apps like navigon and the low storage become a show stopper. Nevermind every other app an its data...

I don't know why this simple fact is taking so long to sink in with you people. Android phones have 2-4+ GB of app space and ios devices pool everything together but come with up to 64 GB capacity. The only reason why people installed apps to sd on wm and older android devices is because they typically came with 256-512mb roms which left hardly any space with the os and bloat installed on that that to install applications. The hd2 had the largest rom and it wad Only 1 GB - and iirc that was only the T-Mobile US variant...

alSo, a phone with 512 Mb ram only really has ~384 Mb or less to the system since the device allocates typically 128 Mb for the GPU, just like integrated graphics on a PC. That is why some HTC phones have 576 Mb RAM, which leaves 448 available to the system/apps. hD2 and HD7 being obvious examples, but they did this for some of their android phones as well.

Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
[Windows Phone 7 General] anseio:
Correct, the HD2 - TMOUS has 1GB ROM. I'm making the trade-off on that though and swapping out my 1GB ROM for AT&T 3G data speeds. I'm picking up my Telstra HD2 from the post office tomorrow and shipping my TMOUS to Belgium next week.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Ineedtoys:
Here's a clue for you - all but 1 of the apps I listed have been paid for, work fine, and receive good developer support. I also use most OS' daily - and there is far more useless cr*p on App Store and Market than on Marketplace.

I offered AppFlow as a suggestion to see what apps were being released or recently updated (especially for Mango) and getting good reviews. Seems nothing's going to please you no matter how people try to help. Makes you wonder why you are hangiong round in a WP7 forum if you hate it, and the hardware so much.
[Windows Phone 7 General] feygor:
I know the space is disappointing on wp7, but I find the performance to be a fair trade off. Even high spec android devices crash if you ask too much of them. Android altogether is an unstable OS, partly due to the fact it sin't locked down like iOS and WP7. iPhones have very very expensive hardware, yet they still crash and take much longer to perform basic tasks than wp7.

There are a wide range of phones on the market to suit your needs. I like WP7, not sure if my next phone will be a WP, or whether i'll try something new, but where as iOS has huge storage, WP7 is faster doing everything, even starting up, has anyone noticed how quick it switches on, loads games etc, against an iPhone you can practically open up messaging, send a message and quite before the iPhone manages to launch it's messaging app, even more so if you have a bigger iPhone.

If you're patient and would prefer the space, WP7 isn't for you. Simple.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vetvito:
^ maybe starting up, but that's it.
[Windows Phone 7 General] N8ter:
Everything has more storage. Android, iOS, winmo, Symbian. It's not about one specific platform and it's not about one being better than another. It's about the sad state of internal storage on most of these phones. They achieve this mostly via large NAND storage or ad card support.

The whole wp7 isn't for you is becoming a bit ridiculous, btw :)