A real Windows 8 Phone, not Windows Phone 8!

ItJustMyOpinion

29-10-2011

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/itg-...dset-50005857/

Originally Posted by CNET Crave:
“Chinese company ITG has announced the xpPhone, the world's first phone running Windows 8 PC software, reports Pocketnow. And if it ever sees the light of day, it'll make the iPhone look like a Fisher-Price toy. ”

I have to say I would prefer a phone running Windows 8, to a phone running Windows Phone 8.

Originally Posted by CNET Crave:
“The specs are completely insane as well. Try a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. That not enough for you? A 2GHz model will also be available. Storage-wise, it'll have 112GB (we're not making this up -- check the product page if you don't believe us). And a 4.3-inch screen tops things off, though presumably it'll double as some kind of teleportation device, in keeping with the rest of the specs. ”

PC / Tablet / Phone, same ecosystem, same app development process. Sounds like a winner to me. Multi colour tiles too.

I imagine Windows 8 on ARM, without the legacy desktop will consume considerably less resources, so they may be able to provide a lower spec.

KIIS102

29-10-2011

Meh, if you want windows 8 then buy a pc

Thine Wonk

29-10-2011

Originally Posted by KIIS102:
“Meh, if you want windows 8 then buy a pc”

Looks like then might be converging mobile and desktop in Windows 8.

Quote:
“Last month the boss of Nvidia mentioned Windows Phone apps could run in Windows 8, so it's fair to assume Windows 8 could eventually make its way onto handsets. It already appears to be adding phone features, so we could be seeing some true convergence in the style of iOS and Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

The specs are completely insane as well. Try a 1.6GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. That not enough for you? A 2GHz model will also be available. Storage-wise, it'll have 112GB”

Diverso

30-10-2011

Why on earth would anyone want an operating system that runs on all devices? Do people seriously think it will integrate phones, tablets and pcs togather? Do people envision being at work at 5:30 working on an excel sheet then leaving work and continuing with that spreadsheet on their mobile on the way home, only to finish the spreadsheet on their tablet as they watch TV? That isn't ever going to happen and let's hope no company attempts to do that.

Phones tablets, pcs are are different equipment that have different specifications and enable the user to achieve different things. If you make the perfect mobile operating system it won't look good on a 19 inch screen, if you make a great tablet os, it will be too simplistic for the PC and to campt for mobile phones. The same can be said about a desktop operating system on a mobile phone device (Windows Mobile anyone?).

Microsoft can't put Windows 7 mobile on tablets or desktop pc's, Google can't put Ice Cream Candwich on tablets or PC's. The only company that has been able to put an os in a device not designed for that os has been Aple and the only reason they succeeded is because the os is ridiculously simple. Can you imagine Macs running on iOS5?

Consumers and producers are going to have to deal with the reality that differen devices serve for different purposes. The invention of the laptop didn't kill the pc, the mobile phone didn't kill the home phone and the tablet won't kill the laptop so the full Windows Phone 8 OS on a smartphone will be the same as Windows mobile, a coplete failure.

Pretinama

30-10-2011

iOS and Mac OS as basically the same thing. iOS was built using a subset of Mac OS X anyhow. So for Apple, a lot of what's on iPhone *could* work on Macs I suppose. It'd be interesting to be able to run iOS apps in the dashboard for example.

I like the convergence, but agree that tablet/phone needs are different than desktop/laptop needs.

IvanIV

30-10-2011

I'd say there will be different editions of W8, for desktops with x86 processors, ARM for tablets and ARM for phones, like there is a full and compact .net framework. It's about user experience being the same across all devices. I do not find it such a bad idea.

late8

30-10-2011

They have a lot to do with Windows 8 on Desktops. Its horrid to use.

psionic

30-10-2011

I can see OS convergence between smartphones/tablet/computers becoming the norm eventually. However the phone in the OP seems a bit ahead of it's time. Unless it manages to deliver a decent battery life, and actually has apps that need such horsepower of course

c4rv

30-10-2011

Originally Posted by KIIS102:
“Meh, if you want windows 8 then buy a pc”

Windows 8 is aimed at mobile devices, the standard desktop is tiles. If you want the full experience on a PC then you will need kinetic or a touch screen TV

dontpannic

31-10-2011

Why exactly would one require a full desktop OS on a mobile telephone?

The xpPhone has been around before, in XP Tablet guise, with Vista, and with 7, and each time it hasn't had the cult following they were hoping for.

In short, the devices were too slow, screens were too small and devices were too big.

Windows Phone 7 is a good OS for mobile. It corrected everything that was wrong with WinMo 6.5 and earlier.

I can see the appeal of an OS that works across all devices, however it is imperative that these OS versions have different UI's and perhaps even a limited amount of background services on the lower power devices.

With regards to the poster above who told the example of a worker working on an Excel spreadsheet until late, continuing it on the way home, then on a tablet when he got home. Although a bit of an extreme example, Apple have actually solved this already, cross OSX platform, natively to the OS, and the same can be achieved with 3rd party addons on other devices.

Apple's example: iWork and iCloud.

iWork has apps for OSX and iOS. If iCloud is enabled on all three devices, the user can save a document on his Mac, it gets uploaded to iCloud, its then available on his iPhone on the way home, saves it, it gets uploaded to iCloud, then at home, is available on his iPad. Steve Jobs was right - it just works.

That example is the reason why we don't need Desktop OS'es on handheld devices. They just don't work.

Gormond

31-10-2011

Originally Posted by dontpannic:
“iWork has apps for OSX and iOS. If iCloud is enabled on all three devices, the user can save a document on his Mac, it gets uploaded to iCloud, its then available on his iPhone on the way home, saves it, it gets uploaded to iCloud, then at home, is available on his iPad. Steve Jobs was right - it just works.

That example is the reason why we don't need Desktop OS'es on handheld devices. They just don't work.”

The thing is there is no auto syncing with iCloud on the mac like there is using Dropbox or so forth.

You have to go to iCloud.com and download/upload the files as far as I'm aware

dontpannic

31-10-2011

Originally Posted by Gormond:
“The thing is there is no auto syncing with iCloud on the mac like there is using Dropbox or so forth.

You have to go to iCloud.com and download/upload the files as far as I'm aware”

I'm using it as we speak - its cooked into OSX Lion 10.7.2.

TheBigM

31-10-2011

Originally Posted by dontpannic:
“Why exactly would one require a full desktop OS on a mobile telephone?

The xpPhone has been around before, in XP Tablet guise, with Vista, and with 7, and each time it hasn't had the cult following they were hoping for.

In short, the devices were too slow, screens were too small and devices were too big.

Windows Phone 7 is a good OS for mobile. It corrected everything that was wrong with WinMo 6.5 and earlier.

I can see the appeal of an OS that works across all devices, however it is imperative that these OS versions have different UI's and perhaps even a limited amount of background services on the lower power devices.

With regards to the poster above who told the example of a worker working on an Excel spreadsheet until late, continuing it on the way home, then on a tablet when he got home. Although a bit of an extreme example, Apple have actually solved this already, cross OSX platform, natively to the OS, and the same can be achieved with 3rd party addons on other devices.

Apple's example: iWork and iCloud.

iWork has apps for OSX and iOS. If iCloud is enabled on all three devices, the user can save a document on his Mac, it gets uploaded to iCloud, its then available on his iPhone on the way home, saves it, it gets uploaded to iCloud, then at home, is available on his iPad. Steve Jobs was right - it just works.

That example is the reason why we don't need Desktop OS'es on handheld devices. They just don't work.”

There are several points to the idea.
1) Hardware (mobile hardware) is now powerful enough to comfortably run a desktop OS.
1b) A move to ARM architecture will allow for a combination of performance and power efficiency so you get reasonable battery life.

2) The concept is that the tile interface and metro in general is a highly scalable UI and UX from 4" phones to 42" TVs. We will see this shortly: we have tiles on the Windows Phones, we will have similar but not identical tiles on tablets/PCs and we will have a tiled interface on the TV (on the Xbox).

2b) This interface is navigable using touch (phones and tablets) can be designed to be m/k friendly (PCs) and through gestures (xbox kinect).

3) There's no suggestion that UX has to be identical across all machines, but the underlying code could be. I don't see why can't design an application that installs a certain interface depending on the device it is being installed to. The idea is for developers to be able to write an application once and have it work anywhere from 4" to 40".

Tying in their desktop popularity into their phones is the only way MS can really catch up to Apple in terms of third-party applications.

Re: the old nugget of how Apple invented everything. MS had ActiveSync and Exchange ActiveSync before the iPhone was created. They had Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Skydrive long before iCloud came along.

For over a year now, business users with a sharepoint site at work could access, share and collaborate easily on documents across PCs and Windows Phones. Mango brought in Skydrive for consumers and Office 365 access for smaller businesses, a touch before iOS5 came out I might add.

psionic

31-10-2011

Originally Posted by dontpannic:
“I'm using it as we speak - its cooked into OSX Lion 10.7.2.”

Sorry for going off topic. But how do you get iWork '09 to sync automatically with iCloud? I was under the impression this wouldn't be possible until the new version of iWork comes out. Even a WebDAV virtual drive would be better then uploading via the iCloud website.

dontpannic

01-11-2011

Originally Posted by psionic:
“Sorry for going off topic. But how do you get iWork '09 to sync automatically with iCloud? I was under the impression this wouldn't be possible until the new version of iWork comes out. Even a WebDAV virtual drive would be better then uploading via the iCloud website.”

I'm using iCloud as we speak - not iWork. I'm led to believe that iWork 11 will support the feature. Sorry if I misled you.

"Re: the old nugget of how Apple invented everything. MS had ActiveSync and Exchange ActiveSync before the iPhone was created. They had Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Skydrive long before iCloud came along."

Yeah, MS did have Activesync first - but lets face it, that was a steaming pile of turd. It was slow, often deleted important data instead of merging it, and it was a long while until it worked over Wi-Fi.

Exchange ActiveSync isn't really in the same league, only syncing email, contacts, calendars, and notes.
I never claimed that Apple invented synchronisation - they've created an implementation that works well and that is easy to set up and use. Nobody can deny that.