MWC Day 1 Summary: Windows Phone, Adobe Mobile Flash, Cisco mention "iPhone 4G"?
Hey All,
Welcome to Day One of Mobile World Congress, and it’s been quite an eventful day! As most of you will have heard by now, as predicted, Microsoft launched “Windows Phone 7 Series” today... catchy title, that’ll have Apple quaking in their boots!
WINDOWS PHONE 7 SERIES
I was more than ready to dismiss the new version, but actually I am quite impressed with it! Let me quickly go through the positives and negatives from what I can see...
YES! Much, much... in fact much, better User Interface (UI). The UI is a lot more intuitive, less “Windows” more “How my brain works”.
YES! Social Network Integration, adding native support for Facebook, Windows Live, and (I quote) “Other Social Networks”. When pressed, no one can talk about what other networks
YES! Much better handling of Photos, Music and Videos... in fact, as far as I can see, less “Windows”, or “iPod”, more (again) “How my brain works”.
YES! Integration, and separation, of Personal and Work lives... both personal and work contacts, calendar entries etc appear on the device, but can be colour coded differently, and stored as “Personal” or “Work”.
NO! So far no talk of other integration... Bing Search, Bing Maps... makes me shudder! But... an unofficial off the record chat with one of their techies suggests that there will be opportunities for other companies (*cough* Google) to integrate, and Windows will act as a base that everyone can add on top of.
NO! Some real disagreement between Adobe and Microsoft. I had a few chats today with various people, and no one seems to know what’s going on... Steve Ballmer says NO to Adobe Flash... Adobe say “we’re working with Microsoft for Flash Player 10 on Windows Phone”... hmm... strange
As you can see, a lot more YES than NO, so overall I think a massive success! But we don’t need to make our minds up yet... this thing won’t be out until Christmas anyway...
http://www.windowsphone7series.com/ for more info
NEW ADOBE FLASH PLAYER FOR MOBILES
This is a really nice one... Adobe have made their next generation of Flash Players on mobile devices able to display FULL FLASH. None of this “Flash Lite” stuff anymore, we’re talking fully working Flash Games on mobile phones... soon to be on Android and Symbian mobiles, and (see earlier) Windows Mobile 7 Series soon after that.
CISCO QUOTE THE “iPhone 4G”?
Talking to a guy from Cisco today about their 3G/4G handoff technology, and he may have just let something slip... (and I quote) “so you have problems when your iPhone 4G needs to switch from a [4G] LTE network back to a 3G one, and this is the way around that for networks like Verizon”. Now, not to add fuel to any fires, but hasn’t the blogosphere been chatting about a Verizon iPhone for a few weeks now? And Verizon are talking about their 4G network a lot at the moment? Could this guy be chatting rubbish, or did he just let slip what he’s been working on behind the scenes?
Hope that is a good little nugget of Mobile World Congress for you...
Oh and on a personal note... met the guys from Fon (http://www.fon.com) today, passed on a few ideas I’ve had... they want to hear more, so invited me to their Offical Party on Thursday Night, which they’re sharing with Fring (http://www.fring.com)... So I’m having an awesome Wednesday night!
Speak tomorrow...
Rich
