Nokias Windows Phones

[Sarevok]

Has anyone used one yet ? What are your thoughts on it ?

[Melchior]

I've used a Lumia 800 briefly (for reference, I recently bought a iPhone 4S and I had a Motorola Milestone before). As you probably know, the general winmo7 OS experience is very uniform between different handsets; performance seemed reasonable. The screen is very nice (if you like phones with somewhat small screen, like iPhones - else you can get a HTC Titan), the build quality is extremely good and personally I like the design, but if I had been willing to deal with the limited ecosystem I could have gone further and have chosen the frankly more interesting N9.

[The Kernel]

Current Nokia handsets are fine but trust me when I say this...wait.

Later this year is going to be bringing much more interesting stuff to market if you are truly interested in Windows Phone. If you are buying today, check out the Galaxy Nexus or iPhone 4S.

[Sarevok]

Kernel I seem to recall from your posts you develop for mobile. What are your thoughts on future of Ovi store ? As a developer I received this Lumia 800 from Nokia. I am quite puzzled that it only contains the Windows Phone market not ovi store. As someone who still makes part of his income from S60 I would be worried if Ovi stores future is at stake in near term.

[Melchior]

Kernel I seem to recall from your posts you develop for mobile. What are your thoughts on future of Ovi store ? As a developer I received this Lumia 800 from Nokia. I am quite puzzled that it only contains the Windows Phone market not ovi store. As someone who still makes part of his income from S60 I would be worried if Ovi stores future is at stake in near term.

There are no plans for a standalone Ovi store on Winmo7 phones, I assume it'll be eventually phased out if/when they stop making symbian phones.

[The Kernel]

Kernel I seem to recall from your posts you develop for mobile. What are your thoughts on future of Ovi store ? As a developer I received this Lumia 800 from Nokia. I am quite puzzled that it only contains the Windows Phone market not ovi store. As someone who still makes part of his income from S60 I would be worried if Ovi stores future is at stake in near term.

I know less about Nokia than I used to when I worked closely with them but I expect Nokia's apps division to live on (from what I hear Ovi Maps and Nokia Music are going to be a key differentiation for the Nokia ecosphere) and that Nokia will probably get a channel in the Microsoft App Store similar to the carrier channels. But I wouldn't expect Nokia to make a full blown app store and you can forget about S60 compatibility because that's not in the cards.

As for the next generation of Microsoft Windows Phone OS, all I can say if you develop apps that traditionally would make use of an NDK, your world is about to change. Microsoft should be announcing more official stuff at Mobile World Congress so I would wait till then to make any decisions.

[phongn]

As for the next generation of Microsoft Windows Phone OS, all I can say if you develop apps that traditionally would make use of an NDK, your world is about to change. Microsoft should be announcing more official stuff at Mobile World Congress so I would wait till then to make any decisions.

I wondered if they would loosen up on the managed-code-only requirement!

Kernel I seem to recall from your posts you develop for mobile. What are your thoughts on future of Ovi store ? As a developer I received this Lumia 800 from Nokia. I am quite puzzled that it only contains the Windows Phone market not ovi store. As someone who still makes part of his income from S60 I would be worried if Ovi stores future is at stake in near term.

I'd say that Symbian doesn't have all that much a future and you'd be best served looking at other platforms in the longer-term.

[Oberleutnant]

Not much future left for Symbian and its developers, who were outsourced to Accenture by Nokia last year. The company released its annual report today, which revealed that Symbian phone sales have all but evaporated. Analysts predict Nokia will be getting rid of the platform sooner than originally announced.

Hope they can get things sorted out. By comparison to my iPhone, MeeGo-based Nokia N9 is in class of it's own when it comes to quality. Too bad about the non-existent ecosystem and UI.

[The Kernel]

I wondered if they would loosen up on the managed-code-only requirement!

Well it's not like they had much choice. Trying to port C++ to C# nets you somewhere between jack and shit reuse of code and I don't think the iOS and Android game developers were all that keen on it. Microsoft may be stubborn but they aren't complete morons and when it became clear that the big developers weren't going to develop for them if it meant maintaining a totally separate codebase I can only assume they made the rational choice.

[The Kernel]

Hope they can get things sorted out. By comparison to my iPhone, MeeGo-based Nokia N9 is in class of it's own when it comes to quality. Too bad about the non-existent ecosystem and UI.

Hah, I used the N9 for a whole two weeks thinking it was the best phone ever...till my ICS Nexus Prime showed up.

It's a great phone, it's a shame they abandoned MeeGo.