FlyGirl001

Only 40,000 units sold the first day and no news from Microsoft after two weeks about the sales. Looks like the market has spoken. From what I heard it is suppose to be a nice phone but the little gotcha's (any new product will have) are starting to show up (burning non MS flash cards; copy and paste problems). Am I excited? No. If they don't spend the whole half billion they allocated for advertising then we will probably have another Vista.

ScottC

Sales figures are not really convincing me all is lost. 40k on day one with just three handsets is not bad. Once they move over to Sprint and VZW, they'll start seeing real growth.

Copy paste problems? There is no copy/paste. Also not sure what you mean about burning non MS flash cards.

Also, the half billion is for global ads - not just the US.

Give it time, I think they are on to something good here.

FlyGirl001

They burnt $100 million in the states before the first day of sales. The copy and paste problem is that there is no copy and paste for a smart phone competing with the iPhone and Android phones. Memory problems: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/tech...ory-cards.html

Maybe Jerry and Bill can cut some new commercials. We'll see.

ScottC

Once again - meh. Both Android and the iPhone lacked cut/paste until well into their second major updates. I think it is stupid they didn't include it, and it is a small thing that'll make them look bad.

The memory card problem isn't really a problem - the SD cards are just meant to be locked to the device, in order to create a secure storage location.

All minor things when you compare it to how clean and polished the OS is, and how smooth it operates.

GadgetFreak

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So if you had to pick a WM phone or an Android phone which would ir be?

JClishe

The Android G1 averaged roughly 5500 units sold per day for its first 6 months in the US, taking it 6 months to reach 1 million devices sold. Android seems to have done OK despite a "slow start", wouldn't you say?

Windows Phone 7 launched internationally last month and sold 250,000 devices before the US launch. Add to that the 40,000 units on the US launch day, and however many devices have sold since then, and it's fair to say it's over 300,000 units sold so far.

So, the numbers would indicate that Windows Phone 7 is selling faster than Android did when it launched. Let's not bury WP7 just yet.

Numbers aside, I believe the primary marketing engine of WP7 will be word of mouth, not formal advertising. I love my Focus and am honestly surprised at how great it is considering it's basically a v1 device. It has a very identifiable home screen, and I've had several people ask me about mine when I've been using it public. This morning I was waiting for a table at IHOP and a guy sitting next to me said "hey, is that one of those new Microsoft phones?", and I let him play with it for a few minutes. Hey said "wow" about 5 times. I think as more of these types of experiences occur and people see WP7 phones of people sitting next to them in waiting rooms, airplanes, etc., it will drive interest and people will start to seriously consider one for their next purchase. And as Scott mentioned, especially once Verizon and Sprint get theirs.

Give it time. I firmly believe WP7 is here to say.

ScottC

As of right now, I'd probably pick Android. But only because its assortment of apps is much richer. I love the UI on Windows Phone 7 - very clean and consistent. It still has quite a long way to go, and I find the UI not as customizable as I'd like (only two themes for example).

BUT - if you took away my Android phone and told me to live with WP7, I'd still be a happy person.

Shamingo

Has anyone found a place to pick up an unlocked WP7? I've checked online a bit and have only found used unlocked (assuming this means they bought, activated then had phone unlocked by carrier). I'm preferably looking for a Samsung Focus, unbranded, unlocked. Anyone know if these exist?

FlyGirl001

I wouldn't pick any WM phone which wasn't a W7 phone. The W7 phone has a smoother looking; better designed UI. Android phones are based on an 'open' system (as contrasted to the closed Window and Apple systems). This is a two sided sword: lots of opportunity for developers good and evil. The app base for Android is stronger but Windows is burning money courting/buying developers of iPhone apps to port their apps to W7. I would buy a W7 phone today if I wasn't already spooled by my iPhone.

Note that in my original post I wasn't reaching all the conclusions subsequent posters have made. I said if they don't spend all their ad money they will have a failure such as Vista. IMO the subsequent defensiveness is based upon latent fears.

Jimmie76

It (as I think I said before) hasn't got anything that would tempt me from Blackberry as I'm not an app person and the GUI isn't that great in my opinion especially as you are locked into their chosen theme. I had a demo of WebOs for the first time from someone at HP/Palm last week and whilst that was nice and it had several interesting features (multitasking being one) it fell down a bit when it came to the emails as it didn't stack up against my Bold 9700. To be fair though RIM have got the email side of thing fairly spot on in my opion. As I don't use the Blackberry as a phone to make calls on, (I have one on a different tarrif for calls) the phone functionality on WP7 is far less important to me, it may be great at making calls for all I know. The fact that I can't plug it into my netbook (Linux) and add/remove files/media is a major deal breaker, as is the SD card issue.

I was told that the SD card isn't removable because MS think that removing them causes phones to crash and for stability they decided that it would be best if it wasn't possible. They also planned to make (and have made) the storage seamless so you won't be able to decicde where something (e.g. music/pictures/documents) is stored, either on the phone or the card, the OS will do that. Why they couldn't just have all the apps/os progs etc. on the handset storage and the user stuff on the SD card is puzzling.

nkedel

Yes, as a general rule buying computers with an OS that's been end-of-lifed is a bad idea; it's not even a version difference - there is a complete break in software compatibility both from a user side and from the dev side.

The one exception is that I've heard a few models (HTC HD2, most notably) do quite well running Android and if they get cheap enough might be worth it an an alternative to buying a new Android phone.

For (a modest number of) heavy app users, that can be a bit limiting, as shown by the enthuasiam some people have shown for apps-on-SD on Android. For most people, I'd expect it to be fine.

A lot of things about Windows Phone 7 seem most readily explainable by "we're doing it this way to make it work like an iPhone." No user accessible file system is something that only makes sense from that perspective.

Jimmie76

I agree with that.

moman

Agree with others' criticisms here. Today I am shopping for a WP7, leaning towards the Samsung Focus but really want to move back to a physical keyboard so may have to get the LG Quantum. Staying away from HTC phones for obvious reasons.

Cut/Paste will be implemented in January (almost next month). Also, I suspect the updates will be quickly coming for requests, MSFT is betting the farm on this device.

One thing I do not like is lack of Outlook sync.

ScottC

What are those obvious reasons?

moman

Poor internals, last cycle technology, poor workmanship. See my other post in the HTC thread for the specific reasons.

If it's telling, I was at the AT&T store and spoke with the sales clerk. The only WP7 phone they had was the HTC Surround, and the clerk said it's selling slow. Said that many people have had problems with HTC phones and are buying the Samungs' instead, especially since the screen is high quality.