Exclusive Interview with Microsoft on Shadow/Neo

[kwoodall]

GadgetNutz sat down this week for a virtual interview with Jay Ongg, a Senior Development Lead at Microsoft in the Windows Mobile Team to discuss Windows Mobile and new developments his team has finished creating.

Jay's group recently completed the new Neo interface for T-Mobile's Shadow smartphone, which is powered by Windows Mobile 6 Standard . This new interface is graphically stunning and yet is no iPhone imitator (which wouldn't be possible as they were developing it long before the iPhone released). It's made this class of smartphone far easily and more enjoyable to use. So much so that T-Mobile has declared this new phone part of a 'Fun' line of phones.

Read on for the full interview!

http://www.gadgetnutz.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=00410

Kermit Woodall
Managing Editor
GadgetNutz.com

[analogs]

"Cut/copy/paste is an interesting feature on Smartphone..."

You call copy/paste functionality "interesting"?! I would say more like "essential" or "unbelievable that you would release a 'smart'phone OS without it". But hey, what do I know? I'm just a dumb user.

I don't mean to be negative -- it's a good article otherwise -- I just get a little worked up over this one. We're talking about some of the most basic functionality a computer can provide but Microsoft apparently doesn't think it's all that big of a deal.

[kinjutsu11]

Well, I would definitely say that the OS refinements are a huge improvement for the standard WM. Since the SDA/MDA days, i've refused to use WM due to memory leaks, slow sluggish menus. And with the Shadow, I've noticed major improvements in the categories that prevented me from using WM again. So this is definitely, in my opinion, a welcome change to a very useful OS, just not traditionally very user-friendly, until the Shadow.

[kwoodall]

You call copy/paste functionality "interesting"?! I would say more like "essential" or "unbelievable that you would release a 'smart'phone OS without it". But hey, what do I know? I'm just a dumb user.


I know where they're coming from, y'see, you're NOT a dumb user. You're a power user, or at least, a user headed that way.

The regular, dumb, user isn't online here. They're very very basic people who wouldn't even know cut'n'paste to begin with. They want a simple phone with fun features. Neo took the power of the Smartphone and made it far more simple and fun.

Kermit Woodall
Managing Editor
GadgetNutz.com

[analogs]

Let's take a step back for a moment. Like anything else, deciding what is "advanced" functionality is a subjective call. And yes, the vast majority of cell phone users are fine with the very limited set of features they have available to them. But come one, we're not talking about time-shifting video content.

I work on a help desk for a financial company and take calls all day long from users who are only vaguely aware of basic computing concepts. Outside of sending and receiving email, they perform a few simple tasks that they've memorized by repetition. They prefer to keep interaction with their computer to a minimum. But even the feeblest of minds grasp the concept of copying a block of text and pasting it somewhere else.

Any phone with a directional pad should have this capability. On a Blackberry, you just hold down the shift key and move around. Doesn't matter if you have a Pearl ball thingy or a plain old scroll wheel, both work just fine. There is absolutely no excuse for not implementing this in WM6 Standard in at least a limited capacity. If anyone has arguments to the contrary, please, fire away.