How can you rate the battery life of a device based on just the OS?

Because Android runs shite on anything that isn't powered by Uranium, Windows Phone runs brilliantly even if powered by a lemon.

^^^ Not quite, but I am now getting ~2.5 days from my Lumia 800 and it was ~3 days from Samsung Omnia 7. That's mostly reading emails (4 accounts, 2 of them with push notifications), sending lots of texts, a few phone calls. But the battery is a weak point of any smartphone, it's nice if there is a low standby power consumption, but once you start using it intensively, it's a matter of hours before it's drained.

now dont get me wrong ..... i do actually quite like the new Lumia .....

but compared to most new androids its quite low specced so its bound to have better battery life.

Well that's the beauty of it. The OS is optimised to a certain chipset including CPU/GPU. So you can have great performance and experience on WP7 with only a single-core. They've quite deliberately held back on a spec arms race with android due to the impact on battery life - you can hear it in multiple interviews with Joe Belfiore.

On Android, you need those specs but you suffer battery life for it. There are other optimisations on WP such as instead of allowing full-scale multi-tasking, they allow only for background agents for battery efficiency.

Sounds simular to the way iOS does it.

I must say I really like the look and feel of the lumia, I would be tempted to go for one in my next upgrade.

ahhhh. but just like ios the software/interface is more basic than Android and the degree of customisation is less. also the hardware that the software can cater with (or has to cater for) is more limited.

There are pros and cons to each approach.

of course on the other hand you dont have the arms race between MANUFACTURERS. With Apple you get what they want you to get and no choice. With Windows there is a little more choice but its still limited.

I used to have a winmo 6.5 phone and i loved it. If I hadnt been tempted to the HTC Desire id still probably be with Winmo. When I upgraded to the Nexus i seriously considered Winmo again. Im not a hard and fast Android 'fanboy'....

Although obviously i never considered Apple for an instance

As customisation goes, one could say Android is for dominant, controlling types, while iOS is for submissive types who like to be told how to do things But joking aside how much freedom of customising a typical phone owner needs. iOS shows that whatever the reasons people like the phone, not enough customising isn't a reason enough to go somewhere else. As for WP7, now that Mango is out, the only little thing I miss atm is that there are no custom text message alerts.

As for programming for WP7, I can't talk about games, but I guess you use the same framework as for xbox. As for 'normal' apps, WP7 uses Silverlight. Which means if you are a .net WPF programmer, you can sit down and start programming for WP7 immediately. You only have to study how 'phone things' are done, if you need them. As for the look of the OS and the apps, that simplicity is a decision of the OS maker to go minimalistic, a decision I like. The complex graphics with icons in folders is so 80s

Well yes, but that's all well known amongst people like us. In the context of the OP's preferences sounds like an iOS or WP approach is more suited. iPhone is great but I just find it less intuitive and more boring than the WP UI personally. Of course there's many people who hate WP UI and like the faux-real look on iOS. In the software arms race called apps, people sometimes forget the 80/20 rule. We spend 80% of our time using the same 20% features and the other 80% of features are only used 20% of the time. iOS trounces both Android and WP in respect of the 80% of features (i.e. quality of apps, quantity of apps, brand-name apps) but I feel WP does the 20% of features I use all the time much better and that 20% is my priority.

Surely the fact the people are moving to android in their droves and that it is now by far the dominant os means its doing something right for many people ..... and more and more apps are starting life on android now .....

I'm pretty sure cost has alot to do with it. You can get android phones for 100 quid now, the same cant be said for an iPhone.

in that case the "something right" is that they are allowing people choice

but it still means that the old 'apps come first on Apple' argument is going to be less and less valid as percentages swing even further in Androids favour.

Microsoft are coming to the party late and are going to work very hard to get App developers to provide the same support for Winmo - even if its is actually the easiest one to develop for ......

Like I say, its a shame ... Winmo does look very good and the idea of full integration between phone and desktop does look very appealing .....

I certainly wouldnt write Microsoft off yet

Interestingly even the iPad 2 looks to be losing its huge market share. Figures for Q4 2011 seem to indicate a 60/40 split as opposed to a 95/5 split previously enjoyed.

I'm unsure about that as reports have stated that iPhone uses buy more apps than Android, Something like 50% of iPhones users buy one app a month compared to 20% of Android users.

To quote a recent report from the multi platform developer of Tango:
This figure could get worse for Android as phone costs come down, If people aren't willing to pay for a phone will they be willing to pay for an app? Time will tell i guess, but it certainly doesn't look like it.

I saw a mention of similar figures somewhere - quite amazing really! Any idea who's in 2nd or 3rd? Are people buying the cheaper £100-150 android tablets or are the likes of Galaxy Tab 10.1 making inroads?

personally i think Apple will end up as a niche market again. You will always get people buying Apple "because its Apple" but they will lose any dominant market share.

Thats unless they carry on agressively suing anyone and everyone ....

It will always be a case that the more you spend the more you spend. I'm sure those buying £2000 PC's also spent a lot of money on software.

but its also down to the app developers....

Angry Birds ... free on Android ..... costs on Apple....

App devs know that with Apple a fool and their money are easily parted

And that's why there will always be some applications that are iOS only. Whilst there are developers who do it for a hobby and have a day job, the ones who are trying to make a living will target the platforms where users are actually willing to pay for apps.

The reason that Rovio can afford to have Angry Birds free but with advertising included is because they'd already spent many months building up the game's brand on iOS. By the time it finally came to Android there were so many users clamouring for it that they didn't care it had ads in. If you can get a large enough critical mass of users, then it's possible for developers to make money from advertising revenue. Unfortunately Angry Birds is the exception rather than the rule. There are very few games released that go on to be that kind of a phenomenon. Hell, they're even making a million dollars a month from plush toys and other merchandise!

Angry Birds is a paid app on WP7, too, but luckily for an old miser like myself every paid app on WP7 must have a free test version. And there's just enough free levels in the Angry Birds one that I can get fed up with it before I can get to the last one

I am programming for WP7 for fun, I would not want to be dependent on the income from it. It's just too fickle if you are not a big player like Rovio. You can't charge much, somebody has to discover you and they have to like it. I have 40 downloads in 8 days on my first app and that's possibly only because it's free and I shamelessly posted the link here

Saying iOS just works doesnt help much. Like millions of others, I find my two Android devices just work too. This just works argument does not carry water at all. The op also seems quite stubborn in insisting their phone is representative of the series at large and seems to consider contradictory reports as BS.

Neither. It seems to be the Kindle Fire, and to a lesser extent the B&N Nook, both of which run forked versions of Android. I think the Fire will be the only true competitor to the iPad for a while yet. Like Apple, Amazon has the brand, the image, the ecosystem...


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ket-apple-ipad

This is all just what some "analyst" has come out with, though.



Samsung doesn't seem to like providing sales figures, but I doubt it's make much of a dent in the market. The original Galaxy Tab didn't, and I don't see why the 10.1 would succeed where the Xoom and PlayBook etc. have failed (Xoom: 250,000 shipped in the first quarter it was available, 440,000 shipped in the next quarter, then 100,000 shipped in the quarter after that. PlayBook: 500,000 in the first quarter it was available, 200,000 shipped in the next one).


Back in October, Google's Andy Rubin said that there were over 6 million Android based tablets "out there" (sold? shipped? what?). Compare that with around 40 million iPads (at the time), with Apple's latest results this month showing over 15 million iPads were sold in the most recent quarter (and the two previous quarters, going backwards... 11.12 million, 9.25 million...)

'The way IOS does it' really reflects its history as an mp3 player operating system with APPS.
Windows history very much goes back to DOS whilst the iPhone of course was always big IPOD.

Things improve over the years so that phone Ipod recently became decent at making phone calls. How everything works though still reflects back to that first limited tasking IPOD.

Well thats obvious considering most apps on apples app store cost yet the same app on Android is free. Angry Birds for one.

Yet they state they still make more money on Android compared to iOS.

Its never carried water. The fact is, its only the smug arrogant pricks who say this over and over since they cant actually figure out what it does better than any other OS.

iOS, OSX fails just as much as any other. My iphone 4S i'm using just now while my S2 gets repaired has had more app force closes than my S2 ever has.

Nice phone, way overrated though.