Why no flagship Windows Phone for 2013 or Is Microsoft OEMs moving too slow?

[OzRob]

I love how you all talk about specs and what's getting old or falling behind like the average consumer knows or cares about any of this. This spec war is exactly what's wrong with OEMs today...

I agree with some of what you say, particularly about the power of branding and status in the sales process. But in terms of Windows Phone you're ignoring a few factors. When Android was launched, iOS was the only other (big) game in town, so it attracted pretty much all potential buyers that didn't want or couldn't afford an iPhone. Also Android was an open platform that allowed OEMs to do pretty much what they wanted, so innovation came thick and fast with Android smart phones appearing for all price points and market segments.

The introduction of Windows Phone 8 was into a very different world. iOS and Android were both well established. And from a perception point of view, the buying public had lots of choice (between Apple and many different flavours of Android). Also, the market is far more mature now than it was back when Android first emerged. At that time most people owned feature phones and were curious about the whole 'smart phone' thing, so it was easier to generate a 'buzz' about a new phone on the market.

Bottom line is, curiosity does, as you say, spark interest. But that interest wanes quickly today because there are a lot of players waving new shiny things in front of people. If Nokia (or other WP OEMs) don't have some pretty hardware in the form of knock out flagship phones to keep people's interest then WP might not be around long enough to attain that magical 'status symbol' status. Just being different isn't enough.

So to the title of this thread, I think Microsoft is moving too slowly with WP8, both from a hardware and a software perspective.

 

[James8561]

IHow on Earth does the Apple iPhone manage to sell so many devices every year when it is technologically inferior? Because its a status symbol!

Just to get the fact straight, the A7 SoC inside the iPhone 5S is the fastest phone processor in the world period.
so no. apple does play the specs game, always competing on power just like everyone else. they just don't say it.

 

[stephen_az]

Every year, we get a new iPhone. Every year we get a new Galaxy S, HTC One, LG, Nexus, and other flagship Android phones. But Nokia skipped 2013 altogether. The 1520 was a flagship type, but at 6", it's fully in the phablet category and not mainstream. The 1020 had a great camera but was basically a 920 otherwise. The Icon appears to have flagship specs but it never came out in 2013. After 2012 saw the 920 and 8X, we mostly had upgrades of those in 2013. Is MS and their OEMs moving too slow if we don't get a flagship every year?

I don't know whether you noticed but those IOS and Android flagships were almost all criticized as being incremental upgrades. The only phone of which I am aware that was truly praised as new and innovative, other than a couple Nokia phones you chose to minimize, was the HTC One. It certainly seems like you are setting a unique standard for comparison. BTW, anyone who considers the 928 to be only a minor upgrade to either the 822 or 8X on VZW was not paying attention at any level.

 

[trainplane]

I don't know whether you noticed but those IOS and Android flagships were almost all criticized as being incremental upgrades. The only phone of which I am aware that was truly praised as new and innovative, other than a couple Nokia phones you chose to minimize, was the HTC One. It certainly seems like you are setting a unique standard for comparison. BTW, anyone who considers the 928 to be only a minor upgrade to either the 822 or 8X on VZW was not paying attention at any level.

You're right. They should just cancel the release of Lumia Icon. Snapdragon 800/Adreno 330, 2 GB RAM, 1080p 5" screen, Wifi a/c since it's just the same type of "minor" upgrade like the S4, Nexus 5, iPhone 5S, Xperia Z1S that people will criticize. But back to reality, why would anyone criticize Apple, Qualcom, Nvidia, and Samsung for pushing processor and display technology at breakneck speeds? We should embrace that as that's what is allowing more complex uses of the phone. The component makers move fast and the OEMs quickly produce an Android version but lag behind for the Windows Phone version. I don't know if MS is too beaurocratic or what, but they don't seem to be as nimble as the other companies. It's surprising that an Icon type phone wasn't released in Q3-Q4 2013. Yes, they have the 1520, but as I and others mentioned, it's a phablet, not a mainstream flagship.

Oh, and the 928 should have been released in 2012 since it's basically a 920 with some changes. But again, are MS and their OEMs just too slow?

 

[a5cent]

But back to reality, why would anyone criticize Apple, Qualcom, Nvidia, and Samsung for pushing processor and display technology at breakneck speeds? We should embrace that as that's what is allowing more complex uses of the phone.

Not really. Hardware advantages are only dramatic when something entirely new is incorporated that wasn't available before. That doesn't happen very often anymore. Apple's finger print scanner or Nokia's OIS are examples (which don't excite everyone to the same degree). These days, the improvements in CPU and display technology are incremental. There is not a thing on our brand new devices that couldn't run on hardware from 2012.

I'm not saying that hardware advancements are unimportant, they are, but primarily for marketing and sales purposes. These days, true innovations in smartphone technology are made almost entirely on the software side.

 

[radmanvr]

I never understand spec lovers. They live and die by the specs. I have a friend like that, his only argument is the specs are better. Specs Specs Specs......

I'm more a feature guy. You can have the highest specs but if your platform don't come with much it isn't much. I'm just saying..... I'm an average consumer, I don't know what dual core quad core or V8 is. I just know what towing capabilities and parallel parking assist is. Front camera, rear camera, side camera, side air bags.

 

[muvig]

same with me, though i wonder why the manufacturers are sticking on 30Fps on camera, they must go higher (60+fps) for a better slow-motion.
As long as they keep on upgrading ans giving us updates and the phone performing well, i will stick with Nokia for the time being.
I hope the Goldfinger would be running on snapdragon 805 with a camera that of NL1020 or better, same size as LN920 (i don't mind the weight)

 

[luk3ja]

Its not that im a fan of old technology. I just prefer my $500 phones to last a few years before having to upgrade.

Sent from my HTC6990LVW using Tapatalk

But think, not everyone's upgrade date is the same as yours. People upgrade every day, people whose upgrade date was over Christmas or is now or next month don't have a new release to buy but there is new flagships on android and new iPhone so Windows Phone misses out on sales because people don't want an old phone especially when they have to stick with it for the next 2 or 3 years

 

[luk3ja]

What is 925 then?

the 925 is the sister to the 920 not the upgrade to it, Nokia said this themselves and it was released almost a year ago

 

[Moiz Mian]

I never understand spec lovers. They live and die by the specs. I have a friend like that, his only argument is the specs are better. Specs Specs Specs......

I'm more a feature guy. You can have the highest specs but if your platform don't come with much it isn't much. I'm just saying..... I'm an average consumer, I don't know what dual core quad core or V8 is. I just know what towing capabilities and parallel parking assist is. Front camera, rear camera, side camera, side air bags.

it's not really even about the specs. Just like you're saying "features". The main selling points for me on the 920 weren't it's dual core processor or 720p screen. It was the built-in wireless charging (first on the market), Optical image stabilization and amazing night imagery, clearblack and it's ease of use to read in direct sunlight. These are hardware features. But all of these features are in other phones now and have been supplanted in many other areas as well.

Of course, I also agree that software is important, and Windows Phone needs a lot of work in that too. Late software update means we haven't progressed anywhere since Mango. That's delayed too. Late new hardware and late new software.

 

[Elitis]

The A7 is not the fastest mobile processor in the world. "Benchmarks so far have showed that the A7?s dual-core Cyclone processor (Cyclone is the new name for the Core, comes after Swift in the Apple A6) runs at up to 1.3GHz..." It's also a known fact that Apple doesn't put a lot of RAM into their iPhones. As I said, going by pure specs - excluding the fact that the Apple A7 is x64 - an iPhone is technologically inferior. Apple is smart enough to play to their strengths. Playing the specs game, for them, is a losing battle.

Source

 

[James8561]

The A7 is not the fastest mobile processor in the world. "Benchmarks so far have showed that the A7’s dual-core Cyclone processor (Cyclone is the new name for the Core, comes after Swift in the Apple A6) runs at up to 1.3GHz..." It's also a known fact that Apple doesn't put a lot of RAM into their iPhones. As I said, going by pure specs - excluding the fact that the Apple A7 is x64 - an iPhone is technologically inferior. Apple is smart enough to play to their strengths. Playing the specs game, for them, is a losing battle.

Source

1.3 GHz.. so?
don't tell me that you seriously think that moar hertzzz is bettah?
that 1.3 GHz dual core demolishes the latest Snapdragon 800 quad-core at 2.2 GHz.
proof: iPhone A7 Chip Benchmarks: Forget the Specs, It Blows Everything Away
no other smartphone chip is as fast as the A7 period. it is the state of the art as of right now.

apple doesn't put a lot of RAM because iOS, like WP, use memory efficiently unlike lagdroid.

 

[3earnhardt3]

People apparently don't want a solid, reliable and fast phone with a great camera. They don't want a fast and fluid OS that rarely crashes and only sips battery. They don't want their phones to be fairly priced. They want to throw their phones in others faces and proclaim their phones superior Facebook rendering speed, 4000 fps in candy crush and 8k resolution screen that comes with a magnifying glass, which is the only way to appreciate all those pixels. And they are willing to give away their first born to afford it! Being an ex-Gaming PC enthusiast I understand the allure of specs, but at the end of the day specs do not justify the costs. My HTC trophy was the most reliable and satisfying device I have ever owned and it wasn't even a flagship, more like a tugboat.

 

[OzRob]

People apparently don't want a solid, reliable and fast phone with a great camera. They don't want a fast and fluid OS that rarely crashes and only sips battery. They don't want their phones to be fairly priced. They want to throw their phones in others faces and proclaim their phones superior Facebook rendering speed, 4000 fps in candy crush and 8k resolution screen that comes with a magnifying glass, which is the only way to appreciate all those pixels. And they are willing to give away their first born to afford it! Being an ex-Gaming PC enthusiast I understand the allure of specs, but at the end of the day specs do not justify the costs. My HTC trophy was the most reliable and satisfying device I have ever owned and it wasn't even a flagship, more like a tugboat.

I think people who are obsessed with specs above the attributes you've mentioned are a small minority of phone buyers. And I think you're fundamentally mistaking the nature of a flagship. Flagship products (whether they be phones, cars, or indeed ships) are created to inspire people and give an insight into what's possible with the brand. It's a 'look what we can do' statement. In the case of Windows Phone handsets the idea is to showcase the operating system and show what it can do when supported by stunning hardware. The intention is to draw people to Windows Phone, create excitement and, hopefully, to buy into the vision.

The reality is that most people don't buy flagship models - they buy similar but cheaper models in the same range - but the flagship creates the aspiration and inclination to buy into the ecosystem. While the venerable Trophy may satisfy your needs completely, it is unlikely to inspire too many people to dip their toes into the Windows Phone pool.

 

[Zulfigar]

See, the issue with that is, like most already know, Android is a lot of bloated software. So even if you have a 2.2 GHz quad-core processor, if it's being used up by the background processes, it's still going to be slow when it counts - which is what that study is showing. I'm not sure how optimized Windows Phone is compared to iPhones though (being that Apple makes their own phones, while Microsoft is now getting there, or will be shortly, we can assume that iPhones are still optimized better). So yeah, sure, GHz of a processor may give a leading edge, but only if the OS is optimized for such (reminder, iPhone 5s still has half a gigabyte of RAM, while Windows Phone has had a full gigabyte for more than a year - and it helps).

Back to features though, wonder how "3D Touch" will be.

 

[a5cent]

As I said, going by pure specs - excluding the fact that the Apple A7 is x64 - an iPhone is technologically inferior.

Your post is a perfect demonstration of how consumers have literally no chance of deriving any useful information from the SoC/RAM related specs on a spec sheet. Actually, hardware and software engineers can't do that either. The difference is that the engineers understand they are missing at least a couple dozen data points before any conclusions can be drawn, whereas the average consumer thinks the spec sheet is already rather conclusive.

On paper it may not look it, but the A7 is actually better then any other smartphone/tablet SoC out there right now, despite having "just" two cores that are clocked at "only" 1.3Ghz. That article wasn't kidding when it stated that the cores race is largely meaningless... consumers just don't want to believe it, and the hardware industry is happy to keep it that way, as specs are one of their primary marketing tools. Specs are much easier to improve upon than actual performance...

I'll spare you the explanations, but will offer this more in-depth article on the A7 (analysed as part of the iPad Air). The A7 is anything but technologically inferior...

 

[snowmutt]

I do feel both the L1020 and the L1520 were expected to do better. I do understand they would appeal only to a smalle buying segment, but they had to be looking for a closer to 10 million unit sold worldwide as opposed to the just over 8 million they had. These are 2 amazing devices, and I am disappointed they did not light tech on fire.

However, let us hope and pray for WP's sake that not only will 2014 bring amazing WP 8.1 devices, it will bring a wave of them. A flagship from HTC/Samsung/Nokia in April or May, and new flagships for the fall. I agree with trainplane completely. Without Flagships at least a couple times a year, our favorite OS will not get out of single digit sales % anytime soon. This OS is amazing, but not enough people have adopted it yet. Obviously, Android gets every OEM to put up Hero level devices, so they get a dozen or so flagships a year. WP will not get that. But a couple a year will be fine. That will get mind share and sales going.

WP is not Apple. It cannot get away with pumping out a L920-like device every 12-14 months and expect to win this race.

 

[a5cent]

So yeah, sure, GHz of a processor may give a leading edge.

Software efficiency and optimization are certainly important issues. On the other hand, clock rates and many other specs don't have anywhere close to the significance most consumers imagine them to have. For example, you think a higher clock rate on the spec sheet signifies an advantage (or leading edge), but you're probably not considering that those numbers only represent the best-case scenario. A smartphone CPU that is listed at 2.3 GHz will throttle the instant it starts running. If it's running something like a game, then around the two minute mark it will be clocked closer to 1.5 GHz. If we're not just using a single core, but two, three or more cores, then we're actually closer to 1 GHz, and we'd get there in under a minute. There goes your leading edge... disappeared in a puff of marketing smoke... if we'd really want to understand what clock rate means, we'd also have to get into IPC and a dozen other metrics which we'll never see listed on a spec sheet.

Forget the GHz leading edge crap... without a lot more information, which most consumers have no hope of understanding, it truly is meaningless...

 

[snowmutt]

Its not that im a fan of old technology. I just prefer my $500 phones to last a few years before having to upgrade.

Sent from my HTC6990LVW using Tapatalk

I absolutely agree with this. When you buy a "flagship", it BETTER be looked at as something that lasts the basic life of a contract: 2 years (or more in some areas).

MS has SWORN 36 month support for every WP, regardless of type. To me, they need to back this up as Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 users will swear this has been said by MS before. But so long as MS stands by their word, every person who spends on a device should do so with no worries. Buy the phone that fits your needs. WP will be supported, even as new ones come out.

 

[Jazmac]

They were waiting for Windows Phone 8.1.

The 1520 was there to take advantage of Update 3, which technically makes it a flagship, but its size renders it more of a niche device.

The 1020 is Nokia's imaging flagship, a follow-up to the 808, and was designed to take advantage of GDR2/Update 2, but is another niche device.

The 920 was a flagship, but it released in 2012!

Agreed. I've decided to wait until the 8.1 flagships drop on AT&T before I buy anything. Then expect to see my phone in the For Sale forum. For now, my L920 is still my road dog.