Open Letter to Anyone Left With a WM Device
Dear Windows Mobile User,
You all obviously suffer from Stockholm syndrome, Microsoft being your captor. And that’s why those of you not only still use these phones it is why many of you will go forward with WP7 at the first opportunity even though pretty much everything that you’ve grown to love about WinMo, being able to get so deeply under the hood and all that crap to make it suit you just right, is being stripped away from both the platform and the hardware. It will be completely foreign to you but you don’t care because it’s Microsoft. Rationalize it all you want, XBox this and Powerpoint that, but that’s the underlying reason, one that only the right combination of soul searching and therapy can cure — or my lending you my Nexus One for an hour.
Because a small cult fanatic following isn’t enough for a company to bring home the bacon to their shareholders, as most consumers would never put up with the crap you all still do, Microsoft smartened up, finally, and figured they’d better change everything, starting with the name, and then identifying, “embracing and extending” the right ideas Apple, Google and RIM came up with and executed with finesse, sprinkling on a bit of their own work like Office, juiced-up video games and cloud coverage the vapor from which did not come entirely from their own R&D ocean. They’ll be great phones, that I don’t doubt, but I can guarantee you, in fact I have money riding on it, that WP7 will be no blockbuster. No one’s going to line up around the block, the media won’t explode if the antenna on the first devices don’t work right. The release will be a nonevent on everything except commercial breaks.
Just way too late to the party (which can be blamed sitting around for the other guys to come up with the good ideas and then stealing them). I know, people said Google was too late to the phone party yet look what happened, right? What, now with your baby people can finally take full mobile advantage of Office and Exchange? Who cares. Know a lot of people who make a living that doesn’t involve blogging about phones who wish they could make that living, one that involves Excel spreadsheets and Powerpoint presentations, while on the train to work? Know anyone from that crowd with a Blackberry who’s pissed off at all the things he’s missing out on with whatever improved Exchange support these phones will bring? Are people so starving for better video game integration on cell phones that they’d actually put their iPhone on eBay to try this new Microsoft world out? No one will give a shit, except you battered wives.
For the most part, the people who will buy these phones are the people who walk into an AT&T dealership instead of an Apple store or don’t own a DVR to fast forward through what had better, for Microsoft’s mobile department’s sake, be a deluge of brilliant advertisements. On the bright side, Microsoft couldn’t have set the bar any lower for themselves year after year after year, the Kin being a recent and more public example of their reminding the world they suck at this phone game, so for all the time they’ve spent making you drool about this platform still with no solid release date in sight, how could they not come up with something you’ll end up loving.
Maybe up until now you’ve been defiantly proud of being in a single digit market share club, the part of the pie chart referred to as Other. But now Microsoft is throwing everything at this operation they can come up with to turn the tables at the expense of ditching the things you love about your Microsoft phones, things unique to WinMo, for the sake of finally putting themselves on the map. So if you guys end up losing so many of these special things you like, and they’re enough of them for many forums and blogs like this to exist, because your captor wanted real bad to make a strong presence in the market, and then your captor fails to make a splash, but you’re still stuck with the loss of cabs and regedit and so many other things I’m so glad to have forgotten since I went Android, well won’t that be a shame. Doug Smith mentioned marketing being the key to everything, and Microsoft of course has the cash to paint the town with advertising. Would you not call Bing as having been very zealously marketed? Then why am I seeing that it has less than 4% of the search share, because I used Google to find that out?
I was going to plug my battery review site here but oh yeah, no spare batteries welcome for WP7 devices. Suckers.
Doug Simmons
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About The Author
Doug Simmons
Biographical info.. hmm. I have a history of not being able to strike the balance between what is "safe" to put into these forms and what is, in my mind at least, funny. Can't do it.
Wow Simmons. Lol, really. If you have any more time you want to waste I know this schizophrenic you could try to explain the difference between real and imaginary voices to.
Don’t steal my signoffs.
Dillweeds.
Good points, good read; but the real debate should now be who’s trolling whom.
In the future please try to refrain from attracting winmorons to mobilitydigest as we already have enough of those fanboys as i can stomach. You’d been doing such a good job on that front. No more slipups, okay tough guy?
Hey. Asshole.
You are as way off base as you are way out of line. The only thing you said that is relevant to our interests is that “they’ll be great phones.” Great analysis, very in depth, and you sure scooped the other WM/WP sites on that one.
What the hell I, or we for that matter, care if our device runs a platform that has heavy market share? As long as there are enough developers, and according to your own site there are plenty, to cook up the software I’ll use and be satisfied with, and as long as the hardware is solid, another thing that according to your site, all over it in fact, will most certainly be, I’m happy.
So either do your homework on WP7 or keep your loud mouth shut on the subject.
though i think this is more satirical than an actual op-ed. i still think the writer is an ass hat. i’ve been coming to this site less and less and less because its constantly behind the curve compared to engadget, pocketnow, and the aforementioned wmpoweruser…but yeah, consider this the last article i read from here. if i wanted to read yesterdays news today….i’d still be reading newspapers. /removed from RSS feed
Boy Doug, talk about being sucked into a platform. You drank the kool-aid and are now being completly controlled by the Google Universe. Forget about objectivity and just sit still while we put that ring in your nose so we can pull you wherever we choose Sounds similar to a fruity cult following that we are all familiar with.
I have had my ups and downs with Microsoft over the years, sometimes screaming into my PC (or PDA) at Mr. Gates so loud (usually in the wee hours) that it alarmed my neighbors across the street. But I still respect what they have done and continue to do. And that’s bringing continuity and inovation to the computer world. I may not completely agree with the direction that WP7 is going, but I still respect Microsoft for trying and will give the platform a close look when it is finally released. Market share has never meant anything to me. Being popular does not automatically make something good. That’s probably why I don’t shop at Walmart or do much Googling. Not being No. 1 assures me that you are going to work harder to earn my confidence. I like that.
Well then, as someone who frequents this site, pocketnow and wmpu, i feel it’s necessary to comment on this one, being that I have yet to comment on the article at wmpu…
1. Wen isn’t the greatest news reporter on the site, and I’m fairly certain he’s planing on not reporting news and scoops anymore *i think it has something to do with the fact that english isn’t his native language.
2. As someone who still uses his touch pro 1 on sprint’s network in NY, I still use my phone because energyROM’s and even the rom sponsored by WMPU are clean, fast, efficient and just plain work without the bloatware. *these comments mirror yours in this article, yes, but for a point* I DID NOT plan on buying a Windows Phone 7 device when it called windows mobile 7 and looked like “Photon.” I was actually pretty disappointed when I saw that. I was interested and invested in windows mobile for years (since pocketPC 2002) but I didn’t like the direction that MS was going in. When they announced what “windows phone 7 series” would look like in february, I became interested again. Admittedly, there will be a lot of compromising with the new OS and still will lose out on the 2 dozen or so programs that I bought over the years but given the fact that I was already planning of jumping ship to android, I’m passed that.
3. Moving along, I’m sure that nexus one is so ridiculously amazing that that google will probably sell it forever. In fact, with the Evo on Sprint and the Incredible on Verizon, I bet there will be a CDMA version any day now. Wait a minute…
4. I’m a systems administrator and project manager currently who re-created his entire resume and cover letter on his WM phone (mogul), when my power cleaner fried my laptop 22 hours before before my interview. I don’t need to rationalize my use of anything if I have real life applications and for the record, I didn’t use copy & paste on either document.
4a. I love my 360, I’m legitimately excited about the live integration possibilities on WP7.
5. Do you honestly believe that Microsoft, after dedicating so many resources to this will ALLOW this to fail? ESPECIALLY after house cleaning of Kin? They are going to do the same thing that they did with the xbox 360, spend excessively until they see a positive result. Call it the Yankee method *im a Met fan and it burns me to even mention those bastards.
6. Lets kill this being late to the party nonsense (and iPhone killer terminology). Technology rolls over at a ridiculous rate You already admitted to the “Android being late to the party” being non-sense, and the G1 came out almost 4 months after the 3G. The droids have shown everyone that the smartphone market definitely has room to grow and there is absolutely no reason why WP7 device couldn’t thrive in such a market (Meego too for that matter)
7. Regarding solid release dates, this has got to be the flattest comparison that you are going to make to Apple. iPhones traditionally come out weeks after their formal unveiling (lost and found boxes at bars notwithstanding), WP7 will come out approximately 8 months after its announcement. GET OVER IT. This is something that I read constantly on blog sites. It’s so ridiculous that I even have to address this.
8. (last numbered point) About Bing, Google has become a part of our normal lives for some time now, enough even for us to even turn the word into a verb. Hell, even now when I want to search something, I’m so accustomed to hitting ctrl + t, google, ctrl + enter that it feels as automatic as breathing. That doesn’t mean it’s better. Image and video search on bing just feels better and more accurate than google (especially video…they way they hide it, you would have figured that they don’t want you to use it). I will be the first to admit that the search algorithm on Bing in the beginning sucked and sucked bad. I really hated it. I felt that it was a bad as ask (jeeves). It took some time to try Bing again and admittedly, the commercials did it for me (note: i didn’t use bing for a week following LeBron’s decision broadcast for obvious reasons). When I did get back into it, I felt that the search engine over all was better and now it’s my default browser (i use the bing search bar as my default because I still think to type google). I will still check google from time to time but I find Bing to be more accurate for my day to day use (they need a damn calculator though).
Final thought: after reading this 3 times over, i need to say something about this specifically. I don’t care about your elitist, half-assed perception of the things people have come to like and enjoy. I don’t care about how cool you feel a device is. I would venture a guess that you wouldn’t do real research on any new tech if it wasn’t something wasn’t an iDevice or had android on it. There are so many devices out there that flat kick the shit out of the devices that have the mind share of the public, feature for feature (audio players: Cowon S9/J3 > Any gen iPod touch; Place shifting: Monsoon > Sling etc.). Consumers have their own determination on what works for them. You’re not entitled to belittle them for it. Assclown.
@Martin Charnin:
You’re trying to hard to stir up trouble on a site that has 2 windows buttons on the front page.
appreciate your effort though, lazy trolling is like abstract art. When interpreted without thought, you can really strike up a heated discussion over nothing…
Hi all, OP here. You see that trackback? Dead link. Sounds like someone’s editor knows his audience has delicate sensibilities and cannot handle the truth.
🙂
Okay Adam, you’re right, I am emotionally attached to Android and Google, so much so that people have suggested I marry it (can’t, I’m spoken for). But as you’re someone who hasn’t touched a WinMo device but intends to go with WP7, I wish you’d elaborate further on why. Might help this post of mine get some substance blended into it, you know?
An email from WMPoweruser’s editor Surur was relayed to me explaining the deletion of their follow-up article, got clearance to share it with you. While I’m typing I’ll make a concession that since I am not a gamer (DopeWars and Paper Toss are the only ones on my phone), my lack of enthusiasm over this xbox business may be applicable just to me and a handful of others. So, here’s Surur on the record:
Wow, way to show people what giant douchebag you are.
Congrats Doug…
I’m glad I got away from Windows Mobile devices so that I could see that the things I loved about them really don’t make them any better than… well, anything. My view on this is as follows:
If you spend $200-500 on a device it should work very well out of the box. Not one single Windows Mobile device I owned (Blackjack, Blackjack 2, 8525, Tilt, Fuze, Tilt 2) worked well out of the box. I had to hack around on every single one of them – and even still, most of them sucked. I bought the 8525 when the original iPhone came out, and I felt pretty good about it because the 8525 had similar features, 3G, and I could customize it a lot. Then the 3G came out and there weren’t too many changes, but I went on to a Tilt which could do even more than the 8525.
But then things changed. The Android universe EXPLODED. People who don’t know things, knew about Android. “Windows Mobile”? They’d say… “What’s that?”
The iPhone hit 3GS and people went nuts.. for a compass and a bit more speed.. Yeah.. it’s that easy apparently. …. I bought a Touch Pro, and eventually a Touch Pro 2. I was happy with my phones, but in the end, there wasn’t really that much that I could do with them other than listen to music awkwardly with an HTC headphone adapter…
So I bought the iPhone 4 and I love it. It works everytime. No resets, no flashing, no hacking, no dongles, no worries. I was going to get the Dell Streak this month too, but I think I’ll hold off to see what Android 3.0 can do for me. WP7 is still a pipe dream as far as I can see. Sure, there’s a lot of apps in development for it, and I’ve personally made a couple apps in only a few minutes time using the tools available from Microsoft, but make me believe that the phone will be as reliable as my iPhone has been and I’ll think about being a Windows Phone user again.
Anyway, even my senior-citizen parents have iPhones. They have a sling box, FIOS, DVRs, etc.. Technology is in the hands of more than just the teens and twenty somethings now because it’s easy and RELIABLE. @The Fight sure, there’s more than the status quo available for the tech/geek crowd, but when 40-60 year old people go shopping, they don’t say “Give me the most difficult to live with product you have available” and receive something made by HTC and fused with a MS product (or a blackberry for that matter.. those people like being horse-whipped for sexual pleasure). No. They get an iPhone or a Droid. They don’t get a Cowon for its awesome playlist capabilities. They get an iPod because it’s dead simple to use. They don’t buy Monsoon. They get the Geek Squad from BestBuy to come to their homes and install a sling box. They don’t buy an Xbox; they get the PS3 (the BD player alone is worth the price of admission on this front –even if you don’t play a single game – It’s upgradable, 3D capable, etc., but toss in free online gaming, a KILLER movie selection, Hulu and more, it’s a no brainer).
The fact is, where the market is, people go. Windows Mobile 6 simply isn’t a market factor anymore. Microsoft knows this. All of MS’s BEST mobile apps are on the iPhone!
As much as I’d LOVE to see WP7 succeed, I’m with Doug on this one. MS needs to step it up, or get real comfy in last place again.
LOL, I love blogs.
Hah! WMPowerLusers, I do believe YOU’VE BEEN SERVED.
Either that, or … IT’S ON now.
You know, I gave you some credit for your opinion until you dropped a blatantly bad statistic. Bing has upwards of 13% market share, and I recall has seen at least a 4% share growth in the year since it launched.
Now, you can come back and say that 13% is peanuts, which it probably is. My point is that you’re clearly as emotionally attached to your Android as you claim Windows Mobile users are to their devices.
I have never owned a Windows Mobile phone, but will be purchasing one on launch day for the sole reason that it will do what no device has done to date. It will bring my life together in an exciting, elegant way. Dare I say, fun to use?
P.S. “there are” != they’re
@Doug Simmons: ROFLMAO!!! If only it were still live so I could read the sure-to-be insane, youtube-like comments.
I’ve used android: don’t like it. I’ve used iphones: don’t like it. I’m back to winmo: I’m still in.
I use what works for me. and yes I will be getting a windows phone 7 device, you got a problem with that? I will not let some asshats thoughts or way of thinking put me in defence mode. I know the new platform isn’t mature as it’s a youngin coming up in the old market and that’s why I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: I will most likely be carrying my winmo device just in case I need it and a wp7 device as my main device until it’s matured where I can have it as my only device. I leave my house with 2 winmo devices because one has a vga out and I load a lot of movies and animes on my sd cards. I went to my friends son’s birthday party the other day and their internet wasn’t working at the time but we all wanted to go on xbox live to play some modern warfare 2, so boom I popped out my windows mobile device and his laptop: a one step easy tethering to the laptop, then share internet from the laptop to the xbox. I don’t have to jailbreak or root my winMo to do this, and I most definetly don’t have to pay anything extra on my bill to do this. so suck on that with your nexus one. we WinMo users know exactly why we use it. it has nothing to do with marketshare for me because again, I use what works for me.
I’m an xbox user and I’m most welcome the integration my gamer score should be through the roof when good games starts rolling out for the new plaform, ha, suck on that with your google phone. I wonder how you like all your info getting stuck down there in the google black box?
I’m also a zune user and I most welcome the integration. zunepass, a brilliant idea and service.
I believe the reason you can’t see why most of us http://www.wmpoweruser.com goers will use the new OS is because of your lack of understanding and seeing the bigger picture. so you and your nexus one can go have sex with stockholm if you like. just leave http://www.wmpoweruser.com users alone next timeand don’t bring your foolishness there.
Well then, I have to address somethings huh…
First, THANK YOU @Chris Leiter for actually reading and responding in a coherent fashion. I was worried that I would have to just deal with the avg run of the mill trolls.
Ok, fair warning, Some of my points may jump around a bit because they lend themselves to other points.
BTW, the link for the article is: http://wmpoweruser.com/thoughts-of-windows-phone-7-so-far-by-doug-s/
the ending for the link you have is …by-doug-simmons/ We’ll just call that an oversight, especially when you didn’t take the 37 seconds that I did to scroll down and see that the article is still there. Come on, do better.
I think the purpose of the article was to talk about the “impending doom” of WP7. I’m fine with WM 6 being dead, although, WM 6.5.3+ has served me really damn well. With that being said. If you think that every iPhone user is completely happy with their experience, you are out of your gourd. The jailbreak community is so ridiculously large now that mainstream newspapers (like the NYTimes) write articles about it. Don’t try to box Windows Mobile into that $200-500 dollar, must unlock to enjoy category when jailbreaking, unlocking and rooting ALL are extremely popular.
Off topic but I have to discuss this since you brought it up, Spending 300 dollars on a blu-ray player is ridiculous. hell if you look hard enough,for 400, you can get an 1100W HTIB (home theatre in a box for all of you who haven’t gone through electronic retail hell like I have *more on this in a couple), from LG that has Hulu, Netflix, Pandora, Accuweather, CinemaNow, Vudu & a Blu-ray player. From someone who has had both (I gave the PS3 away), the online experience on the PS3 is not even close to what the 360 offers, just play games that both systems have an you’ll see it (see: Modern Warfare 2, hell, go into a lobby and just look how many people have mics). It’s pretty damn laughable. On the 3D front, what percentage of games with Sony’s iteration of 3D are actually fun? Wipeout? Come on now, you want 3D? Wait for a 3DS…Rounding out the rest of your PS3 comments in that paragraph: When was the last time you compared the movies on the Zune marketplace to The Playstation Store? Better yet, when was the last time you turned on a 360? Do you realize that BOTH are upgradable? Exactly what part of this was a no-brainer?
Side note: as someone who has delt with both sides of this coin, both retail supervisor and customer, when you do go to upgrade the hard drive on the PS3, don’t strip the screws in the dock/ hard drive bay, that alone with void the warranty for the entire system and Sony doesn’t have great customer service.
As someone who has a number of Cowon devices A2, A3, S9 (16 and 32), I absolute hate Cowon’s Playlist system. No, I loathe it. It only supports the dynamic/OTG playlist features. I use Cowon’s because of how much native support for uncompressed music and videos there is, the AMOLED screens (even if they are resistive), JetAudio, The battery life, Flash support, Bluetooth support and oh yea, IT SOUNDS A WHOLE HELL OF A LOT BETTER. Come on now. Use any kind of headphones and compare, ear buds to grado. Studio monitor to bluetooth…When I was in retail hell, I used to hold classes for people on how to actually use the stuff that they buy and a large majority of the people there, had no damn reason owning the products that they bought. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean that its the right fit for someone or that it’s even cost effective. Monsoon products do so much more for less than Sling products do AND the mobile software is free AND runs over the phone’s network. Sling charges you 30 beans for the mobile software and AT&T would like to talk to you about your data plan usage… Geek squad/firedog and the like are all jokes. They are just direct profit machines pushed by sales people who are by their supervisors and managers. Any one getting these “services” for anything other than delivery and “set-up” is simply too lazy to RTFM (read the f*ckin manual, another retail term).
Back to phone stuff, Blackberry sucks. We are all agreed on this one here aren’t we?
if you owned a tilt 2, what are doing using the headset adapter to listen to music? Why not get a bluetooth headset and get kinoma or TCPMP (dear God save you if you say something dumb about stereo bluetooth headphones and sound quality…)?
I’m glad that you don’t see the need in having to jailbreak your phone but my senior citizen dad does (he’s going to be 66 this year). see, he loves going to retrojunk.com and watch 80’s sitcoms and action shows, and they happen to be on flash. My dad has a DVR now and wants a place shifting device but knows to check the market first. Not everything is cut and dry with technology and just following the market doesn’t always get you to where you WANT to be.
I’ll leave to you read those sure-to-be-insane, youtube-like comments that you’ve been looking forward to.
@ @The Fight:
First mistake? Mentioning MW2.. ugh.. Battlefield Bad Company 2 all day, everyday. No question.
Xbox 360 vs PS3 is a debate that neither side will ever concede. Worse than phone fanboys. Period. I’ll leave it at agreeing to disagree.
My Cowon comment was clearly (wasn’t it?) sarcasm 😉 But my point still stands. People want iPods because they plug into their cars, their stereos, their heads… they want them because they work. sound quality be damned!
When I was on the Tilt 2, I used BT in my VW and 3.5mm in my Jeep. The quality in the BT was NO WHERE near as good as it is from my iPhone. And I was one of the BIGGEST supporters of Kinoma Play around. I was on Kinoma’s support forum more than most of the Kinoma employees.
While there’s no NEED to jailbreak, it definitely makes the experience a bit more interesting. I mean, if a company released a PERFECT product, there’d be no war, no poverty, no starvation, and certainly no competition. Tweaking products is what drives these markets. Be it phones, computers, cars, etc.. That being said, a non-jailbroken iphone is nowhere near as ‘nerfed’ as a Winmo phone aside from Tethering. An iPhone runs at 100% from the factory. A winmo phone has bloatware bogging down the system. Flash a stripped version of Energy Rom on a TP2 and compare it to a stock one. It’s laughable.
@chris leiter
and here I thought you read everything I wrote 🙁
I refuse to support EA since the Madden fiasco that stopped me from playing 2k on next-gen (now current gen) systems. (It’s been hard.) But we can go down the list a bit, Any ghost recon, any splinter-cell, any team base game that would benefit from real actual human interaction is going to suffer where people DONT USE MICS! come on. I was a sony fanboy. I was coverted because i tried something different, it’s not that I don’t see or even agree with all of your points, it’s that my personal experience tells me that the most critical piece of a current gen system (computers included) in the online component and that’s where the wii and PS3 are lacking the most. I was legitimately excited for the PS3, especially for the exclusive features and games (see GT5 and Home) but they never came through. I can agree to disagree with you about this but only after you see that I gave this a FAIR shake.
I didn’t catch the sarcasm (obviously) but still, you’re proving my point. An mp3 players main use is to PLAY MP3s! Not have a dolled up interface (my apologies to any one reading this who has a custom UI on a cowon) . IF you know audiophiles love Cowon for the sound, and you are looking for an MP3 player, why the hell would you look to something knowing that the sound quality is inferior?!! that’s like looking to buy a luxury sedan and coming home with a VW beetle.
BT in a car head unit? Really? Be fair, there’s a distinct reason why i said Bluetooth headset. Lmao about Kinoma, i didn’t have issues with it after I was done with the mogul and went to the TP but I understand and empathize.
Next, I specifically say in my first response:
2. As someone who still uses his touch pro 1 on sprint’s network in NY, I still use my phone because energyROM’s and even the rom sponsored by WMPU are clean, fast, efficient and just plain work without the bloatware.
Knowing that you are on AT&T only amplifies that considering that they are the kings of bloatware/value added services on all devices not named iPhone.
iPhones run at 100% you say? It took 3 years before changing your wallpaper no longer voided you warranty, and 2 to send a MMS. Flash still isn’t there, you’ll never see silverlight (yes i said it), video apps are under constant scrutiny about being able to use the phone network, you still can’t properly group sms, you can’t add favorites to your to the iPod app without jailbreaking, there is still no relevant information on the lock screen without jailbreaking and the most NERFED feature about the iPhone is that you can only facetime over wifi without jailbreaking.
It’s not 100% but jailbreaking, unlocking, and rooting your phone gets you a whole hell of a lot closer than stock. Which is why the first sentence of this article makes me aggravated, all of use who choose to unlock our phones, become power users. There no need to bash people for it.
@The Fight:
I skim comments 😉 I only reply to what I want 🙂
Anyway, all those ‘issues’ are blatantly apparent to people who don’t have them because they’re not willing to change how they operate. Am I looking for the best sound possible? No. I have a helluva a setup at home and am happy with that. Am I worried that I can’t group SMS, or add a few features without jailbreaking (especially now that jailbreaking is so dead simple) ? No.
Flash is available now.
Silverlight might not see public use, but it has been done by MS.
AT&T does suck in the way that they bloat the hell out of their phones, but man, they actually work compared to the POS things that they peddle over there with CDMA radios… my friends had HTC Raphs and Rhodiums on Sprint and had nothing but issues. A few replacement phones later, they were both on Android and loving life.
Opinions are like assholes right?
@Chris Leiter:
Rhodiums failure rate on tmobile is higher than verizon, at&t and sprint’s per broker respectively.
For the record BB’s have the highest “failure” rate (damn near top 4 every broker i’ve checked so far *just 3*) even though a lot of BB’s aren’t provisioned properly (gets provisioned for BIS instead of BES and the reverse…) and end up “failing” because of it. Oh the joy of the being at work to check up on these things…
People kill me with CDMA vs GSM radio talk, I won’t even go there with you on this one. It would be too lopsided. I’ll help you out though, research the HSPA+ capabilities that T-Mobile may have then come back to me for a real discussion if you want..
Again, that doesn’t make sense. If you have a strong sound system at home and clearly you cared enough about your driving experience to buy connectivity hardware, why bog it down?
Where has apple officially welcomed Flash on iOS4? you have to jailbreak it.
Man you weren’t kidding about skimming through comments…
@The Fight:
My argument of convenience stands true for my lazy ass too 🙂
Skim skim skim…..
Capabilities aside, I’ve seen first hand how horrible a CDMA sprint version Touch Pro vs my ATT Fuze was on battery life, call quality and reliability. I’d stick with AT&T just for that. I like having new and shiny things. And like I’ve said before, if I wasn’t such a phone whore, you’d have a real case against me, but I’ll be buying a WP7 device, and probably an Android 3.0 one too.
Yes, jb for flash. My bad, forgot that it mattered.
http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=jam+that+he+had+to+write+his+way+out+of.++Here+is+his+thoughts+he+sent+to+me%2c&d=736192562349&mkt=en-US&setlang=en-US&w=36fd911a,e2474ed0
Use that to view the pulled website post and as I have said on WMPU, I apologize to you both. I legitimately didn’t see the article.
You definitely should start using bing…
Well, they’re butt hurt for sure. A virtual moratorium on mobilitydigest links? that’s just nonsense.
Chris: That, while nonsense, is the least nonsensical of the nonsense surrounding the past 24 hours.
Formulating.
dotcompt: I know I’m not going to win your respect back with this one, but they started it, and in a rather fucked up way I should add which was how they continued it.
@Doug Simmons:
P.S I sent that to Staffnotify showing you what the people on WMPU feel about your thoughts. It was originally posted by Lennard that seems to have also posted it here.
So I do not know how you can say surur said that because I know surur doesnt email people for stupid reasons.
I have to say that I have already met some stupid and ignorant bastards in the mobile community, but you Doug “Simpson”, you are on the Top 3 so far…well first place. Not going to mention the other two as after reading your letter I am starting to respect them.
Attacking someone because they like a different OS??? Dont you nothing else to do? You have serious problems my friend. Get a life and stop being such a ridiculous person.
Hey come on what’s all this hatred in your words.. and why is it directed to wmpoweruser.com? If you hate wp7 say it, but I don’t think it sounds good to insult another good tech blog. This article is a big fail.. I’m sorry. Shame on you!
Now talking about wp7, I don’t think you see it right. You simply hate it and got blinded from that. I don’t say that wp7 will be good or the best, I simply think it has many interesting aspects. The interface could be a breakthrough: let’s see if developers will use it correctly and if it will really be better in real life.
One thing is sure, microsoft has a lot of money and will use it in marketing and other projects to promote wp7. Look around and see how good the ms sdk is and how interesting its crossplatform developing (xbox, pc, wp) is. Developers who use it, coming from iOS or Android, seem to be pretty excited about it. Microsoft absolutely needs a successful mobile platform in order to support all the new clouds services and future services, they don’t want to lose this battle.
Did you see what a big company can do when they put enough money in a project? I’m talking about android. Perhaps you were one of those who were laughing at google when nexus one did sell bad and you thought it was an other epic fail. Now android sold more than iOS eh? What about now?
I don’t say wp7 will be the best OS, it has many dark sides, but I really don’t think it will fail. It could be the most selled mobile os in some years, it could remain in second, third or even a worse position, but it won’t be discotinued. It’s vital for ms plans for the future.
Only wait for its release and then see what will happen in the next year. Perhaps ms will fix the core problems that we all see, perhaps they won’t and so they will lose the power users but attract many normal users that just want a simple phone that looks good. Just wait and see.
So… will I then buy I wp7 phone when it will be released? No I think not, I will see how it will be adopted from the market and what’s under the hood of the next releases of Android. But YES I’m a power user and I love to tweak, personalize my OS (pc, mobile, ..)…. so if wp7 will be so closed at it seems now, I won’t be interested, I will adopt Android. For too many reasons I totally don’t like iOS and apple products, but I don’t want to talk about these reasons now (too long and off topic).
Yes I hate a little bit apple products for many many reasons. But this isn’t a reason to say that apple products suck. In some cases when a friend asks me if they should buy an iPhone or an apple pc, I advise them to do so. It all depends from the type of user and what he’s expecting from the product. It’s the same thing as when you have to choose a gift for someone: if you choose something that you like, without trying to understand what the person wants, you will fail for sure!
The same way I didn’t advise wmobile to normal users that did only want to make phone calls, take cools pictures and some other basic things. For such people, in the past years, iPhone would be a better choice. For less pretending users, I often advised to not even buy a touchscreen phone.
It all depends from what user we are talking about.
So one last time: SHAME ON YOU. You talk like a young boy!
I found mobility digest only a month or two ago and I liked it. So I hope I won’t never again read such a stupid article. I want to read news, leaks, benchmarks, interviews, reviews… not hate towards other serious tech blogs. Nonsense!
I was invited and encouraged to weigh in on my general views of the subject by someone who knew I was not an expert on Windows anymore for his blog that is full of “power users.” He got what exactly what he wanted. If his readers (or his editor for that matter) don’t like it, their beef is not with me.
what a shame, most of the people who read these blogs like gadgets, at the end every person buy whatever he wants, you should respect other people if you dont like winmo, simply dont use it,
wow, this is a poorly written article. being neutral on this issue, i could care less which way this whole thing swings but you should atleast try to backup some of what your saying…
I use an iPhone, lol. And I run Ubuntu, not Windows… Screw Microsoft.
At least its not a Windows device, and if I could afford it I would happily switch to ANDROID
Thanks Esteban, good points.
Though I’m not your garden variety fanboy. I made this, then this, and then came here where, if you forward in time back from the first bunch of articles I wrote here, and by the way I was invited here because I write like this, a desire to diversify the writing style, you’ll see that I’ve not only had my share of WinMo experience, but it included not only, for example, writing articles on dual booting other operating systems starting with the Fuze to mirroring such projects, articles on registry tweaks, the whole nine. I’ve been around that block. I’ve been around other blocks too, iPhones and Blackberries which I’ve had to bring home the bacon by fixing, improving and teaching people how to use them. I speak from experience.
Then one day I got fed up with my TP2 which was as perfected as it gets with EnergyROM and without a scratch on the screen, opened my mind if you’ll be willing to let me call it that, and tried to see how green other pastures were and I was quite taken with how much better they were that I was dismayed that I hadn’t gotten out sooner, and I did feel that Microsoft treated its mobile customers like shit both with shitty software that never went anywhere (except until now, toward a place that lacks everything most of the people on XDA and in my blownfuze audience and here too enjoyed). That people are still hanging on blows my mind and I think that, with some satire, likening it to Stockholm syndrome is not the most absurd comparison one could come up with.
But the crux of my article that sort of slipped through the cracks was that WP7 will fall flat in terms of breaking into the market in spite of Microsoft’s attempts to turn over a leaf, a leaf many winmo users wish they wouldn’t overturn, but for reasons that elude me — beyond, maybe, a digital form of Stockholm syndrome — these guys are going to stick with WP7. In my piece I mentioned Android once and iPhone once. It was not an Android-heavy article. It was a wake-up you guys who are flaming me out of misidentification and by the way WP7 won’t be a blockbuster article.
Based on all these comments about me deserving to be shot and how close minded I am, maybe I am in fact the close minded one and that it is everyone else who isn’t and may look at their next phone buying juncture in their life as an opportunity to try whatever appeals to them the most without being distracted by the brand behind the phone. If that’s the case, hallelujah, because pointing back to my blownfuze site which I really poured my heart into over God knows how many hours just to help people with nothing but some thank you notes in return, and also pointing to my batteryboss.org site, another one of which lacks ads and donation links, my chief interests include consumers getting the best product for their dollar without being manipulated by something like good marketing or old and misguided allegiance to one company. I’ve even publicly invited one of the likes of the angry recipients of my open letter a month or two ago, three months maybe, to take over the keys to the site as I feel bad that it’s getting stale even though I’m on another platform.
However, the way I came off, that’s how I write, especially in response to being flamed for something I didn’t even write and had nothing to do with, one flame of which included calling me an Android fanboy citing this as evidence, a helpful guide to any other Android people in our audience to start firing up good programs fast, one with no mention of WinMo and one categorized appropriately as Android. Fortunately for everyone I’m one of many contributors here (well, not many, but a good handful), most if not all of whom wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. So, go ahead and keep the flames coming but I’d just like to throw out a plea that you keep me and not the rest of these guys tightly in your crosshairs. If they weren’t starved for writers and content maybe I’d be given my walking papers but that’s not the state of this union over here. Speaking of which, back to what I opened with, good points you made, and well — you want to write here? Doesn’t pay anything but it sure as shit is exciting from time to time.
Doug Simmons
The arrogant asshole that wrote this article shuld be bloody shot !!!!!
@Casey:
Ubuntu… yeah. I can see that.
But I don’t know if using an Apple product allows you to say “Screw Microsoft!” in quite the same way, considering Microsoft is the second largest programmer for Apple, behind Apple.
@Chris Leiter: I guess that means if you go and spend more than 8K on a new car, you expect the seats, mirrors, radio station, air conditioning, and cruise control to already be configured to your liking?
Fanboyism goes either way, and in fact I am of the opinion that fanboys who are in denial about their fanboyism are by far more insufferable than fanboys who are upfront.
I had been using Windows Mobile until April or so on an HTC HD2 quite happily… back when I bought it in December it was still the best smartphone option. The iPhone is plainly a pain in the butt in every sense, and Android 2.0 was only available on the CDMA Droid in the US at that point, so I went with another WM device.
The HD2 suffered a shattered screen in the spring so I tossed it out… two months went by as I weighed my options. I considered everything from the iPhone 4, purely for the hi-res screen, to even Windows Phone 7.
Guess what, I just bought another HD2 so I could have myself an unlocked 4.3″ WM6.5/Android 2.2 dual-booting monster for under $500 (no contract, unlocked). Like I said above WM isn’t a total turd and it still has some endearing qualities even in 2010, and since WM is all but dead I wanted to have the last flagship device to hold onto to… let’s not forget that PocketPC is the granddaddy of all smartphone platforms and you can say what you want about Microsoft ripping off Apple, Google and RIM in making WP7, but those guys in turn owe something to PocketPC.
So yeah, try being open-minded and you’ll find your life more enjoyable. I could have ignored the HD2 second time around due to the Windows logo on the box and gone and paid twice as much for a single-boot Android device, but I don’t want to put myself at a disadvantage just to preserve my allegiance to a company (i.e. fanboyism).
WP7 doesn’t look that interesting to me from what I’ve seen, but again, I will definitely try it out if, or I should say when, it can be installed on the mighty HD2. I don’t feel the need to knock something I have no experience with so vehemently, that would make me a fanboy and then I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror as I despise close-minded
foolfanboys.I can’t believe the trash talk I just read. Coming from someone who should be mindful of their need to maintain a professional tone of impartiality especially on a site that covers all mobile platforms, that was inexcusable. Doug you just lost another reader. RSS feed removed!
You are close-minded because you keep insisting that people who are still carrying around WM devices are all in some kind of denial. That’s just not true… I know better than anyone how lackluster Microsoft’s efforts have been in the mobile arena since at least 2007 but that doesn’t mean everyone using WM is an idiot or whatever else you think.
Look at me, I’ve spent over $1,000 on WM phones since December and some would call me crazy upon hearing that. But I explained myself above, it has nothing to do with being afraid to cast off Microsoft. No corporations hold a special place in my heart, certainly not a bland software company like Microsoft.
People have different needs and different wants from their electronics… and face it, WM devices are still worthy for some people, even though those people are shrinking in numbers very quickly these days. In my case the benefit of WM is that it allows me to dual-boot Android and WM, and other people will find other benefits in using or picking up a WM device.
Your repeated insistence that all who are still using a WM product in August 2010 are in denial or suffering from Stockholm syndrome is what gives your writing a tinge of fanboyism, though admittedly I haven’t been following you long enough to know a fanboy of what platform. But anyone who keeps insisting their initial assumptions and making huge generalizations about a group of people isn’t speaking with an open-mind and probably holds some biases.
@Esteban Trabajo:
Don’t get caught up with this. Simmons can say this was a response, but he started posting his crap at fuzemobility and it wasn’t in response to anything. He’s like a kid with a new toy. Any kid who doesn’t like his toy and thinks he’s the coolest is an idiot. And like any kid, he’ll eventually try a different, less confrontational, approach to win people over. When that doesn’t work, he’ll go back to whining, sorry “rants”.
What a riot Doug !!!!!! I go to Vagas for a few days and when I return home, I find that the villagers want to burn you at the stake.
Cheer up, these soft skinned sissy boys aren’t your reader base anyways, it takes a real hard core reader to appreciate your angry man writing style. Maybe Doug Smith can create a separate section where the rest of us “Dick heads” can vent without disturbing the ladies.
Hey Doug, I was in Stockholm about 30 years ago, so maybe it was my destiny to actually enjoy owning and using a WM device, with a stock ROM, in August of 2010. Outrageous!
Discovering this article. My God. This is pathetic.
The author needs some holidays.
The Fight: Please see my last RIM article’s image to understand why the target of this thing was widened, us being the person in the picture.
People, this heat is really making me sweat, you’re laying it on pretty thick. Really stress testing my heat shield which by the way is NASA-grade but even NASA’s shield tiles split off sometimes, you people with your level heads representing the atmosphere as I attempt to come back down to earth. I submit that you consider the possibility that my next array of articles will be more defensible and to reserve final judgment for a little while, then I do something like this again, then you flame my ass off, then repeat. It’s a reasonable arrangement, no?
wtf? I was ready to put this to bed yesterday after I got pissed @ wmpoweruser.com for basically throwing a brick and hiding their hands, hell I even wrote them a letter informing them of my decreasing patronage of their site because of it. now here you guys come editing the original article and making the attack more broad. wtf is wrong with you? wmpu may have a few thousand readers but even a slender9% of the smartphone market represents more than just a few million people. smh, I always wanted to make a tech blog or have a column somewhere but I’ve put it off forever, maybe its time I don’t anymore.
and no this column isn’t in an angry man writing style, read tucker max or deadspin for that, this is just fanboy flame bait.
im done here.
-the fight
@Doug Simmons: Agreed, that is a broad, broad.
The comedic aspect of this whole thing is that this will happen again and judging on the amount of people I have told about this/ bitched to regarding this, I’m probably going to (need to) say something again (not that people read all my points before).
Meh, until then.
I read your comments, agreed with some disagreed with others, but on the whole I thought you were funny(perhaps a little bi-polar but funny). Thats the great thing about the “RANT” section, you can say what you “FEEL” and it doesn’t actually have to be accurate, this is a place to vent the absurdities of your of your particular position. More importantly it’s a place for someone to call you out and tell you “You are a Dick Head” without upsetting the touchy feel good kids who also visit this site.
So I can honestly say “You’re a Dick Head”, I know this because I am one to.
@BRYAN B:
There is distinct difference between rants and inflammatory remarks poorly hidden in weakly constructed metaphors.
Wanna see a rant that’s just ridiculous but at least attempts to employ a couple of classical rhetorical appeals? see: http://deadspin.com/5581889/lebron-james-is-a-cocksucker
For the record: You do have to know your audience (intended or otherwise), readership and the environment for which you post in (ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU KNOW HOW FANBOYS GET ABOUT ELECTRONICS!!!!!!!!). You still are held accountable for not being accurate and for whatever else comes out of your mind when you just try to say what you “feel” without any filter, regardless of whatever tag you place on it. That’s why editorials are editorials and not just streams of consciousness.
I seriously need to unsubscribe to this thread or not have push mail turned on my phone right now.
@The Fight:
You my friend are a roit HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!
If you are out and about, stop at a pub and have a cool one before you have a stroke HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!!