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Microsoft Enters the Cell Phone OS Market 279

Posted by timothy from the press-9-for-customer-service dept.
PuZZLeR writes: "Today, Microsoft unveiled a new operating system for mobile phones (named 'Windows Powered Smartphone 2002') and plans to fully enter the wireless data devices with voice capabilities by utilizing both cellphones and PDA devices. TI already created a reference design for the Ms powered phone. While this sounds like Microsoft is going after Handspring, RIM or Danger, cellphone OS manufactures, like Nokia and OpenWave are expected to counteract to the announcements. Today, Nokia announced it will offer mobile phone makers its own development kit and OS."
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Microsoft Enters the Cell Phone OS Market More

Microsoft Enters the Cell Phone OS Market

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  • You will be forced to connect to Windows Mobile Messanger before you can actually USE your phone's features! Brace yourselves for NokiaXP...

  • Neat! (Score:3, Funny)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:44PM (#3034407) Homepage
    Hey cool! No more monochrome for me! Now I have this great blue scheme going on!

    Oh. Wait a minute...

  • I hope they do better than "prior" track records show.

    -JB
    • What's new? They already tried with "Stinger" and only picked up some Samsung biz... and Stinger was much broader than WinCE.

      WinCE is far too fat/slow/power hungry to run as a cellphone OS. This means that either you need to go with something like Intel PCA (essentially once CPU to do the phone part and another CPU to run the WinCE PDA part) or you can achieve a sigle CPU solution by using a really tight little OS to run the phone part and use WinCE to do the PDA stuff. Even Symbian phones do this and Symbian is much more efficient than Wince.

      I don't think the WinCE PDAphone will win any friends through its nice UI. Start buttons just don't work nicely for phones. In Europe the Symbian phones outsell all other PDAs.

      Likely though M$ will make some inroads through .NET FUD. Big mobile operations (eg. the army of Cocacola sales reps) could easily go for this kinda thing.

      Also of interest is Microsoft getting in the sack with Qualcomm with their BREW phone application achitecture. Again, this could likely lock people into a proprietary Microsoft back-end. Depressing stuff....

  • Woo Hoo!!! We get viruses easier!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by booyah ( 28487 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:45PM (#3034418)
    I cant wait till I awnser the phone and get

    "Hi, How are you? I send you this call in order to have your advice"

    Yeah!!!

  • BSOD (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Neck_of_the_Woods ( 305788 )

    Man that is going to suck when your trapped out in the wilderness, flat tire, and no food.

    Where is the hotswap redundant PHONE?!!!

  • Crash (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Renraku ( 518261 )
    What good is a BSOD if the screen is unable to display the color blue?
  • How is this [microsoft.com] a "familiar Windows environment", other than a vaguely-XP scheme?
    • The icon in the top left looks really similar to KDE-style. In fact, a lot of it looks KDE-ish.

      Maybe it's just me..
      • It's not just you. The icons are *very* KDEish. KDE uses the tight horizonal banding in backgrounds, but that was used all over the web and is also used by OSX... as is the shadowing.

        In fact, with the picture up against Kicker (the KDE menu/task bar), the icons look *really* close, just angled left instead of right. The gear is also a KDE motif, and neigh-identically mirrors the SuSE KDE menu button.

        --
        Evan

    • How is this [microsoft.com] a "familiar Windows environment", other than a vaguely-XP scheme?

      Lots of blue, and Teletubby-ish theming.
  • Ok... I thought that when Windows CE came out that it was a horrible name:
    WinCE

    This one is just as bad...

    Winmps

  • Banning driving with a Microsoft Cellphone (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A driving with a windows powered cellphone, a crash waiting to happen.


    Mattel, SLAPP terrorists intent on destroying free speech. [barbieslapp.com]

  • what a name for a phone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vectus ( 193351 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:47PM (#3034442)
    "Windows Powered Smartphone 2002"

    lol, why not call it "super-great windows CE awesome gnarly future-smart-phone 2002"

    I mean, seriously.. why not call it like "Smartphone XP" or just throw an XP at the end of a decent brand name (nokia 7100XP)?

    ok, I'm done my ignorant comments.. time to read the article and see how far off I really am.
  • Heeey.. that's old news. Just check out this [pcpal.se] link and you'll se for yourself. :-)

    Ciryon

  • that way we know the thing will be secure. (*wipes sweat off brow.*) Otherwise, who knows?
    ---

  • It will be way too big! (Score:4, Funny)

    by burtonator ( 70115 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:48PM (#3034450)
    OK.

    Most cell phones don't have that much data storage... right?

    ... but what about IE? IE can't be separated from windows so they will have an extra 20M there... ;)

    Right... :)
    • On a serious note (yes, that is possible!), Pocket PC 2000 fits happily within a 16MB Flash and runs OK on my iPAQ. The memory in these phones is getting smaller; hell, Samsung had a model out that had 32MB you could store MP3s on; putting PocketPC on one of these isn't out of the question. Put in a Compact flash reader, and you can have many MB of storage (I have a 256MB Compact flash card, and they're getting bigger).

      In short, there isn't a memory limitation on these. In fact, you can almost certainly save some memory by not having the text recognition; just use the number keys like you do for SMS.

  • Bil''s "Road Ahead" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Telex4 ( 265980 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:48PM (#3034457) Homepage
    If anyone's ever read Bill Gate's book "The Road Ahead", this will sound chillingly familiar. In this book, he described how he'd like to see every appliance integrated into a central system (all of course designed by Microsoft ;-). This is just one more stepping stone.

    His vision, then, would be that you turn on your phone, log into the Hailstorm cellphone server, check your hotmail and sms in one, perhaps unfold your laptop running XP and download the messages, go home and turn on your TV running a microsoft-style tivo, put on your MS Stereo running off an XP music server, and so on. Total saturation, with total control from Redmond.
    • I never even heard about his book (The Road Ahead). It reminds me of Mein Kampf -- where Hitler said exactly what he was going to do and how he would rule Germany, and Europe, and the world.

      Nobody paid attention until it was too late. (Maybe that's yet another similarity between the two...)

      (If you feel the need to flame this post -- you're taking it too seriously -- get a life!)

      The Wandering Hermit

  • Phew (Score:2, Funny)

    by NWT ( 540003 )
    "Hello Ma, how are you?"
    "Hey, I'm fine but ..."
    *Piiiieeeepppp*
    "A fatal error occrued at 00x24624, press any button reboot your phone"

    Jeeezzz ....

    • Re:Phew (Score:5, Funny)

      by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @09:11PM (#3035649)
      "Hello. It seems you are trying to make a call.
      Would you like some hints on dialing your phone?
      Did you know that you can change the ring on your phone to 24 gratingly annoying, off-key tunes?
      To shut down your phone, please press the TALK button."
  • soon we'll see 1337 keygens to get free phone calls? i can't wait

  • Who cares? (Score:4, Troll)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:50PM (#3034476) Homepage
    Does anybody here really give a shit? I mean, honestly, for a site that bitches about MS so much, slashdot gives them a helluva lot of free press.

    Why not spend the effort advertising the Sanyo SCP-5150 instead, a very cool, full-feature phone that can meow out of the box, in addition to the normal wireless web, color LCD, blah the fuck blah.

    Or maybe we could concentrate on the Kyocero palm-phones, available for sale right this very instant, interoperates with all your stuff, and is a really cool phone.

    Let's stop watching MS pull out the same old bullshit, but with a start button, and start advertising products that matter, and don't support monopolies!

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by daeley ( 126313 )
      I mean, honestly, for a site that bitches about MS so much, slashdot gives them a helluva lot of free press.

      I think it's more a matter of keeping an eye on what the 298.6-kilogram gorilla is up to. :)

    • Re:Who cares? mod that up baby! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:59PM (#3034547) Homepage Journal
      "I mean, honestly, for a site that bitches about MS so much, slashdot gives them a helluva lot of free press."

      Amen brotha. You know why? More people love to bitch about MS that anything else. So far I have seen about 15 posts talking about BSOD's, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, viruses, etc...not a SINGLE ONE talks about the technology or the phone.

      sad ain't it?

      • Talk about vaporware? What's to say? It doesn't exist yet. As for technology, the M$ part of it is well-known. It's the same old M$ stuff so it is easy to talk about.


        We can discuss the hardware/tech once it exists...but I'll stick with Motorola or Nokia or...anyone that doesn't have an M$ finger dipped into it. I am proud that not a single penny of my money for the last 6 years has gone to M$ and I intend to keep it that way until the beast is tamed by the courts.

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BlackSol ( 26036 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:11PM (#3034625)
      Why?
      Because Microsoft is the (currently) largest commercial software producer. (yes thats a period)

      When the largest company in any name space announces a new product for a new product space its indicative a (possible) new trend in computing.

      So new trend + OS + mobile phone + applications = News for Nerds Stuff that matters.

      Also it may also encourage your stock picks on your 6 month portfolio rebalance. I mean I wouldn't bet on any comercial company in a product space to compete directly with microsoft.
      • NT was their attack on the RISC-nixes, Linux half got in the way there.

        XP is to take on Mac OSX

        Pocket OS is their attempt to kill Palm

        Now they want to take on "Symbian" [symbian.com], a beaut little OS for PDA/cellphone crossover devices developed by little old Psion, the maker of the best PDAs in the world (maybe now past tense), & now taken on by Motorola, Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita/Panasonic & Sony.

        Can't they just be happy with owning the PC desktop?

        • Can't they just be happy with owning the PC desktop?

          No, because that means they must stop growing. Which means that they'll have unhappy shareholders on their hands, who might finally demand some of those dividends Microsoft has been withholding for years.

          And besides, as soon as they stop growing, they stop being a moving target. If they concentrate on owning the PC desktop, then they aren't integrating "new" products all the time anymore. And if they aren't integrating "new" products, then someone else could match their existing feature set. So the instant they stop trying to grab every market in sight, they're dead.

      • Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)

        by powerlinekid ( 442532 )
        Actually this is slightly offtopic but IBM is the worlds largest software company, its just that while the software is commercial IBM's biggest customer is itself.
        • You're absolutely right.

          It was my intention to mention IBM in my original post as being the only exception as an MS competitor

          IBM may well be able to leverage open source products to take a strong leadership in the server and mainframe markets, which would also strongly pull all other open source variants into power as well. Once blazened in these markets (2-3 years?) the desktop components may be ready for joe user and have the strength to break the MS stranglehold.
  • So.. were are they going to put the CTRL, ALT, and DEL keys on my phone? Cuz i KNOW i'm going to need them to kill the damn KaZaa Spyware runnin in the background..
    hmm.. that'd be too easy to bug...
    • No, it would be silly to put CTRL, ALT or DEL keys on a phone, because it's not a PC. What Microsoft actually plans to do is to wedge a tiny Windows button and Context Menu button between the '*' and '#' buttons.

      Over time, all phones will have 14 buttons standard rather than 12. There will be a thriving secondary market for little penguin stickers that people can paste over their Windows button after they load Linux into their phones.

  • Just say NO! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by grrae ( 558854 )
    Don't forget to run out and buy a REAL mobile phone here [nokia.com].

    Let's remember the words of Mr. Burke:

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke

    Go buy someone OTHER than Microsoft's phone, please!

    --Grrae

  • I wonder how much of the blue screen they can fit unto a cell phone. Perhaps it would be easier if the phone just gave a General Protection Fault and halted whenever you lose signal.

    Or better still,
    "Scandisk has detected that your cellphone was not shut down properly..."
  • I mean i hear such amazing things, like cellphones being able to take and store pictures, and to run email and decent browsing software.

    But when cell phones are able to run Microsoft software- that will be quantum leap for the power of portable computing.

  • And I thought having minesweeper on my Siemens S35i was bad enough. At the beginning it diplays this message: With greetings from Microsoft!
  • May come in handy when the phone bugger out in the middle of a conversation with the lady.

    Really, when nokia, ericsson and sony have problems keeping the phones alive without boot, how is MS supposed to manage it?

  • Nokia fights back. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alex_siufy ( 411363 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:53PM (#3034501)
    Here... [yahoo.com]. The short version:


    " Top-ranked mobile phone maker Nokia said on Monday it would offer other mobile handset suppliers a complete design kit for making Internet-ready phones, seeking to stave off a push by Microsoft Corp. into the mobile market.

    The move by Nokia, maker of one of every three mobile phones sold globally, takes aim at computer software giant Microsoft, which said earlier on Monday it was offering phone makers a standard kit of software and computer chips to build new "smartphones."     "

    The article also mentions that out of the top 5 mobile phone manufacturers, only Samsung is coming out with phones based on the Microsoft junk, at the end of this year.

    It'll be .NET (Microsoft) versus Java (Nokia) on the mobile front too...
    • I'm glad to hear that 4 of the top 5 mobile phone vendors aren't taking this bait, but I cringed when I read the following:

      These include the capacity to offer multimedia text and picture messaging, or simpler access to corporate email or common business software programs, to mention just a few of the growing ranges of functions from such higher-powered phones.
      Where:
      'corp email' == Outlook && 'common biz software' == Office

      Which got me thinking, that yes, that would be nice, I wonder why the Java developers haven't done that yet as well with the phone dev kits that are already shipping. The answer, of course, is that none of those protocols are open and thus can't.

      Did the proposed anti-trust settlement address this point? This is *classic* Microsoft market-leveraging behaviour. Without this point of leverage, I would expect this initiative to fail because battery life is too precious to waste on the inevitably large memory/processor requirements of this OS. (Of course, I'm assuming bloated code here, does anyone have any idea what the resource requirements are?)

      Stephen
  • This phone call has caused a protection fault in phone.dll. Please press CALL + END + CLEAR to restart your phone.

    yeesh.

  • Apologies in advance (Score:4, Funny)

    by kill-hup ( 120930 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:53PM (#3034504) Homepage
    ..but reading the names on the "features" links:
    • You only need one hand
    • Small, but powerful

    just gave me a good laugh.
    It's been that kind of day, sorry ;-)

  • Message GPF32. The phone customer you are atempting to reach is temporarily out of service. Error GPF at 0x0F07021. Please try your call again later.
    • Please try your call again later.

      No, it will be 'Press 1 to Abort, press 2 to Redial, or press 3 to Ignore.' :)
      • I want to be the first one with pictures of the Blue Screen of Death on a cell phone [sympatico.ca].

  • Schweet! now I can write a good ol' fashioned pocket sized war dialler and port nmap to the nokia. Business as usual.
  • http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/19/184720 8&mode=thread&tid=100
  • I think like most cellphone users, I don't have a need for all that extra stuff. All these other bells and whistles are just that, bells and whistles...and a more expensive bill.
    Why can't these companies work on getting me decent local coverage first? I'm sure I might enjoy using the web, or email over my cellphone if I didn't have calls dropping left and right. I'll take a solid, strong signal anywhere I go over the above.
  • That's just too funny...now I wonder if we're going to hear stories about the evil M$ mob taking hits out on Open Source developers who are working on secret new phone technologies.

  • yahoo! (Score:1)

    by nslu ( 532403 )
    err...

    See, it feautures hi-res color display, slideshows, internet and one-hand operation! Imagine what you can do...
  • I've always dreamed of having Clippy around during a phone call!
  • Will they (M$) be held liable when some one gets a BOD while making a 911 call?

  • Why is this new? (Score:2, Informative)

    by edwdig ( 47888 )
    Nokia sold cellphones with GEOS on them for years. Then Microsoft threatened with Windows CE, so Nokia and a few other cell phone combines got together and wrote Symbian. Nokia's been shipping phones based off it for about two years now. SDK's have been available for a long time from Nokia's developer's site. Altho I will say, I signed up for one multiple times and never got it. Had no problems getting the SDK for their GEOS phones (even wrote an HTTP server for them). I know others have gotten them with no problems tho.

    So what's the news here?
  • "Windows Powered Smartphone 2002?"

    If nothing else, one had to respect the Microsot marketing department for being able to shovel crap onto the consumer by the pound at the consumer's cost. But after choosing a product name like that...

  • Semi-duplicate post? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Raetsel ( 34442 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:06PM (#3034598)

    Gee... if /. gets to post duplicate (but slightly different) stories, does that mean I have to repost my comments -- but slightly altered?

    I refer to this comment [slashdot.org].

    I referred to better pictures of the Journada 928,

    And then went on to talk about the OS on it:
    • They also have an article about what has been added to WinCE [infosync.no] [infosync.no] (guess I know why MS calls it PocketPC now...) to turn it into a mobile phone-integrated PDA. There are six (!) pages of screen shots in that one. You can also look forward to "...Mobile Information Server (MIS) 2002 Enterprise Edition, which adds Server ActiveSync..." -- here's ANOTHER pie MS wants to sell you pieces of.

      The interesting thing is that ringtones -- which phone companies want to charge you for -- aren't there. Instead, you can assign .WAV files as ring tones, and specific files for specific callers. Wonder what the motivation for that move is...?

      Still... I want one!

    Oh well... if they can cut-n-paste, I guess I have to as well.

  • On "embedded device" systems, I think quality becomes more critical and more obvious to the end user. The calculator on my Nokia phone has a little bug in it... appears to be related to negative numbers ... possibly around 32,000, but I haven't sat down and worked it out.

    While consumers tolerate their desktops crashing, I don't think they'll tolerate it in their cell phones. Dropped calls are bad enough.

    Of course, as folks have mentioned, virii are also a problem.

    Perhaps what could actually happen is that this could cause MS to take a harder look at software quality.

    -jbn

  • Dear Bill (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Introspective ( 71476 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:16PM (#3034655) Homepage
    Hi Bill

    Just thought I'd drop you a line about the sort of things I would like on my cellphone.

    Some features I don't want :
    • Internet Explorer inextricably embedded into the OS
    • Visual Basic scripting
    • .NET, or .anything for that matter
    • Any sort of web server
    • Outlook, Exchange, or Hotmail
    • Buffer overflows
    • Passport authentication
    What I would like is :
    • to be able to enter a number and make a phone call
    Thanks,
    Intro.
  • Hard disk defragmentation software that they won't include for first several releases: $50.00

    Antivirus Software (Must be renewed yearly to get updates): $50

    Specialized uninstaller Software to properly remove software because Windows is unable to do it right: $50

    Time spent reinstalling the OS every few months to keep things working right: variable.

    A Microsoft phone... whatever *snicker*
  • *Phone boots for 15 minutes

    *Displays the "Who do you want to call today" welcome message

    *Hangs for a further 5 minutes

    *Refuses to call non MS cells

    User hurls phone out of car onto the pavement

    :)
  • Anyone know if Nokia's move to provide a development kit will include an SDK? (Or does one already exist?) I'd love to be able to write some additional games for my cell phone. By the look of it I'd say it would require some special hardware to copy them over as well. Going to have to look into this...
    • from this page [nokia.com]:
      Is it possible to develop games for the Nokia mobile phones?
      The only phones that games may be developed for are the 9110 and 9210 Communicators. The 9210 has a symbian operating System which is an open platform for developers.

      This means that anyone may develop games and other add-on applications for the device. This is the same with the 9110, however it has a different operating system.

      Additionally, several Nokia phones support Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), where games and information can be programed for mobile viewing.

      For more information on the Communicators SDKs and other Nokia tools, visit the Nokia Forum (www.forum.nokia.com).

  • Try one more time (Score:2, Insightful)

    by boa13 ( 548222 )
    With domestic appliances becoming smarter everyday and now embarking more computing power than NASA had when Armstrong put foot on the Moon, it is no surprise that all the major operating system vendors try to conquer this new market. This trend has been going on for quite some time now.

    The real news here are that Microsoft is again trying to conquer that market. This is a big challenge for them, because the OS design there is at the opposite of what they usually manufacture: you can't put a system that crashes randomly, or that eats all the CPU and all the batteries of the device. It seems previous incarnations, that is mostly Windows CE, failed to do that.

    They have good designers and the fact that "this is Windows" makes it easy to sell the devices. If they manage to make an OS that stays afloat, they might very well find themselves in a strong position in this market. At least, I think they have much more chances to win here than on the server market.
  • Is this the REAL name of the Stinger phone or have they gave up on Stinger???
  • Now I have to wait for my phone to boot for twelve minutes before I can use it.

  • Linux based phones also in the works (Score:4, Interesting)

    by micahjd ( 54824 ) <micahjd@users.sourceforge.net> on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:59PM (#3034977) Homepage
    Take a look at this: http://www.ridgerun.com/products/phone/tour/ [ridgerun.com]

    With software like Microwindows, PicoGUI, and Qtopia available, a lot of companies will probably be finding Linux useful on PDAs and smaller embedded devices like Cellphones.

  • Nokia is not alone (Score:2, Informative)

    by haggar ( 72771 )
    First of all, OpenWave is not a cellphone OS manufacturer. OpenWave makes a whole bunch of mobile middleware solutions and an embedded microbrowser.

    However, Nokia is in good company as far as cellphone OS-es go: in fact, they use and work on the same OS: which is Symbian. I hope that now the uninformed will start to see the wisdom behind Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Psion, Siemens, Sony, Matsushita ETC. uniting on the issue ofa single cellphone OS that is Symbian OS: not to pay the MS tax. Sure, they had to pay up fronttens of millions of dollars to found Symbian (the company), but that's small potato compared to the money they would have paid Microsoft, if it got hold of the mobile market. That would have been a cut on the revenue on each sold unit! I can tell you for certain, that would have been the nightmare of any cellphone manufacturer.

    On another note, I am really glad Microsoft is openly stepping on Nokia's toe. Damn that's a good feeling! Now the big bad bully just picked a decent adversary! Nokia is not only big enough, it's also nimble and potentially dangerous for Microsoft. It also has a brand recognition that rivals Microsoft's.

  • Is Microsoft going to include WPA in this software? If so, what happens if I switch my battery or plug it into my car lighter and it requires me to call Microsoft? How would I call them if the phone is not usable?
    • ...what happens if I switch my battery or plug it into my car lighter...

      Well, if it's a battery that provides profit to MS, probably nothing. But, if it's a competetively-priced aftermarket battery, or different belt-clip, or one of those candy-colored covers, it may set off the magnesium microcharge inside and burn through the circuit board. On the other hand, it's an MS product, so the charge will most likely not work, so go nuts!
  • Jezz, not one yet. i'll give it a shoot.

    if you goto the Smart Phone [microsoft.com] site. then click on the Developer [microsoft.com] link. You'll notice that this is a rebranded Pocket PC [microsoft.com].

    Which is what it looks like (and i'm 99% sure) it shares the exact same subset of the Win32 API that the current PocketPC/WinCE API does. Which means a relativly sophisticaed OS, capable of real internet browsing (complete with DOM, scripting, GIF animation, etc..). Windows Media player, so WMA and mp3 playback. MSN Messenger (for those who are into that kind of thing). But at the cost of high resources, like 32 megs of RAM min, not to mainstreem with cellphones at the moment.

    and i'm not sure, but i'm guessing all of the current pocketpc apps [hpc.net] including Quake [pocketquake.com], which is also shown in the SmartPhone Tour [microsoft.com]. Will be available for it, which would be pretty darn cool.

    -Jon
  • The Windows Powered Smartphone 2002...

    Technically, the phone powers Windows, not the other way around. When they make software that produces energy, let me know.

  • "My phone just trashed its code segment. Can I call you back ?"

    "Ph33r my l33+ h4x0r 5k!||z wh3n ! p!ng f|00d j00!"

    "Could you call back in just two minutes ? I'm in a heated Solitaire round."

    Ahh the blasphemy!
  • DO-DO-DO... Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please Reboot and try again.
    .
  • Whatever. Danger's product [danger.com] is cooler:
    • Phone
    • Email
    • Pager form factor
    • IM
    • Camera
    • Not M$
  • I mean they can't really grow their market share in desktop PC operating systems ... In fact these days if they don't move into other related sectors they'll shrink heheh
  • I'm looking for something - desperately!

    I write custom web-based information management software. I have a number of products whose value would increase exponentially if they could truly be accessed anytime, anywhere.

    I need a phone that
    1. has a reasonable speed 'net connection (14.4 is S-L-O-W but can be made to work)
    2. HTTP 1.1 compliant
    3. Supports cookies
    4. SSL not critical but certainly preferred.
    5. Can view a "normal" web page with some grace.
    6. Connects to the internet quickly and easily, with little/no fuss.


    I've seen some that are close. WAP is a joke. My biggest problem is that "deer about to be run over" look when I bring up my needs to just about any Cellular reseller....

    Anybody?
  • .. that on the last page of the Feature Tour, called fun on the run [microsoft.com], they have a screenshot showing a modified version of Doom running? Are there other phones available today that can do that?

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