[HD2 General] eaglesteve:
Some random thoughts on Window Phone 7 Series.

As I understand it, we're still about 10 months away from seeing WP7S. 10 months is a long time when we're talking about Smartphone technology, which is extremely competitive and dynamic, so a lot could change between now and then. The HD2 hardware could feel so outdated by then that many of you would no doubt want to have a much more powerful hardware anyway, so you might not be really that much concerned with whether HD2 would get a free WP7S upgrade at that time, although it appears as a important issue at this moment.

What is being demonstrated here is only a beta, so there is no need to be concernd with the seeminly laggy performance seen on the videos - yet, until the more polished final released is available for closer re-examination.

As to customizability and multitasking, I again think that it is pre-matured to conclude at this stage. I initially thought that iPhone lack customizabilty and that it can't do multitasking, but later discovered that it is not the case at all. So, as long as MS is not going all out to block "jailbreaking" (to borrow the iPhone world's terminology), I'm sure it would be just a matter of time when some bright minds here come up with a way to multitask and customise the device. I too think that it is a silly design idea to have such hugh tiles which is not a problem if you have only 10 to 20 tiles but not when you have a few hundreds. Having to swipe swipe swipe to get to the tile, and with each page appearing as slow as a power point presenation transition is not going to be acceptable for most people after a while, I suspect. You need a way to organise the potentially a hundred or two hundreds of tiles into category, to be able to display all category on one page, and quickly jump to all the tiles belonging to that category, like what iPhone users could do with the Overboard tweaks. The ability to show all running applications on one screen and quickly switch to them is another critical element of user experience, and I expect that to become available by some third party at least.

I do not believe that MS will lock out the likes of Opera browser on the new OS. MS is unlikely to be able to incorporate every single features and functions in the browser, and there would be demand for third party software to fill the void. Be it gesture based navigation, cleaner full screen browsing, privacy browsing, or whatever. It just makes perfect sense that users be allowed to change the default browsers. If it is not possible in the stock OS, then a hacked version would make it possible.

I hope 9 months is enough for developers (assuming they get they developement kits next month) to push through enough applications to the Zune marketplace before the actual launch. Hope to see the likes of TomTom, Copilots, iGO, Garmin, available for sales at that time. Hope to see some decent camera and photo editing applications (which is so lacking in WM6.5 platform). Yes, there should be good weather programs, google readers programs, dictionaries, eBook readers, Bible readers, foreign language assistants programs, specialised tour guides applications, decent financial budgeting and accounting applications, password applications, conversion utilities, internet tethering utilities, device to device file sharing utilities, GPRS Data Usage monitoring utilities, Voice over IP applications, Golf Scoring/handicaping/tournament applications, golf rules book quick reference applications, sport results applications, medical applications, office applications with functionalities much deeper than what MS provides, document scanning/PDF document creation applications, business card readers, sophisticated calculators, etc, etc. Obviously this is not something that can happen overnight. Will it take a year? Two years? For many of us, these applications are must haves. We would never buy a phone that does not have these applications which are so much part of us by now. So, would you have gone over to Android by then? Would you have continued with iPhone? Or would you move over regardless of not having these features and functions for the initial few years?

What would Android and iPhone bring to the table in their coming release is also another hugh issue. Even if WP7S looks impressive to some of us now (it is quite impressive to me, don't know about you), will it still be impressive by the time it is actually released? By then, competitions would have moved on again, no doubt about that. It is so dynamic, so any decision made after watching the videos is likely to require re-evaluation all over again by then, IMO.

All I can say it, I'm extremely excited by this release for one reason - I like the intense competition that Android and MS brings to iPhone. So far, every devices that have been touted as iPhone killers have failed to really deliver. They fail either because they are full of bugs and/or unstable, because the UI sucks, or because there's no decent applications. Let's see how WP7S performs in these areas later.

The smooth operations, speed, reliabilty, excellent UI, application store, ability to jailbreak, hugh investments already made on my couple hundred of applications are factors that make me hesitate to leave iPhone. Howeve, if Apple does not significantly upgrade the hardware to higher resolution camera, larger screen, and much faster processor, and if future firmware becomes unjailbreakable and features such as multitasking/customization are not incorporated in the stock firmware, then I would certainly be moving to HTC Supersonic for a couple of years, then I would look at where WP7S is by then and consider coming back to microsoft's mobile platform.