Windows Phone 7 Series' cutting room floor is an extravaganza of bright colors and chunky fonts
By Chris Ziegler 
posted March 17th 2010 11:02PM
posted March 17th 2010 11:02PM
posted March 17th 2010 11:02PM
Microsoft Windows Phone 7
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
this look awsome!
@outlaw85 every first comment on these 7 series posts is "awesome" "cool". That really doesn't contribute to the discussion. We know its good stuff.
@outlaw85 They all look really good.
However, it's pretty exactly the same as what we've got in the end, except all the features that is *impossible* to implement.
1. Large Photos:
There is no way (or would be a waste of CPU) to tell where the face is in a photograph. Even with automatic face detection, there will be chances that a photo has a lot of faces in it. Also, unless the contact uses Facebook, Outlook photos won’t stretch that large.
2. Different Font Weight for First and Last Name:
There is no way to tell if there's first and last name unless Outlook can tell if it's a person. And there's no way it can tell if it's a person. Would it "FACEbook", "BANKofamerica" or "TIMEOUTnewyork"? There's just no way to tell. Cut.
Take all of that out, what you get is the final design.
If Engadget love themes so much, let's see how many of the editors actually skin their Mac OS or Windows first. I doubt anyone moves beyond wallpaper, and perhaps the color of the windows, at most.
@MMMM With that said, not even WM6.5 allows advanced skinning anyway, so why shall we except so much...?
As long as I can change that jarring blue to a jarring red, I should be fine, with my sunglasses on.
@MMMM: I use themes on my smartphone all the time. I like them. I use them on my desktop even. I'm certainly not the only person I know who does that, too. And I'm also certain that I couldn't care less if the Engadget staff theme their desktops.
With Vista and Windows 7 being really so much more improved on the grounds of theming, it's really a shame that they didn't make their mobile OS match. It's really not that hard of a feature to do, the Palm homebrew community figured it out in a month or two. Unfortunately, I doubt Windows Phone 7 is going to be as open and accessible for that type of hacking as webOS is.
@MMMM
"not even WM6.5 allows advanced skinning anyway"
Sense UI, SPB Mobile Shell, TouchWiz, Point UI, Adrokidd. i'd say all those are pretty advanced skins for WM6.5
@SoCoolCurt What I meant is, the phone doesn't come with anything that lets you theme it. Yes, you can download extra things to theme the OS - but that's out of the point.
Like iPhone, you probably just need to jailbreak it. Like Android, you probably just need to root it. Like WebOS, you probably just need to jailbreak it. Like Windows, you probably just need WindowBlinds to overwrite some system DLLs. Like Mac OS, you probably just need to hack it.
No systems mentioned above comes with theming that is more than switching wallpapers and colors. Only Android lets you switch the home screen.
@MMMM Winmo has always let the user completely skin/theme. All items on the homepage are widgets that can be added and removed on the standward homepage options. Furthermore, WinMo has always actually had theme files, also this is a standard feature.
@outlaw85 all the UI looks like a webpage... wonder what this means..!? out google google???
@zullnero microsoft has statistics about every user how he configures and manages windows (if the user agreed to usage improvements statistics), and the result is clear: nobody does theming. around 1% of the people place the taskbar to another place, and that is the biggest change most users do (except wallpaper change). by far the most occuring change.
so focussing on theming and investing much money into it would be spent money on the wrong things. it's better that they focused on making one theme RIGHT than just say "you could switch them if you don't like them".
@outlaw85 Unique doesn't mean good. The UI is horrible.
@MMMM LULZZZZZ WINDOWS BLINDS FOR WINDOWS???? No. In XP people used to uxtheme hack and go right away. By saying WindowsBlinds you essentially lost all credibility in any modding. It's like skinning for kids. No, we don't do that here.
Honestly, the amount of skinning and themeing you can do with current WInMo and ANdroid phones is plenty. It's usually how far the developers take it. Once you dive in a little, you'll realize there's way too much. Way too much as in way too many things you can do that will slow your phone to a crawl....
@outlaw85
Awesome, yes, but also more proof that WinPhone7 was never intended with business users in mind. Look at those flashy colors? I really hope this means that WinMo6.5 will become WinPhone7Classic for people who still want cabs, true multitasking, and copy-paste.
All the sessions and PPT are freelly available on the MIX website.
This one in particular is here: http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL14
watch every blog make a news story about every singlle PPT in the coming days in hope to get linked back by engadget...traffic/hits FTW
hmmm....this looks like cake
@Cynical Hippie
the cake is a.....
@Cynical Hippie
But with cake I can CUT a slice anywhere I want, or pick up one slice from the kitchen and MOVE it to the den and PASTE it down onto the coffee table.
Looks can be deceiving...
@Aaquibn
not so sublime there.
@Cynical Hippie
Cake or death?
well its different..
Me likes teh chunkies.
@trong
I like them to in quake.
Looks like a boring mobile website interface, notthing special about it.
This is absurd. As a former HTC Kaiser/Tilt owner I used Windows Mobile 5 - 6.5 and I used copy/cut and paste all the freakin time! I wrote 3 chapters of a book on that phone using Word.
I made the mistake of getting an iPhone back in Oct. '09. It's faster and prettier, but as far as useability goes it lacks. Now Microsoft is dumping down their phone OS below the iPhone!
My next phone will be an Android or Ill just go back to Win 6.5 on the Tilt - I want a mobile device that does what I want it to do, not tells me what to do with it.
@LikeAThief
Congrats, dude. You just won the non sequitur comment of the day award.
@maxxorz
lol... "dumping down"
@LikeAThief, if the Courier comes out it will be clear they are segmenting their market even if all users don't want it.
(I personally wanted them to be separate, typing a paper is very rare on a mobile device even with the 800x480 screens)
I think microsoft is going with the whole "if you can't beat them, join them" approach with this. No multitasking, no themes, no copy and paste, etc. Turns out that not everyone in the world is an apple fanboy, and not everyone feels that their approach is best...
The lack of themes is going to hurt them so much. That could be one of the key differentiator between this and other platforms. Granted, that won't work with me, but it does for consumers. I've got an uncle who refuses to upgrade from firefox 2 because he would lose support for his wacked out and incredibly ugly customizations....
@I was swhite237 I lost my passwo
You're right.. I think light/dark plus 4 "accent colors" is really really weak. Even Vista and Windows 7 gave us a color picker to let us theme.
@I was swhite237 I lost my passwo It could also allow for some carrier and oem customization that could be quickly turned off, and provide additional revenue for Microsoft (good themes could be sold in the marketplace, just like apps).
Looks like a poorly designed MS Publisher website from the 90s.
[sarcasm]
gosh, where is the engadget w/o WP7S button?
[/sarcasm]
would just like to point out how annoying it is when anti-apple guys are posting this all over apple news when they do something notable.
See what happens when other people (microsoft) do something notable (WP7S) guys? There are tons of posts about those things too!
@Jakintosh
I was going to say "I see what you did there", but then I realized you simplified it and dumbed it down as much as Microsoft dumbed down WMP7S
@Aaquibn
I see what you did there.
But can I copy and paste between this?
"why, pray tell, couldn't these have just been user-selectable themes"
They really ought to be. It's the Windows way.
But what do I know, the Windows way doesn't involve copy/paste anymore. Damn patents and capacitive screens...
As for this UI, I like it but I don't think it's pretty enough. I hope they make it shiny and add translucency and transparency like they did to 6.5 between announcement and launch. The main face of 6.5 is nice-looking with these elements. I think their ideas of background imagery should be used more pervasively than just for media hubs.. I don't use a lock screen so I'd love to see some life behind my start screen.
Speaking of Start Screen, we know the tiles are too big. Maximum 8 to fit without scrolling? Fail.. why don
t we get the option to have 3 across? Not every tile is going to be surfacing a lot of text.
@burnblue
Because 'People don't do that'
They should make it where we can mix colors and have gradient. We should also have the choice to choose different color for each tile on the home screen rather than one color.
P.S.: With so many WP7 articles, Engadget still hasn't mention that WP7 will support Divx natively.
http://gizmodo.com/5493823/surprise-windows-phone-7-has-native-divx-support
So now that WP7 will be the exact same thing apple did 3 years ago it's the iPhone consider a Smartphone phone now?
@keymaker1
Steve Jobs did say the iPhone was 5 years ahead of any other phone when he first introduced it.
Apparently, Microsoft believed him.
@Aaquibn Yep by the time WP7 gains copy and paste and full miltitouch the iPhone would be 5 years old so i guess he wasn't bullshitting.
Anyone notice that the name "Kate Austen" is in the contact list?
I guess the boys at Microsoft are LOST fans!
It looks like a blog layout more than an operating system - makes me think they put more work (and credence, apparently) into experimental design than usability. Reminds me of the new [and unimproved] YouTube video page layouts.
Who is to say some of these themes will not make it into wp7 v2.0?
I for one like that they are concentrating on making this as rock solid of a base OS as they can (by removing things like copy and paste for now).
You only have 1 chance to make a first impression and this is why palm is in a bad position now. You can always add the less used features later but you can't fix core problems as easily.
Theme and unique looks isn't what made the iPhone so successful. It was the tight integration of hardware/software based on industry standards (so devs didn't have a harsh transition) with carefully tuned user experience.
These were the only things lacking on WM6.5x after HTC gave us the UX tuning.
Let's say that WP7S shipped with multitasking, copy paste, removable storage media,....etc.... would it be a winner OS? Yes. I think it looks beautiful and I have ZERO doubt in the developer community building on hell of a app library for it, a lot better than Android's and in a significantly shorter time.
But, sadly, Android took the lead, and who knows how much better it will get by the time WP7S arrives... I'm already impressed by how far along Android came without much competition (only iPhone).
@TareG Android isn't a cup of good tea either..
I like that purplish one. I hope Win Pho 7 has a color wheel so I select the color tiles I want rather than just RGB. I also want to be able to mix the colors of the tiles to my colorful taste.