Windows Phone Thoughts: Mobius Redmond 2003: Day 0 and Day 1 (Half of it)

Jonas presented his “Smartphone 2003 Top 10” list, which are some of the most important features:

1. MMS Client: A third-party client was integrated into Pocket Inbox to enable new devices like the Orange E200 with a camera to send MMS

2. .NET Compact Framework in ROM: Enables developers to leverage portable code across multiple platforms. The advantages of this are somewhat nullified of course by the updates to the .NET CF, because it becomes a problem knowing what version of .NET CF the device has.

3. New Pocket Internet Explorer: WAP 2.0, xHTML, HTML 4.0, CSS, speed enhancements

4. The Smartphone supports 24 languages in total, and 14 new languages were added for 2003: Eastern Europe, Japanese, Chinese, Nordic, others.

5. Enhanced Cellular Support: Always on, ALS VM Indicator, SIM management, Line 2 PIN, USSD 2, AoC. I have no clue what most of these mean, but they’re obviously carrier requirements

6. Bluetooth support: DUN, serial, and object push profiles are native. Most licensees will be adding headset and hands-free profiles. The core Bluetooth support comes from updating the core OS to Windows CE .NET 4.2.

7. More customization extensions (I’m not sure what this means)

8. Always up-to-date Outlook: Exchange 2003 includes the necessary bits to synchronize Exchange/Outlook data, and the biggest deal is the email push.

9. Windows Media Player 9: pluggable codecs, WMA ring tones. I was initially excited about the codec support, but it quickly faded when I learned that the codec still needed to exist inside a WMV wrapper, so the hope of MPEG or Divx support faded quickly

10. NAND support: NAND gives faster read/write memory access, and memory is cheaper for ODM

Jonas also stressed the importance of the abstracted radio layer. As a developer, if you’re writing an application to send an MMS message, you don’t need to talking to the radio – you rely on the OS to do that. Equally as important, if you’re an OEM/ODM and you want to release a Smartphone based on a specific type of radio (let’s say UMTS or something cutting-edge), you only need to design the radio stack – the OS will simply plug into it. That’s a powerful advantage because it reduces time to market. Of course, it also begs the question as to why we haven’t seen any 3G Smartphones yet.

Motorola MPx200: The Dream Smartphone?
The demonstration of the Motorola MPx200 was very cool – this appears to be the phone that the SPV should have been, and the phone that introduced the Microsoft Smartphone to the world. The MPx200 is small, fast, has a great screen, and is made by a major handset manufacturer. Yes, it lacks Bluetooth and a camera, but I’d still take this phone in a heartbeat to replace my SPV. Microsoft’s goal all along has been to get major handset makers on board, but one Microsoft person I talked to said they didn’t fully grasp how important it was to get someone like Motorola on board until they finally were. The Motorola is really a phone, not a small PDA masquerading as a phone. The difference is subtle, but critical.


Figure 5: The Motorola Smartphone compared to Howard Chui's new Motorola phone


Figure 6: Another comparison of the two Motorolas


Figure 7: I'm in love...what a Smartphone!

I’ve always felt that the OS on the Smartphone was held back by the hardware in the SPV, and the Motorola MPx200 was proof of that – it was the same OS that I had on my SPV, but the experience of using the phone was radically different.

...to be continued