Weird title for a blog post, right? Well, those exact words were uttered to me this past weekend from my sister-in-law, Tori.
She came down for a visit from Virginia a few weeks ago, and had just bought a new AT&T Tilt2 (aka HTC Touch Pro2, codenamed Rhodium) during AT&T’s $.01 Windows Mobile sale. She had previously given me an HTC Fuze (aka HTC Touch Pro, codenamed Raphael), and I showed her what I had done with the phone with a custom ROM (Thanks to @NRGZ28 for his great work) and she was impressed. So, I did the only sensible thing and HardSPLed her phone and put a custom Energy ROM on her phone.
This past Saturday, as she was preparing to go back to Virginia, I asked how she liked the phone, and she mentioned that she was returning it. She said the software was MUCH better than the original AT&T Bloatware-infested ROM, but the device itself was just too big, bulky and heavy and she didn’t really like quickly the screen got funky (96 degree average highs for the month of August in Middle Tennessee hasn’t helped that issue). I told her it was a good thing she mentioned it because I needed to relock her phone so AT&T didn’t get stupid and say she couldn’t return it.
So, I installed the most recent Tilt2 AT&T ROM (updated with Sense 2.5, but still Windows Mobile 6.5, not 6.5.3) and relocked the phone for her to return it. After 5 minutes of using the phone after I reflashed it, she said the phrase at the top of this post. I asked her why, and she said it wasn’t fair to have been using what she WAS using (the Energy ROM) and then have to go back to this piece of crap. I agreed…
This morning, I came in to work and found this blog post from one of my favorite Silverlight developers, Shawn Wildermuth. I saw Shawn a couple of weeks ago at DEVLINK 2010 speaking about Windows Phone 7 and his experience developing for it. To summarize his blog post, while he has a Windows Phone 7 device that he’s testing with right now (lucky freaking dog!), he still uses a Motorola Droid on Verizon as his main phone currently, because the WP7 phone uses a SIM card, and the Droid doesn’t.
He recently upgraded to Android 2.2 (Froyo) and found he had some performance issues. He had to go track down what was causing the performance issues, because 2.2 should be (and in my experience, IS) faster than 2.1 was. He then expressed his concern that MOST people either won’t KNOW how to do that, or won’t WANT to do that. This point then expresses his thoughts about Windows Phone 7 and how he is GRATEFUL that Microsoft is locking it down as much as they are.
I’m really torn on this topic, personally. I love tweaking my phones. For example, a friend at work decided he wanted a Blackberry instead of his Touch Pro2 (see my blog post last week ripping Blackberry) so I ended up with a Verizon TP2. I’m on AT&T. I’m happy to say that thanks to the fact that the TP2 is a
World Phone, it has a SIM card slot, and the AT&T radios (except for 3G). So, I was able to unlock the phone, unlock that AT&T radios and put my SIM card in, and now I’m using a Verizon branded CDMA phone on my AT&T GSM network. And the irony is that it seems to download faster on this phone on Edge than it did on 3G. Or at least more reliably, I’m not sure which it is. And, I’m running Android 2.2 on it as well. And I’ve overclocked it successfully. But, I’M A GEEK! (Yeah, huge shock, I know)
My wife, sister-in-law, mother, colleague at work, etc., will NOT do any of this sort of thing. It’s part of the reason iPhones are so popular. You don’t HAVE to be a geek to use them. Luckily, I’ve finally come to this realization, and so I agree with Shawn’s point. In order for Windows Phone 7 to be truly successful, Microsoft actually needs to ignore us geeks for a little bit and go after the regular consumer market. THEY are who will determine the success of these phones, and this platform. After having played with a device at DEVLINK for a few minutes, I can honestly say it feels like a device my wife, sister, sister-in-law, etc. will use. I don’t know that my mother would use it, because it’s got too much stuff for her. She just wants a phone. But as that’s the case, she’s not the intended market.
So, while my geek side hates the fact that WP7 is so locked down, it will be kind of nice to have a phone that I don’t HAVE to flash to get it to do what it should out of the box. It’ll be nice to be lazy, maybe.
BTW, if you have an HTC device of any kind, make sure you visit http://forum.xda-developers.com and check out the info on your phone. It’s like a second home to me!