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Windows Mobile 7 Review

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Renegade:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/technology-video/gadget-inspectors/8074247/Windows-Phone-7-first-review.html

It's a video review.

Summary: Looks good. Massive leap forward for Windows Mobile. If you buy one, we're not going to call you an idiot. Very promising.

Darwin:
Very promising unless you live in Canada and you are a Telus subscriber. Telus is seriously fouling the bathwater these days - they're offering feature crippled versions of some smartphones (a lesser version of the Samsung Galaxy S, for example) or not offering others at all. With the Windows 7 phones that they've announced, they're not bringing in any of the high spec phones that I've read about and drooled over, offering instead a couple of base models from LG and HTC. If I'm going to live with a phone for three years, I want to start off with something cutting edge.

I guess I'll have to go carrier shopping...

Canada - great place but cursed by a huge land mass and a small population. Apple has the Canadian population so mesmerized that other manufacturers have been steadily pulling out/scaling back on the productst that they offer here. The potential sales aren't enough to offsest the marketing and shipping costs.

app103:
Here is another review: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2010/10/windows-phone-7-the-ars-review.ars

Better set aside a big chunk of time for this one...it's almost 20 pages!

Renegade:
Very promising unless you live in Canada and you are a Telus subscriber. Telus is seriously fouling the bathwater these days - they're offering feature crippled versions of some smartphones (a lesser version of the Samsung Galaxy S, for example) or not offering others at all. With the Windows 7 phones that they've announced, they're not bringing in any of the high spec phones that I've read about and drooled over, offering instead a couple of base models from LG and HTC. If I'm going to live with a phone for three years, I want to start off with something cutting edge.

I guess I'll have to go carrier shopping...

Canada - great place but cursed by a huge land mass and a small population. Apple has the Canadian population so mesmerized that other manufacturers have been steadily pulling out/scaling back on the productst that they offer here. The potential sales aren't enough to offsest the marketing and shipping costs.
-Darwin (October 22, 2010, 09:20 AM)
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I didn't know it was so bad. (I'm Canadian, just haven't lived there in 15 years.)

But it's not very surprising. Carriers regularly screw things up. They're the same people that haven't improved audio quality in umpteen decades since the origin of the phone.

I need to get a phone here in Australia, and simply dreading every step of the way. Options?

* iPhone - Ummm... Nice phone. Evil company. MonoTouch makes the platform tolerable to deal with.
* Android phone - Skeptical about getting something decent as the market seems a tad thin there. MonoDroid is still under development.
* Windows Mobile 7 - Too new for here I guess. I doubt I'd be able to get one for a while anyways. This would be best though as I could easily write software for it better than any other platform. Microsoft simply has the best tools and platforms out there. .NET and C# is the way.
* Blackberry - I don't have the business need for it.
* bada - Very attractive platform for development, but it's really a first mover situation now, and I'm too small for that. C++ beats Obj-C any day. Uses Eclipse as the IDE, so it's better than Xcode, but still not Visual Studio.
* Symbian - Meh. Never been really interested in it.
* Other - Huh? Like what's left that's viable?  

I'm leaning towards an Android at the moment. Still not too sure though... The carrier contracts here don't thrill me. I'll end up paying double for half as much as I had before, if I get that much. (The carriers are just insanely expensive for what they deliver.)

Still, if things go well, I may very well end up buying different phones to develop on. It's really about what *I* want as a starting point.

Darwin:
Hmm... regarding the Windows 7 phones offered by Telus, perhaps I am being too hasty - the specs set by MS for the hardware is high-end, so maybe it isn't so important which phone I get?

Processor 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon
GPU Qualcomm Adreno 200
RAM 256 MB
Flash storage 8 GB
Screen resolution 800 × 480 (exactly)
Touch Capacitive multitouch with at least four contact points
Cellular connectivity GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSPA (HSPA+ optional)
Wireless 802.11b/g (802.11n optional), Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, FM radio
Hardware buttons Start, search, back, volume, power, and camera (with half-press focus)
Camera 5 MP, dedicated flash
Sensors A-GPS, accelerometer, compass, proximity, light
Ports Micro-USB, 3.5mm TRS headphone jack
Miscellaneous options Hardware keyboard, user-accessible microSD slots

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