January is now being touted as the month that Windows Phone 7 will jump a big hurdle and bring copy/paste, Bing turn-by-turn directions, multi-tasking and some other improvements. Nothing groundbreaking, but every smartphone OS needs these. More at wpcentral.
Sounds like they’re more or less copying Apple from the way they started out… even the things everyone complained about. I still can’t believe a company would leave copy/paste out… it seems like such an obvious oversight to me.
Who needs cut/paste? Who needs multi-tasking? Who needs to connect to a BT keyboard? Who needs A2DP? Who needs battery sucking 3G? It seemed to make sense to a lot of peeps in 2007
And adding all those things which are more or less standard these days is called “jumping a big hurdle”?! – lol!
“And adding all those things which are more or less standard these days is called “jumping a big hurdle”?! – lol!”
Everyone said the same for Apple and it was all standard before then too..
Though to give the same flack to MS as Apple got the title should be “MS invents Copy/paste”… lol
The difference between now and 2007 is that the first gen iPhone raised the bar significantly in several key areas (media, web browsing, interface design and ease of use, to name but a few). It changed the rules of the game, and the rest of the smartphone world had to scramble to catch up.
Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, is merely playing catch up to the status quo, so the lack of several commonplace features is a more important omission.
MS is just taking their time to do it right
There are 2 ways to look at that lazyboy. The lack of copy paste and multitasking was a big omission in the first iPhone because other systems already had them. Having other great features does not excuse that completely.
And MS will only take a few months to add them, unlike Apple.
I prefer iOS to Windows Phone by some distance but don’t see the gap in adding these things by MS as a big problem.
It has taken MS four long years to come to produce an OS that can almost compete with the iPhone/iOS, during which time its share of the smartphone market has completely collapsed. In that context, another few months to add cut/paste, multitasking etc. is nothing, I suppose. I’m not really bothered by it, and I’m not falling about in fits of apoplectic rage/derision as many of the critics of the iPhone were. MS has produced a nice looking, smooth OS which provides a basis for it to go forward.
I think my central point stands, in that the first gen iPhone offered enough compelling/unique features to make the omissions largely irrelevant to many. Indeed, a year later there was still no cut/paste or multitasking, but the App Store changed the rules of the game again.
At the moment, I’m struggling to see what is compelling enough about Windows Phone 7 to make a typical iPhone user switch to it. The “anything but Apple” brigade might be tempted, though, particularly if Android keeps fragmenting.
From my own personal perspective, however, if I had to rank which major OS I would choose for my next smartphone, it would go like this:
1. iPhone/iOS
2. Windows Phone 7
3. Web OS (but only with an iPhone like form factor)
4. Android
5. Symbian
And I think that’s encouraging for MS.
Oops. forgot about Blackberry OS, which I’d probably chose over Symbian.
I would go for:-
1/ Android / iOS
2/ BlackBerry
3/ Windows Phone 7
4/ webOS
5/ Symbian
Every time I review a new Android phone I am more impressed with the OS and, from a smartphone perspective, it is coming together. The fragmentation issue is not really an issue for 99% of users.
I have been working from home because of the snow today- 3 dropped calls on the iPhone 4 and people continually saying I don’t sound clear. This has only just started happening over the past week (iOS 4.2.1?) so the iPhone is not my favourite device of the moment, and I can’t move the microSIM to another phone. GRRRRR!
My BlackBerry Curve 8310 continues to be used for all things voice- same network, full signal, good quality voice sound.
iOS is way up there in terms of PDA and app functionality, but as a phone, the iPhone always has been poor in my experience if you are in an area of average to poor coverage. Other people at work have similar problems as me.