Microsoft Device Event!

[Geoff]

Who else is excited for all the new Microsoft products? The Lumia 950/950XL look to be very high end flagship phones, the Surface Pro 4, and the Surface Book so far.

Lumia 950/950XL:
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-lumia-950-and-lumia-950-xl-smartphones-officially-announced

Surface Pro 4:
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-pro-4-official

Microsoft Band:
http://www.windowscentral.com/new-microsoft-band-official-and-its-curved

 

[Troncoso]

I don't really get the point of the laptop. Besides being slightly bigger than the Surface, it's pretty much the same with a keyboard attachment.

They showed some augmented reality stuff, which looks neat. I think they are wasting their time trying to use video games as a selling point, though.

 

[ian]

I haven't been excited about anything Microsoft has launched in over ten years now.
Definitely wouldn't buy a windows phone due to the lack of apps and limited hardware choices. Even though the surface pro 3 has good reviews, I never liked the ones I used in store.

 

[Geoff]

I haven't been excited about anything Microsoft has launched in over ten years now.
Definitely wouldn't buy a windows phone due to the lack of apps and limited hardware choices. Even though the surface pro 3 has good reviews, I never liked the ones I used in store.

I felt the same way, but this press event was the best presentation of devices they have put on in a long time.

 

[ian]

I noticed they are making some sort of effort to make it easier for Android and ios developers to Port their apps over for use on Windows mobile. I think if LG gets greedy and tries to copy Apple the same way as Samsung did by removing the removable battery and microsd card, that could possibly be an opportunity for Windows mobile to make a tiny dent into android/ios markets are by offering those features. I see the lumia 950xl has a removable 3,340mah battery and a microsd card slot. That really is good to see. There is no reason for companies to remove those features apart from greed and trying to maximise profits. The camera and dedicated camera button also look good, I retract my comment about never buying a windows mobile phone, I would consider trying one if LG stuff up their g series of phones.

 

[Cromewell]

SD cards become less useful on phones as they have a lot more internal storage now and cloud storage of the stuff you'd normally keep on the internal memory becomes common place.

This hardware launch seems uninteresting on the whole to me because I don't see anything truly new in it. Refinements, sure, but it's just another phone, another laptop and another smartwatch.

 

[Okedokey]

They're quite expensive I think (at least in AUD). Nice hardware though.

 

[Geoff]

SD cards become less useful on phones as they have a lot more internal storage now and cloud storage of the stuff you'd normally keep on the internal memory becomes common place.

This hardware launch seems uninteresting on the whole to me because I don't see anything truly new in it. Refinements, sure, but it's just another phone, another laptop and another smartwatch.

Not really, many phones still come standard with 16GB, which hasn't really changed for years. Not to mention carriers are now using tiered data, so the cloud isn't a solution for many.

 

[ian]

I have 10gb of data allowed on my phone per month, and I go through a lot of it, if I had to store stuff in the cloud instead of on my sdcard, it would end up costing me a lot of money. We don't have unlimited data plans for mobile in Australia, well not that I am aware of.
Also some people don't like storing personal photos and video in the cloud. If you travel, it is easy to take photo and video and just swap out the microsd card for unlimited storage. wifi and mobile data is really bad in some countries.
I dont like excuses being made for the manufacturers, in my opinion they are doing it out of greed. The note 4 is not bulky at all in my opinion with the sdcard and removable battery, same goes for the lg g4, both phones show it can be done well.
Look what apple did with their mac mini computers. Their 2014 mac mini looked to have the same external dimensions as the 2012 model, but they soldered the ram into the motherboard, and I don't think you can easily change out the hard drive. Purely a move to get people to pay more for their overpriced RAM, or if you buy an older model and the ram is not sufficient you will have to buy a new one. I guess it is not an issue as most people will not care. And Apple can get away with it because they own ios/macosx, but samsung are not apple, they dont own android and there are a lot of other manufacturers that people can go to. They are already losing market share to LG, I reckon this move will see them lose an even bigger market share to them.
Microsoft has made a lot of blunders and miscalculations. They made horrible mistakes with mobile, and search engines, two very large potential income streams for them. And even with mobile, why do they persist with those tile icons. I know some people who use windows mobile say it is great, but it just hasn't worked for them given how low windows mobile market share is, they should change their home screen to the same as apple and ios. People go into a shop and look at those phones and it just looks too different to what they have all been accustomed to. They are making it easier for developers to port their apps to use with windows mobile, I think they should take the biggest apps and pay those companies to develop apps for their operating system. nokia/lumia produce some fairly nice hardware, but they are going to have to do something drastic to eat into apple/google market share.