OK, so who's getting or upgrading to a WP8 phone ??

[dlock13]

Honestly, I might upgrade to one when they come out. It depends what Jellybean has on the table, and if I go over to Windows 8 or not.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Right now you can get a Galaxy S2 i777 for the same price as a Lumia 900 directly from At&t and the S2 is cheaper if you go through best buy so Windows Phone doesn't have a price advantage. The i777 is already on ICS as well so there is no reason to say it's headed to the grave. Not to mention the fact that it's still twice as powerful as any Windows Phone device out there and has a better display than all but one of them.

He said he was referring to off-contract price, not postpaid contract price.

Yeah, I would never sign a 2 year contract to get a Windows Phone 7 device, but they're pretty cheap off contract vs. competing Android phones, and unlike Android, all Windows phones work basically the same so there's no need to spend extra for faster hardware. I think the point is if you are on contract and break your phone, or if you're off contract and want to use a cheap prepaid plan, a cheap WP7 device is a good alternative to a cheap Android device.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

He said he was referring to off-contract price, not postpaid contract price.

Yeah, I would never sign a 2 year contract to get a Windows Phone 7 device, but they're pretty cheap off contract vs. competing Android phones, and unlike Android, all Windows phones work basically the same so there's no need to spend extra for faster hardware. I think the point is if you are on contract and break your phone, or if you're off contract and want to use a cheap prepaid plan, a cheap WP7 device is a good alternative to a cheap Android device.

As far as unlocked phones go the Galaxy Nexus is cheaper than the Lumia 900, is pentaband so it works with all GSM carriers, and will actually get updates for the foreseeable future.

 

[AstroManLuca]

As far as unlocked phones go the Galaxy Nexus is cheaper than the Lumia 900, is pentaband so it works with all GSM carriers, and will actually get updates for the foreseeable future.

I understand but the point was that there's no need to buy a high end WP7 device since they're all the same. The only substantial thing the Lumia 900 has over, say, the Lumia 710 is screen size, and the resolution is the same anyway. So if you want to save money just get a lower end, cheaper Windows phone and you'll still have a pretty good user experience. On the other hand, cheaping out on an Android phone has consequences.

 

[cronos]

I'm actually looking forward to WP8, but the next iPhone is also coming out and there are also rumors about multiple Nexus phones coming out before the end of the year as well, so I'll likely end up choosing between one of them.

I'll also only buy a factory unlocked version of whatever it is, so that will somewhat be a limitation. Hopefully the flagship WP8 will be free of carrier lock (or at least there will be a version of it that is).

 

[Deeko]

We'll see what happens when the new devices are actually announced in the fall.

 

[openwheel]

Right now you can get a Galaxy S2 i777 for the same price as a Lumia 900 directly from At&t and the S2 is cheaper if you go through best buy so Windows Phone doesn't have a price advantage. The i777 is already on ICS as well so there is no reason to say it's headed to the grave. Not to mention the fact that it's still twice as powerful as any Windows Phone device out there and has a better display than all but one of them.

You really have to play with the GS3 and One X to appreciate the difference. To me the GS2 is outdated and overpriced especially in the used market. Yes Super Amoled + is nice, but the resolution is too low imho. If I am signing a contract , I would get the GS3 or OneX at this moment. GS2 is done imho just like current Lumias.

WP7.5 provides nearly identical user experience from low end to high end. You can save substantially here using WP7.5 as a stop-gap. It's quite a polished system.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

You really have to play with the GS3 and One X to appreciate the difference. To me the GS2 is outdated and overpriced especially in the used market. Yes Super Amoled + is nice, but the resolution is too low imho. If I am signing a contract , I would get the GS3 or OneX at this moment. GS2 is done imho just like current Lumias.

WP7.5 provides nearly identical user experience from low end to high end. You can save substantially here using WP7.5 as a stop-gap. It's quite a polished system.

The GS2 still stacks up well against the GS3 and One X, in fact my GS2 running ICS easily beats the One X at Sunspider.

The Lumia's suffer from crippled hardware that the S2 does not, my S2 can still play all of my 1080p videos as good or better than the One X while the Lumia's can't even handle all 720p playback.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2243282

That thread seems to indicate the S2 is clearly superior to the current round of WP7 devices.

A dumbphone would save a lot of money compared to a S2 as well but that doesn't make it a viable alternative.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

You really have to play with the GS3 and One X to appreciate the difference. To me the GS2 is outdated and overpriced especially in the used market. Yes Super Amoled + is nice, but the resolution is too low imho. If I am signing a contract , I would get the GS3 or OneX at this moment. GS2 is done imho just like current Lumias.

WP7.5 provides nearly identical user experience from low end to high end. You can save substantially here using WP7.5 as a stop-gap. It's quite a polished system.

The resolution isn't really that big of an issue. Yes the GNex is sharper, I've held both side by side, but big deal? It's not like the SGS2 is bad. The sharpness of the SAMOLED+ screen is pretty nice. IF you were comparing pentile WVGA with pentile 720p, I think that's a pretty clear cut difference.

My Nexus S doesn't have the same sharpness, but it's actually better calibrated because Samsung's display drivers on the SGS2 are more difficult to work with. So in fact better color calibration is a bigger issue. Sometimes I feel like my Nexus S looks nicer with the punchy colors in ICS, but it's really just a calibration.

The sharpness is nice, but once again not a killer difference.

But you're right. With current gen devices out, there's no reason to look at the SGS2 unless size is a huge concern.

The GS2 still stacks up well against the GS3 and One X, in fact my GS2 running ICS easily beats the One X at Sunspider.

I find a lot of these benches to be useless. Put in a custom ROM, custom kernel, your phone flies. Oh now I score 3k+ on my Nexus S in Quadrant. I completely demolish the Motorola Atrix, a dual core phone. What now? It's misleading.

 

[openwheel]

I guess it all depends on the usage. I personally prefer higher PPI due to the amount of news/forum reading I do. GS2's screen simply can't do the job for me. I like the deep black of the SAMOLED+ but I hate the fuzziness of the font. For someone who doesn't watch movie on a phone, an LCD screen like the OneX is actually preferred. Pentile is a none issue as long as the PPI is high enough. Just imho.

As far as custom ROMs. I appreciate all the work from developers, BUT:
I refuse to install custom rom on ANY device that is relatively new. To me the only point of a custom android rom is to salvage older hardware. However, these roms are simply not stable. I have no time to flash nightly with my fingers crossed that blutooth would finally work on a Samsung Infuse. Like I said, I would go high end or go home. I wouldn't even mess with custom roms anymore. Too much uncertainty, and I simply need my phone to work as it was designed.

 

[AstroManLuca]

I find a lot of these benches to be useless. Put in a custom ROM, custom kernel, your phone flies. Oh now I score 3k+ on my Nexus S in Quadrant. I completely demolish the Motorola Atrix, a dual core phone. What now? It's misleading.

I think some of the custom roms are specifically designed to score well on benchmarks so they have something to show off. Whether any benchmark-increasing tweaks actually improve the user experience is unimportant.

That said, custom roms have always felt faster to me anyway, so there has to be something to it.

As far as custom ROMs. I appreciate all the work from developers, BUT:
I refuse to install custom rom on ANY device that is relatively new. To me the only point of a custom android rom is to salvage older hardware. However, these roms are simply not stable. I have no time to flash nightly with my fingers crossed that blutooth would finally work on a Samsung Infuse. Like I said, I would go high end or go home. I wouldn't even mess with custom roms anymore. Too much uncertainty, and I simply need my phone to work as it was designed.

Currently running a nightly build of CM9 on my Galaxy Nexus and it has absolutely no bugs or problems at all.

Depends on the device, though. The most stable roms are the ones based on the phone's original software. In my case, the Galaxy Nexus runs stock ICS and CM9 is based on stock ICS. I also put CM9 on my Samsung Epic, which only supports up to Gingerbread, and while it had some nice features it also had a couple bugs.

Also I would say that installing a newer software version than what a phone officially supports isn't exactly a recipe for success either. As in my aforementioned Epic, things just got a bit sluggish. Now that I'm not using it as my primary phone anymore, I'm thinking of reverting back to a stock rom based on 2.3 with TouchWiz. That would naturally be the most stable software since that's what the phone officially supports.

 

[AstroManLuca]

EDIT: getting a bit off topic, sorry...

HEY how about that new Windows Update feature coming to WP8! Sounds like a step in the right direction, am I right guys?

 

[dagamer34]

EDIT: getting a bit off topic, sorry...

HEY how about that new Windows Update feature coming to WP8! Sounds like a step in the right direction, am I right guys?

Yep, OTA updates are nice.

 

[openwheel]

OTA would be nice.
My fiance is excited to customize colors on the tiles. She wants different colors on the same start screen. That makes sense to me.

 

[kaerflog]

I know WP8 phones won't be out for a while but I hope they at least announce upcoming ones.
Both iOS and Android are fine but I just want to try something new.
I'm excited for the new version of WP.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

As far as custom ROMs. I appreciate all the work from developers, BUT:
I refuse to install custom rom on ANY device that is relatively new. To me the only point of a custom android rom is to salvage older hardware. However, these roms are simply not stable. I have no time to flash nightly with my fingers crossed that blutooth would finally work on a Samsung Infuse. Like I said, I would go high end or go home. I wouldn't even mess with custom roms anymore. Too much uncertainty, and I simply need my phone to work as it was designed.

I dunno, CyanogenMod at this point has become my standard in terms of phone software. My 3 Android phones and my HP TouchPad run Cyanogenmod. It allows all devices to run the same OS (though the oldest phone is stuck on GB so CM7), but it's vanilla Android with a few tweaks.

You're right a lot of crap doesn't work often. The recent 3 nightlies on my SGS2 had a dual mic thing and I didn't realize that when calling regarding a potential job offer my voice was echoing like mad. No one said anything to me until I read XDA and called myself to test. Flashed back ASAP.

While I swear by custom ROMs, its a difficult life to live with. It takes X amount of days for a device to get rooted and another few days for a group to start developing. ROMs will vary phone to phone which is why I tend to stick with a standard--cyanogenmod. But even then these devices take forever to make it to be a CM device and every device is like reinventing the wheel. Drivers are rarely all open source, and open source drivers rarely fully work for a phone. As a result we're stuck with stuff that works and stuff that doesn't. Certain phones make it further than others.

I don't know anymore. I feel like I'm living in a state of incompleteness.

- My HP TouchPad gets shitty battery life (any naysayers, need to use an iPad and then stfu about what standby battery SHOULD be in a device)
- My SGS2 has a broken auto brightness function. This is documented in XDA as something that is difficult to resolve. GPS is janky, but what's in place is a band-aid solution.
- My Nexus S lacks the flashlight ability from the notification bar. Why? Who knows. The torch app isn't even included in the nightlies. I have to manually add it. Why? Who knows. So when I need a flashlight at home, I end up reaching for my old phone or my windows phone and toggling the flashlight. Annoying.

I feel like I shouldn't have to deal with my devices never reaching a well developed state. By the time these issues are resolved, the SGS4 is out. I think it's best I go for a Nexus phone next time around....

 

[openwheel]

I feel your pain my friend.

 

[zoiks]

Never really thought about it like that, but that's a good point.

With Android, you need high end hardware to have a good experience. So get the latest dual core phone with a huge screen and you have a premium smartphone right there.

With WP7, there's really no reason to get a high end phone since all of their phones are basically the same. So you may as well get a cheap, low end phone off contract and pay less per month. Unlike cheap, low end Android phones, there's really no disadvantage other than maybe a smaller screen (but it's the same resolution anyway).

You know, you're correct. But only for the latest iteration of the WPx phone. Microsoft has shown this and will likely change requirements when they release another major update to their phone OS. As such your low end WP phone won't cut it.
I feel sorry for all the Nokia Lumia owners who bought their phone as if it was predicted to be the best slice of bread they ever had. Little did they know what the almighty MS had in store.

 

[WelshBloke]

...
I feel like I shouldn't have to deal with my devices never reaching a well developed state. By the time these issues are resolved, the SGS4 is out. I think it's best I go for a Nexus phone next time around....

You don't have to deal with it, you can stick with the stock ROMS and tweak them.

 

[Dominato3r]

You know, you're correct. But only for the latest iteration of the WPx phone. Microsoft has shown this and will likely change requirements when they release another major update to their phone OS. As such your low end WP phone won't cut it.
I feel sorry for all the Nokia Lumia owners who bought their phone as if it was predicted to be the best slice of bread they ever had. Little did they know what the almighty MS had in store.

Two differences this time around

1) They've guaranteed a minimum 18month support cycle for every phone. So you will get one major update and maybe a second one

2) WP8 is based off of the NT kernel, which they've been using in Windows for over a decade, and can scale much better from low end hardware up to multicore systems. WinCE in its most latest iteration lack support for what most would consider low end hardware even on phones these days.

I think WP8 phones this year are shipping with an S4 which is a very commendable chip, and with good optimization will shine well. And it will probably run WP8.5 and WP9 well, considering MS keeps up its practice of lowering OS hardware reqs.

 

[kaerflog]

I don't get why some of you are saying you feeling sorry for WP7 user.
The life expectancy of a phone doesn't last 2 years anymore(life of a contract).
There are many Android phones that will never get the latest updates(ie ICS).
Even the 3gs and IP4 will only get certain features of iOS6.
Its not like WP7 will just stop working.
You can still make calls. Your apps still works. You can still surf the web.
You will get some features of WP8, how much we don't know.
You can't fault Microsoft for going toward this direction.
Its a great move overall for the future of WP OS.

 

[openwheel]

You know, you're correct. But only for the latest iteration of the WPx phone. Microsoft has shown this and will likely change requirements when they release another major update to their phone OS. As such your low end WP phone won't cut it.
I feel sorry for all the Nokia Lumia owners who bought their phone as if it was predicted to be the best slice of bread they ever had. Little did they know what the almighty MS had in store.

The current Lumia owners are experiencing the same as many Android owners who are stuck with Froyo/GingerBread. However, the Lumia owners are getting a straight answer early. Only Google Nexus owners have any bragging rights. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if MS allows current WP7.5 users to trade-up with huge incentive (remember the windows phone challenge give-away few months a go?)

There is really no difference between "low end" and "high end" windows phones. They almost all have the same processing speed with same screen resolution. Hence "low end" with "low price" is the way to go.

OMG I sound like a Microsoft sales-man. Although these days, they could use a few. Apple has too many...

 

[bearxor]

I don't get why some of you are saying you feeling sorry for WP7 user.
The life expectancy of a phone doesn't last 2 years anymore(life of a contract).
There are many Android phones that will never get the latest updates(ie ICS).
Even the 3gs and IP4 will only get certain features of iOS6.
Its not like WP7 will just stop working.
You can still make calls. Your apps still works. You can still surf the web.
You will get some features of WP8, how much we don't know.
You can't fault Microsoft for going toward this direction.
Its a great move overall for the future of WP OS.

Come on now, though. Both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are older than every single piece of WP7 hardware.

Honestly, this is just terrible marketing by Microsoft. They should have just simply said that every device was getting WP 8, but older devices may not get certain features that requires more powerful hardware.

 

[darkewaffle]

Come on now, though. Both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are older than every single piece of WP7 hardware.

Honestly, this is just terrible marketing by Microsoft. They should have just simply said that every device was getting WP 8, but older devices may not get certain features that requires more powerful hardware.

Yea, because that's not the type of thing sensationalist websites love to capitalize on lol.

I don't understand the whole "WP7 users are abandoned" thing though. They're still getting at least one more big update and it includes the only big aesthetic change. I think that a few months from now if you put a WP7.8 phone next to a WP8 phone, you won't be able to tell much difference. They'll look about the same and I think they'll feel about the same because hardware is not a bottleneck for WP; which is really all that matters for most users.

 

[Red Storm]

I genuinely like Android, so no, I won't be making the switch. The only reason why I deal with Windows is because of gaming. I have no interest in a Microsoft OS on my phone.