JClishe

Why do you think it's DRM related? What evidence are you basing this on? I'd love to see the data that led you to this conclusion.

nkedel

Having said essentially the same thing farther up the thread ("I'm assuming the real reason for this limitation is DRM/sandboxing, which is in general their theme of making these as much like the iPhone as possible.") I'd say:
- MS's history of trying to embed DRM in the OS
- the degree to which the previous Windows Mobile platform had a problem with app piracy
- the degree to which pretty much everything else about the platform seems to indicate "we're copying the iPhone business model" (which is itself all about the DRM)

In a sense, the MS solution is a clever way to solve the problem of "how do I make external storage work in something like an iPhone" but the world, already having an iPhone, doesn't need another one. Meanwhile, losing the open alternative of WinMo 6.x and being left (in the US market) only with choice of Android, isn't very helpful.

UALOneKPlus

You hit the nail on the head. WP7 will be the first phone ever to have removable storage that isn't removable.

So you get the worst of all worlds - a limited storage that can't be upgraded to a larger size without a lot of hassles. And a potentially catastrophic situation of SD card failure that renders the phone unusable. SD cards are much more likely to die an early death when being used constantly for OS purposes.

Only a company as brilliant as Microshaft could come up with something so clever.

Wunderbar.

Imagine on a PC - I have to replace my externally connected hard drive... oh wait I have to reformat and reinstall my Windows first, dang... That'll fly well.

JClishe

I definitely see your point, don't get me wrong. But I can't help but wonder how big of an issue this truly is? What percentage of smartphone users will be impacted by not being able to easily swap their removable storage? I have removable storage in my current phone, which I've had for over a year, and I've never once touched it.

I can see wanting to upgrade to larger storage, sure. Say I buy a WP7 device with 16gb of storage and at some point in the future I want to upgrade to 32gb. Gonna have to do a hard reset and that'll suck, no disputing that. But at least I have the option to do it so I'm already a step ahead of iPhone users. I might perform this storage upgrade once, maybe twice during the lifetime of the phone.

So I'm just wondering, what is the use case for needing to be able to "swap" storage so frequently that this really becomes a dealbreaker for buying the phone, and going back to my previous question, what's the percentage of smartphone users that will be impacted by this dealbreaker?

I'm just trying to rationally understand both sides, that's all. For me, and quite honestly most everyone that I know, this whole removable storage issue isn't an issue at all. So I'd just like to understand the use case for the other perspective here, the perspective that thinks it's a really big issue.

Thanks,

Jason

UALOneKPlus

I keep different libraries of videos / songs on different SD cards, especially when I travel, so it is very important to me.

I also have multiple Android phones - Evo / Epic / Moment, so I swap media/data between the phones often. So it is very useful in this case as well.

My iPhone apps alone now are about 6gb in size, and my Android apps and data are steadily growing. With App2SD on Froyo I have virtually unlimited space for apps. With WP7 I'd be limited until I could upgrade and wipe the phone. Files sizes are surging in size, and not being able to easily swap to a larger size is crazy.

Also I sometimes have to load files quickly onto the SD card with my SD card reader. It's nice to pop the cover off of my Epic, remove the SD card, place some files on it, or copy some files off of it, without having to shut off the Epic to do so. Hot swapping is pretty nice. With WP7 you will have to turn off the phone to do this, risking missing important calls / emails / alerts while the phone is inoperable while you get data on / off the SD card.

As you can see there are many use cases for removable media. Not the least of which is because microSD cards are universally used in other gadgets as well - my Sansa e280 MP3 player uses microSD cards, I use the microSD card in a pinch in an adapter for my digital camera if I run out of room on my Canon digital camera, my dedicated Garmin GPS uses microSD cards also... It is handy to be able to swap / hot swap when needed.

Even if you don't use it, why should a phone be designed to remove the portability that was designed in the first place?

This was one of the worst ideas I have heard Microsoft come up with, it's truly shocking to me, as a veteran of Microsoft products. The Windows mobile team should have been fired years ago...the utter incompetence of this is incredible in the face of surging Android and Apple.

UALOneKPlus

Back to the DRM question about WP7 - you can't side-load apps on WP7 either, it looks like, along with other activation schemes:

http://windowsphone.mobilitydigest.c...e-the-nipples/

WP7 - worse than the iPhone, crippled beyond hope compared to Android. I see WIN for WP7, the same way the MS Kin phones won the market. WIN WIN WIN...

nkedel

Except you can't even do that out of the box - the card on WP7 is in a non-PC-readable format (although I assume there will be ways around that once hackers get at it) and there's no manual control over what's stored on the card vs. internally.

The new Windows Phone 7 isn't designed by the Windows CE team; I'm not sure if the folks who did the phone veneer on top of that moved over, but the main overlap seems to be with the Zune folks. Which probably explains everything.

The lack of backwards compatibility with old Windows Mobile/CE apps is kind of an FU also; I grant, the last paid WinMo app I bought was in like 2000 but I've picked up quite a bit of freeware over the years which I really like. A goner as soon as my Touch Pro gets retired (for a G2 or Epic, I haven't decided whether to ditch Sprint at the same time.)

Yep, this has been known for months and is ridiculous - WinMo 200x/5/6.x -> most open platform til Android came along and pretty comparable even once Android did (which as folks will note, often needs to be "rooted")

UALOneKPlus

wow that's even worse...



makes sense.

Agree.



Again fully agree.

elCheapoDeluxe

Ditto. Maybe X7 (17)? We're still a couple versions away. I'm just as excited about Windows Phone 7 as I am about Microsoft Word

cblaisd

Preach it, brother, preach it.

JClishe

You know what I find interesting about this...from reading the comments here and from my general assessment of all the reviews, blogs, and articles that I've read online about WP7.

Most of the self-proclaimed Apple fanboys seem to have a response something along the lines of "hey, this thing actually doesn't suck. It's not as good as my iPhone but it sure beats the heck out of Android".

And then the folks in the Android camp seem to respond with something like "OMG this thing blows, it's going to be a huge disaster and MS are fools for taking it in the direction they have".

Again this is just an observation, nothing more, nothing less. But I do think there's a very clear difference in the way that WP7 phones are perceived by Apple fans vs Android fans. It's interesting.

UALOneKPlus

I don't know if it means anything, but I have and use iPhone 2G, 3GS, Blackberry, Windows Mobile 6.5, and of course Android. So I have dabbled in all platforms (except for WebOS), and I find this to be complete BS.

harpodamann

Not Really

nkedel

As someone who's been on various versions of Windows CE/Mobile for almost a decade, I'm pissed off about WP7, but since since I'll be moving only reluctantly to the Android platform after this, I can't see how I'm in any way a fanboy.

godlovesugly

Engadget has a pretty thorough write-up on the OS. Seems that it shines in some areas, but in others it is currently crippled (no copy+paste, no multitasking, poor third-party app support and implementation). Still, a good start for Microsoft, especially if you consider the first iteration of iOS, Android, and Blackberry's revamps.