I'm just curious about this... why do developers like netflix and hulu restrict their apps to certain devices?
I assume the short answer is because they're not confident that the non-certified phones can handle the app. But I have a Galaxy S (Vibrant) and I use my slingbox all the time to stream to my phone and it works without a hitch... so why do these companies think that my phone can't handle streaming netflix or hulu?
It's just really frustrating.
And on a completely different note, when is someone going to tell the big corporations (banks, etc.) that Android has a pretty big lead in America over iOS? It seems like everybody still develops iOS apps first, then goes back and does Android... that annoys me, too.
Thanks for letting me vent! Anyone who knows anything about my question please reply... I'd be interested to see what you all have to say.
Cheers,
+mf
Howdy. This is the first post from a lurker.
So, I'm a longtime Android user. I hopped on the platform with my first smartphone, an OG Droid.
Recently though, I've become a little dissatisfied with things in the Android world for various reasons, and I'm torn between upgrading to the Galaxy Nexus or hopping to a new platform.
I'm not really interested in the iPhone, or Apple products in a general sense. Windows Phone looks much more appealing to me. I love the diversity in devices, the direct updates, the UI is gorgeous, and the deep integration with things like XBOX doesn't hurt either.
My biggest gripe with Android, as someone who writes a lot, is that the Google Docs integration may as well not exist. The app is terrible. It's basically a pretty shell for the mobile site. SkyDrive/Office sounds very, very appealing to me. There are other issues I have, but this post seems like it's going to be huge already.
So I guess I have a few questions for you Windows Phone gurus.
How do you find SkyDrive to be in comparison to Google Docs? I understand you guys probably live in the Microsoft ecosystem as much as I do in Google's, but I've found Docs to be incredibly useful. Going forward in my life, having a really solid cloud productivity solution is critical.
How is the integration with other Google services like Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Contacts, etc? I've read a few posts on this, but most seemed to just confirm that it exists, and didn't really comment on how reliable it is.
I know that Microsoft doesn't have its own turn-by-turn GPS navigation yet, but are there any plans, to your knowledge, for future implementation of that? I know there are third party apps that do this, and those are valid options too but I really love that it's just built into the Google suite Android-side.
How is 3D gaming and emulation on Windows Phone? I don't play a ton of games, but there are a few I really enjoy. I'm absolutely in love with FPSE though, and playing Suikoden II on my phone is pretty much the bomb.
That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have other questions eventually. I tend to obsess over decisions like this for weeks.
Thanks a ton for any help you can provide me, guys.
I used to live android . Developed a rom and a few themes as well . I continue to work with 7+ Android in bringing as much of the metro UI to android as possible ...but honestly there is no comparison. I initially bought my wp7 device to help with our project . I now have no desire to go back .
I never used google docs , but I find SkyDrive to be amazing for my needs . 32gb for free is awesome ,and seamless integration with my PC . Gmail and contacts sync with no problem at all .
Wp7 actually does have turn by turn navigation built in with voice guidance now with mango . You just have to tap the screen after a completes turn . Now with Nokia drive being able to be sideloaded ...gps situation is perfect .
The os is just so smooth. I think you would be ver satisfied.
Sent from my mwp6985 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Although game emulation is basically non existent other than nes and gba ..and those struggle . But the os Is young .. It will come ..so that may be a deal breaker . But MS has some awesome original xb live titles . In not much of a gamer , bu some of those are really fun .
I feel like its a fair trade off for not dealing with androids lag and FCs
Sent from my mwp6985 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
do jump....
I also had android and though they have alot of apps...windows have crazy features and then some...with the cooked mods that are being release...it only gets better....jump to windows...
htc hd7 T9292 nexgen+ os
Thanks
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I think I'll take another week to consider it.
I have google mail and my google calendar synced with my phone and they work flawlessly. Only issue is that if you have multiple calendars on google it'll only sync the main one. Not an issue for most people though (me included).
cptsmithy said:
Thanks for the feedback, guys. I think I'll take another week to consider it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Think carefully about it.
But I am sure that if you jump, you won't regret it
cptsmithy said:
Howdy. This is the first post from a lurker.
So, I'm a longtime Android user. I hopped on the platform with my first smartphone, an OG Droid.
Recently though, I've become a little dissatisfied with things in the Android world for various reasons, and I'm torn between upgrading to the Galaxy Nexus or hopping to a new platform.
I'm not really interested in the iPhone, or Apple products in a general sense. Windows Phone looks much more appealing to me. I love the diversity in devices, the direct updates, the UI is gorgeous, and the deep integration with things like XBOX doesn't hurt either.
My biggest gripe with Android, as someone who writes a lot, is that the Google Docs integration may as well not exist. The app is terrible. It's basically a pretty shell for the mobile site. SkyDrive/Office sounds very, very appealing to me. There are other issues I have, but this post seems like it's going to be huge already.
So I guess I have a few questions for you Windows Phone gurus.
How do you find SkyDrive to be in comparison to Google Docs? I understand you guys probably live in the Microsoft ecosystem as much as I do in Google's, but I've found Docs to be incredibly useful. Going forward in my life, having a really solid cloud productivity solution is critical.
How is the integration with other Google services like Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Contacts, etc? I've read a few posts on this, but most seemed to just confirm that it exists, and didn't really comment on how reliable it is.
I know that Microsoft doesn't have its own turn-by-turn GPS navigation yet, but are there any plans, to your knowledge, for future implementation of that? I know there are third party apps that do this, and those are valid options too but I really love that it's just built into the Google suite Android-side.
How is 3D gaming and emulation on Windows Phone? I don't play a ton of games, but there are a few I really enjoy. I'm absolutely in love with FPSE though, and playing Suikoden II on my phone is pretty much the bomb.
That's it for now. I'm sure I'll have other questions eventually. I tend to obsess over decisions like this for weeks.
Thanks a ton for any help you can provide me, guys.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i made the jump last week, and i have not regretted it yet.
here's some of my answers to your concerns.
How do you find SkyDrive to be in comparison to Google Docs?
honestly, better. i have a lot of my work documents on there and the integration with office is so much better than google docs on android.
How is the integration with other Google services like Gmail, Reader, Calendar, Contacts, etc?
flawless, just sign in and they are there
I know that Microsoft doesn't have its own turn-by-turn GPS navigation yet, but are there any plans, to your knowledge, for future implementation of that?
bing maps is OK, reminds me of the earlier version on the iPhone 3g. it works good enough, but it's not google navigation. there are better 3rd party apps available ranging in price from $5 to $50
How is 3D gaming and emulation on Windows Phone?
xbox live games are cool. i never really gamed on a mobile, but the few that i have played on wm7 run smooth and flawless.
i actually started a blog last night about my jump from android to wp7 to help others considering the change over. again, i just started it last night, so it's really crude as of now, but i will be updating it and should have a lot of info and my experiences on it soon.
www.johnpflueger.com
so i am like most folks, a noobian right...my question for help is pretty simple, i guess im not thinking outside that proverbial box right now, enuf said, here is my query please.
I have apps on my phone like most folks do, however i cant have 20 people huddle around me next week to be trained on an app my company has developed for me to showcase to our prospective users. how can i display this app up on a tv that has an hdmi port? its a sony, dont recall exact model at this time but if there is a way to do this easily, I would be most ever grateful
Thanks,
x81kilo
There are 2 apps that I desperately want on my Gear S2, and before buying the watch I did a search for "Gear S2" and "Backcountry Navigator" and found their submission to the Gear App Challenge. So I bought the watch! The app isn't available. I contacted the developer who said that development has been "put on hold." I found another app - a knitting row counter - that was also submitted to the challenge and also isn't available. What is the deal here? I don't understand app being submitted to the app challenge, and then never released.
So I'm very persistent. Or stubborn. Whichever. I have spoken to the owner of Crittermap - who makes BCNav, and I've spoken to the developer of the row counter I wanted. If folks are wondering why there aren't more apps for Tizen, I'm getting some clues.
The row counter dev did have his app approved by Samsung and it's in the Gear S store, but since I have an S2 I won't see it in the app store so I can't even try and see it would work. Some quotes from him:
"It was an extremely complicated process to get an app onto their platform, and it kept getting rejected and taking two weeks then to get an answer back from them as to why."
"...they stopped supporting their Gear watches well..."
A quote from the BCNav dev:
"Our support for Samsung would be more timely if they didn't change development paths twice a year and if their communication path between the watch and phone weren't so unstable."
It seems like the general consensus is that Tizen is a better overall experience than Android Wear, but the lack of apps is holding it back. So I am really confused and frustrated that Samsung isn't exactly facilitating getting more apps out there. Here are 2 developers that actually did 95% of the legwork, then bailed out because Samsung was such a pain. I'm so disappointed, I'm wishing I'd got a Moto 360
This is interesting. Thanks for sharing it. I've often felt there's something unstable "in the communication path between watch and phone" and that it has to be hard working with Samsung's unpredictable and awkward systems. This stuff is all curable; the simple fact that some folks inside Samsung came up with such a great bit of hardware and interface says that great things can happen inside that company. But whether or not that moment of great work can be translated into great follow up, into more stability, better support for developers, etc. -- well that remains to be seen.
This is what annoys me about Samsung. I personally have only owned Samsung phones starting with the S4 after switching from iphone 4S and now I have the note 4. Have gonna on alright with them and think they're brilliant phones but Samsung just seem to let themselves down quite a lot. Why they removed micro SD card slot from the S6 and note 5 is stupid for one example. But in the case of the S2 it's one of the best watch designs going especially with the bezel but for some stupid reason they seem to have no intention to make it dev friendly and getting devs involved in it.
I haven't looked into the iphone support (not sure if it's available yet) but I sure hope iphone users get the full S2 experience and don't get restricted apps or function because it has the potential to out do the apple watch if Samsung just make it 100% cross platform/device so that android phones and Iphones get the full experience without not being able to pay for apps for example or get limited functionality like no point in them adding iphone support if Iphone users can't send sms from the watch for example. Then they need to put better development documentation (have heard it's poor) and then get more big name devs involved plus make all apps available in all countries fgs.
So I came across my best buy receipt for my gear s2 classic. It was $380 something bucks. I began to ask myself what value I got from it I hoped for.
1) My first use case i was really looking forward to was samsung pay. But it was delayed and there is no word from samsung about its release. Im beginning to wonder if the gear s2 community will ever use it. This is a HUGE shame on samsung currently IMO.
2) I am a previous user of the gear s. I was certain the galaxy store was to offer a substantial increase in useful apps with the gear s2. There was no way to check since theres no website to browse (only in-app with gear onboarded, scumbaggish samsung). Anyways I browse the appstore every week and nothing ever happens. Its pitiful everybody is so excited for uber. One app I was certain would be available is for the Nest thermostat. Its the perfect user interface! Nope. I best thing ive seen so far is the hue app. Cheers to the dev. The gear s2 dev community needs clones of him. But overall our app selection is outrageously pathetic. I don't see it getting much better soon.
3) Why do I have to use s voice? C'mon. Samsung cant be this pretentious. Let me use google. I also thought there'd be a more seamless integration with google now. Nope. Oh yeah, ever wonder why you cant use voice to text on 3rd party apps? Because samsung locked out that ability.
I have a very good feeling that developing for the tizen smartwatch platform is an upsettingly dreadful experience. I say this because i spent four hours on a Saturday trying to get the development environment setup on OSX. I couldn't even get any sample projects to load. This trickles through. For example I really wanted to have xClock -Agent as my daily watchface but I couldn't condone it. Its affiliated android app caused alarming battery drain - and the app developer does not care one bit to correct the malbehavior. But then i ask myself why doesn't the core gear services provide an api for location so this problem wouldn't even occur? Why not for everything else? Why no S voice or be able to use any sort for speech to text for an app? I need an add on app mostly for the dumbest things. This sucks a lot.
As a product owner myself of two development teams I have been on a desperate search for the product owners of the gear s2 platform and express my concerns on that level. All leads Ive found on linkedin did not reply to my attempts at reaching out. Maybe no product owners exist, because things should not be this bad.
Anyways I would love to love this watch. The industrial design encompasses a wonderful human interface. But I don't love it because it has no soul (useable software). I hope things change. But I'm probably going back to the pebble time.
Okay.
K!
2. Google now won't happen. It is not Samsung's fault. Google does not open the access and I believe they won't. Why would they open it for competitors?
I agree with you on the app development part though. Setting up the development environment is not a trouble for me but dealing with the lack of documents, bugs in the IDE, Samsung review team and their servers are really nightmare.
Occasionally, I came across this reviewer who does not read my instruction for testing app and she rejects my apps very often. I just re-submitted one of my app for review hours ago. Another app got rejected a month ago for the third times and the problems were also their fault. I don't even bother submit it back.
Samsung servers or their Gear app store is very very unstable. Way back in the days of the Gear 2, I already saw the cannot install WO WO issue. It still exists and occur very often for customers. I receive at least 3 emails about downloading problems a day and sometimes I get 1 star rating for problems that I cannot solve.
These are just some notable issues.
So yeah, new devs won't develop apps anymore if they face similar problems. These days, I only see new watch faces submitted using the designer tool. Hardly anyone writes apps
Yeah, I agree with everything -- and just dropped dime to get a Verizon classic 3G to replace my current sport 3G.
Why? I need the 3G.
As soon as cell capabilities are offered on AW, and nothing improves on the Gear side with the issues listed (I'm a developer that walked away from development on the Gear because of the hassle), I'm gone too.
So sad, this is the second time Samsung has lured me into their watch with bad apps. Kept watch too long to take back but would if I could. I have bought numerous Samsung products and they always just move on to the "next big thing" without looking back..
Rsmin said:
So sad, this is the second time Samsung has lured me into their watch with bad apps. Kept watch too long to take back but would if I could. I have bought numerous Samsung products and they always just move on to the "next big thing" without looking back..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here.. I've had s2 classic few days and is been a pain in "A"
When it disconnects I have to reboot phone and watch ... so few apps to use app store is barren
such a shame as its a lovely looking device
I'll give it to the weekend then off it goes back to Amazon if it doesn't settle down
I'm not doing too bad but my requirements aren't huge and there are things the phone is better for. I'd love to use Google - but its not an android watch and i knew that going in. I get my emails, texts, my alarm works well enough, I can answer texts with voice, my appointments and Google Reminders work. I'm pretty happy! Wish it was waterproof. Wish the alarm was stronger. But still, I'm satisfied. At least until the next big thing... I AM a gadget whore.