Some Quick Thoughts on Windows Phone 8
Friday, September 7, 2012 at 1:11PM I just wanted to provide a quick update since it’s been days since my last post. I’m in New Zealand this week, and though I’m finally heading home today (Saturday, here at least) and have been preoccupied with the events here, I’ve been thinking a lot about Windows Phone 8 and this book.
Like many of you, I’m disappointed with Nokia’s inability to market itself or its products effectively. The world’s critical reactions to this week’s event—at which Nokia launched (or, really, “previewed”) its upcoming Lumia 920 and 820 devices is sadly representative of the pro-Apple climate we now live in and of course exasperated by Nokia not announcing release date(s), pricing, or carrier availability.
Like many of you, too, I have my theories about why that happened. Really, it doesn’t matter.
Windows Phone 8 is architecturally a major change. They are moving from a Windows CE core to a Windows (NT) core. This is huge, and as big a deal as moving from Windows 9x to NT with Windows XP back in 2001.
But the reality is that Windows Phone 8 is an evolutionary update from a user experience standpoint. If you use and/or understand Windows Phone 7.x today, moving to Windows Phone 8 will be obvious and even seamless. Yes, there are a ton of excellent new features in there, but there is no single major change. This is evolution, but good evolution. Windows Phone was already excellent, so there’s no need to go back to the drawing board.
The marketing stuff—Microsoft’s weird desire to hide the final end user features in Windows Phone 8, Nokia’s silly inability to explain itself—doesn’t matter much to the book. The core changes are important, sort of, but how much time can we really spend on what is essentially background material? Ultimately, the book is about the user experience. And in Windows Phone 8, that means everything that was right about Windows Phone 7.x—which is to say, most of it—plus the fun/useful new stuff we’re getting in Windows Phone 8.
Put another way, it’s all good news.
I’ll try to write up the final notes on the Summit so I can look at updating our very raw TOC and then move on to the next event. I suppose I need to start actually writing the book soon as well. Given that so much of what’s in Windows Phone 8 is already there in Windows Phone 7.x, it might make sense to start with some areas that aren’t expected to change (or change much).
Reader Comments (3)
You're right about the imperfect executution and there's certainly room for improvement on that front. Looking beyond that though I really think the 920 is a homerun techologywise and sets the mark for Nokia's ability to still make those awesome phones. That will show that the crown for innovation has been snatched from Apple. Just crossing my fingers they won't become another DEC ;)
Well, I'm looking at this site, so I think I'm already pretty conviced by Windows Phone somehow. when looking at the demo made during the Nokia event, I strongly believe that there is some features present in the video which are not even mentioned by Joe Belfiore (and looking at the line just up to the keyboard when he's typing, there is some stuff there: http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-8-keyboard-includes-a-new-type-ahead-feature/ ). And the question is why? The only interpretation I see for this is that they know that the product would be hitting market later on in October/November, and that they just want to tease... at least until the iThing 5 event on the 12th September. Are they going to tease us and let some feature "Surface" during September and October until the release date, to maintain the hype?
Regarding Nokia's in disappointing launch event I think it is important to put this into perspective. I seem to recall that when the Samsung Galaxy S3 was announced it was greeted with with a feeling of disappointment, I recall people talking about how ugly they thought it was. The iPhone 4S was also regarded by many pundits as disappointing and I think the Apple stock value dipped slightly before rebounding when people had more time to consider things calmly.
Non fruit based companies are forced to show their devices to carriers long before they lunch them and it is inevitable that the information about them will leak. That is why they do a press event so they can tell their own story. I wish it could be different but Nokia needs the carriers more than they need Nokia so Nokia will just have to suck it up