I have done the same for the 3gs. I have been a big fan of WM for years but it just has not moved on and is not coherent in the way OS 3 is. Yes it has annoyances but way less than WM.
Sadly I feel like i backed the wrong horse and i wont be going back there
I'm just about to join you there. I've loved my MM phones, but the focus (pun intended) on tiny, low resolution screens has made them less and less useful to me.
Even apps that do assume finger presses under WM still present data and messages in a tiny font. After using my iPod Touch for 6 months, I'm sold on the value of a great UI and a design that does not just try to replicate a desktop experience on a tiny, unreadable screen.
I hold the Canadian telecom providers partially to blame. They refuse to offer the VGA devices and often offer only one choice for WM pro. That's just not going to meet my needs for mobile computing. Add to the fact that WM users are wedged into matching tiny data plans (30MB per month) when iPhone users get GIGs of data for the same price.
I've been putting this off for a long time, but the people who make money off all this technology and services have pretty much forced me into moving away from Microsoft.
MS should ditch the current WM entirely and make a brand new WM OS from the ground up.
They're building on top of a dated platform that could do with a healthy reboot. There's nothing wrong with that. It's sort of like how windows would probably run way better if they wrote that from the ground up and left all compatibility up to a virtual machine.
Let WM 2011 be a completely new OS. Not just a pretty face over the same thing. Do what Palm did. New OS that also has an emulator for all old apps.
Keep it flexible and open so that companies like HTC can customize it as much as they can an Android device.
MS has the resources to pull this off, and do it well. I hope they do.
I would love to see 5 smartphone OSes out there that all offer their own experience. And all of them being worthy contenders.
MS should ditch the current WM entirely and make a brand new WM OS from the ground up. ... Let WM 2011 be a completely new OS. Not just a pretty face over the same thing.
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I don't know if you are a developer or not, but if you aren't and are mainly a user of the phones, then it's not clear to me why you believe Microsoft needs to ditch the current OS? Isn't what you care about really just the "user experience," ie, how you interact with the device?
As a part-time developer, who has written multiple Windows Mobile applications, I know that the Windows Mobile operating system has a rich, deep set of APIs that can be programmed against. There really is little reason to dump all of that infrastructure -- the functionality would have to be recreated anyway.
I totally agree, however, that Microsoft needs to radically transform how the user interacts with the phone. But for the most part, that is, in fact a "pretty face" over the existing OS. HTC demonstrates this point most effectively.
I don't think we are yet at the point of the HTC UI being a threat. Not to undermind the importance of a good UI but for now it is only an interface and by itself not a significant thread to the WM space. UI frameworks that abstract the underlying operating system away are not a new thing (thinking of Java Swing, and Qt).
IMO the bigger threat would be technologies that can be used to both provide a UI and envelope functionality such as Flash. As the OS becomes further abstracted it becomes easier to make a move from one OS to another while minimizine (if not eliminating) the amount of code that would need to be changed in an application to make it compatible with another platform
Microsoft has the ability to make such frameworks too (Silverlight for one, though portions of the .Net framework have been ported to other operating systems too). When Silverlight gets ported to Symbian and if it gets ported to Android then the playing field could change from being WM vs Andoid vs Symbian vs iPhone to Flash vs Silverlight vs iPhone for general purpose applications.
What you're writing here is a very interesting thought. Of indeed apps and UI becomes free from the OS then we'll see some real performance differences.
The fun part is that all these mobile devices run more or less the same cpu, carry similar gfx- and additional chips (like gps etc...). In fact look at the new spur of Samsung devices. They're basicly the same device with another OS/UI combi (S8000/i8000). Yet the S8000 is blindingly fast. So would that mean that we might be able to buy e.g. a HTC Diamond II and remove WM6/7 and install Android on it so that basicly becomes an HTC Magic? Like you're installing Linux on your Dell PC which came pre-installed with Vista. This is really interesting.
By then the site better changes it's name? PocketDevicesThoughts perhaps.
Also if I look at the sales o/t LG Cookie and Samsung Star which both run proprietary OS and are feature packed devices with touch screens then it's clear that M$ HAS to wake up. There is a shift that future (handheld) computing/coms devices will be ARM-powered with ARM-compatible OS's. The best (best performance/price ratio) will win.
Anyway the problem is not only M$. Their partners make dumbass decisisions as well. HTC is making catastrophical mistakes with their latest devices by removing features instead of enhancing the machines. E.g. Touch diamond... no flash, Touch pro... keyboard and LED flash. Sure that LED is more usefull as small lamp then an actual flash. But I use that lamp more often than taking pictures. The Daimond II and Pro II... NO LED flash?!?! WTF. If you look at even their biggest competitor the Samsung Omnia. Samsung not only provides a flash on all recent devices. In the case o/t Omnia you can even assing a button to fire up the lamp.
I think that in the case of HTC. They're more concentrated on their Touchflo and using large resolution displays while Samsung go for the best in overal functionality.
BTW. I recently played with that HTC magic in a store and I was surprised that that device has practically no lag compared to HTC Diamond HD. But again it has no LED lamp which I require. (For god's sake, even 99 USD dumb phones from Sony Erricsson can use the LED-light as a lamp).
I pretty much agree with the posters. Microsoft has completely abdicated their role in developing a fresh user interface that keeps up with the times. HTC, being an enterprising (and hungry) mobile phone vendor, decided to offer innovation in areas that Microsoft either would or could not. At least HTC appears to be considering what consumers want.
I would agree that Microsoft dropped the ball on WM, but would otherwise disagree when Paschott says,
Until Windows Mobile 7 comes out, I will reserve judgement on whether or not they are "frantically" doing anything. There has been much heat on WM7 but so far, no light -- Zune HD previews notwithstanding.
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I became exasperated with MS when they seemed never to come up with a fix for MS Reader. I think of all the money I spent for ebooks and since WM 5 have been able to read them.
You can also wonder. Why should M$ be responsible for the UI? Let M$ provide the ground-work (core OS) and let others create their own UI. It seems that both HTC (TouchFlow), LG (S-Class) and Samsung (TouchWiz) are doing a fine job. Every new generation of devices has (albeit small) UI improvements without M$ intervention.
I'm beginning to think that perhaps it's better to let M$ just create the core OS. Let the third parties create their own UI perhaps even an Open source UI which can run on top of M$ CE (or whatever it's called these days). Ofcourse then you can also wonder why we just shouldn't ditch M$ altogether and just go for Android (which is fully open source).
You can also wonder. Why should M$ be responsible for the UI? Let M$ provide the ground-work (core OS) and let others create their own UI. It seems that both HTC (TouchFlow), LG (S-Class) and Samsung (TouchWiz) are doing a fine job. Every new generation of devices has (albeit small) UI improvements without M$ intervention.
It makes for a highly fragmented developer experience, however. Having one cohesive UI is critical, even moreso on mobile devices than desktops with their limited screen real estate and specialized input methods, when you want to have third-party apps. Think of the UNIX UI situation (i.e., GNOME, KDE, and many others) as applied to mobile devices.
The UI runs on the OS. Ever noticed the overhaul HTC did with their Touch Flo 3D? Still WM 6.1 or 6.5, but different UI.
Exactly my point the UI runs ON the OS, so the UI IS NOT the OS (in a lot of ways)...
As you said HTC replaced a large aspect of the UI without replacing the OS...
The point is, to me, not everyone wants the same UI (except iphone users) and so one strength of WM (and android) is that the vendors can make their own UI. So within the framework of the one OS you can still have many different UIs to suit different people.. Then you can look at freeware apps like fingersuite that makes even more UI changes at a lower level (something I think HTC should pick up on to make their UI more complete)...
Really MS don't need to change all that much, the home screen is being looked after by the vendors and 3rd party tools, and everyone wants it to look different anyway. MS just need to pick up some minor changes like fingersuite to make popup boxes and menus more finger friendly and more kinetic scrolling on all text and list boxes etc like is offered by ftouchsl and they would have covered a hell of a lot of the gap (notice 3rd party apps already provide these UI changes, something Apple for example would never allow as they assume everyone wants the same device. Which I conceed it seems many do at the moment, but that will wear off eventually).
Sleeping
What? are you kidding me? UI does NOT equal OS...
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