Support NeoGAF

[Firestorm]

I'm set for disappointment after the rumours about an April release date x.x

 

[Complex Shadow]

So on the gaming side, I have to take back some criticisms I've had of WP7.

I've mentioned here, and other places, how annoyed I get that the WP7 versions of games get the shaft. No birthday update in Angry Birds, no pomegranate in Fruit Ninja, limited themes in Doodle Jump, etc.

Today I finally played with a Kindle Fire. I played with all 3 of those games. All three were identical in content to the WP7 versions.

Here I thought iOS and Android were getting special treatment. Nope, just iOS.

ios is their bread and butter so i would expect that to be the case.

 

[SeanR1221]

ios is their bread and butter so i would expect that to be the case.

I get that now. I thought WP7 was getting the shittiest versions of these games. Glad I was wrong.

 

[clav]

ios is their bread and butter so i would expect that to be the case.

Yeah doesn't make sense to put in extra effort considering the marketshare.

 

[VanMardigan]

Today I finally played with a Kindle Fire. I played with all 3 of those games. All three were identical in content to the WP7 versions.

Here I thought iOS and Android were getting special treatment. Nope, just iOS.

I don't know about the Fire, but on my Nexus One, there was Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio. And I didn't pay for a single one of those (didn't pirate them either, btw, they were just free).

 

[kehs]

Isn't there like a visual style guide for third parties to adhere to when it comes to live tiles?

-Text
-Solid Color
-Icon

 

[SeanR1221]

I don't know about the Fire, but on my Nexus One, there was Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons, and Angry Birds Rio. And I didn't pay for a single one of those (didn't pirate them either, btw, they were just free).

I was talking about the birthday levels in the regular version.

 

[VanMardigan]

I was talking about the birthday levels in the regular version.

Doesn't the Android version have levels that the WP7 version is missing? I know that there was supposed to be dlc for the WP7 version to bring in additional levels, I don't know if it got all of them.

Edit: A quick Google search seems to indicate that the Android/iOS versions have more levels.

 

[jagowar]

ios is their bread and butter so i would expect that to be the case.

Still doesn't excuse the lack of real xbox live exclusives.... I really thought by now they would have actually leveraged the xbox brand more. There is no official multiplayer (even turn by turn) and none of the real xbox franchises have made their way to wp7. Guess they are all waiting (hopefully) for windows 8 tablets.

Even now most of the games they are pimping are already on other platforms (that most recent marketing blitz) and 1 or 2 half baked arcade titles. They need real halo, gears, fable and forza games to come.

 

[Klocker]

According to sources of betanews...


Nokia 900/Ace To Launch With $100 Million Marketing Campaign In US

 

[Psychotext]

Pretty much what they need to do... though I suspect that it'll just result in other carriers ignoring WP7 just as much as they already are.

 

[Blackhead]

Pretty much what they need to do... though I suspect that it'll just result in other carriers ignoring WP7 just as much as they already are.

One factor that might get US carriers to position WP more favourably is the coming battle over mobile payment systems. Verizon just had a little tiff with Google over the Wallet on the Galaxy Nexus and it doesn't seem likely that Google will play ball. Apple will never let carriers put their crap on iPhones and the company possesively guards access to their hundreds of millions of iTunes accounts with credit cards. Microsoft, on the other hand, already supports carrier billing. Nokia has that relationship with other carriers too in many countries and already has experience manufacturing phones with NFC. If the stars align we could see a big push behind Apollo in the fall of 2012 when the three US big carriers launch their mobile payment system...

 

[maximum360]

According to sources of betanews...


Nokia 900/Ace To Launch With $100 Million Marketing Campaign In US

This sounds promising. If MS can do something similar for the other carriers maybe they'll begin to make a dent.

 

[DrFunk]

HTC Radiant Pictured:

The phone pictured above may look a lot like the HTC Titan, but according to a reliable source, this will indeed be a distinct device, the LTE-capable HTC Radiant tipped by Paul Thurrott to land on AT&T.

We've initially heard of the Radiant way back in April when we saw a list of device names trademarked by the Taiwanese manufacturer and then app logs featured the phone in August. More recently, Radiant was rumored to be among a trio of AT&T-bound, LTE-infused Windows Phones poised for launch at CES, along with the Nokia Lumia 900 "Ace" and still-mysterious Samsung Mendel.

There are still a couple of differences between the Titan and the Radiant. First off, the top of the phone not only wears a fairly larger HTC branding but also what appears to be a bigger front facing camera lens. On the right side, the buttons are slightly shifted towards the bottom of the phone, especially in the case of the volume rockers.

The back side is where the big changes are. You can see that the dual-LED flash has been moved to the right side of the camera (and probably the speakers to the left). The unibody build has been also slightly changed: there's a curve to the aluminum above the camera and, according to our source, it has a non-removable battery and slightly different color.

We don't have anything in terms of specs but we can definitely guess a standard Windows Phone configuration (with the 1.5GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM and definitely the same sized WVGA screen like on the Titan). Because of the LTE capability, the 1,600mAh battery on the Titan should definitely be improved on the Radiant in order to power both the radio and the huge 4.7-inch display.

Oh, and according to our source, this device is also going to hit Telstra Australia.

 

[gcubed]

An lte phone with a non removable battery. Oy

 

[chaosblade]

So basically it's a Titan with LTE and non-removable (but possibly bigger) battery. And maybe no call quality issues.

 

[PG2G]

This sounds promising. If MS can do something similar for the other carriers maybe they'll begin to make a dent.

I love when blogs leak partial information and Paul Thurrott uses it as a reason to clear things up and provide all the real details

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/exclusive-microsoft-nokias-plans-marketing-windows-phone-2012-141784

 

[brotkasten]

I love when blogs leak partial information and Paul Thurrott uses it as a reason to clear things up and provide all the real details

http://www.winsupersite.com/article/paul-thurrotts-wininfo/exclusive-microsoft-nokias-plans-marketing-windows-phone-2012-141784

For the lazy ones:

With tech blogs leaking somehat inaccurate information about Microsoft and Nokia's plans for marketing Windows Phone in the US during the first half of 2012--and others still predictably parroting that information--I thought it might be worthwhile to set the record straight. Microsoft and Nokia will not spend "in the neighborhood of $100 million" to market Windows Phone this year. The companies are spending much more than that.

And that's just in the United States. In this most crucial of markets, Microsoft has one goal and one goal only: Convince consumers to purchase millions of Windows Phone handsets in the first half of 2012. Doing so will require a new set of phones--as I exclusively detailed previously in Microsoft's LTE Plans for Windows Phone--as well as stepping up engagement with tech enthusiasts, increasing retail worker recommendation rates through training ands sale incentives, and other means.

But most of all, it's going to require a lot of money.

Nokia is helping, but so are other Windows Phone hardware partners like Samsung. (As you may recall, Nokia previously stated that it would spent more marketing Windows Phone in the coming year than it had on any previous initiative.) According to the internal Microsoft documentation I've viewed, the total cost of this marketing tsunami is in the neighborhood of $200 million, not $100 million. And again, that's just for the US. And on AT&T at least, Nokia is outspending Microsoft 2-to-1.

Included in the plan are sales incentives for retail workers aimed at getting them to finally start recommending Windows Phone as an alternative to Android and the iPhone. The amount of payments are $10 to $15 per handset sold, depending on the number sold, for some handset models.

They're finally doing something about the mess in the retail market. Even if they have to bribe the employees.

I thought this one was pretty funny:

I don't want to reveal more, and I've been sitting on this information for weeks so that Microsoft could make its big announcement at CES this coming week. But with these leaks, as with the equally inaccurate LTE leaks last week, I felt the need to set the record straight. The way tech blogs work these days, any information, no matter how inaccurate, is simply parroted between all the gadget blogs and then, inevitably, to the increasingly lazy mainstream news as well. So let's at least get it right.

Remember how he caused some drama, when his "usually reliable" source told him that Mango wouldn't even make it for 2011? Now that was cool.

 

[VanMardigan]

Yeah, Thurrott is a self absorbed jackass who is wrong just as often as the other blogs he constantly bashes and is as big a fanboy as the apple fans he makes fun of. However, he's been on fire with the Nokia/AT&T stuff lately.

 

[thirty]

HTC Radiant Pictured:

that article forgot to mention this will include Beats Audio, a first for WP7.

 

[thirty]

great news on nokia outspending MS 2-to-1. verizon and sprint should be pounding at nokia's door begging for their phones.

 

[PG2G]

that article forgot to mention this will include Beats Audio, a first for WP7.

Where did you read that?

 

[maximum360]

great news on nokia outspending MS 2-to-1. verizon and sprint should be pounding at nokia's door begging for their phones.

.

 

[frontieruk]

• Live tile notification doesn't always work. This is fatal for an IM client and an issue I've encountered in Birdsong as well (the Twitter app)
• Opening to read a message in a conversation can crash the app and take you back to the home screen
• Sometimes you'll get a toast notification of the message you got and when you click on it to see the full message it doesn't even appear in the conversation unless you wait 10 seconds (even on Wifi).

Those faults can also be levelled at all the twitter apps, Whatsapp, IM+ even the messaging tile when being hit up from Facebook/WLM and occasionally the Xbox Live Microsoft really needs to improve the situation with notifications. It's not the apps fault it's the OS.

 

[Lanbeast]

I'm sad that I can't sync my HTC Titan to the Sync in my '09 Ford Focus. Sucks that Sync is powered by a partnership between Ford and Microsoft, and yet the third party developers and Ford haven't made it so that you can connect Windows Phone to the car.

 

[jagowar]

I'm sad that I can't sync my HTC Titan to the Sync in my '09 Ford Focus. Sucks that Sync is powered by a partnership between Ford and Microsoft, and yet the third party developers and Ford haven't made it so that you can connect Windows Phone to the car.

What are the issues? I have read that windows phones support on sync was pretty good.

Curious because I am getting a new truck soon (f150 with ecoboost engine) and one of the big things was the sync integration.

 

[PG2G]

That's weird, my friend just called me the other day to tell me that the connectivity between his new Ford Focus and HD7 was amazing.

 

[Lanbeast]

What are the issues? I have read that windows phones support on sync was pretty good.

Curious because I am getting a new truck soon (f150 with ecoboost engine) and one of the big things was the sync integration.

I'll have to try it again now that I think about it. I'll check tonight when I get home. I forgot that when I tried to connect it before, I didn't go through the initial "set up your phone" thing because I was driving at the time.

I just went to their site and it says "connect your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry!" which made me further assume that I couldn't connect. I'll repost when I find out after work.

 

[jagowar]

I'll have to try it again now that I think about it. I'll check tonight when I get home. I forgot that when I tried to connect it before, I didn't go through the initial "set up your phone" thing because I was driving at the time.

I just went to their site and it says "connect your iPhone, Android, or Blackberry!" which made me further assume that I couldn't connect. I'll repost when I find out after work.

Ill be interested to know.... wp7 is supposedly one of the few that supports the text messaging with sync (again according to their website but that is not real world experiences).

 

[VanMardigan]

My wife has sync on her Ford Focus and her windows phone connects to the Bluetooth. Address book,audio music etc. The only issue is that the Bluetooth sometimes fails to connect when she gets in the car. I think it's an OS limitation, the iPhone connection was more consistent back when she owned one.

Edit: text messaging works. It'll read it out and you can respond.

 

[gcubed]

great news on nokia outspending MS 2-to-1. verizon and sprint should be pounding at nokia's door begging for their phones.

why?

 

[bigtroyjon]

why?

Obviously they are going to blow $250 million* on SuperBowl ads and make Windows phones the next hot item!

*Ad time will cost 10-15 million, the rest will be spent on bringing Michael Jackson's corpse back to life in an amazing series of Thriller themed commercials throughout the game!

 

[brotkasten]

why?

Because they want a third company to kick them in the balls. Apple and Google aren't enough.

 

[gcubed]

Because they want a third company to kick them in the balls. Apple and Google aren't enough.

well thats a good excuse for Sprint, since they like to relish in the pain

Lets just hope Nokia doesn't use the same marketing company as the initial launch commercials of WP7

 

[kehs]

well thats a good excuse for Sprint, since they like to relish in the pain

Lets just hope Nokia doesn't use the same marketing company as the initial launch commercials of WP7

I quite enjoyed watching people trip everywhere in slow motion.

 

[Klocker]

I'm sad that I can't sync my HTC Titan to the Sync in my '09 Ford Focus. Sucks that Sync is powered by a partnership between Ford and Microsoft, and yet the third party developers and Ford haven't made it so that you can connect Windows Phone to the car.

Advanced settings/Bluetooth/Add Bluetooth Device/turn on BT on your phone/tell sync to connect/get code off screen/connect BT on phone by entering pin when prompted. then set it as primary device etc...

the 2nd gen phones work great with sync even using the text messaging built into sync (if you want) I just use BT voice text through WP because you can replay by voice while driving.

 

[Vanillalite]

I get that now. I thought WP7 was getting the shittiest versions of these games. Glad I was wrong.

Difference being some of the Android stuff like Angry Birds released free where as you have to pay for the WP7 versions.

Eh either way the fact of the matter is that you basically HAVE to go iOS if you are really into mobile gaming on your smartphone or tablet. Apple has the market cornered and the mind share of that developer base.

I'm not really sure what can be done to move that base beyond just iOS either.

 

[Vanillalite]

My wife has sync on her Ford Focus and her windows phone connects to the Bluetooth. Address book,audio music etc. The only issue is that the Bluetooth sometimes fails to connect when she gets in the car. I think it's an OS limitation, the iPhone connection was more consistent back when she owned one.

Edit: text messaging works. It'll read it out and you can respond.

I know the OS itself can do a lot of things, and comes off really smooth. Still when you really look at things the OS is really hamstrung by an older kernel gone by. Hopefully 2012's big update fixes things. It might not be a bullet point feature for the public, but a new modern kernel could be the biggest thing to happen for the OS outside of being initially created.

 

[clav]

Bluetooth issues could be a hardware issue if it's similar to how wireless radios work for networking.

Who makes the bluetooth radios in phone devices? Broadcom?

 

[Tomcat]

http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-rolling-out-disappearing-keyboard-fix/

 

[D4Danger]

I just downloaded the call blocking app from Samsung and surprise surprise it doesn't work on the Omnia 7.

I don't know why I bother

 

[Ghost]

http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-rolling-out-disappearing-keyboard-fix/

THANK CHRIST

That's been annoying the fuck out of me.

 

[jagowar]

I'm not really sure what can be done to move that base beyond just iOS either.

The base will go where they make money and right now that is ios. Take the xbox as an example. Nintendo/Sony were in similarly dominant position and xbox has still managed to become the defacto 3rd party standard.

The xbox became successful because they got impressive exclusive games to get people to jump on board and once they had them leveraged a service like xbox live to keep them coming back for more. They could have used that exact same model with wp7 but have chosen not to for some reason (no really impressive exclusive games and no multiplayer). It says alot when the only wp7 game that has really impressed me was ilomilo and that was an at&t freebie launch game.... they have yet to find their halo or gears for the phone. I still say multiplayer is their play against apple. As entrenched as apple is they still have not done multiplayer right with gameroom on the phone and there is an opening for ms to "figure it out" again. That window will close quickly though because apple will be nowhere near as slow to react as sony/nintendo were.

I think it also speaks volumes that the few games that have come over from xbox have been poor imitations of the real thing (kinectimals, fable golf, toy soilders if we ever get it is also just a minigame collection). I do have some hope they will do better with windows 8. Notice the Toy Soldiers game listed there is priced at $9.99 which is between the average xbla price and phone. Hopefully it means its the full game and not the watered down mobile version.... I expect to find out the answer to this at ces because they always have a few game demos there.

It really isn't hard to see why wp7 has failed in the gaming dept.... just think what xbox would be if they only had offline xbox live arcade games (no halo, gears or xbox live). That console would sell no better than what wp7 is currently doing.

 

[kharma45]

http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-rolling-out-disappearing-keyboard-fix/

finally.

 

[wwm0nkey]

The base will go where they make money. Take the xbox as an example. Nintendo/Sony were in similarly dominant position and xbox has still managed to become the defacto 3rd party standard.

The xbox has been successful because they got impressive exclusive games to get people to jump on board and once they had them leveraged a service like xbox live to keep them playing. They could have used that exact same model with wp7 but have chosen not to for some reason (no really impressive exclusive games and no multiplayer). It says alot when the only wp7 game that has really impressed me was ilomilo and that was a at&t freebie launch game.... they have yet to find their halo or gears for the phone.

I think it also speaks volumes that the few games that have come over from xbox have been poor imitations of the real thing (kinectimals, toy soilders if we ever get it is also just a minigame collection). I do have some hope they will do better with windows 8.

Notice the Toy Soldiers game listed there is priced at $9.99 which is twice the price of the average wp7 game. Hopefully it means its the full game and not some crappy minigame collection.

It really isn't hard to see why wp7 has failed in the gaming dept.... just think what xbox would be like w/o halo, gears and xbox live. They would be nowhere near what xbox360 has become.

About Xbox Live on Windows 8, I was talking to one of the guys who made Pinball FX2 and he said it took one guy a few hours to port the game over to PC/Windows 8 mostly because of the engine. I assume this is the case with most XBLA/360 games so porting XBLA games to Windows 8 seems like an easy process.

 

[Complex Shadow]

About Xbox Live on Windows 8, I was talking to one of the guys who made Pinball FX2 and he said it took one guy a few hours to port the game over to PC/Windows 8 mostly because of the engine. I assume this is the case with most XBLA/360 games so porting XBLA games to Windows 8 seems like an easy process.

i am excited if this is true.

 

[Speedymanic]

Bluetooth issues could be a hardware issue if it's similar to how wireless radios work for networking.

Who makes the bluetooth radios in phone devices? Broadcom?

I just came in to ask about this. I activated BT on my E900 today and it doesn't work, also activated it and did a search via my GF's phone and it doesn't come up under available devices there either.

Would be pointless to return it now as I have no way to contact the seller and I'm thinking of upgrading to the Titan or Lumia soon anyway, but it's pretty damn annoying.

 

[Milchjon]

Seems like I have a "D'oh"-moment with this phone every day. I was complaining (to myself) about the missing chat in the Facebook-App. Well, today I looked into the "Message"-Hub for the first time...

Anything else that is so different from the iOS on my old iPod Touch that I might have missed it?

Also, I really don't like the tab switching in IE, that was handled much better in Safari on the iPod. And is there really no "forward" button in IE?

 

[brotkasten]

THANK CHRIST

That's been annoying the fuck out of me.

I hope they fixed the entire keyboard and not only the disappearing issue. Spell checking and correction is worse since mango.

Also, it's nice to see Microsoft getting OS fixes out. They're still slower than Apple, but already better than Google and the manufacturers with Android, it seems.

 

[jagowar]

About Xbox Live on Windows 8, I was talking to one of the guys who made Pinball FX2 and he said it took one guy a few hours to port the game over to PC/Windows 8 mostly because of the engine. I assume this is the case with most XBLA/360 games so porting XBLA games to Windows 8 seems like an easy process.

I really hope that is true..... I am a bit worried about the price (using the screenshot example is priced between the average wp7 ($5) and xbla ($15) version. I want the pc/full version and not the phone port.