Posts Tagged ‘future’

Quick Thoughts on future of Windows Phone ..

Posted: June 20, 2012 in Other Stuff, Windows Phone 8
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What a week it has been if you follow MSFT Technology stack! First, the innovation we saw in the MSFT Surface. Today, it was the turn for Windows Phone Summit to lay down the what MSFT had in works for the future of the Windows Phone ecosystem.

Love it or hate it – you cannot deny, as a technologists, that relentless innovation from competing companies is what pushes our tech industry forward. Here are my 2 little cents on the Windows Phone announcements:

[Recently at a conference, I learnt from Jay Harris that "Bullets Kill People" :) . Bullets are meant for guns & not presentations/blog posts. Sorry Jay, it was just quick this one time .. hoping you don't see this! Moving forward, I promise ...]

  • The One Ecosystem – First, in my opinion, Windows Phone 8 looks very very good; it delivers on everything we were expecting as enthusiasts. Most importantly, it draws from the power of Windows .. the NT Core stack for networking, file system, security & overall stability/performance. This was expected; but not a trivial ask ripping out the core underlying the 2 year old Windows Phone OS. This has positive implications written all over it .. the combo of Windows 8 & Windows Phone 8 sharing guts is going to make for brilliant opportunities. Just better together!
  • First Loves – Here are things I absolutely loved about the direction in Windows Phone 8 platform, as a consumer: Sharper high-res screens, Wallet, NFC, Expandable storage, Nokia maps & IE 10 rendering engine. Oh, and OTA is for the win!
  • Developer, Developer, Developer – Every tech giant knows who their best friends are; so no wonder developers need to be wooed. Here’s what I will be looking forward to in the next Windows Phone SDK: Native code support (Not smart enough to do myself yet; but this will be huge), In-App purchases (Thank You!), VoIP and Wallet API integrations. How do we make Digital coupons or use NFC APIs? Let’s hope the SDK lands soon .. can we have a BUILD please? Now, the real interesting thing would be the SDK. Would I be able to target both 7.5 & 8 from VS 2012 templates? What percent of us WPDevs would start jumping on the WP8 bandwagon, given most user base is on present generation & might not switch until their next phone? Let’s hope the transition would be smooth for devs ..
  • Buyer’s Remorse – Now, the bittersweet. Would you agree that in today’s age, we live with constant buyer’s remorse, specially with gadgets? So, Windows Phone 8 OS would NOT run on present hardware devices. Somewhat awkward, but really not much way around. Shooting from the hip here, but given generation shift in technology between Windows CE Kernel & NT Core, I would imagine it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to flash smartphone ROMs that close to metal. So, there. Now, all three of Apple, MSFT & Google are refreshing their mobile OS big time every year. So, in practicality, we are being enticed to buy new hardware every year! Unfortunate, yes .. but let’s set aside budget, shall we? As Rob Gibbens mentioned, would you want to pay a little more upfront for a phone, given a 1 year contract? Thankfully, there would be Windows Phone 7.8 that would be pushed out to present phones, to bring you the advancements of the new Start Screen experience.
  • Start – So, there is a somewhat new Windows Phone Start screen experience. See the wonderful video HERE. Live Tiles & pinnable content is one of the most loved Windows Phone features among users; so, nice to see this being pushed forward further. Live Tiles would come in 3 customizable sizes & various colors – so your phone is distinctly you! Personally, I somehow liked the little right arrow & the breathing space to the right in present generation Windows Phones – I think it’s aesthetic; most think it is wastage of valuable screen real estate. Guess I’m alone & we shall see how the new Start experience feels in hand. Clutter is uncalled for .. so may be we can be sparing in placement of the customized smallest Tiles.
  • Enterprise Features – Encryption, Security, Remote Wipe & Company Hubs – Love it!

Overall, I am pretty excited about the announcements at Windows Phone Summit. The future of Windows Phone ecosystem is in good hands and Windows 8 will only help propel adoption. In fact, starting this Fall, between the Phone, the PC & the XBox – the MSFT ecosystem is pretty darn difficult to not get excited for. And we are just getting started .. let’s see all that is in store for developers! We win as one :)

Adios!

What’s Next for Windows Phone

Posted: April 14, 2011 in Windows Phone 7 Stuff
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Wow! I had to begin with that word. The 2nd day’s Keynote at Mix11 Conference has to be the best of Microsoft we have seen in recent times. Now, obviously I would be biased with all the good stuff, being a Silverlight & Windows Phone 7 enthusiast. But just for reference, an iOS developer friend was watching the Keynote with me and he said-“Damn, that’s good stuff!”.

Now, a lot of cool things were announced in the Day 2 Keynote – things like Silverlight5 & Kinect SDK; not to mention free Kinects for attendees! I just wanted to recap on the Windows Phone enhancements and what they might mean for us developers:

  • Increased Reach – Our WP7 apps will start having a bigger audience with Window Phone Marketplace being available in 35 countries, up from 16 right now. However, MSFT also announced upcoming support for 16 new languages, including Asian ones, which they seemed to be testing for aesthetics right now. A huge majority of apps right now in the Marketplace are in English though; as we reach a broader user base throughout the world, we developers need to think about offering a more native app experience through localization.
  • App Search Enhancements – I guess this was due and a few leaked Mango builds had indicated this was coming. With increased number of apps users install, the long alphabetical scrolling list of apps was just not optimal. Enter Search capabilities in the next update, which should help users use suggestions as they search for apps. This search also taps into the Marketplace with deep-linking of suggested apps; this is awesome for the discoverability of our apps. There is also the added support for the all-familiar Jumplists for searching for apps with the beginning letter.
  • IE9 – As JoeB mentioned, IE9 on the Windows Phone will have the exact same rendering engine as that on a PC. Now, does not mean that we do not need mobile web targeting the phone form factor; smartphones still have a small GPU & memory. But with HTML5 & the same rendering mechanism, differences in regular & mobile websites will start to shrink. The demo showing how the phone uses the audio/video tags of HTML5 to keep media running in the background is phenomenal. So, I think this will be a huge scale-tipper for enterprises looking to have a single unified mobile web presence. Web developers FTW!
  • APIs – There are north of 1500 new APIs in the Mango toolset. 1500 !! This includes a gamut of ways we developers get to tap into the phone’s motion sensors, camera & audio among other things. I do not know much; but believe the augmented reality folks are rubbing hands in anticipation.
  • Toolsets – This to me is mind-blowing, given that WP7 development IDEs are among the best any mobile developer can get. The app Profiler should be very cool if it lives up to what was demoed. A lot of WP7 apps, including few of mine, could use performance tuning. We developers have got to understand the nuances of coding for a small device; repercussions of choices on UI, component & background threads.
  • Multitasking – This combined with fast app switching, should be something I would rejoice with as an user. However, I am a little wary of how things are laid down in the development tools around the existing ways of tombstoning. How does the OS soft-suspend an app? What are the expectations off the developer? I hope as the Mango toolsets are released, we shall see more guidelines from the product team on how they envision this unfold.
  • Notifications – This is a good one too. I was running a WP7 dev session & somewhat asked why is it that a Push is needed to update a Live Tile. If the user has a shopping list app & marks things off, all the current data is on the phone. Why then do we need to make a service/MPNS round-trip to update the Live tile? Well MSFT seems to have gotten the feedback as well. Enter Background Notifications, Live Agents and multiple Tiles per app with deep linking. Again, we will have to see how the implementations work out and how we may have to adjust future apps.
  • SQLCE & IRC – I am not an expert on either of these topics; but seemed like good stuff. I think I have the seen the community provides toolkits & ways to get around these limitations in the past. Good to know that they are right out of the box in Mango.
  • Emulator – Again, this is freaking awesome. How many times have we wondered if there was an easy way to simulate accelerometer & location data on the WP7 Emulator? Well, wait no more with the Mango toolsets. The fact that Bing locations services can be used to set up to provide a chain of location data to the emulator apps is phenomenal.
  • Silverlight & XNA – This is something I have personally not missed; but I have heard from multiple XNA folks that they would like to bring 3D modeling to the Silverlight apps. And, so it happened!

Yes, I know what you thinking. This is a fanboyish post with all praise! Kinda true .. haha. There were a few missing pieces that were rumored – Silverlight5 on WP7 & Silverlight runtime for the Xbox ecosystem. True – but a lot of right steps were taken today and as a Windows Phone developer, we should take to heart the commitment to the future of this ecosystem. As Matt said in this post (here), luck happens more often to folks who plan & prepare. Share the love, as every developer matters.

Adios!