Windows Phone 7 now on sale in the US | Hacker News Reader

Windows Phone 7 now on sale in the US

engadget.com

38 pointsFlemlord34 comments

I'm very interested to see how well this sells. If WP7 rocks the market, then Google and Apple will have to do incredible things to make even more awesome phones. Sounds exciting!

On the other hand, I kind of want it to fail; it takes the mobile world in a direction I don't like. Mobile sites will no longer be able to use HTML5 if they want to support WP7. And I love HTML5. Also, it looks like you can only write managed C# apps that have to be approved in an app store :(

I'm kind of confused what you wanted to say. HTML5 runs in a browser, so why it wouldn't be available on WP7? Or you mean javascript based solutions that bridge into the native API?

Also, to program native apps for WP7 you need to use Silverlight, but you can do this in any language that runs on .Net (VB, IronPython, IronRuby etc), no?

Well, The browser on WP7 is based on IE7 and 8, so there's no native HTML5 support. Of course, a user could download another browser with HTML5 support in favor of IE.

IE8 does support a few of the less sexy HTML5 APIs like cross-document messaging. But no <canvas> games or Flash-less <video>

Silverlight is only option for WP7 development now so no alternative browser in near future.

Technically you can use XNA too, and you can make a browser using that. Ofcourse that means you have to toss away all the platforms goods and libraries you have and produce that on your own as well. Not really the sexy option, no.

So not saying it's going to happen, but technically speaking it's not impossible either.

Sure it is possible theoretically but not practically. If you want alternative browser for WP7 you need to create engine from scratch. You could not create browser that can compete with current 4 engines for one or two years. Quite possibly that we've never see new independent browser engine.

Downloading another browser isn't possible – at least if you don't want to use the IE rendering engine. UI development for WP7 apps is C# and Silverlight only. This is why Mozilla isn't making Firefox for WP7, for example.

WP7 is the only modern mobile platform with bad html5 and even html and css support. All other mobile platforms use WebKit based browsers.

If you Google for "windows phone 7 html5" you'll get relevant results where Microsoft announces their intentions to specifically not support HTML5 on WP7.

This is laughable and will of course change, but it just puts them further behind the release curve.

I got the sense from MS employees at PDC that the browser situation would be much improved within 6 months.

It would be the best for consumers and developers. Passing AcidTest + html5 support would be great.

Why would passing AcidTest be all that interesting? I get HTML5 support, but it seems like passing a test where the weights are on more obscure features would be low on my priority list.

Is there any better way to measure css support in modern browsers?

Acid2 is largely a CSS test (which IE passes just fine, AFAIK).

ACID3 is largely DOM and Javascript.Here's a good article to read about the ACID3 test, from a name you probably know: http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2008/03/27/acid-redux/

Thank you for article. Acid3 is not so good CSS test but we don't have better mainstream css test anyway.

Agreed, in fact they seemed to 'talk up' the future would be HTML5 so much that the Silverlight lack of mentions got a lot of (Silverlight) developers quite anxious [1].

I don't especially want it to fail, as the market is ripe for competition and it will keep pushing Apple and Google forward, but as an app developer that really just wants to stay on the 'pure web' now, it's an unwelcome extra column in the already big matrix of things to have to specially support...

[1] http://www.silverlightshow.net/news/Silverlight-and-PDC.aspx

> Google and Apple will have to do incredible things to make even more awesome phones.

I think what they already have more than covers for WinMo 7's "awesomeness"...

I think they could've made a bigger splash if they'd had some particularly fancy must-have hardware to sell it on - at least one model with something absolutely outstanding about it.

As far as I've heard (admittedly I haven't followed it very closely), all the Windows Phone 7 phones [wow, that's awkward] are pretty similar to existing handset hardware, so this just feels mostly like an OS release. An OS that has some interesting features (and a few important things missing, too) and very few apps. And a shitty (at least from a dev standpoint) browser grrrrrrrrr.

Meet the Dell Venue Pro. No other handset on the market like it today:

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/Direct2Dell/b/direct...

An iPhone4-ish display excepted, what's so outstanding in it?

First, it's 4.1 inch display, not an iPhone-ish display. But the real meat is the full size 800x480 display with a portrait keyboard slider. That's a pretty big deal, if that's something you're into as there is no other device on the market, that I know of, that has someting similar.

It also has what looks like a half inch of wasted margin space at the top and the right. It's shiny, but looks like a very big phone by today's standards.

That margin on the right is actually part of the UI. The screen has probably symmetrical margins.

So, the GUI wastes the screen real-estate that goes beyond what the iPhone 1 offered a couple years ago...

Something is wrong here.

Oh... It has a tiny keyboard...

The case could certainly be made that the Windows Phone 7 UI in general has a rather low information density. I very much enjoy the aesthetics of the UI – I actually prefer them to what iOS or Android have to offer – but I’m not sure whether all their decisions are practical. Good looks alone don’t make for a good UI. I will have to try one soon.

OK. A slightly larger screen with pixels I can't resolve.

Wait... It's just 800x480?! The Nexus One had a screen like that more than a year ago and the Droid had a much nicer keyboard to go with a better screen. And a real software library.

So, this is the phone that makes it worth to switch to WinMo 7? Really?

The Nexus One has a completely different type of screen, unless the only thing you mean is that they're the same resolution, but I know you're not that ignorant when it comes to mobile phone technology.

Odd that you can claim that the Droid has a much nicer keyboard, when you've never used this keyboard. But in anycase it's a slider portrait keyboard, while the Droid is a landscape keyboard. Different stroes for different folks.

And I'm not sure what you mean by a real software library, but on launch day of WP7 there are already 2000 apps, and its relatively small game lineup already trumps Android in quality (although not the iPhone's game lineup).

But lets be clear rbanffy we already know that even if the WP7 device made you stunningly attractive, gave you eternal life, some decent dev chops, and $5B in your bank account, you'd still hate it and get an Android phone :-)

I am sorry, but I don't get what's so amazing in this phone except the fact that Microsoft managed to persuade Dell to build it.

That was some serious play with Windows OEM licensing...

And, BTW, I could use the eternal life and US$ 5B bank account, but I already am stunningly attractive... ;-)

A lot of people have been asking for portrait sliders. The only ones that are out right now (at least that I know of) are the Blackberry Torch and Palm Pre line.

The Torch is a 480x360 device, and the the Pre is a 480x320 display.

AFAIK the Venue Pro is the only device on the planet that has a full size touch screen (800x480 like the Samsung Galaxy S line, Nexus One, etc...), but yet is a portrait slider.

Beyond that, virtually everyone who has used it, has been impressed with the build quality of the device.

Now you may not prefer a portrait slider, but it's absurd to say that its not a device of interest. I don't like virtual keyboards, but I won't sit around saying the iPhone has no interest because of my personal preference.

Don't get me wrong: it's not a bad device. It's just that's not an awesome, must-have, world-changing one.

And, this morning, it came to me it has, indeed, a killer feature for corporations: lots of Visual Basic programmers will be able to write code for it. With so many of them already hired, it could be a no-brainer to target WinMO 7 for internal development.

I had a chance to demo a couple of Windows 7 phones last week and was impressed at how smooth the navigation and inertia scrolling is. It reminds me of the iPhone experience, but less refined. I think it beats RIM and is very close to Android and WebOS. I think it will sell well if they can give free phones (after contract rebate) because most of the public is looking for the UX over OS potential.

I'd love to try building an app or two for WP7, but I'm not about to pick up another phone contract merely for the privilege. Until MS has an iPod touch-like device (new Zune, perhaps?) it's just not going to happen for me.

I wonder what Apple's App ecosystem would like right now if the iPod touch had never existed. I bet it wouldn't be nearly as robust.

When there is some hardware with a physical keyboard as good as the Blackberry's, RIM is in serious trouble.

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