Mobile Phone News

Samsung is releasing a number of Windows Phone 7 devices, but have their reservations regarding its success.

Unlike LG, is seems Samsung does not have as much high hopes for the success of Windows Phone 7.

YH Lee, head of marketing at Samsung Mobile has told Reuters at IFA they will be concentrating on Android and Bada as their main platform, stating:

“We are Prioritizing our Android platform. Android is very open and flexible, and there is a consumer demand for it,”

She was much less positive about Windows Phone, saying:

“There is still some professional, specialized demand there,”

Of course things could be worse.  On Symbian she said “We are not seeing visible demand for Symbian,”

Of course, like all mobile operating systems, except maybe the iPhone, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 will have to prove itself in the market, and hopefully in 6 months to a year Samsung will be singing a different tune.

via Mobileburn.com

1)Have you developed Apps for any other platforms before?If Yes What are they?

I have not developed any Apps for any other phone platform.  I have developed many web based applications and games.  At one point I worked building educational flash based lessons that were deployed on CDs.  I Currently build web based business solution for small to mid size companies using php, Flash, but mainly ASP.net.  As a hobby, I have built many small games using Silverlight, Flash, and html 5.

2)Why did you choose WP7 as a platform of your choice?

The biggest reason is the development tools.  I can take existing applications I have built for the web, in silverlight, and port them to the phone with little effort.  I’m also excited about developing with XNA on the phone.

3)Which one do you think as the single most feature you liked in WP7?

I like the simplicity of the phone menus.

4)Are you satisfied with WP7 Platform development tools?

Very satisfied.  I can still use the same development tools I use for other .net projects.

5)What are the Apps you are developing now in WP7?

I am currently developing 3 games: Frog Log, PaperBall, and Frog attack.

Frog Log – You stack frogs on a logs.  Different levels have different challenges.

PaperBall – Is a mini football simulator with a twist.

Frog Attack – You try to catch the food and avoid the attacking frogs.  If they get you, you will have shake them off.

6)In what way Microsoft can improve their WP7 or What does WP7 lacks from?

I don’t see any features that “wow” me better than the other leading smart phones on the market.  I hope to see a better “wow” factor.

7)Future Plans of you?

I would love for my hobby of making mini games to become my day job.

Thanks Jimmy.People interested in exploring more of his work,head to http://www.jimmyinteractive.com/.

One of my most favourite handsets which never made it to market was the HTC Trophy, a smartphone with a front-facing QWERTY and a capacitive VGA screen which was meant to arrive some time this year but but appeared to have been cancelled in the end.

Now the::unwired reports that an enigmatically named HTC 7 Trophy has just passed through the Global Certification Forum with European UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at 900/2100 MHz bands.

No further information is available, but it would be rather odd for HTC to include the number 7 in the name of an Android device, so I feel we can be rather confident it will be a Windows Phone 7 device, hopefully coming soon (given that it was certified).

The picture on top of course is just a mock up. Whether the name indicated a new device, is just a re-used code name (which HTC does to confuse leakers on purpose sometimes) or marks the long-awaited arrival of a real front-facing QWERTY keyboard device will remains to be seen.

Read more at the::unwired.net here.

More confirmation that the LG Optimus 7 is coming to AT&T has just popped up, with the device successfully navigating the FCC with full AT&T bands.

The handset, which is rumoured to have a full metal build (rather than the plastic suggested by the pictures), and will of course otherwise have the full Chassis specs required by Windows Phone 7.

See the FCC  documentation here and here .

Via Engadget.com

Remember the Courier, and its ingenious method of copy and paste by “tucking” items to the center spine, or maybe the Kin spot. Well, if blogger msftnerd’s sources are correct, that is the method via which copy and paste will come to Windows phone 7. It is a elegant method of solving this age old problem and here is just a taste of the implementation.

I was really pleased, then, to hear that Microsoft had figured out a better way and that it would be coming in an update soon after the world-wide launch of the first wave of phones. You see, the company has pulled this implementation straight out of the “canceled” Courier dual-screen booklet project. Now, Courier had the middle hinge to act as a temporary virtual clipboard, and WP7 doesn’t have one. So, where do the copied items go? Straight up, at the top edge of the screen in portrait and on the side opposite the app-bar in landscape orientations…

The post: Windows Phone 7 clipboard: “Tuck and Paste” goes into so much more detail so hit the link and get ready to be amazed!  A word of caution though, this is all speculation/rumor so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. However, it is not that far fetched from reality IMHO because Microsoft already posses the technology. So what do you guys think if this turns out to be true (crossing my fingers)?

Via @msftnerd

With the introduction of WP7, Microsoft fixed most of the aspects that made the old Windows mobile powerful yet unusable for average users by creating a new standard UI for the OS, and specifying  a set of minimum hardware specs that are high enough to guarantee a great user experience out of the box. The requirement for a physical camera button will be a decision most consumers will appreciate and so will the ability to quickly snap pictures even when the phone is locked together with the seamless switching between the live view and camera roll.

That being said, with all the thought that obviously went into the design, I wonder why they neglected to define a standardized multi-function connector like the one found on the Zune or iPhone. The Zune HD already has an excellent  HD dock for use with the connector(albeit expensive) and it would have been great to just be able to plop any WP7 phone onto the dock and enjoy the Zune service on a big screen. This would also have spawned a proliferation of 3rd party accessories because the manufacturers would not have to build custom products for individual phones, instead, they would be able to target all the devices just like they don’t have to worry about screen resolutions anymore.

I have no idea how extensible the micro-usb port on WP7 devices in regards multimedia capabilities and such, but I think that for the next revision(2.0) of hardware specs for WP7, Microsoft needs to include the standard multifunction port. From what I have read so far, such a port offers more extensibility than Micro/Mini USB ports and provides greater durability. The USB ports could still be used be available for charging purposes.  Some of the multimedia functions can also be covered over Wi-fi, but specialized peripherals for business applications may benefit greatly from the added flexibility.  I am sure that you guys have great opinions for or against the idea so let us know but please, keep it civil.

Ruttensoft, the company behind the first Windows Mobile Dropbox client, Cloudfiles, is in the process of porting their software to Windows Phone 7.

They write:

Building on CloudFiles, the very successful Dropbox for Windows Mobile 6.5 Client, we are working hard to port our Windows Mobile 6.5 Dropbox Client to the much-anticipated Windows Phone 7-Platform.

As Windows Phone 7 is a complete new platform which cannot run Windows Mobile 6 Apps, we had to recode a bigger part of the application, especially the GUI. Thanks to Microsoft Blend 4, building GUI’s for Windows Phone 7 apps is really easy, compared to previous GUI-designing. It’s better not think about how much time we would have saved if previous Windows Mobile apps could have been designed using Blend

But Microsoft has done a really good job, although some developers will miss some features which are (not!) yet implemented in Windows Phone 7, building apps for WP7 with impressive GUI’s is easy as never before.

Great news, and with out own l3v5y also working on a dropbox client it seems Windows Phone 7 will not be short of cloud sync and storage any time soon.

Keep an eye on Ruttensoft’s site here for the latest developments.

Thanks Geekword.net for the tip.

Windows Phone 7 going gold

Terry Myerson has announced on Microsoft’s Windows Team Blog that Windows Phone 7 has now been finalized and released to manufacturers for loading onto devices.

Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we’re very excited to say that we’ve reached the biggest milestone for our internal team – the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!  While the final integration of Windows Phone 7 with our partners’ hardware, software, and networks is underway, the work of our internal engineering team is largely complete.

The final version of Windows Phone 7 will include features not seen in the preview version so far, including the ability to filter facebook contacts which will be integrated into the contact list, said Myers, and also the ability to “like” a post directly from the people’s hub, and reply to a comment.

Myers also Windows Phone 7 the “most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released”, saying:

We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes.  We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback. We are ready.

Hopefully all this testing will result in an extremely bug-free and smooth-running operating system, likely helped by the lack of unpredictable interactions by the lack of native access to the system by third party applications and the lack of multi-tasking for the same apps.

Read the full post here.

For Windows Phone 7, the only way is up.

Now we would be first to admitted we have never heard of i-programmer.info, but that’s not going to stop us from reporting the good news that programmers are more keen to develop on Windows Phone 7 than iPhone, by a narrow margin of 19 to 18%. Of course Android was still far ahead at 45%, but it is still pretty good for an unreleased operating system.

In the survey Blackberry had only 3%, which may account for their meagre application store, despite their large numbers.

An explanation of Windows Phone 7’s performance may lie in a recent article by Paul Thurrott in which he explains the appeal of the platform. Examples include that, unlike the iPhone, developers do not need to buy a new computer to develop for Windows Phone 7, they can program in a language they knew already, and using tools they were already familiar with, and that Microsoft has done a good job promoting and supporting development on the OS so far.

Do our readers think the poll reflects reality? Let us know below.

What have we here?  Apparently a leaked O2 spread sheet shows the mythical HTC HD2 successor arriving on O2 on the 18th October, just in time for the Windows Phone 7 launch.

What do our readers expect from this hopefully amazing device, if real? Let us know below.

Via Engadget.com