Live From Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 Press Conference

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/05/live-from-nokia/

by vyrotek • 14 years ago

38 45 14 years ago

vyrotek4• 14 years ago

Personally, I'm really interested in WP8 and I've held off renewing my contract for a year just to see what will come out. We've had many Android phones in our home and I'm kind of done with them. I would like to avoid the updates nightmare between the carriers and google.

untog4• 14 years ago

If the experience of WP7 is anything to go by, you're going to be exchanging a nightmare between the carriers and Google with a nightmare between the carriers and Microsoft.

AT&T flat out refused to release an update for my phone, I had to do the WP equivalent of rooting it and manually patching myself.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

Microsoft has said they will allow you to download updates OTA even if your carrier hasn't approved the updates yet. This is similar to how major upgrades to WP7 (NoDo and Mango) worked.

vyrotek4• 14 years ago

Ah, that's rough. I was pretty upset that Sprint didn't release more WP7 phones but now I see why they held off. Unfortunately, it seems WP7 was a transition/beta device.

But, I think it will be different this time with the huge bet they're making with Windows 8 across lots of different devices now.

untog4• 14 years ago

Nokia's new phones look fantastic. But their last ones looked fantastic, too.

PureView camera? Awesome. But all my friends share photos through Instagram. No Instagram on WP8 = me not being able to share photos with my friends. So right now, this former WP7 user is sticking with Android.

I really, really want to like Windows Phone- the UI is better than anything else out there. But it needs more support from third parties, and fast.

Metrop0218• 14 years ago

It'll come, I wouldn't worry too much about that

reddiric• 14 years ago

Windows Phone 8 has a native 3rd party API and DirectX, in addition to the C#/SL/XNA stack on WP7, which will make porting applications from and sharing code with iOS and Android easier.

untog4• 14 years ago

Oh, I know. And I really do hope it makes a difference. But given Microsoft's connection to Facebook, and Facebook's ownership of Instagram... I was hoping they twist some arms today and announce Instagram as a WP8 'lens' app. That would be awesome.

mtgx3• 14 years ago

It seems Nokia's misleading "PureView" marketing has succeed as even tech savvy people can get confused into thinking this camera is the basically the same as the one in the PureView 808 smartphone.

It's absolutely 100% not. It doesn't have a high resolution for pixel binning to make those images ultra clear, and it doesn't have pixel binning at all. Also it doesn't have that super large sensor to capture much more light. It has a regular smartphone sensor. This is what made Pureview be Pureview. The new camera is nothing like it. It just adds some stabilization technology, but that's no reason to still call it PureView, other than to mislead people into thinking it's the same as the original.

I also think WP7 looked better than WP8. The small tiles make it look more cluttered.

freehunter3• 14 years ago

Nokia has said that PureView is the new kind of optical image stabilization, not the megapixels on the sensor. It's not misleading, you're just not understanding it correctly. The high MP count was part of the 808 PureView, but it wasn't what defined it as a PureView. The optical image stabilization was. The 41-MP sensor was just Nokia showing off.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3293041/nokia-lumia-920-pur...

Lewisham3• 14 years ago

Nokia's new phones look fantastic. But their last ones looked fantastic, too.

I think this totally sums up Nokia (and Microsoft's) predicament. They're doing all the right things, and they still can't seem to catch a break.

Google's tactic of putting Android in the hands of companies who were being heavily burned by iPhone gave them ubiquity, and in America at least, the AT&T deal probably did more harm than good for Apple by forcing Verizon to push Android hard.

Now we have this two horse system: one that has all the apps and the cachet, one that has the rest of the handsets (and, with Jelly Bean, is really a strong offering against iOS) and there just isn't any room left for Nokia or WP8. I think Nokia is going to have to step into the Windows RT ring this holiday.

Microsoft thinks it knows how to play this game from its Xbox days: buy out developers until you get enough mass to make consumers stick. But the game is different when you have carriers screwing things up for you (no Nokia on Verizon this year, carriers blocking OTA patches) and a platform that is driven by app numbers rather than by hits in the same way the games industry is. It doesn't help that web startups are hitching their horse to iOS and then begrudgingly offer Android later (I'm looking at you Mint and Simple). Windows Phone just isn't in their roadmap anywhere.

My guess is the fate of Windows Phone and Nokia is probably tied to the success of Windows 8. If Windows 8 takes off, Windows Phone will get a halo effect and sales of that will follow. But even then, I think consumers are going to be weirded out by the fact that the stuff they have on their Windows 8 tablet doesn't appear on their Windows Phone 8 handset.

vyrotek4• 14 years ago

I think consumers are going to be weirded out by the fact that the stuff they have on their Windows 8 tablet doesn't appear on their Windows Phone 8 handset.

I'm not sure I followed this. Do you think people get weirded out by not having 'the stuff' on their iPad appear on their iPhone?

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

I am the only one that finds Metro to be ugly (hate the color choices and block-y design) and cluttered? This does not strike me as something I want to see on my home screen:

http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/769...

Regardless, I'm wondering if the average consumer feels the same way as well. WP7 is not selling well, and WP8 (and the new Lumias) don't really differentiate themselves that much from the previous iteration in terms of what a consumer will see in the first few minutes of using the phone.

Also, this is DOA in the US if they are AT&T exclusive.

untog4• 14 years ago

I was surprised to see a view like that being promoted. I love Metro, but I hate app makers that don't keep to the Metro aesthetic. When it's done right:

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/nokia-...

I think it looks fantastic, and communicates more than the iPhone home screen without the mess of the Android one.

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

Even in those two screens, everything just blends together (especially with the white text on yellow tiles). Just seems like a usability nightmare imo.

Regardless, I don't find Android home screens messy at all (although there are a few widgets that are poorly made), and with the customization ability that's provided with custom ROMs, it can be as beautiful as you want it to be.

sixothree• 14 years ago

No, you are not the only one. Their choice of color is abysmal. Have you seen Server Manager in Server 2012? Awful, just awful.

At least the icons fit the home screen properly this time.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

You do realise that you can change the colour?

Server Manager 2012 - agree. That's just horrible.

antninja• 14 years ago

Yes, both WP8 and Windows 8 start screens look like walls of blinking Flash banners to me. I won't judge a GUI without having actually used it, but it sure doesn't give me a good first impression.

eckyptang2• 14 years ago

TBH it doesn't ever really look that messy. That's just a marketing photo. Most of the time, it's pretty clean looking and intuitive. A few applications abuse that but they are usually not worth keeping anyway.

You really have to use it for an hour or two to get a feel for how nice it really is.

For reference, WP7 devices are still selling like hot cakes in the UK at least. We've had around 50 people (33% of our workforce) switch to WP recently and I'm watching a lot of them appear in users' hands.

I think it might suck more in the US unfortunately.

lnanek2• 14 years ago

I don't know, actually using the phones, it's very easy and quick to scan through the screens and actually use the interface. The screens are usually very simple and light. If you don't have the blocks you have a simple list, or a screen with very little chrome held together by typography and whitespace. So blockiness can be good. Web site usability books are always saying people scan sites, they don't read them.

I do think it is kind of ugly actually, but it's so damn usable I like it anyway. Before Windows 8 I'd always turn off all the special effects like Aero and have a dull gray bar that just worked snappy on my Desktop. Finally with Windows 8 I can tolerate the defaults.

And the scrolling is so buttery smooth, even on the phones since 7, that Android didn't catch up until JellyBean.

meta• 14 years ago

I felt the WP7 icons looked 'ok' until I saw/used them in person. The movement aspects of the tiles, personally, are important to the overall feel of the home screen. I really liked the tile interface after using it (so much so I switch to a WP).

mtgx3• 14 years ago

WP8 is definitely more cluttered-looking than WP7 before it. But overall, it's just blocks of color, and in many (app) cases ugly colors.

recoiledsnake• 14 years ago

Have you used WP beyond seeing screenshots? That homescreen is that way because they want to show the flexibility of tiles in Windows Phone 8.

Coloring Metro to be ugly based on that is almost like seeing a MySpace page and calling HTML/CSS ugly looking.

If you take the mini tile out of the equation, here's a video showcasing WP 7.5 (WP8 can be made to look like this).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=locNEna0of4&feature=plcp

What's ugly about that? People's tastes differ, of course, but a lot of people use it and seem to like it for the most part.

If you're really interested in the design philosophy instead of seeing a screenshot and knocking it down in a knee jerk comment(Well, this is HN with its biases, who am I kidding), here's some analysis of Metro's alternative approach.

http://www.riagenic.com/archives/487

http://www.riagenic.com/archives/493

http://www.riagenic.com/archives/526

>Also, this is DOA in the US if they are AT&T exclusive.

>Regardless, I'm wondering if the average consumer feels the same way as well. WP7 is not selling well, and WP8 (and the new Lumias) don't really differentiate themselves that much from the previous iteration in terms of what a consumer will see in the first few minutes of using the phone.

Even the Lumia 900 with the deprecated WP7 had decent sales and was second on AT&T after the iPhone and then beat the One X till the S3 came into the picture and WP8 was announced.

http://www.wpcentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/postimage...

Edit:

Here's Woz calling it a no contest.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/28/2983312/steve-wozniak-wind...

And here's Scott Adams thoughts after trying WP:

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/windows_phone_challenge_result...

USER INTERFACE

    Samsung/Windows: GREAT

    iPhone: GOOD

    HTC EVO 3D/Android: POOR

>The Windows phone has the best user interface experience, although the onscreen keyboard is problematic just as it is with the other phones I used. The Windows interface is intuitive, simple, and has a liveliness that I find appealing. Voice call quality was good, and battery life seemed good too. I declare it the winner compared to my iPhone 3GS with AT&T and my HTC EVO 3D with Android on the Sprint network.

markmm2• 14 years ago

Let's see how it sells compared to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S3. Everything else is moot.

madoublet• 14 years ago

Sales are important. But, lets give them some credit. This is a really well designed phone. And if the (less than impressive) iPhone 5 leaks hold, than this could be the first phone that is arguably designed better than the iPhone. That is pretty impressive.

patd• 14 years ago

Apparently, it's not living up to the expectations of the stock market. The stock is down 13%. Not sure what people were hoping for.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ANOK

ghshephard2• 14 years ago

They've announced a product, but no pricing or availability. People will immediately stop buying the current generation, but don't have the next generation to purchase - and there is no idea when they will be able to. Nokia just put the brakes on sales, and haven't indicated when they'll let up on them.

MartinCron• 14 years ago

But the brakes have been on sales for a while, as we have known that the latest windows phone software won't work on the existing Lumia phones.

lawdawg3• 14 years ago

Wow, no prices or dates? Fail.

(Guess they just wanted to announce/show off the devices before the iPhone5 announcement ... but without prices or dates, the hype is going to fade into non-existence).

Toshio• 14 years ago

I am now convinced that they organized this event hastily once they knew the date for the iPhone 5 event... kind of like what they did with surface to front-run the Nexus 7 announcement.

Smacks of desperation if you ask me.

markmm2• 14 years ago

It will fail, this is the last chance for Nokia, I expect them to go out of the smart phone business very quickly.

yajoe• 14 years ago

I can confirm this. The Surface and WP8 also were announced hastily at the beginning of the summer in response to competitors and not because they were ready.

Amazon originally had Sept 5 for their announce, and Nokia scheduled over it because if they didn't announce before Apple it would be a lost cause. But they needed price. Price is what's going to make this year interesting. Coincidentally, Steve's letter about from a few years ago today said the same thing: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/

Spearchucker• 14 years ago

Reading a lot of anti WP sentiment, and much of it directed at WP8 (surprising, because Microsft hasn't really revealed anything about it yet). That said, the Lumia 920 is without a doubt my next phone. Granted, I'm in a position where price means nothing to me, so the deciding factors are wireless charging, NFC, offline maps (not the pseudo-variety Google offers), PureView (even if it's only a 5Mp camera I'm betting it'll still outdo anything else in a smart phone).

I accept that no two people share the same view.

vesky2• 14 years ago

The 920 has an 8Mp camera. I got the same feeling from all the blogs covering the event. They all talked about it through a "doubtful" lens. I kept seeing expression like "I gotta admit it's actually nice" and "this might actually be worth owning" that clearly states their Apple/Android affiliation.

I used to be an Android fan but after using the Lumia 820 for a month (unlocking it for a friend), going back to a Galaxy left me a bit sad. After WP, Android seem childish and overly hard to keep uncluttered over time.

I just hope the 920 won't be too expensive otherwise I'm gonna have to deal with samsung for another 2 years :(

mtgx3• 14 years ago

As a side note, Nokia's stock seems to have dropped 11% today. I guess stockholders aren't too excited about the new devices and WP8.

Live From Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 Press Conference

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