I don't know why manufacturers aren't using machined polycarbonate more the way Nokia and HTC do. It seems LG and Sony are just now trying to be where Apple was 2 years ago with the glass-back phones, which I think was a very poor material to use and a mistake on Apple's part.
I think they quickly realized that, but it took them a while to create an aluminum iPhone the right way, because as we know aluminum is not great for radio connections, so you'll have to arrange the radios in such a way that the body doesn't interfere with them, which is probably why it took them so long, and why they made the iPhone 4S identical to iPhone 4.
I won't even discuss Samsung, which seems to have a fetish for crappy plastic. If it were after me, phones would all have metallic bodies, because it feels the best in hand, but you won't get full metal bodies anyway, but a mixture of metal and plastic or glass (like iPhone 5).
The best compromise between being easy to make and also feeling solid in hand seems to be polycarbonate right now, and more manufacturers should be using it, along with more colors for their devices, as I'm getting really bored with the black and white "options". It's like most of them are afraid to even try other (bold) colors, and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and in the same time complain about not being able to differentiate, other than changing the skin on Android, which I think it's just an easy way out for them, instead of actually doing interesting things with their hardware design.
The same thing applies to Nokia, which in the past have said that they wouldn't be able to differentiate with Android, but I think a Lumia-like device would've sold a lot more units with Android. Nokia's growth is being limited a lot by WP's own growth right now. They can only grow as fast as WP is growing, and if anything, it's Nokia pulling WP after them, rather than the other way around, which just goes to show how much better it would do with Android, which doesn't need to be "sold" to the public anymore.
Samsung is the only manufacturer that is making money from Android, and Samsung doesn't advertise that they use Android anywhere in their marketing. Most Samsung phones don't even show an Android logo when you turn them on.
Consumers don't know about or care about Android. "Normal" people do not go into a store looking for an Android.
If Nokia had gone with Android, they would be in the exact same position they are now, except they wouldn't have Microsoft's $5bn cheque keeping them afloat.
Personally I am glad they went with WP. I can't stand Android and so I am very happy there is another option.
Every person I know - 9 out of 10 of which are average tech consumers - knows Android by name. They know it's a platform, they know it's separate from Apple and Microsoft, and occasionally they know there's some sort of connection to Google.
And if you ask said people, they will absolutely tell you they have an Android phone. In fact that's exactly how they define it as being separate from the iPhone or Blackberry et al.
You are wrong, at least regarding most of the world. In Europe Android is a very well recognized brand. People ask questions like "recommend me a good android phone" and "do you think it's worth going for a Nexus instead of a Galaxy S". And I'm talking about "normal" users, ones that don't root/flash their devices.
> Consumers don't know about or care about Android. "Normal" people do not go into a store looking for an Android.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Android is a well-known brand these days, and many people recognize the difference between smartphone OSes.
I don't agree. They do have Windows and Bada phones, but no where near Android counterpart. Most people who are capable of buying smart phones are smart enough to know what they want to buy.
>Nokia's growth is being limited a lot by WP's own growth right now
According to Nokia they can't manufacture enough to satiate demand (components supply constriction). So even if they had chosen Android, they'd have the same unit sales. "Mr. Elop said the company has experienced supply problems, as certain mobile components have been in short supply, both for Nokia and other phone makers." Unless some of the unavailable components are WP-only, this is the main issue.
It's not about components being WP-only. It's about components where for WP there's just one option, while for Android there are multiple. Specifically they're locked to Qualcomm SOCs, S3s for WP7 and S4s for WP8.
(Everyone but Apple and Samsung have been getting fucked over by Qualcomm's supply issues for almost a year, but at least companies like HTC have an option of using Tegra 3s in countries where LTE isn't a hard requirement. Or even shipping modern software with a semi-obsolete S3 SOC like Sony has been doing.)
That's a fair point. However, I don't think the author had that in mind as they specifically mentioned WP's growth affecting (stunting) Nokia's growth. Still, your point is quite valid.
They aren't as profitable as a lot of analysts/shareholders would like them to be. If you consider that these people could have invested in Samsung instead, you might understand why people see this as a failure rather than just 'less successful'.
HTC is not having a good time in Android Marketplace. At this point Samsung is synonymous to Android, at least to a mainstream customer. They dropped 91% profits YOY.
I've played with the Lumia at Best Buy a few times. It's a solid, attractive phone and I wouldn't be ashamed to carry one at all.
I'm an iOS guy but as far as Windows Phone goes, I have to say it doesn't suck. I'm not saying that Microsoft's phone and tablet businesses will become a resounding success in spite of all current evidence, but I will say it would be a mistake to dismiss them.
I'll give them credit. If you would have told me before Windows Phone launched that I'd be frequently reading iOS users saying it doesn't suck, I wouldn't have believed you. I feel like at this stage of the game that's a win. I'm still probably not switching though.
Maybe it's part because of psychological politics.
The market leader (that is, Apple/iOS; the numbers are irrelevant, they feel they're the leader today) is usually hostile to number 2 but friendly to number 3. While number 2 is usually hostile to number 3 - look how Google tries to bully WP.
(For example, MS used to bash Linux but kind of threw a bone to FreeBSD)
And this translates from companies to companies' customers.
That's the thing. MS has actually produced a really good product, better than any of the alternatives. But it's not going to be enough, because they're too late to get the app developers.
There is late and there is staying power. When Google's G1 came out people said "Has promise but the iPhone has too much of a lead." People said that Apple would never be compelling in the personal computer business again. People said RIM was too entrenched to be dislodged from the Enterprise. It goes on and on.
Time and time again, making a good product, sticking to the mission and making it the best it can be, has resulted in success for that product. So if Windows Phone is a solid product, and Microsoft sticks to it, they will have a very good chance of becoming a force to be reckoned with.
>When Google's G1 came out people said "Has promise but the iPhone has too much of a lead." People said that Apple would never be compelling in the personal computer business again. People said RIM was too entrenched to be dislodged from the Enterprise.
In each of those cases the new product that gained ground offered something significant that the existing product didn't. Android offered comparable quality for less money. MacOS offered a significantly better user experience than desktop Windows and also leveraged a higher level of consistency in user interface between mobile and desktop for the new generation of iOS users. And iOS did the same to RIM from the other side.
None of those are simple cases of comparable products gaining ground against intrenched competitors, they're cases of superior products gaining ground. And that's Microsoft's problem. They've produced something comparable, not something superior. Where's the killer app? The UI is neither abominable nor spectacular. It doesn't run desktop Windows programs. It isn't any cheaper than Android. What should make me want to buy one of these over Android or iOS that makes up for the lack of apps and the training cost of learning a new UI?
> MacOS offered a significantly better user experience than desktop Windows
I have both system and I just got a Mac to be able to code for iOS. I don't find your statement true at all. Actually I have a better experience with Ubuntu (as buggie as it feels) than MacOSX. For instance, in my case, I never got used to the Dock / Exposé way to switch between windows. Maybe I am just too used to the task bar but whatever the reason is, I suffer a lot anytime that I need to work on a Mac.
WP8 is not better than the alternatives. It's good and has some cool features, but it was buggy on release and still suffers from being brand new and all of the lack of polish that comes with that.
There's also, ironically, giant gaping holes in the app/feature selection for business users. No Citrix, no VPN, no app that lets you get to OWA mail if ActiveSync is disabled on your Exchange account, etc.
Yes and no... on one hand, I'm at times frustrated by the app selection, on the other hand, every day I look at the Marketplace, some other app is there (and I realize I miss less and less yet another app I had on my iPhone).
On the /third/ hand, I find myself more and more tempted to download VS2012 every day and do some development of my own.
Not really, I think that WP will have a bigger userbase than RIM and I think that a better to compare against Android. I also assume that "phoneapps" will work on desktop/tablet windows 8 as well... But again, this is just my thoughts.
>I think that WP will have a bigger userbase than RIM and I think that a better to compare against Android.
I think you're being extraordinarily optimistic. The latest numbers I could find quickly[1] show RIM with more than double the share of Microsoft, and with both showing a reduction in share vs. six months prior. You might be able to claim that people are abandoning RIM faster than they're abandoning Windows Phone, but even that is arguably because RIM is falling from a higher initial position.
The other problem is that .NET makes no sense for mobile apps, because neither of the two largest mobile platforms have good (if any?) support for it. Everyone who is not some kind of Microsoft evangelist is going to support Android/iOS first, which means they're not using .NET and are not going to worry about a Windows port unless Windows Phone gets enough share to be worth worrying about.
That's pretty much exactly how I felt about mine (before I returned it for an iPhone 5). It does indeed not suck. But you just can't shake the feeling that "this will be better two revisions from now."
Take an exceedingly simple example: load up Hacker News, then look at the screen as you rotate the phone from portrait to landscape and back. On an iPhone 5, the rotation is smooth. On the Lumia 920, you see flashes of white as the screen is repainted in the new orientation.
Yeah, this is window dressing, but it part of the user experience. This kind of attention to the user experience is missing throughout WP8. For example, the user interface relies heavily on glyphs (minimalistic icons), but doesn't use them consistently. In the Camera app, to get to the Photo Roll, you click an arrow icon. Does an arrow make me immediately think of my other photos? iOS uses a thumbnail of your most recent photo.
And I think Nokia made a huge mistake with the form factor. Over the weekend I was trying to surf HN while feeding my baby, and I thought I was going to drop the phone on her. The extra weight (60% heavier than an iPhone) makes it that much harder to rely on friction to keep it in your hand. There is no way it would be a comfortable fit for my wife or my mom. The Lumia 820 is probably a better "appropriate for everyone" phone, but with a low-res screen, etc, it's not positioned that way.
I think you are being a bit too used to the iPhone experience. For instance, for me the example on the camera app is very intuitive, specially because the image animates out of screen in that direction so it looks pretty natural to me.
I came from iPhone 3G, and an Android 2.1 before having a Lumia 900 (which I lost) and now a Lumia 920. I have to say that the windows phone experience was the most pleasant to me. Probably since I had worked with all them in a daily basis before that I am not specifically attached to anyone.
I am agreed that 920 doesn't feel like a mainstream phone because the form factor, but it is good enough for the "experiment"/bet that they are doing. If this generation would sell decent I think we would see a lot of 92x where people would choose the model that fixes better to them.
Some of the stuff is familiarity, I'm sure, but a lot is immaturity. Things aren't worse just because they're different, but at the same time just because things are different doesn't mean they're not worse.
Consider the following issues:
1) In the text message app, the keyboard leaves way less room for seeing the previous texts in your conversation than on iOS. Is this not worse?
2) IE10 shows more artifacts in the process of rendering than Safari. E.g. the aforementioned visible re-rendering during orientation changes instead of the smooth transition. Is this not worse?
3) I'm not sure whether this is the fault of WP8 or the specific apps I used, but chat apps seem to restart each time you switch to them (showing a splash screen), instead of being re-hydrated from memory.
4) When you select a drop-down dialog in IE10, it takes up the whole screen. In iOS it takes up only part of the screen so you can maintain some context by still being able to see part of the page. Is this not worse?
5) Abandoning skeuomorphism makes it harder to figure out what the active parts of the screen are. I think my mom would find the "People" app downright confusing with how it blends bits of the next screen into the current one. It's like a point-and-click adventure game--not always obvious what things are touchable.
6) The ordering of items in the settings menu is, as far as I can tell, totally random.
7) Live tiles can chew through battery life if you're not careful, diminishing their utility.
8) On initial release, the Lumia 920 and WP8 were objectively buggy. Most reviews, and my initial impression, mentioned bad battery life, but those largely went away with the Portico update and a few cycles of discharging the battery all the way, along with turning off NFC. Not exactly the way to launch a highly polished, come-back product.
The first feeding of the day both you and the baby want to bond. By the fourth, the baby just wants to download milk from the bottle into her tummy as fast as possible and you want to veg out on the Internet. :)
I've never even seen a windows phone (maybe they aren't popular in Asia?)...I remember when they first came out, most reviews seemed to agree it was very superficial and in need of a lot of polish. Has to story changed?
WP 7.5 added an almost-perfect level of polish to WP7. WP8 could use the same treatment. I haven't seen anything really show-stopping, but there are some minor annoyances that pop up.
I don't recall seeing any reviews saying it needed significant polish beyond the fact of some missing features that were added in 7.1 and 7.5. Some of the inconsistent behavior has been cleaned up in 7.1, 7.5, and 8 (although 8 introduced some of its own). I don't regret running Windows Phone for the past two years. The only thing I miss is VPN support. The positives over Android and iOS vastly outweigh any of the negatives.
Last I read, Nokia accounts for 75% of all WP device sales, which means we can estimate around 6 million WP devices were shipped (not sold) during Q4 2012. Unlike Apple (which also calls shipments "sales" in their quarterly report), Nokia devices aren't in incredibly high demand (other than perhaps the 920).
I can't really see how this is good news for WP when Android and iOS activated 17.1 million devices on Christmas Day alone. I can't imagine Q1 2013 being any better for Nokia when they have no major devices going out, and no major WP upgrades upcoming either.
To put that in perspective with Android sales, the whole of WP sold in a quarter as much as Android in 4 days.
I still think Nokia made a huge mistake not making Android phones, too. 4 million Lumias (low-end and high-end ones) is not enough to make them recover on time. They'll still probably get acquired, possibly this year.
Maybe that's the plan? IMHO Elop did everything to make Nokia unattractive to all possible buyers except Microsoft. I see the only option for Apple to try buying Nokia to at least make it more expensive for MS. I don't believe Apple could buy Nokia because that most probably wouldn't be met very friendly by EU bureaucrats.
The vast majority of those Lumias will be the high-end 920 and the slightly-less-high-end 820. Whereas those Android activations include everything and the kitchen sink.
The Lumia 820, which is a lower-end and lower-priced WP8 phone, should be coming out this quarter, and is being mainly targeted at countries like India.
> Whereas those Android activations include everything and the kitchen sink.
OK, and? Nokia sells devices in exactly the same price ranges as Android. iPhone and GS3 sales absolutely crush Nokia on their own as well, so not sure what your point was exactly.
Really? You're posting a graph that shows overall usage of WP devices, that could have been bought at any time in the last 2 years, and trying to present it as data suggesting that more old devices were sold. If anything that graph demonstrates the opposite of what you're saying, as the 920 already has 10% of total WP usage, despite only being released a few months ago.
> OK, and? Nokia sells devices in exactly the same price ranges as Android. iPhone and GS3 sales absolutely crush Nokia on their own as well, so not sure what your point was exactly.
My point was putting your "17.1 million devices on Christmas Day alone" FUD statistic into perspective.
Yes, Apple and Samsung are still doing better, but that doesn't invalidate what Nokia has accomplished here.
Wow, you need to relax. I asked you where you got your numbers from and linked to the only numbers I knew about (and they can't be from "any time in the last 2 years" as they include the Lumia 920 and 820 .....). If you have numbers showing that "vast majority of those Lumias will be the high-end 920 and the slightly-less-high-end 820", I'd love to see them.
Secondly, you need to look up the meaning of the acronym "FUD", because you really blew it there.
Well, for once, there are a lot of markets where the 920 and 820 haven't been launched yet.
Here in Europe, it was launched in France, Germany and the UK, but only now is it launched in the Netherlands (where I live) and Belgium, and probably other smaller European countries.
I have a Nokia 920 and its solid, really solid. I went back to my iPhone over Christmas (I do mobile development) and I was thankful when I got back to the 920. Its very fast, very functional, love updating tiles.
The only gotcha is music - the iPhone still crushes everyone on music apps / syncing / acquisition. Otherwise, the 920 was equal or better - even apps are coming along. Only missing Strava now for me.
I never understand when people say the iPhone is better for music. I'll grant you the Windows 8 Music app sucks on the desktop, but Zune was solid on Windows 7. The WP8 music app is great, the Zune Pass/Xbox Music Pass is basically the biggest reason I can't seriously consider switching platforms. $8/mo for 10 songs DRM-free and streaming/caching all other songs in their database is huge! Nokia Music playlists are huge, and free! The speakers on the Lumia 920 are much better than iPhone speakers in comparisons with my coworkers.
> $8/mo for 10 songs DRM-free and streaming/caching all other songs in their database is huge
Just FYI, it's $10/mo now, and the "10 free songs per month" deal is gone. If you had a Zune pass, you were grandfathered in, but new signups get the new deal. Still a good deal given the catalog size, but perhaps not as good as it once was.
Good point, I did not know the new deal. I personally never really used the DRM-free songs part of the bundle, I have software that watches my music folder on my hard drive and when a new song comes in it exploits the "analog hole" to strip the DRM from it and drop in a replacement MP3. It's pretty comparable to Spotify, and if you have mostly Windows devices there's not much incentive to look further than Xbox Music. iOS and Android support has been announced but not given a firm date for launch.
I'm in a similar boat. I've had every iPhone except for the 5 since the first one (Yes i got bit by the 62 day $200 price drop) and I'm very impressed with the speed and quality of the Lumia 920.
My favorite part of the Lumia is the social media integration. It reminds me of what it felt like to switch from Windows to OSX in 2005. But yeah the music experience is lacking, They finally fixed some bugs in their Windows version of iTunes so at least you can still sync songs, but I'm really just waiting for Spotify and Instagram and then I'll be set.
It's becoming apparent that the app data can provide more lock-in than the OS itself. (I don't want to find an alternative and lose 2 years of data -- just for the first app I thought I'd need!)
RunKeeper mentions Caledos as an option on their site. I haven't used it, and don't know how seamlessly it integrates with RunKeeper, but it has largely good ratings.
"the iPhone still crushes everyone on music apps / syncing / acquisition"
I'll give you "acquisition", but if you are for a moment suggesting that iTunes is anything other than a steaming turd, then I must respectfully disagree.
I personally prefer the plethora of music apps available for Android and that Google Music cloud thing ain't too shabby either.
I've only ever owned iOS devices, but when I see a Windows Phone, I kind of do a double take. Everything is so different, that I always want to play around with it, and try them out.
I really want Microsoft to succeed in Windows Phone 8, and Windows 8, for the simple reason that competition is good. We'll be much better off with 3 giant companies competing rather than two.
Also, the prospect of having a tablet computer with a full OS on it (Windows 8 Pro tablets) is pretty interesting to me. Loading up Steam, Visual Studio, a VM, while on the go (without the weight of a laptop) could be pretty neat.
Out of left field for sure. I waited in line on launch day to buy my 920... all by myself for 5 whole minutes. Didn't even get a high five from the staff :(
I went looking for one a a couple of days after launch here in Sweden just to have a look, and only found one store that had even bothered stocking them.
That's because they just don't have stocks ... I don't know what Nokia did, but their production is not up to the demand (the demand itself being not THAT extraordinary, even if honest).
I bought one, had it for two weeks and crawled back to iOS.
Phone as a phone is very solid and beautiful, but Windows Mobile 8 is still a disaster.
Doing a factory reset (regular, honest-to-god, get in the menu and select a reset) bricked the phone. And it seems to be common bug. Microsoft is blaming Nokia and Nokia is Blaming Microsoft....
I think they quickly realized that, but it took them a while to create an aluminum iPhone the right way, because as we know aluminum is not great for radio connections, so you'll have to arrange the radios in such a way that the body doesn't interfere with them, which is probably why it took them so long, and why they made the iPhone 4S identical to iPhone 4.
I won't even discuss Samsung, which seems to have a fetish for crappy plastic. If it were after me, phones would all have metallic bodies, because it feels the best in hand, but you won't get full metal bodies anyway, but a mixture of metal and plastic or glass (like iPhone 5).
The best compromise between being easy to make and also feeling solid in hand seems to be polycarbonate right now, and more manufacturers should be using it, along with more colors for their devices, as I'm getting really bored with the black and white "options". It's like most of them are afraid to even try other (bold) colors, and just want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and in the same time complain about not being able to differentiate, other than changing the skin on Android, which I think it's just an easy way out for them, instead of actually doing interesting things with their hardware design.
The same thing applies to Nokia, which in the past have said that they wouldn't be able to differentiate with Android, but I think a Lumia-like device would've sold a lot more units with Android. Nokia's growth is being limited a lot by WP's own growth right now. They can only grow as fast as WP is growing, and if anything, it's Nokia pulling WP after them, rather than the other way around, which just goes to show how much better it would do with Android, which doesn't need to be "sold" to the public anymore.