Android vs Windows Phones

[sarge78]

I really can't get my head around Microsoft being so far behind on the tablet front. I'm not ging to run two mobile os, so until they realise a decent tablet the phones are out of bounds.

Everyone's moving towards one OS for all devices (Ice cream, Windows 8, OSX/iOS, QNX, Meego, webOS etc) only the UI/power saving features will differ depending on screen size/input/power supply.

Microsoft have just decided skipped this intermediate Honeycomb/phone OS stage and bet the house on Windows 8 (9?)

 

[Glaucus]

But is loosing 100s of millions as well as market share and app development.

 

[Abooie]

Interesting blog/article that echoes how I feel about wp7 and android here: http://mobilitydigest.com/living-the-multiplatform-lifestyle/

 

[manveruppd]

I know you've not mentioned this but if you are after a buissnes phone i'd go with WP7 just for the intergration with other Microsoft products (maybe not yet but at some point down the line)

Link Server
Share Point
Exchange (done better)
Office 365
CRM
etc
etc

That IS a big selling point, and I admit I was tempted purely for having more fully-featured Office apps (something I miss from my old WinMo phone - I have QuickOffice and Google Apps on my Android phone but it's not quite as good).

However, I heard that even WP7 doesn't fully support Outlook, specifically Notes and Tasks. Can any WP7 users confirm that? In fact, I heard that even BlackBerry doesn't support notes, and the only current mobile OS with full Outlook support is Symbian!

 

[manveruppd]

Games for Android *should* use purely standard OpenGL imo, as then they'd work on any phone, but that's hard to enforce with the way the market is (and that's also the thing that makes Android 'better' than iOS/WP7, so it's a tough one really...)

Fully agree, Google have to be MUCH stricter on which apps they allow onto their Market. If it doesn't use a standard Android API it shouldn't go on there. The dev can always sell it through their own website, Google won't stop anyone installing it, but the Market should serve the lowest common denominator. (Though it's acceptable that the minimum spec for this should rise as the years go on - they can't be expected to continue supporting the Hero indefinitely, Apple isn't still supporting the original iPhone after all)

Sony Ericsson missed a trick by not making the Xperia Play more powerful (Tegra 2 or another dual-core). Then they could support an extended API and sell games through their own online games store that are ONLY guaranteed to work on the Play. Currently most games released for it will probably work on other handsets, and Sony are competing on hardware alone: the only incentive someone who wants a better gameplay experience has to get the Play is the gamepad. That's a pretty strong reason of course, but they could have done more with it.