Spent the day in Costa Mesa today at a Windows Phone 7 Code Camp event put on by Microsoft. I had a great time! Some great presentations and some really nice people. I even won a new LG Quantum in a random draw!
I am not giving up my Samsung Focus so this will make a nice present for my sister-in-law. She has an aging Blackberry something or other and has eyed our phones but says she can’t do with out a mechanical keyboard. Lucky for her, there is the Quantum! Now she can know the joys of Mango (I’m updating her phone right now) on a modern smartphone and toss that old Blackberry in a box.
Best part – my wife is a WP7 manic and will show her all the coolness that lives in Mango.
On September 27th, 2011, Microsoft released the highly anticipated “Mango” update to Windows Phone 7.
After running the Mango beta for a few months, I have to say the final product is much better. It’s so much smoother, faster, and feels much more solid.
As Matt Buchanan at Gizmodo said in his review of Mango: “The thing I like most about Windows Phone, really, is that it's the only phone besides the iPhone that feels like it's got its shit together, from the interface to the core apps to the overall experience.”
I have to agree. I can say without hesitation that in my almost a year of using Windows Phone 7 that it is truly a fun, fast, and rock solid OS that has never crashed or locked up on me.
Overall Mango is a very solid OS and a wonderful evolution of Windows Phone 7. If Microsoft keeps updating Windows Phone 7 and keeps innovating, I think MS will have a big time winner on its hands.
From a developers perspective, Mango is not a large leap from NoDo. Mango does add some new APIs and features that do affect application design – in particular the “fast resume” and multitasking features. Also the new Background File Transfers API looks to have some very interesting potential uses in applications. The new Live Tile and Secondary Tile API is absolutely epic. This is a great addition for developers and will really facilitate development of apps that utilize the “glance and go” design language of Metro. I personally plan on using the deep linking feature in our games.
Also, for us game developers, the graphics frame rate has been unlocked from 30fps. This is HUGE! It now means we can do much more fluid looking 3D graphics. In some of our in-house test applications, we saw a noticeable improvement in smoothness. While 30fps is adequate, some people can see visual strobing at 30fps. I happen to be one of those people.
All in all in Mango there are many new features - 300+ according to Microsoft – in Mango. Some of the major features I really like are the changes to the email and people hub. You can now create groups of people and email or message them all at once. Threaded email and threaded messages (SMS, MMS, and IM) are now standard. Speaking of messages, Live Messenger and Twitter support is now baked into the OS. It is so nice to be able to update my Facebook, Twitter, and IM status from on place without having to jump in and out of different apps.
Another killer feature is the “Internet Sharing” option. It lets you set up a mobile hotspot that up to 5 devices can access. Sadly, this is not enabled on first generation Samsung phones – but you can enable it if you so desire.
I can confirm this hack works as advertised as it is the very same one I used on my Samsung Focus.
First, this hack requires a developer unlocked phone. If you don’t have a developer unlocked phone then stop here.
Next, you will need to do an interop unlock.
These are the instructions I followed to interop unlock my Samsung Focus. I followed the first subset of instructions under step 11 in the Samsung fork and was done.
Next, follow these instructions. One note to clarify the instructions at step 4: What it should read is “Select the checkbox in the app for ADC and then press apply”.
Once you are done, you can uninstall DiagProvXML and the Samsung Tools.
All in all it took me less than 5 minutes to enable Wi-Fi Internet Sharing on my Samsung Focus. No more USB tethering required!
This should make my crewmates happy since we can now have boat-wide Wi-Fi courtesy of Mango.
Microsoft had their Build conference here in Southern California last week. For the first time in 10 or so years I am genuinely excited with what they presented.
I grabbed the developer preview and installed it on my primary development machine on a new hard drive. It ran surprisingly well out of the box. I only need to update two drivers to have it functionally equivalent to my Windows 7 install:
- I needed to update the video driver to the latest nVidia beta to get the HDMI output to work. The VGA port worked just fine with the default Windows 8 nVidia driver, but I don’t do analog.
- I needed to install the Windows 7 64-bit driver for the O2Micro SD reader, it was not recognized by Windows 8 during the setup. The same thing happens with Windows 7.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty uneventful preview aside from the WONDERFUL new features, enhancements, and the LOVELY Metro interface. I even have Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, and Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with all the Mango developer tools running on it like butter. I may actually use it day to day.
Having had a Windows Phone 7 phone since day one, I have longed to see the Metro interface on a tablet and PC. Looks like I got my wish! As for developing apps for Windows 8, it’s cake. A few tiny changes in a little bit of code and methodologies as well as some new name-spaces. Not really much at all considering the re-imagining of Windows. All I can say is that I can’t wait to see what comes next!
Here’s the Keynote speech from Build Day 1. It’s amazing how excited and how much enthusiasm everyone is showing. I think Microsoft may have gotten its’ Mojo back!
Steven Sinofsky is the man.
So I have been patiently and not so patiently waiting for the Windows Phone 7 update. Looks like it dropped today. I love how it says February update and it’s now mid April.
Dear Microsoft, please stop letting AT&T screw with the release of updates. Dear AT&T, please get the hell out of the way regarding updates.
That is all…
Now on to the benchmarking and testing.
Sorry for the lack of posts over the last months. We’ve done a lot of traveling over the holidays and when not traveling I have had my nose to the grindstone with my new business. I’ll be getting back to more regular posting this week starting with a look at the Windows Phone 7 OS – an OS that I think is a real gem hiding in plain sight.
Here’s to 2011 being a better year for everyone than 2010 was. Cheers!
Today is Windows 7 is one year old! Happy birthday and great job Microsoft!
Out of my gaggle of geeks I am usually the guy who has to have his old, dead operating system pried out of his hands.
Being a developer, I really hate upgrading operating systems because it takes so long to get it setup with all the tools I use. This time however, I did something rare for me – I got involved in the Win7 beta and installed it on a second hard drive in my primary laptop. From the install screen on, I knew I was going to ditch XP and Vista and go full Win7 as soon as I could. I had fallen in love.
So, to share the love, I will present you with my 7 (clever, eh?) favorite Win7 features.
7. WINDOWS KEY COMBOS
Windows + left or right arrow snaps the active window to the left or right side of the screen. If you are like me and run multiple monitors, it will snap and move the windows across all your monitors.
Windows + SHIFT + left or right arrow will move the window from monitor to monitor without snapping it to the side or changing it’s size and shape.
Windows + up arrow maximizes the active window. Windows + down arrow minimizes the active window.
Windows + Tab will do the 3D document flip. A nice replacement for ALT + Tab.
6. GOD MODE
This handy feature puts all your OS settings and tasks in one place. It’s a clever implementation that nobody is likely to stumble on. Here’s how to access it:
- Create a folder anywhere on your system.
- Name that folder GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
- Enjoy!
5. WINDOWS CALCULATOR
It does EVERYTHING. Conversions, statistics, you name it. Check out the view menu on the calculator app for more detail. The calculator really is a gem.
4. LIBRARIES
Microsoft had been struggling to make this concept work in previous versions of Windows. They finally nailed the implementation in Win7.
3. WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER
It finally works right and the wife and I LOVE the “play to” feature. I really love being able to access my media securely from the Internet as well without having to setup a VPN.
2. THE TASK BAR AND AERO PEEK
Oh how I love the taskbar and the way it combines shortcuts and live apps into a single icon. I wonder how it was that we ever got along with the old taskbar.
And my favorite Win7 feature?
1. PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY
Win7 just seems to run like butter. It’s snappy, doesn’t crash, and is just a pleasure to use. After a year plus a few months, I am still in love.