From Mango to Apollo: The HTC Windows Phone 8X on the Daily
by Dustin Sklavos on January 28, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- windows phone 8
- Windows Phone 8X
- HTC 8X
Essentials: Browser
As Brian mentioned before, the browser experience on Windows Phone 8 is improved largely under the hood. Windows Phone 8 enjoys the Trident 6.0 engine shared by Internet Explorer 10 on the desktop and even identifies itself as IE10. It's smooth and gets the job done, but actually feels too stripped down. I've come to accept that if I want Flash on a mobile platform I need to be running Android, but tab management is sorely lacking.
That isn't to say that you can't actually have multiple tabs open, but the only way you can get a shortcut to the tabs you have open without having to bring up the drop menu on the bottom of the display is to swap out the stop/reload button for it. So while the browser in Windows Phone 8 is very functional and snappy, it's extremely easy to outright forget which tabs you've left open in the first place. This was a problem in 7, and it persists here.
Again, though, performance is definitely up from 7, and compatibility as well. I've found IE10 in WP8 to be a noticeable improvement in practice.
Essentials: E-Mail
I've heard complaints of the e-mail app in Windows Phone 7 (and 7.5 and now 8) as being too stripped down, but I've never actually felt it was particularly oversimplified. I have three different e-mail boxes that I need regular access to: my personal e-mail, my Gmail, and my AnandTech e-mail. You can choose to have each mailbox store all of your e-mail from that box from the past week, from the past month, or just plain all of it. My AnandTech e-mail box is a nightmarish abyss of spam and clutter that I've done a horrible job curating, so that gets set to "past week."
What's evident is that the app is still designed as a way to check your e-mail in a pinch, not as a way to actually do your e-mail bookkeeping and keep up on all your correspondence. Unfortunately, the lack of a robust app ecosystem keeps power users from finding a more comprehensive e-mail management solution (much as it keeps power users from finding an alternative browser to IE10), so if just having e-mail threads organized by subject line and middling multi-mail selection and management isn't adequate for you, you're stuck.
Essentials: Calendar
Just as the People hub brings all of your contacts from all of your disparate social networking accounts under a single unifying banner, so the Calendar does with your events and calendars. The Calendar app is also essentially unchanged from Windows Phone 7: a single calendar aggregates your Google calendar with events from Facebook.
The complaint I've heard registered about Calendar is that it only allows for a single calendar, while Google allows you to have multiples. If you need multiple calendars to keep organized (for example, one with birthdays, one with tasks, one with meetings, and so on), this is probably going to be a dealbreaker. Note also that by default Calendar will integrate Facebook events you've been invited to but not actually responded to; this is something you can toggle off, but I'm confused as to why it's on in the first place.
Meanwhile, assuming you have it set to be the single text readout on the lock screen, the lock screen itself will tell you what, where, and when your next Calendar entry is.
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shompa - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
The author is worried about vendor lock-in with the iPhone. Whats the difference with windows? You are locked into using windows on you PC/Phone.I am amazed how uneducated people are how MSFT locks its users in. Always by doing shady stuff. Gamers for example are forced to use windows because of DirectX. MSFT refused to follow open standards.
Office/Exchange is another huge lock-in.
The funniest thing is that windows fanatics never have used anything else then windows. Every single mac user I know have used/know how to use windows.
MSFT have a 50 billion turnover on crap. Its amazing.
(But I do give MSFT props for the Metro GUI. Their first own innovation)
thesavvymage - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
They are not locked into windows because of directX. Windows can use openGL and other rendering engines. Its just that directx is much more efficient and easier to code for than the open standards. Also, Office is not a lock in. It is simply the most widely used productivity software, and its also available for mac.UpSpin - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
The fact that Win 8 will be a requirement for Direct X 11.1 is artificical. MS forces you to upgrade to Win 8 if yout want to play the latest games. Luckily for us, game companies are too lazy to switch to DirectX 11.1 immediately. But maybe with the next XBox console, this will change, so people have to upgrade to Win 8 if the game requires DX11.1.Microsoft could support open Document formats, yet, they only improve their propietary stuff. So open source Office solution often aren't fully compatible to MS Office documents and it's a hassle to switch between them.
MS could also support OpenGL, no, they only develop DX, because that way they make sure that gamers use Windows, and regularily update to the latest version, if they want to play a game.
This will, luckily, change, because of Valves and other start up initatives (Ouya) to support open console like devices running on anything.
A5 - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
1) Ouya is going to fail. Just so you know.2) Steambox won't change anything because the console ports are all going to be DirectX. The reason DirectX took such a huge lead is that OpenGL was slow to adapt to changing standards and whatnot.
DanNeely - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
Supporting old hardware means there're multi-year lags in when new DX standards become required. It's only really been in the last year or so that DX10 only titles have started appearing in any significant number, and DX10 launched nearly 6 years ago with Vista.By the time DX11.1 becomes a required minimum as opposed to something that gives extra eyecandy at max settings windows 9 will probably be in the middle of it's retail lifetime and DX11.0 only systems will be obsolescent at best.
In the medium term keeping everything working with DX10 only systems for the cross platform ports is, if anything, likely to hold back the 720. I doubt that will be an issue though since DX11/11.1 have only been incremental changes on top of the existing DX10 foundation, and not major redesigns like the DX9-10 upgrade.
Alexvrb - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
If Microsoft's document format is so proprietary, why does Libre Office work for me? On Windows, no less? MS isn't half as bad as Apple. You can even put a browser on WP8 that uses its OWN proprietary rendering engine - try doing that on iOS! You can't!Most developers actually support multiple renderpaths. As a result, the vast, VAST majority of games will run fine on Vista/Win7 even if they DO support an 11.1 render path. Actually, most of the important 11.1 features are getting backported to Win7 anyway.
Valve's only motivation for Steambox is money. They want a box where they are the primary/sole distributor, and take a cut of all profits. They don't want to share that cut with MS or anyone else. If all they really wanted to do was foster gaming on Linux or PCs in general, they wouldn't be building a console-type system. They would drop their fees to almost nothing for Linux versions to encourage developers to make a Linux port. Maybe even reduce their cut for the Windows version of any game with a Linux port, to further sweeten the deal.
ananduser - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
The DX 11.1 requirement is also tied to kernel modifications that are present in Win8. It is not artificial.OpenGL was always supported in Windows, but since OGL was built with CAD in mind, they(MS) created a superior product with DirectX that caters exclusively to games. It's so good that Carmack himself praised it.
krutou - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
"The fact that Win 8 will be a requirement for Direct X 11.1 is artificical. MS forces you to upgrade to Win 8 if yout want to play the latest games."How else is MSFT going to pay for DirectX development? DirectX is a large driving factor for the improvement of graphics quality and performance in PC games.
boozed - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
Tell us the story about how we're all so uneducated again, oh enlightened one!karasaj - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
I used an iMac for four years in band/for various music editing stuff. I love mac for music, photo, and video related stuff, but prefer Windows for most things. I see why some people like Mac more, but I personally don't.