Why was this announced so early if the phone isn't coming out until the last quarter? Is it to give developers time to do their thing? Will the features be drastically different depending on the phone manufacturer?
No, there's no skinning on WinMobile 7, so it will be nearly identical across all manufacturers. The only differences will be in the hardware.
If Windows Phone 7 never came out. Android would've been my next choice if I wanted to replace my iPhone. I just love WP7 UI and it totally fit my style. It might not for many but I like the modern look to it. Never did like the Desktop like UI with apps/gadgets floating around. I'm pretty sure there will be people out there will create skins for WP7 so there shouldn't be any concern for that. I'm also starting to jump on Apple and Microsoft bandwagon for not introducing Flash on their mobile. Flash is just terribly scripted and it's pretty buggy. I have to close my browser and reopen to clean up the sluggish Flash very often. Adobe need to get their act together and hopefully Microsoft is working with them to get a more stable Flash going. I'm getting really tired with their videos lagging all the time and they need to be compatible with other add-ons.
Yeah things like the camera will vary, but otherwise MS has made the UI standard is no longer allowing custom skins (Good thing the default is pretty great). I think they took a lot of steps forward but also took some step back. I'm disappointed by the limited multi-tasking and lack of customization.
Flash is alright on Windows machines; but it runs poorly on a Mac (Though Adobe says 10.1 will work as well as the Windows version). Flash Lite is also disappointing(Windows Mobile 6), but the Flash set to come out for Android is the full 10.1 and seems to work pretty well. I think at least the option to enable/disable Flash should be there for whenever it's needed. I've heard though that Flash might eventually make it to Windows Mobile 7, it's just that it won't be there at launch. I don't think MS is against Flash on Windows Mobile, it just hasn't been worked on by Adobe yet. Flash on Android 2.1 (Beta) <object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vlWOocHwcLo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vlWOocHwcLo&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object>
I think pausing an app(s) is just as good or better than multi-tasking. It will save battery power and less sluggish while using another app.
Pausing an app doesn't let you run things simultaneously or in the background. For instance an IM/twitter app or Pandora running in the background while you're browsing the web or using another app. The reason some of people stuck with Windows Mobile over the iPhone, was deep customization(SPB, TouchFlo, etc...) and multi tasking. It now has a much better interface, but now has limited multitasking. They should have found a better way to handle it like WebOS and Android do compared to WinMob 6.1 but they shouldn't have eliminated it. I can sort of see where there coming from though since the iPhone was able to have success without it but it's still disappointing to me.
I'm pretty sure it had to do with HTML 5. Not sure if it will totally eliminate Flash down the road. The problem with Flash is that it's hard to work with, doesn't cache propely(reloading a video over again), can't copy text or pictures, pressing the back or forward buttons take you back to square one and need to reload again and ect. I like Flash but I hate the loading reloading process.
HTML 5 will hopefully replace Flash since it is much better in many ways but that's still a long way from happening. After looking it up it seems even though it won't be there at launch, MS is okay with Flash and it will be eventually available. Which is great since at least the option should be there. Google is actually one of the biggest backers of HTML 5; both Chrome and the Android browser support HTML5, all of their mobile web apps run on HTML, and they've released a HTML5 beta for YouTube. Yet they still support Flash on Android; glad MS will do the same.
I agreed. I mean they should at least allow max 2 or 3 apps open. But I think there's still problem with multi-tasking. Could be many phones hardware and software isn't stable enough to handle many apps at the same time at the moment. I see too often phone becoming sluggish and locking up and need a hard reboot. But I'm pretty sure there will be hackers/mods that will implement multi-tasking. Another hopeful is that a firmware/OS update down the road will implement it with the right hardware.
Hardware wise, probably but as for software, which matters a lot, I don't think it can compete with Apple or Android. We all know about Apple and it took about a year for Android to really hit the market hard.
