Re: Always worth a look

I can dismiss it because I own a Lumia 800 and have used it extensively. The UI is very beautiful, there's no denying. Animations and effects are very fluid and slick. The main functionality is pretty intuitive and useful. I like the blue tooth navigation and the Nokia Drive app is useful even if it does come up with some pretty braindead routes at times. If I did not own a smart phone before this device I'd probably be quite happy with it.

But I have owned other smartphones and this device is poor by comparison. There is little customisability in the UI aside from ordering tiles around a long vertical list and setting a screensaver wallpaper. Forget dynamic widgets, backgrounds, animated backgrounds, multiple screens, folder groups, or shortcuts because they don't exist.

Other annoyances include a wifi / power / signal strength bar which comes and goes whenever it feels like it, badly placed buttons in the messaging app which make it far too easy to hit send when you meant carriage return, an utterly retarded APN settings which lumps 3G and MMS together as a single setting which is on or off (i.e. you can't receive an MMS without also enabling 3G), a volume control which makes no distinction between call volume, ringtone volume or game volume, the need to run a fat sync client with the device and a raft of other irritations.

By far the worst sin is the lack of multitasking. When an app is not in the foreground, it's suspended or killed. Most phone OSes do that too but they also provide ways to run services or broadcast receivers to in the background. So a VOIP app might listen to an incoming call and launch up the app to handle the call. The closest thing in WP is a background agent which has so many restrictions that it's utterly useless which explains why Skype is too on WP7.

The problem with WP is not that it's a bad phone OS, but that it's poor by comparison. I expect WP8 will fix a lot of these annoyances and a level of refinement e.g. maybe Skype will get properly integrated. But I'll reserve judgement until it appears. One thing is certain. Neither my Lumia 800 or yours will be getting it. All that is promised is a WP 7.8. which updates the home page and little else of note.

Re: Always worth a look

... and there are no apps, no developers making apps

... the Microsoft lockin and guaranteed security problems.

... and they will leave you in the lurch when Windows Phone 9 arrives with another new app format.

Thats assuming of course that Windows Phone 8 phones are actually good. That's unlikely, as Samsung really don't want to make them (like HTC didn't), they are just forced into doing so because of part of the Android patent protection racket that Microsoft have been running. This is little more than fulfilling a contractual obligation, so you can bet they won't be anywhere as near as good as a S3, S2, Nexus etc..

Re: Always worth a look

"Anyone who dismisses it hasn't tried it."

Really? Closed-minded platform advocate much?

Re: Windows Phone.

The arm or the hacksaw?