Category Archives: smartphones

Images from Mobile World Congress – Huawei’s SmartPhone horse, a Lego robot that collects trash

There are some striking artifacts at Mobile World Congress this year. One is Huawei’s winged horse which stands proudly above one of the fountains.

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It is made of smartphones, as this close up of a leg shows.

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Impressive, though it is an expensive way to make a statue and I cannot help being reminded of the anti-capitalist protestors at the gate. Perhaps these are factory rejects.

Another amusing piece is this Lego robot which collects trash and drops it in the bin.

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Unfortunately I cannot remember what this is promoting!

What is in BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0: new universal inbox and remote control

Here at BlackBerry Devcon Europe attendees were shown the key features of PlayBook 2.0, an update for the RIM tablet that will run on the existing hardware.

Aside from new runtimes for developers and some usability tweaks, the main changes users will notice are a new universal inbox and PIM (Personal Information Manager), and deeper integration between the PlayBook and BlackBerry smartphones.

The PlayBook 2.0 PIM offers a single inbox for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as well as email.

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The PIM includes an embedded web browser so that you can view HTML messages without leaving the application.

The application also covers calendar and contacts.

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If you look in detail at a meeting, you can see the other attendees, presuming that the information is available.

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One of the aims is to aggregate information drawn from social networks and from the internet. It is a compelling idea, and one that Microsoft has also used. For example, when you view an email the Outlook Social Connector automatically looks up status messages from FaceBook and LinkedIn from the author. Windows Phone also aggregates information from multiple social networks in its People hub.

RIM talked about adding web information. We were given the example of getting an email from someone and viewing recent press releases from their company within the PlayBook 2.0 PIM. If this is well implemented, it does make sense, giving you useful background without the need of a manual web search. A contact record is no longer just name, address and company, but a portal into that person’s story and current activity.

The other big new feature in PlayBook 2.0 is remote control. You can use your BlackBerry SmartPhone as a controller and input device for the PlayBook.

What is the point of this? A good question, to which the most obvious answer is that you can use the physical keypad on a BlackBerry to type on the PlayBook. This drew applause when demonstrated.

I asked for other use cases on Twitter. The main other suggestion was using a BlackBerry as a remote when your PlayBook is plugged into a screen as a media player or presenter.

The concept goes beyond this though. Here is new CEO Thorsten Heins speaking in the keynote:

Just take this idea a step further. Think about BlackBerry 10 being a platform, for mobile computing, for smartphones, so it really shows the deep integration of the BlackBerry platform. Think about having your PlayBook somewhere on your desk at your home, and you can control everything just from your BlackBerry, I think that is fantastic

Incidentally, RIM’s operating system naming is confusing. This is how it goes. BlackBerry OS up to and including 7.0 is the old smartphone OS that is being phased out. The new OS is based on QNX and first seen in the PlayBook, which runs Tablet OS 1.0. Version 2.0 of this OS, due out later this month with the features mentioned above, is called PlayBook OS 2.0.

BlackBerry 10 is the next iteration of this QNX-based OS and will run on SmartPhones as well as on the PlayBook. BlackBerry 10 is expected later in 2012, probably towards the end of the year.

RIM’s future depends on wide acceptance of BlackBerry 10. The uncomfortable question: how many mobile operating systems can succeed? It seems that Apple iOS and Google Android are well established, but the future prospects of new entrants such as BlackBerry 10 and Windows 8 is open to speculation.

Update: I visited the exhibition here and spent some time hands-on with the version of the PIM that is installed on the PlayBook devices. It is disappointing, though bear in mind that it is not, I was told, the final version (though if the final version is coming this month you would have thought it is not far off).

Some key points:

  • The embedded HTML rendering in the email client is just for the message itself. If you tap a link, it takes you into the separate web browser app.
  • In order to get social network status updates from the author of an email message, you have to be logged into that social network and the author must already be one of your “friends”, or so I was told. I hope this is incorrect, as it seems largely to defeat the purpose of this kind of integration. Outlook’s social connector retrieves status updates from anyone irrespective of whether you are logged into that network or have them on your friends list.
  • I asked about SharePoint integration and received the vaguest of answers. A SharePoint app is in preparation but there is no word on when it might appear, and it may be dependent on some sort of Microsoft input.
  • There is no official cloud storage service from RIM. You can use third-party services like Dropbox. Enterprises are expected to use internal file shares, via VPN if necessary.

It seems to me that RIM is in danger of missing an important market for PlayBook here. Many RIM customers use Microsoft’s platform because of the link with Exchange. A tablet with excellent support for SharePoint and Office 365 would have obvious value, and Microsoft can be expected to tap into this with Windows 8. BlackBerry could get there first with PlayBook but it looks like this will not be the case.

What will it take to make RIM’s Playbook sell?

I am at RIM’s Blackberry DevCon in Amsterdam (where it is so cold that the canals have frozen). Attendees have been given a free Blackberry Playbook, the neat 7” tablet running an operating system based on QNX, acquired by RIM in 2010.

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The Playbook was launched in spring 2011, and sales have disappointed. Exact numbers are hard to find; the Guardian estimated that RIM ordered 2.5m devices, while Crackberry.com says 5m. How many sold? In the three reported quarters, RIM said 500,000, 200,000 and 150,000 were shipped. Prices have been falling, naturally, but it seems that there are plenty left.

Nevertheless, this is an attractive device. The operating system is smooth and the size is convenient. Why has it failed?

One factor is that the device is designed as a companion to a Blackberry smartphone. Email does not work unless you have a Blackberry, or can get by with a web browser client. RIM thereby reduced the market to existing Blackberry owners, a mistake which should be rectified when version 2.0 of the operating system is released – expected later this month.

The second problem is the the extent to which Apple owns the tablet market. When you buy an iPad you know you are buying into a strong ecosystem and that every app vendor has to support it. That is not the case with the Playbook, making it a riskier choice. RIM’s fix is to introduce support for Android apps, though there are a few caveats here. Perhaps the biggest is this: if you want to run Android apps, why not just get an Android tablet and avoid any compromises?

The Playbook is a delightful device. The big question – for RIM and other new entrants into the tablet market – is what will make it sell, other than pricing it below cost?

Amazon found an answer for its Kindle Fire: low price, Kindle brand making it an e-book reader as well as a tablet, and a business model based on its retail business. Amazon can sell the device at a loss and still make a profit.

It is not yet clear to me what RIM’s answer can be. The most obvious one is to make it truly compelling for the large market of Blackberry smartphone users, but not if that means crippling it for everyone else as with the 1.0 release.

Another factor is that the device has to be nearly perfect. On the conference device, it took me 10 minutes to send a tweet. The reason was that the supplied twitter app is really a link to the twitter web site. That in itself is not so bad, but I found the soft keyboard unwilling to pop up reliably when twitter’s tweet authoring window was open. Making a correction was particularly frustrating. A small thing; but one or two frustrations like this are enough to make a good experience into a bad one.

Version 2.0 of the operating system does promise numerous improvements though, and watch this space for a detailed review as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Nokia Drive on the Lumia: it works

Over the weekend I took the opportunity to try out Nokia Drive, a turn-by-turn navigation app which comes bundled in the Lumia 800 I have been testing. Well, it was not so much “took the opportunity” as “try anything”, since the Tom Tom the driver was relying on had lost its signal somewhere in the depths of rural England.

I fired up Nokia Drive, entered the destination, and was impressed. It picked up a signal, displayed a well-designed screen stating what was the next turn and how far away, showed our location and progress complete with the road name, and spoke out clear instructions in a voice that was less robotic than some.

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I was a passenger in this case; how does this work if you are the driver? It turns out that Nokia Drive disables the screen saver (which developers can do with a couple of lines of code – check out UserIdleDetectionMode) so it runs continuously. This is a battery drain, so for longer journeys you will need some sort of car kit; you can get by with just a bracket to hold the phone and a standard micro USB power supply.

For basic navigation this seems to me as good as a Tom Tom though there are a few things missing. You cannot calculate a route offline, it does not show time to destination, and it does not have speed camera warnings.

Nevertheless, a significant benefit for Nokia’s Windows Phone users.

How many clouds is too many? AcerCloud announced in Las Vegas

Acer has announced its AcerCloud in the run-up to CES in Las Vegas. This is a service that spans mobile devices, PCs and the internet, the aim being that pictures, documents and multimedia are available from any device. Take a picture on your smartphone, and it appears seamlessly on your PC. Download a video to your PC, and view it on your tablet. Play music stored at home from your tablet while out and about.

The press release is short on technical details, but does say:

AcerCloud intelligently uses local and cloud storage together so all data is always available

That said, it is more PC-centric than some cloud services. It seems that Acer considers the PC or notebook to be the primary repository of your data, with the cloud acting as a kind of cache:

Professionals can update sales documents on a PC and save them, and the documents will be put into the personal cloud and streamed to other devices. They can then go to their meeting with their notebook or tablet PC and have immediate access to all the updated files. The files will be temporarily accessible for 30 days in the personal cloud and on the devices, or they can choose to download the files on to other devices for long-term storage.

One of the features, which failed in the CES demo, is that a PC which is in hibernation can be woken up through wi-fi to deliver your content on demand:

As long as the main PC is in sleep (standby/hibernation) mode, Acer Always Connect technology can wake it up through Wi-Fi® so media can be retrieved via a mobile device.

This whole thing would work better if the cloud, rather than the home PC, were the central repository of data. A PC or notebook sitting at home is unreliable. It has a frail hard drive. It might be a laptop on battery power, and the battery might expire. The home broadband connection might fail – and most home connections are much slower uploading to the internet than downloading from it.

Another question: if you one of the professionals Acer refers to, will you want to put your faith in AcerCloud for showing documents at your business meeting?

Acer wants to differentiate its products so that users seek out an Acer PC or tablet. The problem though is that similar services are already available from others. DropBox has a cloud/device synchronisation service that works well, with no 30 day expiry. Microsoft’s SkyDrive is an excellent, free cloud storage service with smart features like online editing of Office documents. Google Music will put all your music in the cloud. Apple iCloud shares content seamlessly across Apple devices, and so on.

The problem with this kind of effort is that if it is less than excellent, it has a reverse effect on the desirability of the products, being one more thing users want to uninstall or which gets in the way of their work.

We will see then.

Finally, I note this statement:

AcerCloud will be bundled on all Acer consumer PCs starting Q2 2012. It will support all Android devices, while future support is planned for Windows-based devices.

Android first.

Microsoft puts carriers before users in new Windows Phone update which you might not get

Microsoft has posted a new update for Windows Phone, update 7.10.8107.79. The list of fixes is here, not huge, but including one fix for an issue that has irritated many users:

On-screen keyboard. Fixes an issue to prevent the keyboard from disappearing during typing

But will you get the fix? The real news in Microsoft’s blog post announcing the release is this:

The update, available to all carriers that request it …

Microsoft is also discontinuing its Where’s My Phone update site:

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Why? Microsoft General Manager Eric Hautala is blaming growth in the number of model, country and carrier variations. That makes the site more work to keep up to date, but no less useful for users.

So what is going on? When Microsoft ditched Windows Mobile for Windows Phone, it sought to learn a lesson from Apple and to provide consistency in user experience, hardware and software. One important part of that is to control updates, so that users do not have to wait for carriers to authorise updates (or not to bother), but get them in a timely manner. This is a potentially a selling point against Android, where users have difficulty getting updates, especially on older devices.

In March last year, Hautala said:

There’s one more thing I want to clear up. I’ve seen a lot of speculation on blogs and forums lately about whether carriers can “block” an update. We work closely with carriers to test and schedule updates. They may ask us for a specific date to start an update. They may ask for updates to be bundled together. But you should ultimately receive all the updates we send out [emphasis mine].

Microsoft now seems to be back-tracking on this commitment, though we need clarification. It is possible that all devices will eventually get the fixes, though not necessarily in this release but in a future roll-up. Check the comments though: users fear the worst.

For background, I recommend you read my piece from February 2010, before the launch of Windows Phone, where Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Joe Belfiore and Andy Lees discuss the partner problem.

One further thought: if Microsoft is losing control over its partners, this represents an opportunity for specific partners to make the commitments that Microsoft is backing away from. How about it Nokia?

Update: Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore tweets:

ps – on updates, pls don’t overreact, our focus is on users first! As greg said “nothing has changed” in how we work w carriers on updates.

Greg is Greg Sullivan, Senior Product Manager on Windows Phone.

This still strikes me as a worrying development for users though. The disappearing keyboard bug is troublesome. How can a user find out when they will get the fix? “Ask your carrier” is all very well, but many find carriers unresponsive on this kind of issue.

Nokia Lumia 800 review: beautiful phone, some annoyances

I have been trying Nokia’s Lumia 800 for the last week or so, the first Windows Phone from the company. It is a significant device, since Microsoft is relying on Nokia to revive its Windows Phone 7 platform which has won only a tiny market share since its launch in late 2010, while Nokia is betting its business on Windows Phone after selecting it in preference to Google Android or its own MeeGo operating system. No pressure then.

The phone is nicely packaged and comes with a free protective skin as well as a fake railway ticket stating “Your one way ticket to amazing.” This is a UK ticket so I presume it is suitably regionalised elsewhere. A small detail, but it formed part of my impression that Nokia has thought carefully about the unwrapping experience, whereas previous HTC Windows Phones have felt like just another phone in a box.

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The Lumia takes a micro-SIM, as used in the iPhone 4.x, and the only one I had available was in my iPhone, so I removed it and popped it in the Lumia. Everything worked, the switch-on and initial setup was good, and I was soon up and running with Exchange email. I did have to install my self-signed certificates for Exchange, but this is not an issue that will affect most users.

This phone has a polycarbonate body and a Gorilla Glass front and feels solid and well-made. The 480×800 screen is bright, clear and responsive to touch. I have not had any issues of laggy or uncertain response to taps.

What counts here is that the Lumia feels like a high quality device; the design has something extra that sets it apart from most smartphones out there.

In terms of hardware features, the Lumia is unexceptional, with volume, on-off and camera buttons on its right edge, speaker at the bottom, standard headset socket on top, and rear-facing camera lens and flash.

I rate the sound through the supplied ear buds as decent, but the speaker is tinny, much worse than that on the iPhone 4. Fortunately you rarely want to play music through the built-in speaker.

The USB connector (also used for charging) is behind a flap. You have to push a small protrusion to swing it open. It is a little awkward at first and a slight annoyance, but I can also see how it improves the appearance and protects the socket.

Although I like the hardware overall, there are a few issues. One is battery life; it is barely adequate, though Nokia says a future update will improve it:

A software update in early December will include improvements to power efficiency, while a second update in early January introduces further enhancements to battery life and battery charging.

How bad is it? Here is a screenshot:

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Do the maths … if 23% is 1 hour then 100% is just over 4.5 hours, not good. Of course this is with active use, mostly email and web browsing. Do not panic about the “Time since last charge” – it was not a full charge!

The Lumia does have a neat feature whereby it goes into a “battery saver” mode which turns off non-essential services to prolong battery life when it is low. Curiously this was off by default, but I enabled it and it works.

Lumia Software

Physically the phone is above average; but what about the software? This bit is mostly Microsoft’s responsibility, though Nokia has done what it takes to make it run sweetly on the Lumia; the user interface flows smoothly and the chunky tiles are easy to tap.

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On an iPhone you get four favourite shortcuts at the bottom of the screen and page through the others by swiping through pages (or you can create groups). On Windows Phone you get eight favourites above the fold, scroll down for more favourites or tap the arrow at top right for the complete alphabetical list which scrolls vertically. It is different but equally easy to use.

You have to tap at the top to see network and battery status; I would prefer to have this always visible but it is a minor point once you know how.

Nokia does supply several apps. Nokia Music is radio without the ads or commentary; you choose a genre and it plays continuous tracks. A decent app.

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Nokia Maps is an alternative to the standard Bing Maps, which is also installed, and seems redundant to me, since it has fewer features. I also noticed several cafes wrongly positioned in my local area, which does not inspire confidence.

Nokia Drive though is worthwhile, offering turn by turn directions and its own set of road maps – though I am not sure how practical it is if you are driving on your own.

The Lumia comes with a mobile build of Internet Explorer 9, and I have found it pretty good in general though of course neither Adobe Flash nor even Silverlight is supported.

Office Hub

The Office Hub is one good reason to get a Windows Phone – provided you use Exchange and SharePoint (though note the annoyance below), or the free SkyDrive, or Office 365. I like the way Outlook on the phone easily handles multiple Exchange accounts, which appear as separate instances.

The Office Hub gives you read-write access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote documents, which I personally find useful, even though the editing features are limited.

Me and People Hubs

The Windows Phone 7 OS aggregates a number of social media accounts: Windows Live, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn though not Google+. I find this works fairly well, though I found the slightly different roles of the Me tile and the People tile confusing at first. Personally I use Twitter more than Facebook; and I find tweets of people I follow listed in the People app, while my own recent tweets and notifications of tweets mentioning me are in the Me app. I wonder if these two apps could usefully be merged?

That said, Windows Phone does a great job of surfacing your social network interactions and I would guess that this is one of its foremost attractions in the consumer market.

Annoyances

I found a few bugs and annoyances, though I suspect for most of these Microsoft is more to blame than Nokia.

First, there seems to be a bug in the interaction between the maps, the GPS and the direction finding and “Local Scout”, which is meant to find local attractions and facilities.

I saw this today. I was in London and the GPS was working fine, I could tap the “me” button and it correctly located me on the map. But when I asked for directions to a street nearby I got this:

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“No location information”. Something not right there – and yes, I tried again. I also get this sometimes with Local Scout.

Second annoyance: on my Android phone I can connect to my laptop and use the mobile as a 3G modem. Windows Phone has a Mobile Hotspot feature, though it does not work on my O2 connection; I assume that is a carrier issue, but I miss the feature and the direct USB connection works well for me on Android.

Third annoyance: Zune. I do not know why Microsoft persists with the tarnished Zune brand, and it is a mistake to build in this dependency on Windows only desktop software – yes, I know there is also Windows Phone 7 Connector for the Mac. I would prefer to be able to connect the phone to any PC or Mac and have the ability to copy documents and music to and from device storage.

Zune is not too bad when everything is working, though I had a specific issue on the train recently. I had written some notes in a Word document on my laptop and wanted to transfer them to the phone. Zune only syncs music. The only way to get the document from the laptop to the phone would have been via the internet, and that was impossible because the laptop was offline.

Fourth annoyance: SharePoint. I run my own SharePoint server, and while I can easily access it on the internal network, if I try using it from Office Hub over the Internet I get the message “SharePoint doesn’t support this authentication scheme.”

This turns out to be documented:

Unless your organization uses a Microsoft Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) server, you can only access a SharePoint 2010 site if you’re in the office and connected to your organization’s Wi-Fi network.

That is not what I consider a detailed technical explanation and maybe there is a workaround; but it is annoying when Microsoft cannot get its own products to work together properly. Note though that SharePoint in Office 365 works fine.

Fifth, I had to sign up for a paid developer account in order to install a screen capture application. This is why many Windows Phone reviews have no screenshots. How difficult would this be for Microsoft to build in?

Sixth, I have found Local Scout near-useless. This is mainly because of lack of momentum; it needs more data and user reviews to be useful. However I have also noticed that a restaurant near me which closed a while back is still listed even though I have twice reported it closed through the “Tell us this place is closed” link, the first time two months ago. It makes me wonder to what extent this database is actively maintained; inaccurate information can be worse than useless.

Windows Phone Apps: still a disappointment

The biggest disappointment deserves its own heading. This is the apps available in the marketplace. When I go to the Apple or Android stores I see dozens of apps that look interesting; in the Windows Phone store on the other hand I struggle to find excellent apps. The number of apps in the marketplace is less important than the quality, and here Windows Phone 7 still seems to fall short.

If I go to the marketplace, choose the category of All apps, and then select Top (which I presume ranks according to popularity and rating) it is interesting that they are all games and mostly from Microsoft Studios:

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Games are important, but that does not look like a healthy ecosystem to me.

Could this be an opportunity for developers? Since Nokia World in London at the end of October I have seen a dramatic increase in profile for Windows Phone; it is what Microsoft should have achieved at the original launch a year earlier. We will not know numbers for a while, but there must be more of these things going out, with new users looking for apps.

The Camera

I am not reviewing the camera in detail here. The quality is good though the images seem a little “cold” to me, which means I suppose that the colours are not as vibrant as they should be. I will not press the point though; it is a decent camera and good enough.

Summary

This is a beautiful phone and the only showstopper problem is the poor battery life. If Nokia fixes this, we are left with what seems to me the best Windows Phone 7 implementation yet, despite a few annoyances which are mostly in the Windows Phone 7 OS and its core apps rather than being the fault of Nokia.

There are a number of things to like: social network integration, the Office Hub, Mix Radio

Nokia’s Windows Phone launch has made more impact than I had expected. Microsoft and its partners need to follow through with faster updates, and to work on quality rather than quantity in populating the app Marketplace.

Android and Carrier IQ: alarming claims, immediate questions

The claims of security expert Trevor Eckhart regarding data collection by Carrier IQ are among the most alarming of any I can recall in the IT industry. I dislike the way Facebook gets you to publish data about yourself almost without realising it, and the amount of personal data collected by Google, for example, but this is more worrying.

Eckhart says:

The very extensive list of Android security permissions granted to IQRD would raise anyone’s eyebrow, considering that it’s remotely controlled software, but some things such as reading contact data, Services that cost you money, reading/edit/sending sms, recording audio(?!??!?) and writing/changing wireless settings seem a bit excessive

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The only choice we have to “opt out” of this data collection is to root our devices because every part of the multi-headed CIQ application is embedded into low-level, locked regions of the phones.

So what does Carrier IQ gather? Eckhart lists webpages visited, location statistics, media statistics, SMS texts, keys pressed, apps opened and focused, and even text sent over SSL (HTTPS) in browser sessions that you thought were secure.

If these claims are correct, then nobody who deals in confidential information should use an Android mobile with this installed. Since most of us have online bank accounts or other secure logins that we use on our mobile, that makes an Android phone a risky proposition for almost anyone.

My immediate questions:

  • Which Android devices have this software installed?
  • How soon will the affected operators give us a way to remove or disable it?
  • How can a concerned user discover whether or not his mobile is leaking private information?

Finally, now is the time for rivals such as Apple, RIM, or Microsoft and its partners, to explain in plain English how their devices compare in terms of privacy. What data is gathered in the interests of:

the Carrier IQ solution gives you the unique ability to analyze in detail usage scenarios and fault conditions by type, location, application and network performance while providing you with a detailed insight into the mobile experience as delivered at the handset rather than simply the state of the network components carrying it.

as Carrier IQ puts it.

What will it take to make Windows Phone a success?

Microsoft made a splash in New York City yesterday with a giant Windows Phone in Herald Square.

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The idea I guess was to show how each “Live tile” is a window into a feature of the device, with a special emphasis on “people” – the way Windows Phone aggregates Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Windows Live and more into a single feed and tile.

This is the kind of stunt you get when a huge corporation with a lot of money to spend is trying to muscle its way into a market.

Is it enough? It does feel as if Microsoft has managed the re-launch of Windows Phone better than its first effort around a year ago – the first devices went on sale in October 2010. The operating system has been tweaked, the new devices are more imaginative, and partner support seems better. I actually saw some window displays for Windows Phone in my local small town though they were gone a few days later.

It still feels as if Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle. There is not much wrong with the phones now, but what is the killer feature that will sell it alongside Android and iPhone? Personally I like the SharePoint integration, but Microsoft is still primarily going after consumers rather than business users.

There is also the matter of the tiles. They work well, but look at the photo above: are they beautiful? Not really; and it is unfortunate in some ways that all the Windows Phones look like this.

That said, I enjoyed my few minutes with an HTC Titan; it has an exceptionally large display and a great camera but does not feel too bulky, and I can see it doing well if the marketing is right. Nokia’s Lumia 800 looks good too.

Microsoft came late into this market though, persevering with its old Windows Mobile for too long, and it is not going to be easy to catch up.

Something has changed for Windows Phone

When Windows Phone 7 launched last year, it was obvious that it could not succeed since it was all-but invisible to most people. In my local small town centre, which has several mobile phone shops, it was nowhere to be seen.

I went out to post a letter just now and was astonished to see this poster in the window of Phones4u:

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I went in and discovered only a dummy of the Radar and Titan on display. I asked to see a Titan and they got one out for me to see.

The Nokia Lumia 800 was also on display, this one a working model.

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The Titan has a gorgeous large screen, but while it is slightly bulky it is slim and does not feel heavy to hold. I put it alongside the Lumia; the Titan screen does look larger and better. Unfortunately I could not see the Lumia out of its clip. The Lumia does benefit from Nokia Drive (not working because no internet connection) and seems to be around £100 cheaper than the Titan. The Lumia also has the free British Airways app pre-installed.

I asked the assistant what she thought of Windows Phone and she said she had not tried it. I said I had an HTC Desire (true) and she seemed slightly puzzled about why I would want a Windows Phone though she thought it would be good for work because of Office.

Still, Microsoft’s device has visibility at last, though this seems to be more because of moves by Nokia and HTC than from Microsoft itself. If it can win the support and enthusiasm of some of those influential retail assistants we may see significant growth in market share.