My cell phone contract expires in a couple weeks and I was all set to buy an iPhone.
The iPhone had started to take off when I got my current phone / contract but at that the time Microsoft paid for a significant portion of my phone bill so staying with a Windows powered phone was appropriate (I like to be a good team player.)
Budget tightening as changed the expense policy and now Microsoft’s contribution to my cell phone expenses is limited to $35.
So, I figured I’d get an iPhone, it’s what all the cool geeks have.
Plus, my Windows phone from T-Mobile is falling apart, which matters little since it’s never really worded all that well any way.
Windows Mobile 6 wasn’t a real home run in comparison.
There have been a number of reasons to prefer the iPhone.
- Its Cooler
- Multi Touch UI.
- Best phone media experience.
- The App Store with TONS of applications.
- Huge 3rd party hardware market.
- Windows mobile apps never seem to be stable enough.
Everyone knows that Apple’s iPhone is the bomb, right ?
Well, today at MIX “The Gu” introduced then Windows Phone 7.
Yea, I know, I work for Microsoft but if you think THAT means I’ll toe the party line than you must be new to reading my blog.
But as a consumer of phones and a developer there is much in Windows Phone 7 to interfere with my decision to move to the iPhone.
Though the Windows Phone 7 is not “in my hands” yet and I’m talking about preview technology, lets consider what some of those this are.
- The User Experience – there is nothing wrong with the iPhone user experience but the Win Phone 7’s UE appeals to me because it’s not just a slick interface, it seems to be designed and optimized for phone specific use from little things like like the quick one touch “I’ll be late to this meeting” feature to built in Social Networking functionality.
- Hardware standards. Microsoft has set detailed specs for the venders who are implementing the hardware. Screeen dimensions, multi-touch, etc will all be standard across devices making development of applications that will work on all devices much easier.
- Zune features ! – Though perhaps not as neuvo-cool as latest generation iPods, I’ve always felt that for full media experiences the Zune was the best device on the market. Win Phone 7 has a Zune-Like Media Experience.
- xBox Live – Win Phone 7 supports XNA. This means that you can use the same development technology for games development as that which is used for the xBox. In fact you can play games on the Win Phone 7 that are xBox Live aware.
- Silverlight 4 !!!!!!! (That’s right the SAME technology stack that was just used to stream and deliver the winter Olympics to millions of sports fans.)
As a developer myself, Silverlight 4 is HUGE !!
The Silverlight 4 PHONE developer experience is the same as any other Silverlight 4 experience. That means you use Visual Studio and C# or Visual Basic to do your development. (And we’ve announced FREE versions of our development tools for Windows Phone 7 Application Development.)
That means like a MILLION developers are already out there who can start with the technology that they already know to build Phone 7 Applications. And, Visual Studio, .NET, and C#/VB will prove to be move productive than previous phone development paradigms (including Microsoft’s)
…. and there will be apps !!!
Ebay announced a program by which developers will be able to sell and distribute Windows Phone 7 applications on eBay. And, I suspect eBay won’t be the only on line Windows Phone 7 application store to appear.
So, as a consumer, the only question left to be answered when comparing the iPhone to Windows Phone 7 is 3rd party hardware, and I predict that the 3rd party hardware offerings will be plentiful and will start becoming available about the same time the actual phones start hitting the street.
But, I’m not just a phone consumer, I’m a developer.
I dabbled in in Windows CE/CF style phone development and phone development for the iPhone but found both to be too “nitty” for my casual use.
Now though, I can use the same tools that I develop with every day to build apps that I (and hopefully YOU) really want on my phone.
Since it’s .NET I get a network stack so I can code any feature that I like interfacing with Twitter, Facebook, etc.. Since it’s Silverlight I get XAML based UI and the richest media experience on the web.
And THAT seals the deal for me.
Not the only question is – how soon can I get my hands on a couple of them.
Thankfully, the new dev tools come with a complete emulator so I can start building those applications NOW and deploy them as soon as I get my Windows Phone 7 in my geeky little hands.
I already have an iPhone 3G and my contract with AT&T ends in July. I live in the Northern VA (Washington, DC) area and have been plagued by the dropped call problems that most other iPhone users seem to have everywhere else. I’ve heard from people who work for AT&T that it’s actually a hardware problem on the phone and not a network issue, but either way, I don’t see myself re-upping my current contract. I’ve been thinking about switching back to Verizon, but I really like the iPhone experience (minus the dropped calls). WP7S sounds pretty cool, but I won’t know how much I like it until I get my hands on one. But by then I will have already moved on to my next phone since WP7S won’t be out till "the holidays".
RE: I was going to get an iPhone, BUT ……..
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I have high hopes for Windows Phone 7! My contract ended in Feb and had plans to buy a Droid, but after testing the Droid for a few days (no Hulu). I am sticking with my old phone till Microsoft launches. Now I guess I better plan on adding a Zune this year as well.
Good choice – I can’t wait to get rid of my iPhone, hopefully replacing it with a "Windows Phone 7".
Some of the Apps on the iPhone are nice, but as an actual phone, it’s probably the worst phone I’ve ever owned. Poor build quality (my 3GS has been replaced 3 times in 7-8 months), poor call quality, dropped calls, annoying loud interference noises/buzzing while on calls, etc.
I hear that MS are going to approving (and therefore potentially censoring) every app that hits the app store just like Apple do.
This is a very dangerous path for the computing industry to be going down and as a developer I could never support such a model. The internet is great because it is open and because anybody can publish a website and mobile phone app stores should be no different.
I’ll be sticking with Android for now, Google seem to allow you to install anything you want on the device YOU have paid for (just like MS have done with Windows since the beginning) and I’ll not be changing my mind while Apple and MS continue to go down that path.
Jon – what does "I hear" mean. Is there any basis for such a rumor?
as long as the "phone" end of it holds up as well as previous mobile versions, i look forward to the UI changes and increased competition to the iPhone in the consumer marketplace. I might be tempted to drop infrastructure and bond with some silverlight programming for a bit. I think you would be able to install anything you buy (off the web or with active sync), but an app store service should be controlled if they are distributing the software.
Joe, Confirmation from Microsoft…
http://www.engadget.com/…/confirmed-marke
So, Apple have proved that if they want to suddenly delete your application, they can. If it conflicts with their "core functionality" (e.g. business interests) then they’ll just disapprove it, as Google found out with their Voice app. Oh, and let’s not forget that a few weeks ago Apple decided they would remove every app they considered to be pornographic. Who are they to decide whether I should be able to look at lovely naked ladies or not?
Unfortunately, Microsoft have decided to go down the same path of approving every app against a set of guidelines before publishing it.
Can you imagine if Microsoft insisted on approving every piece of software before allowing you to run it on your PC? Seriously, we need to show Apple/MS that we’re not prepared to let this happen, and we start by not buying their phones.
// Rant over
Also, as an aside, no multitasking…
http://bit.ly/dczex1
Really can’t see why anybody would choose a Win7 phone over an Android.
Hey Jon – thanks for the link,
My impression is that the MS App Store will not be the only way to buy phone apps, just the only way endoursed/supported by Microsoft.
I guess we’ll have to see if MSFT does a better job with the polotics than Apple has.
I think there is a difference between "apps Apple does like" and apps that create a liabiity for them (as pornographoc apps might.)
Which Android Phone(s) do you recomend and were to you get apps for them ?
"My impression is that the MS App Store will not be the only way to buy phone apps" …. I hope so, if that’s the case then I take it all back
The phone I have is an HTC Magic, but I think it’s called something else in the US. It’s fairly old now so I’m looking at both the Sony X10 and the HTC Desire (which is basically an unbranded Nexus One), mainly because they both have very large screen resolutions which should be great for browsing.
I get all my apps through the Android Marketplace, which AFAIK doesn’t suffer from the same draconian censorship process.
Oh, apparently it gets worse.
http://www.engadget.com/…/windows-phone-m
I’d urge anybody who cares about the future of computing to take a stand against this by boycotting iphone/ipad/windows phone phones.
I don’t want to sound all paranoid conspiracy theorist but if you think this kind of censorship is going to stop at phones then take a look at the iPad and ask yourself where this is all heading…
Seriously? You think the iPhone’s cool? I think there are a boat load of phones cooler than the iPhone.
That said, SL3 + partial SL4 and XNA is a gamebreaker for me…now if only there was a way to limit who could buy my software off the app store so that I can keep corporate things internal, there’d be no looking back…and if there is some looking back, I do believe I’ll be buying one of these gizmos when they’re out
You bought a zune, ’nuff said.
RE: I was going to get an iPhone, BUT ……..
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I’m looking forward to Windows Phone 7 but what I’m interested in most is the fact that you can already use C# and .NET to program for the iPhone via MonoTouch and their Android stack is shaping up nicely so by the time Microsoft actually releases WP7, you will be able to develop for all three platforms using the exact same back-end via .NET. Of course in all cases you will want to use the native tools for UI to ensure your apps fit well on each platform but the base code can all be the same. These are really exciting times
I have an iPhone 3G and I like it but, I’m not a fan of Objective-C, Cocoa or XCode. Having to deal about "retain counts" is lame. I’d much rather be able to use Silverlight, C# and Visual Studio to develop for my phone.
I recently chose the 3GS as part of a trade-in for a new contract. Programming takes some getting use to, but gets easier once things have sunk in. Joe, I suggest you put up an app in the AppStore, to get a personal take on iPhone development, assuming you’ve not studied at it already. This way, the comparison with WP7 could be more meaningful. Not having touched .NET for some time, I cannot claim familiar ground when I do get my hands on a WP7 phone. So it *will* be a struggle for me. I suppose I am not alone here.