Windows Phone 8

Watching the Windows Phone 8 launch event yesterday left me in two minds; some of the features are rather nice, but not exactly mind blowing and the operating system is still very impressive in many ways.

I have never understood why Windows Phone has not caught on and still believe it to be one of the very best mobile operating systems with some definite advantages over iOS and Android. The live tiles do make the icon driven iOS feel somewhat dated and when you spend the time to get used to the way it works, it is hard to step back.

The sheer smoothness, the large screens and almost everything else about the setup is great and Microsoft appears to have struck a good balance between innovation and incrementation with the latest version. I want to try one of these devices and spend a lot of time really getting to know it when it is released to the public and fully expect to enjoy it. It looks as though Windows Phone 8 is a good fit for the smartphone form factor which maybe the latest version of Windows isn't for the Surface or even a desktop.

It also looks as though too much emphasis has been put on bringing the smartphone experience to fixed devices and this is possibly too ambitious and too early for it to work across all, but for now Windows Phone 8 is looking good. Very good. There is one caveat in that all of the devices shown on stage yesterday had the same problem as the original Windows Phones did- they all looked the same...

Comments

[Gavin]

I wonder when the Windows 8 tiles become tiresome, like iOS home screen.

[David Green]

One of the things that holds me back against Windows Phone was initially the tiles were just big squares, far larger than necessary. Especially when all you get is an icon and a big number proclaiming how many missed calls, and that occupied up to 15% of the screen.

At least version 8 has allowed them to be shrunk down to ¼ of that size.

But I am still waiting to see something other than squares.

I know screen space usage mapping is constrained to boxes, even Android has the same limitation, but widgets and tiles would appear to have functional similarities, but Android widgets have transparency which, of course, lends itself to artistic shaping.

I think is WP can do something better than boxes, the eye-candy potential should help bolster WP's appeal. The best they seem to have managed is to match the tile colour with the case colour.

I'm waiting to see something innovative with WP tiles, until them, is poor second after Android, although slightly ahead of the iOS launcher UI (replication of Palm and Psion's from the previous millennium).

@Gavin, from my perspective, it already is, aside from being a regressive step.

Window 8 Tiles reminds me of "Program Manager" from Windows 1 through 3.xx. Windows 95 Start button and task bar was the winner, and has lasted right through to Windows 7. As I understand it, under Windows 8, like Program Manager, you have to minimise the current application to access the icon of another application. This is where Win95 onwards won, application launch control was always available, along with the bar showing all current running tasks.