WP7 And The Clock/Battery/Signal Meter Disappearing Act
Just take a look at the videos of the emulator…on the home screen there’s no time, battery or signal indicator. Sort of made me scared for a bit. Then I saw the WPC video and the on stage video showed cell signal strength, battery and clock. So I figured it was just an emulator glitch. Well I was just reading Ben Gracewood’s blog posting about why everyone will want Windows Phone 7 (including himself as a long time iPhone user). Talking about design, Ben notes:
There’s one line from the Metro design language presentation that really stuck with me: “Fierce Reduction of Unnecessary Elements“. And they don’t just pay lip services to this: if you wait for a few moments, the Windows Phone user interface does away with the battery and signal strength icons.
Now he doesn’t note the clock, so maybe that is an emulator thing, but am I the only one that thinks that they may be taking things a bit too far? I mean, I’d like to know the time and if my battery is ticking. Presumably tapping the top bar will bring it back to the forefront so I have to reserve final comment but let’s not get crazy with minimalism. This is a phone, not an art project;) oh who am I kidding – I’m buying one even if it doesn’t tell the time…
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Hi,
Don’t worry, I’m developing with the emulator and when you tap the top bar, the signal and battery life slide down 🙂
I think more information may also slide down (e.g. silent mode), but I can’t guarantee that as I may have just imagined that lol
If the Zune HD is any indication, pressing on the volume button/buttons will bring up the status
and as always, the lock screen should display all the necessary indicators
@ keyboardP – what about the clock? Same thing?
@ adp – Well see if my habits change with WP7 but on WM6.5 I don’t use the lockscreen and I do use my phone as a clock as much as anything so I hope I can adjust a setting (like 6.5) to keep the clock up there all the time. The battery and signal are pretty secondary to me as long as it tell me when bad mojo is happening;)
@David K – I’m messing around with the emulator and can’t see the clock. However, I’m not sure if this will be the case in the final version. The current emulator doesn’t allow users to change the time (it’s set to Alaska), so maybe those two things are integrated. I’d be very surprised if there’s no clock (or a tile that displays the clock) on the home screen.There’s definitely a clock on the lock screen.
The Clock doesn’t go
Check this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=j8wc1cpFl3k
@1:04, then @3:50
I Like this 🙂
Well with the signal strength meter buried in the background OEM’s won’t have to worry where to put the antenna. And for the battery I am sorta hoping for a fuel cell. This phone is going to need it.
“oh who am I kidding – I’m buying one even if it doesn’t tell the time… ”
@davidk – you’re starting to sound like those people you make fun of. Where is the objective consumerism?!?
theres nothing to object to when no other OS will run XNA and silverlight…
oh btw… have you heard of this thing called x-box live? yeah… its exclusive
@Smok3y – Sorry, but no. I’m a consumer first and foremost above anything in the market. Aboslutely no room for fanboyism. I’ll be the first guy to call out anyone on their bullshit. Whether it’s sideloading for WinPho, remote wiping non-sense on Android, or all of that weird fruit nonsense at AT&T, I’m gonna put it in my book of stuff to watch out for. Consumers vote with their dollars and if you idiots are running around cramming cash into someone’s mouth who’s putting out a crappy overpriced product then in the future, I as a consumer, will end up having to pay more for actual quality goods. If it doesn’t have what you need then don’t buy it because “you support something or other”. Screw that. People too stupid to take note of why they do or do not like something is rampant these days. I can give you good reasons for buying every product I have and why I didn’t purchase something else.
” I can give you good reasons for buying every product I have and why I didn’t purchase something else. ”
@matt, my good reason for buying a windows 7 phone is because it is going to connect almost every aspect of my electronic life… i can give up sideloading and copy and paste for that… theres nothing i “NEED” that winpho7 wont offer from what i can gather at the moment, is it really fanboyism just because i dont want to buy a PS3, get a gmail account, basically take a hit on all the other electronic things i love about microsoft just because i refuse to not sideload apps on my phone… its deeper than fanboyism…
I love my Zune HD, but I hate that the battery meter is not always visible and I need to go to another screen to check it. I would prefer for all of the meters to always be present.
I just buy microsoft zune phone and I’m really digg it, before that I had samsung galacsy and the zune phone is 10 times better