Posts tagged Android

I’ve been a fan and advocate of Windows Mobile since Windows Mobile 5 was released in May of 2005. It was reasonably fast and had a bunch of applications I could install to do genuinely cool stuff, like VNC into my home computer from my PPC Apache by HTC, browse the web like a desktop on Opera Mobile, and I could even SSH into my web server, all from my Windows Mobile device.

So, Whats changed? Nothing; that’s the problem. Windows Mobile has barely evolved at all since its Windows Mobile 5 release. Most of the improvements are unseen, and insignificant to end-users. With the release of WM6.5, the changes were even smaller, adding simple kinetic scrolling, a honeycomb start menu, and a new home-screen called CHome that is even more useless than previous versions. Most of the upgrades in WM6.5 are a shotty attempt to mimic features of a much more user-friendly and intuitive device, the iPhone.

The iPhone changed the mobile world forever. Utilizing a capacitive, multi-touch screen, it revolutionized the way people think about a UI in a mobile device. The problem with the initial release of the iPhone, however, was a lack of extensibility. Users were limited to a few applications created by apple, and all existed on phones previously created(including Windows Mobile). Save for those who jailbroke the iPhone, you were limited to these applications. At this point, Microsoft probably believed the iPhone to be a small threat, and still made no attempt to alter the user experience.

Then in summer 2008, Apple developed an effective method to deliver extensibility to the iPhone. Enter the App Store: An easy and intuitive way to extend the device. Now, roughly 1.5 years later, the App Store has over 100,000 applications and around 2 billion downloads. iPhone OS 2.0 also adds Exchange and ActiveSync support, making the device more suitable to the business market, a niche long held by Microsoft.

The iPhone isn’t perfect though, you can’t multitask very well, application development is heavily controlled by Apple, and there’s barely any customizable features on the device. Now Google introduces Android, the new open source OS, allows for infinite customization. HTC even developed their own all-encompassing, snazzy UI called Sense for their line of Android devices. Although having a relatively small market share now, as more and more Android handsets are being introduced on more carriers, its going to get a lot more popular.

So as I sit waiting while my Windows Mobile phone slowly loads its text messaging app on its now aging interface, I can’t help but think that unless Microsoft really pulls itself together in the next release of WM, they’re going to be in some serious hot water, and my next phone will be an Android.