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BBC MUNDO RADIO
The last three years has seen an explosion in new smartphone operating systems. Apple's iPhone OS, Google's Android, Palm's webOS, and Nokia's Maemo all offer rich, touch-driven platforms for a new generation of fast, Internet-capable, high-end telephonic pocket-sized computers. The one company missing from that list is, of course, Microsoft. Though a long-time player in the smartphone OS market, Windows Mobile is outclassed by its competition. The recent 6.5 release has done little to redress the balance. Windows Mobile is slow, unstable, clunky, and fundamentally not designed for use with fingers. Today at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft showed off its new phone platform for the first time. Everything that we knew and loathed about Windows Mobile is gone. Even the name is different. It's now "Windows Phone 7 Series."
That Microsoft has been working on a successor to Windows Mobile 6, due for release some time this year, is no secret. That this successor was intended to be the platform that got Redmond back in the game was equally well-known. But beyond that, little more was known. There have been rumours—especially of a Zune Phone—but nothing concrete.
Microsoft really has changed nearly everything. Most obviously, the user interface is new. Touch is mandatory for all 7 Series devices, and the user interface reflects that; it's touch-driven through and through. No longer will phone users have to use small, fiddly, desktop-oriented scroll bars; smooth finger scrolling with inertia is the order of the day. The finger-friendliness is exemplified by the new start screen. There are large panels in a smooth-scrolling grid. The look is clean and crisp, balancing at-a-glance information—counts of unread text messages and e-mails neatly displayed in their squares, for example—with simple thumb-sized accessibility. Each panel represents a particular "hub"—a place where all related information (be it contacts, photos, music and videos, etc.) is brought together and managed. As you move between the screens of each hub, smooth animations rotate and slide information into place, giving the user interface a kind of cohesive "joined up" feel.
This relationship with the Zune HD is especially clear when using the music and video capabilities; in essence the entire Zune HD interface has been plonked straight into the Windows Phone interface.
The minimal aesthetic will not be to everyone's taste; the oversized text in particular seems to raise eyebrows. I personally think it looks good, but more importantly, Windows Phone 7 Series has a definite look to it, just as the iPhone does. Windows Mobile 6.5 is a mish-mash of different concepts, with some parts finger-friendly but many not. Different parts use different styles, with the result that it feels very disjointed—there's no particular Windows Mobile look-and-feel. Windows Phone, in contrast, has a very strong visual identity; all the screens are clearly Windows Phone with consistent user interaction and styling.
To reinforce that identity, another old Windows Mobile mainstay is ditched: custom interfaces. All Windows Phone devices will look and work the same way (colors and the exact layout of the start screen can be specified by the user, but the basic square concept is immutable), so no longer will vendors like HTC be able to supply their own front-end. Whether this will sit well with the OEMs is unclear; one of the major ways in which they differentiated themselves was through their custom user interfaces. With those now gone, differentiation between vendors will be greatly reduced. The upside for consumers is that Windows Phones will be far more predictable and approachable, with the same high-quality interface available regardless of which vendor you pick.
Taking a page from Palm's book, Windows Phone is connected with the cloud. The contacts list is no mere list of phone numbers; it incorporates Facebook and Windows Live contacts, providing a single view of all of your contacts. Drill down into a contact and you'll see his or her latest status updates, all in real time. Contact syncing with these services is all performed over-the-air—one Windows Mobile feature that has thankfully been retained.
The other area where the connections are particularly important is in the Photos hub. Photos are a major part of the social experience on networks such as Facebook, and 7 Series exploits that for its photo capabilities. Easy access to new photos uploaded by your contacts, easy sharing and management of photos, all cloud connected, and again, done over-the-air.
The most important (or at least most traditional) uses of a network connection are, of course, e-mail and Web browsing. The Web browser is, unsurprisingly, still Internet Explorer. Claimed to be somewhere between IE 7 and IE 8, the new browser is, as with the rest of the platform, fully multitouch friendly. One thing not found in the new browser is Flash. Unlike Apple, Microsoft has no particular aversion to Flash as such—it wouldn't be against the rules for third-party apps or anything like that, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that there are "no objections to Adobe Flash, but no support in v1.0 for 7 Series phones"—but the performance is presently a problem. Adobe has, belatedly, made indications that it is working in earnest to improve Flash performance, especially on ARM processors, and so a future version of Flash on 7 Series is not out of the question.That Microsoft has been working on a successor to Windows Mobile 6, due for release some time this year, is no secret. That this successor was intended to be the platform that got Redmond back in the game was equally well-known. But beyond that, little more was known. There have been rumours—especially of a Zune Phone—but nothing concrete.
Microsoft really has changed nearly everything. Most obviously, the user interface is new. Touch is mandatory for all 7 Series devices, and the user interface reflects that; it's touch-driven through and through. No longer will phone users have to use small, fiddly, desktop-oriented scroll bars; smooth finger scrolling with inertia is the order of the day. The finger-friendliness is exemplified by the new start screen. There are large panels in a smooth-scrolling grid. The look is clean and crisp, balancing at-a-glance information—counts of unread text messages and e-mails neatly displayed in their squares, for example—with simple thumb-sized accessibility. Each panel represents a particular "hub"—a place where all related information (be it contacts, photos, music and videos, etc.) is brought together and managed. As you move between the screens of each hub, smooth animations rotate and slide information into place, giving the user interface a kind of cohesive "joined up" feel.
A familiar and distinctive UI
The Zune HD's user interface is the clear precursor to 7 Series', and many stylistic elements from the media player are carried over to the phone interface. Text is large, clear, and crisp; sometimes (deliberately) oversized, so it does not fit entirely on screen. Likewise, the Zune HD used the same flipping, scrolling, and zooming concepts to drill down from the general to the specific, and this is very much the motif used in Windows Phone. The transitions from the start screen to the contact list to a single contact are all fluid and attractive. The Music + Video hub is Zune HD... on a phone!
The minimal aesthetic will not be to everyone's taste; the oversized text in particular seems to raise eyebrows. I personally think it looks good, but more importantly, Windows Phone 7 Series has a definite look to it, just as the iPhone does. Windows Mobile 6.5 is a mish-mash of different concepts, with some parts finger-friendly but many not. Different parts use different styles, with the result that it feels very disjointed—there's no particular Windows Mobile look-and-feel. Windows Phone, in contrast, has a very strong visual identity; all the screens are clearly Windows Phone with consistent user interaction and styling.
To reinforce that identity, another old Windows Mobile mainstay is ditched: custom interfaces. All Windows Phone devices will look and work the same way (colors and the exact layout of the start screen can be specified by the user, but the basic square concept is immutable), so no longer will vendors like HTC be able to supply their own front-end. Whether this will sit well with the OEMs is unclear; one of the major ways in which they differentiated themselves was through their custom user interfaces. With those now gone, differentiation between vendors will be greatly reduced. The upside for consumers is that Windows Phones will be far more predictable and approachable, with the same high-quality interface available regardless of which vendor you pick.
Microsoft loves the cloud
The People Hub brings together all your phone and social networking contacts, with instant access to Facebook and Windows Live status updates
The Pictures Hub unifies pictures on the Phone, your PC, and the cloud
E-mail is, well, e-mail; it's one of the things that worked pretty well on Windows Mobile, especially with ActiveSync for Exchange users, and this will continue with 7 Series, just coupled to a far better interface.
Apps and games
One of the iPhone's most successful features is its application store. Windows Mobile 6.5 introduced the Marketplace to Windows phones, and it retains its place in Windows Phone. Existing applications, however, have no place on the new platform. There is no compatibility with its predecessor at all. Beyond that, little has been revealed about Windows Phone applications. More is expected to be announced at next month's MIX. Microsoft has been particularly evasive when asked about one of iPhone's big omissions—multitasking. Although the company confirmed that some tasks, like playing music while browsing the Web (which the iPhone can also manage), would be possible, representatives stopped short of promising full multitasking of third-party applications (which is what the iPhone prohibits). Instead, there will be some (as yet undisclosed) mechanism to allow applications to update when not running.Lack of full-fledged multitasking will be quite a regression compared to Windows Mobile, and also means eschewing one way in which Redmond can really differentiate the Windows Phone platform from Cupertino's offering. What's more, iPhone OS version 4 is likely to ship at some point between now and Windows Phone's release, and that could yet introduce full multitasking. It would be unfortunate, to say the least, if by the time it arrives Windows Phone is left as the only smartphone OS that can't multitask properly, especially since its predecessor has been doing it for longer than any of the other new platforms have even existed. Hopefully the situation will become clearer at MIX.
The Games Hub with integrated Xbox Live makes gaming on your phone a social experience
An example of how this might work in practice: if a friend invites you to play a Windows Phone game, the Xbox Live tile on the start screen will light up to tell you so. This kind of friend/community-based gaming is one of the things that makes Xbox Live so popular, and the unification of phone, console, and PC gaming will certainly make Windows Phone an interesting and attractive gaming platform.
A consistent theme with the new platform is a radical shift in Microsoft's treatment of the mobile phone marketplace. The old Windows Mobile was awful in many ways, but it was supremely flexible. OEMs could buy several different versions, making core features like touch support optional. The interface could be customized, built-in applications disabled, and so on. The variety of hardware was huge; different processors with wildly different performance characteristics, different screen sizes, optional GPU presence—all of which enabled Windows Mobile to run on a vast range of different form factors and devices, but all of which ended up compromising it. Microsoft could not concentrate on a high-quality touch UI, because not all Windows Mobile phones had touch. Nor could the company depend on fast graphics, because not all phones had GPUs.
Stringent hardware and design requirements
The new platform, however, is considerably less customizable, and the hardware requirements are much, much tighter. As mentioned, touch is compulsory (up to 4-point multitouch, in fact). So is GPS, FM radio, a high-resolution screen, accelerometer, and a 5MP camera. Even the processor and GPU must achieve a certain performance standard. In fact, pretty much the only optional feature is whether to have a hardware keyboard or not. This makes Windows Phone a much easier development target for third parties; perhaps not quite as uniform as the iPhone, but not far off at all, and certainly a vast improvement on the Windows Mobile landscape.Software-wise, there will only be one version, with none of the variants that its predecessor had. Windows Phone 7 Series is a series of phones, not operating systems. Again, the result is to create a more consistent experience for users and developers alike.
Windows Phone is also no longer designed primarily for businesses. The iPhone showed that smartphones could have broad appeal rather than being aimed at men in suits. Windows Phone will certainly still support business scenarios—Exchange support, for example, is still there—but the platform is now designed to appeal to everyone, hence the emphasis on a high-quality UI, ease of connection, and rich media capabilities.
The design also shows that Microsoft does have a little more understanding of the phone market than perhaps it lets on. One of Windows Mobile 6.5's really strong points was its Today screen (providing at-a-glance displays of unread text messages, unread e-mails, missed calls, voicemails, forthcoming appointments, and so on) and its lock screen (providing similar at-a-glance access to this kind of information); both are miles ahead of the iPhone's equivalent screens, at least in terms of functionality. At-a-glance access to information is something that has informed the Windows Phone user interface; the start and lock screens retain this concept from Windows Mobile, and the tight integration with online services extends this to allow ready access to Facebook updates and the like. This was something that was strong on Windows Mobile, and looks to be even better on Windows Phone.
Even after the release of Windows Phone 7 Series, Windows Mobile 6.5 will continue to be available and supported for as long as there is sufficient OEM demand. With Windows Phone dedicated to higher-end devices, Windows Mobile 6.5 might yet live on in simpler, less-capable devices, for example non-touch e-mailing dumb-phones, where its flaws are less significant.
The iPhone will be more than three years old by the time Windows Phone 7 Series hits the market. The target is "holiday season," so hardware should arrive in October or so. To say that this release is overdue is something of an understatement; as weak as Windows Mobile 6 was, Microsoft certainly started with a huge incumbent advantage relative to Apple and Google, which has been spectacularly squandered, as both of those companies have come from nowhere to have offerings that are superior in almost every way to Redmond's phone software. That said, Windows Phone looks good. Yes, it discards virtually everything from the past, but on this showing, it looks like a price worth paying. It would be presumptuous at this point to suggest that Windows Phone will be the cream of the crop when it does arrive, but one thing is already clear: it will not be the kind of lame also-ran that Windows Mobile presently is.
Further reading
- Official Windows Phone 7 Series site (windowsphone7series.com)
- First Look: Windows Phone 7 Series Hands on Demo (channel9.msdn.com)
Sulamérica Trânsito
