W10 for phones your opinion of the event news?

[Luisraul924]

it carrying the same Lumia camera name makes wonder if other OEMs would support such a title.

It's highly likely that it won't be called Lumia camera anymore. Picture the default "camera" tile/icon but when you start the app it's the "Lumia" camera app that starts up.

 

[Naren Parker]

It was a real good presentation. They have showcased where they are heading. And I personally feel this is the right direction. Everyone is aware of the positives of this so I'll just comment on what else could have been shown -

1. Interactive Live Tiles/Mix View - I pray and hope that this will make it to the final build.
2. Better media capabilities and a little bit more peak into the new Music and Video players.
3. The future of the People Hub - whether this social extensible framework actually works and also other hubs.
4. Looks like the Pictures Hub is being replaced for good by the Pictures app. Whether its good or not, only time will tell but one thing that cannot be denied is that the old Pictures hub with its beautiful panoramic views was just fantastic.
5. Probability of using Hologram APIs in Phones/Tablets - This would bury Google Glass for good.
6. UI consistency across apps - either have an Hamburger or an app drawer. I would prefer the latter. The App drawer is something that we have grown accustomed to since WP7 and it really doesnt need a change. Other platforms dont have it either AFAIK so it still retains its novelty.

All in all, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy this presentation. It was worth every min and MB spent I understand that it would be impossible to cram every possible feature update in this talk. They should do a separate event for WP either during MWC or Build to really highlight some of the cool stuff. I also expect that a lot of these features make it to the final builds and we have a uniform update process which is not fragmented at least for the CV phones.

If any of the MS employees are here, my best wishes to you and hope that you will continue to innovate and make us all proud.

 

[Nogitsune Micah]

Oh I am aware it is far superior than the native and even HTC/Samsung apps. But there is a vast difference in making a camera app exclusive to Lumia and restricting an entire OS to Lumia....though I certainly wouldn't mind(I'd prefer that tbh).

People keep saying lumia exclusivity isn't good for MS or windows phone but how exactly is it bad? Hasn't that same exclusivity actually increased marketshare and stabilized it and then it dropped because said products were either end of line or simply unavailable every(Icon is US only and the 930 took forever to get places). I fail to see how it is bad for the OS or Microsoft(especially since they do need to still make money).

Its not even bad for the other OEMs...it should encourage them to be better than the crap they call effort and make something competitive and give a defining reason to buy their products without needing any type of leg up from Microsoft.

In regards to its name, call me elitist, but i'd rather it just say camera. I'd hate the idea of lumia branding on them.

I completely disagree with this Lumia exclusivity thing, Lumia camera is far superior than the native camera app so having it has a Lumia only app would make people think that good things only come to lumias which gives a bad impression to OEMs, it's just like Google saying that the next Android will be for nexus phones only,of course no one would want to buy other manufacturer's phones with outdated software and that's the thing that Microsoft never cared about with Lumia denim which came out in just the time HTC had launched the m8 for windows, Lumia exclusivity isn't good for Microsoft, windows phone or OEMs and that's why I think the Lumia camera will be exported to other phones and it carrying the same Lumia camera name makes wonder if other OEMs would support such a title.

 

[Abhinaba Maitra]

there is more to come from microsoft on windows phones i guess .. this was a just a trailer

 

[jeetu4444]

Yes they gonna unveil more on windows 10 in.march at MWC....Hope windows 10 has good multitasking like symbian where apps are actually live in background and.not.frozen....

 

[Naren Parker]

Yes they gonna unveil more on windows 10 in.march at MWC....Hope windows 10 has good multitasking like symbian where apps are actually live in background and.not.frozen....

This! We need true multitasking. But I don't remember seeing the resuming screens anywhere in the demo at least. Probably sign of good things to come.

 

[faisalbaba]

How I get update through phone insider or pfd and Microsoft didn't provide any information about phone insider

 

[taymur]

Think you guys have seen a sneak pic of what windows 10 is going to be like on small screens, its still windows phone anyway with full-scale background wallpapers, I haven't noticed any big changes,the notification center looks almost the same, the app menu is still the same to and only the settings menu showed a little difference but still black with white text as well, the lock screen still looks like the old one to.
.......................................................Actually I haven't noticed any ui changes, things still look the same, now looking back at other OS unveiling,i think every version of android, iOS or blackberry has looked unrecognisably different front the others though iOS doesn't look much different from older versions to.
I haven't seen any ground shaking features like those Google unveiled in android 5, so far i haven't seen much of anything different but let me hope Microsoft works more on what it has just showed us, I was expecting something like Android 5,iOS8 or BB10 make over unfortunately the only new things I saw were the background images,tweaked settings menu and the new keyboard thing and that's all.

Let me know what you guys think of the new windows 10 mobile in comments below

Man, i got really irritated reading your post.... seriously if you don't see improvements after all what was presented, then i think you should go to the platform that adds rows of icons by each OS update, or the one that keeps adding home screens.

 

[taymur]

Yes they gonna unveil more on windows 10 in.march at MWC....Hope windows 10 has good multitasking like symbian where apps are actually live in background and.not.frozen....

i have a feeling that multiple users would be avilable. for the reason of having both a work phone and a personal phone, each with a different Start Screen.

although this might have been a very important feature that if available they would have talked about.... we will see.

 

[Vaclav Dajbych]

We need true multitasking.

Apps can live in the background in Background Tasks. Tens of simultaneously running apps would drain your battery.

 

[Naren Parker]

I agree. What I meant was a more effective way to resume from memory instead of long resume times only to find out that some of the apps dont 'remember' their pre-resume state.

 

[a5cent]

Apps can live in the background in Background Tasks. Tens of simultaneously running apps would drain your battery.

Yup. "True" or "unrestricted" multitasking is something we don't need!

Rather than call out a technical feature, I think people would do better describing the problem they want solved. "Unrestricted multitasking" is an assumed solution to a problem proponents never specify.

90% of the time what people really mean is that they are tired of the resuming screen. Ironically, "true" or "unrestricted" multitasking does absolutely nothing to solve that problem.

I agree. What I meant was a more effective way to resume from memory instead of long resume times only to find out that some of the apps dont 'remember' their pre-resume state.

Yup. This is what I meant. Much better. These are actually two separate problems, neither of which have anything to do with "true" multitasking. Both are tied to RAM capacity, the computational overhead associated with launching XAML and managed apps, and devs not doing their job by failing to restore pre-resume state.

 

[white_Shadoww]

I hate the new UI. I loved the pivots and panoramic apps, and that's the reason I got into Windows Phone. If I wanted hamburgers anywhere, I'd just get an Android, which is I will do I think. I think Lollipop looks better than this. But I loved 8.1 UI, even more 8.0, remember that Photos hub. Windows 10 seems only a cheap wannabe Android.

 

[psiu_glen]

I hate the new UI. I loved the pivots and panoramic apps, and that's the reason I got into Windows Phone. If I wanted hamburgers anywhere, I'd just get an Android, which is I will do I think. I think Lollipop looks better than this. But I loved 8.1 UI, even more 8.0, remember that Photos hub. Windows 10 seems only a cheap wannabe Android.

Everything looks like a direct port (desktop/tablet/phone) the whole point is we use them differently.

[putting a menu up top on my desktop doesn't make difference -- upper left on a phone though...]

WP has been great for the most part because it has been so intuitive and "stayed out of the way". Now they have people doing things for superficial UI look reasons and to check off feature list boxes.

:/

 

[blackdaemon]

Apps can live in the background in Background Tasks. Tens of simultaneously running apps would drain your battery.

Yes, plus the system would lost its responsiveness and fluidity. Current design of WP multitasking is optimal.

 

[Fire 29]

I've got one suggestion. Provide more customization for the start screen. One of them could be that; the feature to add one more column of tiles to the start screen first seen on Windows phone 8.1 , the one column actually included either two small square or one big square tiles. Due to this, this feature was only useful for phablets or large screen phones. But if they could add an option to increase only a single column of a small square tile then it could also be useful for small screen phones.

 

[Keith Wallace]

Actually, my preference for tiles would be a 2x4 option, maybe 1x2 and 2x1 as well. Sometimes, the way I logically group my apps leads to my wanting a vertically stretched tile, not a horizontal one.

 

[a5cent]

What I liked:

• That the settings menu is finally getting cleaned up. Great!
• The ability to dictate rather than type, anywhere I'd be able to type text.
• That the messaging app is regaining the ability to integrate IP based messaging services, like Skype! Finally! Finally!!!!! Maybe we'll also see Facebook messages back in there...
• Touch Office looks a lot more powerful than I expected it would be, and just as good as I had hoped. This really does look like it might support the scenario, where a docked phone could potentially replace a laptop for casual MS Office work. Great!
• The Power Point presentation on the phone was impressive.

What I did not like:

1)
Practically all the first party apps, including the Touch Office apps, are clearly abandoning the Metro design language. The navigation bar at the top of the screen is the main indicator of this, as it often included a hamburger button and the occasional "back arrow". That's just the most visible change of many however. I'm not a fan. This is why:

• The occasional" back arrow" showing up seems confusing and unnecessary, given that WP has a hardware back button.
• There is already a lot of edge UI originating from the top, and all of it can cover up those navigation controls. Consider Joe's demonstration. What if he had started writing his response to the text message he received, and then realised he needs to check something in a word document? He can't, because the navigational controls are occluded by the interactive toast message. Even the small version of the audio panel that extends from the top edge would cover up half of that navigational strip. How many people will accidentally tap a navigational button, rather than expand the audio panel as they might have intended?
• A result of placing a lot of controls at the top of the screen, is that our hands will spend a lot more time blocking our view. Half the time we'll not even see the effect tapping a control at the top of the screen had, so we'll move our hand out of the way, just to move back again to invoke the next action. We're used to this on iPhones, but not on WP. It was the sum of all these little things, that made WP better. To put it more extremely, why don't we place the keyboard at the top of the screen instead of the bottom. Same reason. If Metro was all about "content over chrome", this is now about "hands over content".

The bottom and right (for right handed people) or left (for left handed people) edges are the best places for commands and navigational chrome. Controls at the top of the screen only work well for things that are used briefly and only occasionally (like volume controls).

2)
It's becoming increasingly difficult to identify particular UI concepts that we could give a name and collectively call a design language. One might say that WP is becoming more "clicky" and less "swipey". I admit that is rather mundane, but collectively, all the little changes leaves me with the impression that WP is losing some of what made it original and lovable. Based on what I saw, I'd also say it looks a lot less "alive".

One example is the command bar in the Touch Office apps. I like that this contains the ribbon, but in earlier releases of WP, we'd have been able to swipe between these ribbons (think of a small pivot control embedded in the command bar). Instead, we tap a button and then tap an entry in a flyout menu. Yes, it's a really trivial thing, but the impression it makes on me is maybe best described with "schizophrenic". Change itself is not necessarily bad, but a lack of consistency, in terms of look & feel, is. The UI seems to be suffering from an identity crisis. It's both swipey and clicky and neither.

I'd love to read MS' internal guidelines for WP UI design. Right now it seems MS is ignoring many of the subtle differences that made WP great. We seem to be headed towards a WP user interface that is characterless and unprincipled in comparison.

Of course, this all comes with the caveat that we were presented very early development releases, where much can still change. But at least based on what I saw, I'm no longer a fan of the WP UI.

 

[nicfromwales]

I like a lot of what I've seen, but I hate that start screen backgrounds now fill up the entire screen behind the tiles, rather than being able to see a background *through* the tiles, like *windows*. I don't want my phone to look like a PC, and I definitely don't want it to look like iOS or Android. I bought a Lumia because Windows Phone is different.

 

[MysticForce]

W10FP looks awesome ! I like changes ! I will test It when preview gets available.