Big Ups to XDA-Developers - Off-topic

I just read a closed thread in the X1 forum involving a WinMo hater, and I did find it a little amusing, and I understand it was closed with the statement not to bring it up again, so I decided to bury this in the off-topic section.
My point is, though, that WinMo has its issues as does every other phone platform, but I have decided to stick with WinMo not simply for its technical advantages that I prefer, but primarily for the outstanding service and support that is provided by the very accomplished contributing members of XDA-Developers.
Most (if not all) of the people who contribute here do it as a labor of love, and I have not found anything else quite like this anywhere else on the web.
So for all those who make this in my (somewhat biased) opinion the best online community on the WWW, BIG UPS! Good Job!
Most importantly Thank You for making my trip through the PocketPC world as fulfilling as I could have imagined.

Agreed. I dont venture to that forum as i dont have one but having support from XDA and PPCGEEKS has made my device, whatever it has been, the best out there.

I agree, xda-developers is the best mobile community.
However my next phone will be the Nokia N82. I'm going to try the Symbian OS. Nothing against windows mobile, but I'm sure many of us can agree that most HTC and other phones just quite aren't powerful enough to handle windows mobile. I'm sticking with the N82 till there is a blazing fast windows mobile device packed with great features. (Maybe it's the tegra chip I'm waiting for?)
Plus, switching to S60 gives me something new to learn about! And now I can play quake 3, doom, GBA, SNES, and everything else I've always dreamed of playing on a phone!

i loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee xda

Related

on the hunt for a symbian based site similar to xda-developers

Hello!
firstly, thanks to everyone for such a fantastic resource. I always enjoy reading about the latest bits of user made software and trying out delicious freshly baked roms...
I have been a winmo user for about 5 years now (many MANY phones ) but, sadly, i have just purchased a nokia N95 8Gb (i basically couldn't refuse the offer) but one thing that really annoys me about it (and i havent got it yet! it arrives tomorrow) is the lack of intelligent, and credible sources of user discussion and content generation (such as this fantastic site). I really will miss it!
Does anyone know of a good symbian forum/irc/site in a similar vain to xda-dev? I have visited www.allaboutsymbian.com and wasnt impressed with the manner or technical level of its users... maby i just didnt dig deep enough.
Anyway, thanks again!
wish me luck on the s60 side... ill have a tytnII if it all goes tits up
Ant
I spit in the face of Symbian!Ptui!! Although,you could go over to mobiholics.com, I know youll be back soon because we all know youre going over there to sell the phone.
i got a p1i, and my super device of all time, the athena has since been neglected... maybe that will change with the release of the real athena project rom..
so i too am looking for symbian-developers.com
Rory

Good news for us chefs...

Microsoft and HTC both agree on XDA-Developers "We can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em
According to tweakers.net (dutch), a very popular and more important, trustworthy Dutch IT website.http://forum.xda-developers.com/
XDA-Developers breaches intellectual property laws regarding ROM Cooking.
However Microsoft and HTC both agree "We can't live with 'em and we can't live without 'em."
Microsoft will not send take down orders to sites such as XDA-Developers, who offer customized ROMs for windows-mobile telephone.
Some sites offering ROMs based on Windows Mobile 6.5 got take down orders last week. They, However, appeared to be hoax.
“Taking action against sites such as XDA-Developers isn’t a matter of concern for Microsoft” says Maarten Sonneveld of Microsoft Netherlands against tweakers.net. “What happens there, the modifying of ROMs, is illegal. The intellectual property however is not with us. The ROMs are intellectual property of the producers of the phone or the mobile phone providers if it concerns branded telephones. We simple only deliver the OS.”
The biggest producer of Windows Mobile-phones, HTC, also says they don’t have any plans to take action against ROM sites. “What happens there isn’t allowed” says HTC Benelux-CEO Mark Moons,
“But XDA-Developers is the biggest and most active community of Windows Mobile-developers. We can’t live with ‘em and we can’t live without ‘em.”
Last week it seemed there were to come an end to tolerating Windows Mobile-communities.
A certain ‘James Young’ sent emails on behalf of Microsoft to site managers in which he stated that they were sharing illegal content, and summoned them to stop their practices; some site managers, in fact, did this.
It mostly concerned ROMs with betas of Windows Mobile 6.5, the update of Microsoft’s Mobile OS that should appear this summer
Haha nice one
Nice, but doesn't come much as a surprise. This community is the only reason Windows Mobile is still competitive. And Microsoft knows it. Besides that, why should they bother? Other than on the desktop PC, the phone hardware is quite limited without proper drivers WM won't run on phones which weren't supposed to run it in the first place. So Microsoft sold their license, HTC (or any other manufacturer) bought it and end of story. They have absolutly no disadvantage when ppl start cooking ROMs - in the contrary. I can't even begin to image using my X1 or any other WM-phone without the customization options presented here. Without them, I wouldn't have bought another WM-phone and become a WM-fan ... ;-)
Read this on tweakers.net yesterday, don't know if we should be happy about this statement.
But it seems xda-developers is going to be watched carefully by MS and HTC, probably has been already.
Until the take serious actions against this community I'm going to flash my X1 with Touch-IT ROMs as many as possible
I would say Microsoft and HTC is the winners here. The ROM cooking means more people is attracted to the platform and for me the reason I bough the X1 was this community.
Rather than moaning, HTC and Microsoft should make donations to XDADevs because this community is one of the main reasons why both of them rose to unforeseen heights.
skycamefalling said:
Rather than moaning, HTC and Microsoft should make donations to XDADevs because this community is one of the main reasons why both of them rose to unforeseen heights.
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Totally agree with u lolz
E90 Commie said:
I would say Microsoft and HTC is the winners here. The ROM cooking means more people is attracted to the platform and for me the reason I bough the X1 was this community.
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+1
i bought my htc wizard and SE x1 because of xda-developers.if they shut rom sites down i ll never buy windows mobile device that's for sure.my phone is my home so i ll decide how will i decorate my home not microsoft.cheers
Yeah i've read that also (im dutch and visit that site 3 times a day or so )
I think that htc says "MAKE NICE ROMS XDA, or else we will.....)
I'll add my 2 pennies worth...
I'm not a cook, though I sorely wish I were! However, thanks to XDA developers, I've had WM phones for the past 5 years, up until Blue Angel I *only* would have Nokia phones, but I was given the Blue Angel as a present and hated it. I then accidentally found XDA when I was going to sell the Blue Angel and was looking for a way to unlock the sim. Figuring I had nothing to lose as I hated the phone anyway, I put a new rom on and fell in love! Since then, I've had every HTC phone and just recently went to the Xperia *ONLY* because of this website. If XDA wasn't here, I would have gotten the N96 or a Blackberry.
So, for what it is worth MS and HTC if you're reading... Leave XDA alone, support it where you can, and be happy for the generosity of this community for making the product you produce better and more usable!
the only reason I got rid of my Omina and went back to a HTC made pda was because of the support and options that I can find here, good move from microsoft however I suspect microsoft as always turned a blind eye to a degree (remember the fpt problems?)
Cool. This is a pretty big community of developers.
James Joung lives here in my neighbourhood
Now I understand why he has spent the whole week laughing
Well,
if it wern't for XDA developers, when I got my Orange c500 (Back in the day) that would have been the last WM phone I bought.
Since then ive had:
Orange c550
Orance c600
MDA Vario
HTC TYTN
HTC Touch Diamond
Sony Xperia X1
goes to show the value of XDA... if anything, I think Microsoft, HTC etc should jump on the band wagon and help chefs get the best out of WM, or at least, some kind of formal agreement should be attained to help protect the community
can't live without them(xda),hehe.. htc and microsoft should donate to support xda !
gtrab said:
James Joung lives here in my neighbourhood
Now I understand why he has spent the whole week laughing
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Maybe he was laughing because his CEO, told him that if he will try to touch this site, he will have to fill up for unemployment... This site have 41,159 members (ONLY ) and allmost all of us, we own between 2-4 HTC pda phones. If HTC will loose us, I guess that they will show the middle finger to Microsoft and they will stick with Android from the time on...
To be honest in that perverse way MS has BENEFITTED from 'Piracy' etc. throughout their history. Take Office for example - way back in the day Lotus and Wordperfect were the dominant market forces. MS were trying to force their way into the market wth their Office products. In the end they blew away the competition - how? Because their media had no copy protection - thus Office Workers ended up getting copies from work to put on their home PCs to carry on extra work at home. The others had copy protection.
MS turned a blind eye to this because they knew that the more people had Office, the more they would want it in their workplace - so much so that in the end how many companies use those products anymore? Now that they are the dominant force, Piracy is an issue.
It is the same with sites like XDA-Devs. The mobile phone market is huge and will get bigger even in these times. WinMo is still a small part of that market - Nokia and Symbian undoubtably have an edge here. However people are becoming more savvy about mobiles and want more from them which is where MS, RIM, and Apple come in (with an improving Symbian).
However if all the consumers had to rely on was 'Stock' ROMs and buggy WinMo (esp. when consumers will compare it to the iPhone etc.) then WinMo would have nowehere near the amount of consumers, and would die a slow death. However thanks to XDA-Devs (and sites like these) we can buy these phones confident that some super talented Cook will provide us with a ROM that will get us the full experience of these devices. Hence we will then buy the next generation, then the next etc.
MS and HTC know this - hence why they can't 'live without 'em'. No point cutting off your nose to spite your face eh?....
@itje
after reading the good news.. please bring back your Touch-IT WM 6.5 project rom.. hehe =)
damskie said:
@itje
after reading the good news.. please bring back your Touch-IT WM 6.5 project rom.. hehe =)
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He just did, and posted the new ROM for download.
[/offtopic]

[01/11/2010] [Apple iPhone ROM] [beta] Development {0.01} for $1000

EDIT: I changed my mind, if someone provides me a working iphone ROM for the touch pro 2, I'll give you $1000. If you want details of what I want, I'll give them but it would require the ability to sync with itunes, all sprint cdma radios to work, wifi, bluetooth, 3g, usb, internet tethering, text messaging, basically, a 99% working ROM. I know the money isn't much but that's about how much an iphone would be worth to me.
please pass this on to your favorite developer/programmer
It seems like there are many different ROM's, or OS's that can be modified to run on these tiny little computers. So why not the apple iphone OS? Seems like hardware wise we would be in heaven with such a great keyboard to the most popular and succesful phone ever. Have any of the talented programmers here attempted it? i would easily pay $50 ore even more for it, as I'm sure many, many other people would. i am certain that there is a programmer out there with access to the iphone source code and can write in the drivers for the hardware. i realize it would be illegal and copyright infrigement but the person that could do it would be infamous and be offered a sweet, cushy programming job at a huge corporation. which of you programmers are currently in a job they don't like or even unemployed? this would be your opportunity to cross the invisible barrier and make double, triple, or even 100X your current salary. think about it.
PS-other than the amazing talents that you would be displaying by doing this, even if you don't become famous, I'm still going to show you how to make money off this. Immediately before releasing the program to the public, get as much money as you can to buy, borrow, cheat, steal, or using whatever means necessary and get every single touch pro 2 phone you can find. i literally mean, 10000+ of them if possible. As soon as the program is released, the word will get out, and within weeks the cost of getting a touch pro 2 on the black market will be upwards of $600-$800, maybe even more. an iphone with a keyboard...
ChristopherJLee said:
please pass this on to your favorite developer/programmer
It seems like there are many different ROM's, or OS's that can be modified to run on these tiny little computers. So why not the apple iphone OS? Seems like hardware wise we would be in heaven with such a great keyboard to the most popular and succesful phone ever. Have any of the talented programmers here attempted it? i would easily pay $50 ore even more for it, as I'm sure many, many other people would. i am certain that there is a programmer out there with access to the iphone source code and can write in the drivers for the hardware. i realize it would be illegal and copyright infrigement but the person that could do it would be infamous and be offered a sweet, cushy programming job at a huge corporation. which of you programmers are currently in a job they don't like or even unemployed? this would be your opportunity to cross the invisible barrier and make double, triple, or even 100X your current salary. think about it.
PS-other than the amazing talents that you would be displaying by doing this, even if you don't become famous, I'm still going to show you how to make money off this. Immediately before releasing the program to the public, get as much money as you can to buy, borrow, cheat, steal, or using whatever means necessary and get every single touch pro 2 phone you can find. i literally mean, 10000+ of them if possible. As soon as the program is released, the word will get out, and within weeks the cost of getting a touch pro 2 on the black market will be upwards of $600-$800, maybe even more. an iphone with a keyboard...
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Click to collapse
There are sooooo many reasons this can't and won't happen. Where shall I start? The vastly different screen resolution? The completely different hardware which has absolutely no support? The bootloader? Or maybe the fact it's closed source, and thus can't easily (if at all) be modified to the point where it runs on our devices? (There probably isn't even a HAL, or only a minimal one at best). Maybe the fact that there would be lawsuits up the a** from Apple if this ever happened, not 6-digit salaries and job opportunities. I personally would rather see developers devoting time to creating a fully, working port of Linux than a half-a**ed iPhone OS port which doesn't boot into a GUI or even a console (if it boots at all), and doesn't even support basic elements of iPhone OS like multi-touch and synchronization. This idea has been suggested over the years quite a few times, and it's never gotten anywhere because there are so many things working against it.
I'm not necessarily against such a thing (if it were to be fully completed) but all I'm saying is that there is already a huge shortage of talented developers who can port operating systems, and we don't need to be wasting their talents and efforts on a wild goose chase of a port, such as this proposed project. Even if the port is completely finished, there are fundamental problems such as lack of multi-touch, OS updates having to be adapted each release, the issue of all apps being the wrong resolution while no scaling mechanism is built into the OS (unlike android), and many other reasons I could literally go on listing all day. Besides, your whole scenario of a port is flawed itself. I think I can safely say that nobody on this forum has access to the iPhone's full source. I think I can also safely say that the price of a black-market TP2 probably wouldn't go up that much if at all, since you can still buy them from HTC or any other retailer (often for dirt cheap with a commitment), and any black market TP2 would have to be cheap enough to be somewhat competitive. Your scenario also relies on the assumption that Apple won't throw their entire legal team at this forum and the developers responsible. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is at best a pipe-dream, and simply won't happen for a myriad of reasons. If you want the iPhone OS, buy an iPhone or get the SDK and use the emulator included, or if you want the look of the iPhone on your TP2, look at iPhone today and S2U2.
just wondering are there any iphone users who want winmo on their device
DaveTheTytnIIGuy said:
I'm not necessarily against such a thing (if it were to be fully completed) but all I'm saying is that there is already a huge shortage of talented developers who can port operating systems, and we don't need to be wasting their talents and efforts on a wild goose chase of a port, such as this proposed project.
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I disagree, the shortage is not from lack of talented developers who can port operating systems, it's that some of the talented developers don't have the motivation to do it. i'm hoping that my post will spur some of the ones dreaming about truly making it big
DaveTheTytnIIGuy said:
Even if the port is completely finished, there are fundamental problems such as lack of multi-touch, OS updates having to be adapted each release, the issue of all apps being the wrong resolution while no scaling mechanism is built into the OS (unlike android), and many other reasons I could literally go on listing all day.
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I agree there would be issues but like all software, it can be modified. for example, up-scaling could run as a default for the entire system as there would be no need to have the iphone running 800 x 480, it could be the default iphone resolution
DaveTheTytnIIGuy said:
Besides, your whole scenario of a port is flawed itself. I think I can safely say that nobody on this forum has access to the iPhone's full source. I think I can also safely say that the price of a black-market TP2 probably wouldn't go up that much if at all, since you can still buy them from HTC or any other retailer (often for dirt cheap with a commitment), and any black market TP2 would have to be cheap enough to be somewhat competitive.
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You're probably right, no one on this forum has access but someone's friend of a friend that works at apple or is a consultant does. Yes, you can buy touch pro 2's on the internet but there's a limited supply. in april of 2009 it was reported 37 million iphones/ipod touches have been sold. this is over a 3 year period. in a 2 day period 270,000 iphones were sold. are there even 270,000 touch pro 2 users? how many of us have the money and the means to end our contract and pay for an iphone? how many of us simply don't do it because of the cost and/or cons of using att or a phone with no keyboard? there aren't enough touch pro 2's in existance
DaveTheTytnIIGuy said:
Your scenario also relies on the assumption that Apple won't throw their entire legal team at this forum and the developers responsible. Sorry to burst your bubble, but this is at best a pipe-dream, and simply won't happen for a myriad of reasons. If you want the iPhone OS, buy an iPhone or get the SDK and use the emulator included, or if you want the look of the iPhone on your TP2, look at iPhone today and S2U2.
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I agree that Apple would do all of this, worldwide fame and recognition of your talents. Surely someone would face the consequences than stay nameless in a basement somewhere for the rest of their life. Someone is reading this that can and will do it because it is achievable.
aZzz.bZzz said:
just wondering are there any iphone users who want winmo on their device
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yes please...........oh sorry i was only joking
apple don't like it.......
when people clone or try to copy there OS
they have and will come down on us like a ton of bricks
this is a reason why people don't try it.
I thought the interwebs is soo vast far and wide.
But I just cant seem to hide from these Iphone crap...
Dumb idea...
As a developer, there is no way in h*ll I would try this. First off, Apple would rain fire and brimstone down on top of you. Apple is one of the most controlling and paranoid companies on the planet. XDA would get shutdown almost immediately just for being associated with it.
Besides, I like not being a sheep. So why would I want to imitate one? Let the sheeple be happy with their device. I'll be happy with mine.
i'll happily be a sheeple
data that's relevant to you individually? why aren't any other phones doing this exact thing as well? it's been 3 years since the iphone came out, surely someone outside of apple realizes the benefits of the iphone and should be building it into wm6 or 7, and android. a phone that actually uses your current location to suggest food and things that you can enjoy that you would otherwise miss the opportunity or waste your time looking for? the games, the programs, the applications, are all built well and perform well because of the os that is used. the iphone os, interface, all of it, is genius. there are things to improve, but let someone crack it and then the rest of us will come up with improvements
I'll port this over if you can get me the iPhone OS source code. I'm thinking you'll run into trouble though, because it's not publicly available
Please read up on development before making such an outlandish request
this thread is done
as if we let it happen here we will be contacted by apple
and they don't like it when people play with there toys.
thread closed

Is STEVE BALLMER literally RETARDED? MS to charge carriers for WM7. Yet Android=Free?

Sometimes 2 pictures can tell a story better than 1000 words. What is wrong with one of these 2 pictures?
DEATH WISH / Link
vs.
ON-A-ROLL / Link
Is the MS strategy so secret and mind boggling that I am simply not smart enough to comprehend its brilliance? Or is there a wattage problem in MS's Board Room?
.
.
I can live with it adding $20 to the cost of a device. There are also things like TCO or similar that apply to a manufacturer and in turn to a customer.
The answer is yes. He is most definitely retarded.
Fact is that wimo could NEVER have been considered successful. Mostly because it is a piece of trash. Charging more [than nothing] for it is suicide -- especially when you compare it to the in-every-conceivable-way superior ANDROID, which is free.
I actually quite like their strategy of shooting themselves in the head. It means that they will die off faster.
Alright, let's do a recap:
-Android is 100% free, WinMo is not
-They are about to charge CARRIERS, so say goodbye to unlocked phones
-It's Windows Mobile, so say goodbye to Google services. If you like Bing, Windows Live and the rest, good for you, but most of us don't.
He is to Microsoft what Bush was to the US. He is arrogant, generally misoriented and strengthen the opinion the public has about Microsoft.
N1c0_ds said:
Alright, let's do a recap:He is to Microsoft what Bush was to the US. He is arrogant, generally misoriented and strengthen the opinion the public has about Microsoft.
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Wow, this is quite apt, and yet I have never made the connection before. Now that you've made it for me, there are thousands of 1:1 analogies that flow like a rain-flooded river out of my head.
His "Mission Accomplished" was his laughing off the iphone. That was the beginning of the end of staying relevant. Now, 3-4 years later, he's introducing his own iphone, but with one very clever and extremely significant difference:
He's calling his Windows Phone.
Ballmer has been blowing it for years! That's why XDA thrives fixing his OS and why Adroid is on the fast track.
I had 3 WinMo phones before my Hero and I thought it was amazing, I was really reluctant to switch to Android, and after using Android for 1 day I'm pretty sure I'll never use WinMo again. If someone paid me $100 to use WinMo instead of Android, I wouldn't; so asking people to pay THEM to use WinMo is just stupid.
It really starts to come down to the essence of this site
rpimps said:
I had 3 WinMo phones before my Hero and I thought it was amazing, I was really reluctant to switch to Android, and after using Android for 1 day I'm pretty sure I'll never use WinMo again. If someone paid me $100 to use WinMo instead of Android, I wouldn't; so asking people to pay THEM to use WinMo is just stupid.
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This is my exact experience. It isn't a punitive view. It has nothing to do with loyalty/disloyalty, or "they're late to delivering their new OS, so I will punish them by not using it". This has everything to do with how good the combination of HTC + Android is. There is not one thing I long for, there is nothing at all that I am missing using my HTC Hero running Android. HTC's SenseUI on top of Android (which i had never run before, nor even tried before, deciding I wanted to buy the Hero) works so beautifully right out of the box, and the Android market is filled with apps & utilities that make the device's functionality even greater.
I spent over 3 years here, a whole year before even registering, just to help make my T-Mobile MDA device useful to me.
I am saying this: Before my first touchscreen device, I had a very reliable Samsung clamshell device... Being very careful, while in the car I could hit a speed dial and get someone on the phone, activate speakerphone etc., and when the call was done, bullet-proof step to end the cal;. I could feel it in my fingers.
Entering the world of touchscreens, of which I am such a huge champion I have created an awards series in support of, I quickly discovered, to my immediate dismay, "I can't even make a phone call without having this screen up to my face"... But worse, put it in my pocket and for a year my friends are all angry "why do you keep calling me?". Try to get the phone OUT of my pocket to answer a call before it goes to voicemail, 9 times out of ten a touchscreen area gets pushed and call is lost.
Then the tiny tiny keyboard you use reading glasses to see so you can poke that stylus precisely... I was wondering, "what have I traded away for a screen that can browse the web?"
Again, 4 years ago, thankfully one T-mobile store salesperson in San Francisco told me about this site, kind of in hushed tones while inside the store as employee. When I first came here, like with many folks, it was an intimidating jungle, with caution signs everywhere: "READ THIS FIRST" "DON'T POST WITHOUT SEARCHING". I would finally come to what I thought would be straight-forward set of instructions: "A Newbie's Guide to Upgrading your T-Mobile MDA", only to encounter in the very first sentence "Make sure your phone ist HARD-SPL'd or you'll brick it"... "HARD SPL? What does THAT mean?" It took me well over 6 months, back then, to stop-and-go, stop-and-go-back, just then searching for "what is HARD SPL?" only to come to yet another thread saying stuff like "To make sure your device is capable of HARD SPL, it must be all ROMS after 63i850db247, not before or you'll brick your phone"... Read 100's of pages of thread and not one post saying "Yes, your MDA is fine for Hard-SPL". On and on it went til finally, after being slapped down a few times for asking questions (they would link me back to the very threads I already had plowed through), I got some help to get me started.
And THAT day began the pursuit toward USEFULNESS OF USING MY PHONE.
Admit it, more than 3/4 of this site has always been about compensating for what may have been a very fine underlying OS, but a terrible, terrible unfriendly user experience. I upgraded to the T-Mobile Wing before the iPhone came out and was finally at the spot where XDA-devs had created 1000 workarounds for those tiny menus you have to hold up to your face to see... They stripped out the inefficiencies of various WM software, and suddenly I could multi-task keeping Google Maps aways open, with contacts open, notes, music player, ans various utilities. Finally, for me, after 3 years I had a USEABLE PHONE that matched the promise of the ads and marketing.
In almost all cases, XDA-devs were generally NOT exploiting some fabulously smart feature of WindowsMobile, and making it better. They were taking poorly-thought out functionality and terrible UI, and adapting it to become useful. And when the iphone hit, then the paradigm of finger-based navigation changed everything, and XDA-devs created UIs that replicated the easier to "hit" target zones of the iphone interface. Lots of 3rd party shells, etc... But almost ALL of this was to correct deficiencies due to handicaps of what was core Windows Mobile. Still, to this day, people like Supbro, developer of iDialer, and his branch of iContact, have been correcting the stupidity of tiny text for adding a new contact.
I'm just saying: Here I am 4 years later, having had amazing functionality delivered to me thanks to great chefs here, great app & utility developers, and, let's all face it, GREAT ROMS from HTC which were broken apart to extract and enable yet MORE compensating UI fixes (like TouchFlo), all to FIX and mask over the terrible user experience of Windows Mobile.
THUS, when I got my Hero, and began to use it, and from DAY 1, it just works, and it's easy and intuitive, and with all these great widgets and real-time display updates, I realized even more: JEEZ! Finally an OS that is smarter out the gate. Yet Windows STILL had a year to come in and show the marketplace it had learned a thing or two, after the G1 introduced the world to Android. And all they could burp out, with all their resources and skilled engineers, was windows 6.5? And they had to even quickly abandon their explicit HONEYCOMB Ui after it was immediately, and rightfully ridiculed as
"THIS is your new thinking, Microsoft? Your honeycomb staggered alignment, and your start button at bottom center. THIS IS IT??"
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So Ballmer 6-9 months ago "gets religion" and admits (in that infamous private meeting widely reported throughout cellphone land) his whole company should have focused on WM7, and not gone down the 6.5 path, because they were already so behind their new-found competitors... And there was a HOPE, a spark, an ember left, that said, OKAY, MS has HUGE resources and money... so if they tackle this well, they could well turn everything around. But that delivery date for WM 7 was FEBRUARY 2010. Meanwhile many companies moved forward: Google, Motorola, HTC and we saw October, November, December just POUND the marketplace with success after success of Android products, coupled with HTC and Motorola keeping the competitive spirit alive which drives innovation.
JANUARY 2010, and Google comes out with NEXUS ONE --- full of problems, including Google's total fumble with the whole concept of "dealing with customers"... and HTC has had their Snapdragon-processor phone lines well in development as well... And now they've got phones in the marketplace right now much better than the Nexus One, with a new optical trackball, and other usability advances.
And so here we are in February 2010, the very time at which WM 7 was set to be IN THE MARKETPLACE wowing us with what we all hoped would be something re-invented, reviving their tattered brand. And now it's September 2010? Who here believes they'll make THAT date? But great, a little tease at a Mobile World Congress revives some hope that it will all be worth it.
That's 7 months from now! We will surely see in that time a whole new iteration of iPhone OS software. And who knows what from Android?
So I come not to bash Ballmer, but to question his brain-function. With all these deficits working against MS's comeback, he has the audacity to play chess with the marketplace and proclaim there will be add-on carrier fees for his company's new WM7 OS phones? I really meant it literally. Does this man have a screw loose?
Sorry for the BOOK length post, but for anyone reading it, tell me where I'm wrong?
XDA-devs SAVED THEIR ASSES for the past 3 years -- by enabling their crippled OS to do tricks that satisfied customer demand. And now that I bought the Hero -- because I liked what I saw -- and have used it for 4 months, I just don't see the point in wondering "what will WM 7 really be like?" -- because once I made that leap, I'm no longer dealing with 3/4 of the efforts of this great site devoted to COMPENSATION for what WM lacked. Maybe there are people with great sentimental ties to WM -- because naturally after working one's asses off to build off of it, and create great useful software products, features and utilities, there would be a lot of cognitive dissonance at play when contemplating where to continue your development efforts going forward.
And there IS sentimentalism that drives quite a bit of WM enthusiasm. ANd that's fine. But here I am 4 months into using my HERO, and I have yet to even feel the need to come here and root my phone and make it EVEN BETTER. I will, for sure... But I haven't needed to. It's all frosting or gravy for something that inherently works AS SHIPPED.
So that's my rationale. rpimps' prior post just flushed this essay out of me... yet what he's said in 2 sentences summarizes everything I just typed.
Choice is good. And for everyone who wants to stick with WM, I am sure there will be plenty of fruits to bare. But meanwhile I *use* my phone and depend on it right now, not 7 months from now. I'm not looking back.
galaxys said:
That's why XDA thrives fixing his OS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And that really is the summary statement about the genesis of and incredible growth of this great site.
If they want to sell WM they need to make it exactly the same as Android, and make a long press on the Home button bring up the usual WM task list to switch between running apps. I'd buy that.
I'm starting to get pretty sick of all this love for Android and how anything Android will blow WP7 out of the water. All this love for a dumbed-down smartphone. None of us have seen WP7, except for a few screenshots here and there and in my opinion it looks great. MS had to make some changes if they wanted to stay relevant, because what we forget is that the "power-users" make up a very small percentage of the buyers market. However, I really do hope that MS does not forget about us all together. All I know is that come December, I'll be rocking the new WP7 and not an Android. Theres my 2 cents.
Irishpride said:
I'm starting to get pretty sick of all this love for Android and how anything Android will blow WP7 out of the water. All this love for a dumbed-down smartphone. None of us have seen WP7, except for a few screenshots here and there and in my opinion it looks great. MS had to make some changes if they wanted to stay relevant, because what we forget is that the "power-users" make up a very small percentage of the buyers market. However, I really do hope that MS does not forget about us all together. All I know is that come December, I'll be rocking the new WP7 and not an Android. Theres my 2 cents.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is an actual question, not an argument - what are some things WM can do that Android can't? I use my phone for business functionality and I don't consider myself a member of the "general public" and switching to Android after 3 WM phones, I haven't found a single thing (aside from maybe quicker switching between running apps) WM did that Android doesn't.
Steve Balmber retarded?
Hmmmmmm
Limited vocabulary
Edit: WTF!?
He's bat**** effing insane! Thanks for sharing
You guys are jumping the gun on this. At least wait and see how things go before you saying game over for WM and jump ship.
Do you guys ***** that the desktop or laptop or netbook you just purchased cost you $25-50 more because it is running Windows7 compared to Ubuntu or another Linux build? No way!
So why are you going to moan about a measily ~$10 fee on your phone for running WM7. Heck you can probably run a dual boot setup on your WM7 phone to run both Windows and Android to experience the best of both worlds...just like some of us have done with our computers.

Dead as a dodo?

It's been too quiet in the hd7 forums lately. And it's more or less the same in WP7 in general. No new hacks, not much of development either. Maybe we should start coming to terms with the fact that WP7 has reached it's inevitable end?
I mean, we've waited for two good years to see the platform growing and maturing, yes, we've seen custom ROMs and seriously brilliant hacks which gave us more control and choice over our devices. But where are those major developers in the marketplace? Now that we have an almost feature complete gadget thanks to the huge efforts of this community, WP8 is already out. But what is really sad is that hackers will have to start from scratch with the new OS. I personally dislike Android but truth is that even a very low-end device does more than my good old HD7. Plain, simple truth. I've had (and still do) a lot of winmo devices. The open ecosystem with the abundance of apps, even for professionals kept me going despite bugs and lagging of the OS. It's too bad that despite the snappy, lag and bug free interface, WP7 never made it (even close) to provide us with decent apps. And i fear that WP8 still, hasn't brought anything really new to the table yet.
What are your thoughts, people?

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