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  • stm1185 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Single core cpu and 800x480 screen are not going to cut it in a competition with a dual core iPhone 4s, and a dual core 720p Nexus Android phone. Sure it might as quick as a single core, but the average idiot consumer won't understand that looking at the info on it. WP7 needs to be able to use cutting edge hardware to be competitive.
  • tipoo - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Yeah, the 800x480 res really hurts devices like the HD7 and especially Titan.
  • Pirks - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Average phone shoppers do not masturbate on gigahertz gigabytes and quad cores like you, they choose whatever is slick, smooth, fast, responsive, comfortable, easy to use and looking/feeling good in hand. WP7 delivers on these criteria 100%
  • inplainview - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Best post ever. This is what is becoming increasingly wrong with this site. Many to most here are basement dwelling geeks who need dual-quad core, 10 terabyte ram smartphones to validate their existence while the average consumer is going to go for what looks nice, has nice software and some sort of backend support (iTunes like experience) to give an all around experience.
  • tipoo - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    True, but even Joe Consumer can probably tell the difference in screen resolution. I had a HD7 for a few months and I found myself wishing for a higher resolution screen, on a 4.7' like the Titan that would be even worse.
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    What would you do with that resolution? I can only think of one reason and that would be Remote desktop. Other than that the standard user doesn't need it.
  • smulji - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    For the most part your are correct. This spec porn is getting out of hand. What matters is the overall user EXPERIENCE. And WP Mango definitely delivers in this regard.

    But I do agree with the poster above that higher resolution screens are a big plus in improving the overall user experience. When I went from an iPhone 3GS to iPhone 4 it was amazing how much more enjoyable the device was to use just because of the better screen.
  • stm1185 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    You guys really think Joe Consumer can't understand the difference between dual and single core. Now with over 5 years of dual core CPUs being out. Or the difference in resolution after all these years of HDTV marketing!

    Mango will deliver a comparable experience with a single core. But I dont think the consumer will realize that, I think the marketing and sales push behind getting people to upgrade their single core android phones and iPhone 4s are going to make that single core cpu in WP7 phones look very dated. And while the single core CPU can be overlooked by people who understand it, the screen resolution being low just all around sucks and is a huge negative at this point. They are behind the iPhone 4 of last year, and way way behind the now 720p Android phones. This screen resolution is not spec porn, its a real difference that every user can see, especially on a 4.7inch display.
  • zorxd - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    A single core 1.5 or 1.4 GHz CPU will be just as fast on average than the 800 MHz dual-core CPU in the iPhone 4S. On multithreaded task it will be slower (mainly because the Cortex A9 is faster clock for clock than the Snapdragon) but in single threaded task it will be much faster.
    1.2-1.5 GHz CPUs in Android phones will continue to reign however.

    But it's not only about the CPU. The Adreno 205 GPU in future WP7 devices will continue to suck. It was an OK GPU in 2010, but now it's way outdated.
    The best display will be the Samsung 4.3" S-AMOLED+. The same one as on the Galaxy S2. It will only come to Windows Phone late. And with the same 800x480 resolution. The HTC Titan is going to have a display too big for that resolution. It should have been 1280x720 or at least 960x540.
  • ImSpartacus - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    People still don't understand resolution. They think HDTV is some subjective quality thing, rather than four times the pixels.

    Joe Consumer cares about screen size more than resolution.
  • french toast - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link

    Response to the statement that it doesnt matter what the specs are as long as the phone works fine, here is an anology with cars....
    As were talking about the top of the range smartphones here, they can be compared to say ferari and lambo's,

    ..So would you pay £150,000 for a lambo with a v10, gullwing doors that does 200mph ( android)
    - OR would you part with £150 grand for a ferari with standard doors with a v4 that does 120mph..just because 'you wouldnt use it?'
    .. no because your getting ripped off compared to the competition, never mind the fact your never gonna go 200mph or not, its not desirable and most of all its poor value.

    I like wp7, and its nice to see that it runs smooth on weak hardware, but thats not desirable, people want the latest, greatest, stuff, they want good value.

    So unless Nokia is gonna pull these phones out alot cheaper than say a nexus s...then they better stop being cheap skates because they wont sell many
  • french toast - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link

    sorry galaxy nexus.
  • a5cent - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Joe Consumer might understand the differences, but isn't confident enough to make a decision and too disinterested to educate himself. The marketing push you speak of won't make any impact on Joe Consumer at all. But it will influence simpleton geeks and sales representatives. Joe Consumer will ask one or the other for help and get all the marketing BS repeated after which they will buy either an Android phone or an iPhone.
  • damianrobertjones - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    They can't. Most can barely switch on a computer let alone know where their router password resides.
  • ol1bit - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    I think Joe Consumer is getting smarter. Now your mom and dad, maybe not, but Joe consumer wants to do thing like listen to music and use gps, plus text at the same time or some such.

    And no matter how you cut it, a single CPU will stutter more than a dual core. So Joe consumer will see that.
  • notposting - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link

    Except that WP7 does those things without stuttering while Android still has those little delays, microstutters, "did it take the button push?" moments far too often even on dual cores.

    The GPU might not be the latest in the WP7 phones but at least they use it outside of the stray games here and there.
  • zorxd - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Well if you don't need a high end phone you can buy (second hand) last year's androids or iphones, they will be as good as WP7 devices that will be released this year.
  • a5cent - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Exactly! These GHz/Megapixel geeks really get on my nerves.

    The phone-camera-megapixel race is getting us ever higher sensor resolutions most of us don't need, all the while sacrificing light sensitivity and color accuracy (that doesn't even deserve the name anymore).

    The phone GHz race is getting us faster phones that are overall less efficient and barely last a day on one charge. Qualcomm is the only company that's focused on significantly improving per-core performance while everyone else want's higher clocks, all else be damned.

    High resolution screens have merits, but we have reached a point where improvements offer diminishing returns, all the while happily sacrificing contrast, brightness and battery life. We all know that mentioning screen resolutions on their own is absolutely meaningless, yet it's done all the time. The only thing we should ever need to mention is pixel density... and at what point each of us perceives the benefit of higher densities to not justify the cost.

    I have no illusion that people will be able to escape the bigger-number-is-always-better trap. However, apart from replacing the largely meaningless numbers found on today's spec sheets with something more indicative of actual performance and display quality (and have everything specified relative to power usage), I don't know how to do that. Ideas?
  • Exodite - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Average phone shoppers don't buy WP7 devices either, they buy what they know or are recommended.

    Which will be Android or iOS devices.
  • zorrt - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    I disagree.

    Average consumer will buy whatever the sales guys says is good and sales guys will often bring up the fact that this phone is dual core , has absurdly high resolution which makes it this much better than that other phone, and it made of superior material which makes it much better than that other phone.

    The average consumer won't notice any speed differences between phone A and B.
  • clarkn0va - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link

    "Average phone shoppers do not masturbate on gigahertz gigabytes and quad cores like you, they choose whatever is slick, smooth, fast, responsive, comfortable, easy to use and looking/feeling good"

    Awesome. That's exactly the tune Apple was singing in the 80's as their ship was sinking under Iceberg Microsoft.
  • neelaplohith - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link

    Well said dude :) ......its all about end user experience....device makers who understand this will survive and the rest will perish....
  • Kristian Vättö - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Nokia may concentrate on the middle-class market more. The high-end market is pretty crowded and requires that you update your phones fairly often. Single core and 800x480 are fine if the price is significantly lower too.
  • zorxd - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    That would be fine as long as they don't do like the first wave of WP7 devices and price them like high end phones.
  • Arsynic - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Who gives a shit what the specs are if it has all of the features and performs great? You spec whores never cease to amaze me!!!

    If a phone can do what the most powerful Android phone can do and then some, does it matter what's under the hood?

    All I care about is a great camera, 4G, a great browser and apps! If the phones had a 386 with a Voodoo 1 chip and ran better than Android, I would still buy it.

    If MS and Nokia can land these things at $100 with a contract that would be awesome and would undercut Google and Apple.
  • stm1185 - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    "Who gives a shit what the specs are if it has all of the features and performs great? "

    The average consumer who is looking to buy one and does not know the difference and is bombarded with marketing about dual core cpus and high res displays.
  • Andrew.a.cunningham - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Part of the reason you want to keep at least one eye on specs is future-proofness - since lots of contracts last for two years, you'll want it to keep getting updates and running well for at least that long (I think Apple has done right by the 3GS with iOS 5, and would like to see that sort of trend continue).
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    "All I care about is a great camera, 4G, a great browser and apps!"

    Guess you won't be getting a WP7 then.
  • rajopotamus - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    the people commenting that the avg user doesnt know are out of their mind. Their argumetns that the avg user doesnt know, is exactly why microsoft cant do this...THEY DONT THAT A SINGLE CORE WORKS AS WELL AS A DUAL CORE! They only know whats being marketed and what the majors trends are. Everyone else is doing higher resolution and dual cores....if you dont have it...then your product isnt as good...thats what they know...they know that barely anyone has windows phone, so SOMETHING must not be right...thats what they know.

    The argument that the avg person only cares about how it functions overall is so wrong. Are you telling me that the average joe wouldnt take a mercedes benz over a hyundai?? Even though both are really good cars at this point. WRONG...they arnt engineers and they dont know the technical differences between a 65k dollar hyundai equus and similarly equipped 150k S class...but they still want and will buy the S class. In this economy, luxury car makers are seeing an INCREASE in sales... because the people with money, are usually not the ones sitting on blogs all day... this is why the iphone sells! Its not always logical for tech people that follow this...but as an example in my profession...how much time do you think you would need to invest to make good medical decisions as a doctor...id probably call you a moron too...but rather than do that...you trust a doctor and listen to what they say... Thats what most people who dont want to specialize in every single thing in life, because hey have other obligations...do... In every field, you see how the unknowing people get manipulated and taken advantage of and marketed to... the best product is rarely the most marketed and best selling...
  • munky - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    By that definition, the original iphone should have been a colossal failure. Even the latest iphone 4s should have failed with its microscopic 3.5 inch screen and snail-speed network without LTE.
  • tipoo - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    I wonder if this will be metal like the N8 or polycarbonate like the N9. The N8's case was one of the most indestructable I've seen in a full touchscreen smartphone, whatever else you can say about the device.
  • haukionkannel - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Yes. This is not like Galaxy 2S, but if it is cheaper and if the battery last for example twice as long or longer due not so beefy CPU, this may be the phone that I have been looking for. (if it does work, and is durable enough...)
    I am guite sure, that there will be flagship models allso in mobile windows format, but real money is in the low and middle prized stuff, like in GPU market.
    Not so many have 590, but 560 is good enough and very popular and so on.
  • Spivonious - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Agreed. Pricepoint is what will make or break these phones. Hopefully they can keep them under $400 or under $100 with contract.
  • dtreader - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    The N9 is an exciting new phone that I'm very likely going to purchase, and would really love to read AnandTech's analysis...Thanks!
  • trivor - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Although WP7 doesn't NEED dual core there are a number of features that could probably USE dual core down the road (not everyone wants to by a new phone every 12-18 months). Better photo processing by the software. Web browsing can always be accelerated with the CPU/GPU combo. I'm sure they are working voice recognition (Tell me) to compete with SIRI and whatever Google is working on. There is no LTE for either Verizon or ATT. They have limited ram (don't tell me it can't use more RAM - only Apple can dictate that), it has limited storage with no expandibility (8 or 16 GB - even Apple a has 64 GB option) - don't tell me it's in the cloud because all the carriers are going to data tiers or throttling. And by the way the iPhone 4 doesn't NEED dual core either and yet the 4S shows some great increases in responsiveness of the OS, web browsing, etc. IF all MS wants to do is sell sub $100 budget phones then they'll do OK (maybe - their market share is still negligible (1%) after whole year. If they want to compete against Android and Apple they need better phones with better specs - not just to compete in the marketing wars. I'm not an Apple, Android or WP7 fanboy (in fact, currently looking to upgrade from WebOS - excellent OS that just ddn't make it). MS is treating this like XBox - if we stick in there long enough we'll get some market share because we have a great product - isn't going to work in the mobile space.
  • rogueagentsix - Thursday, October 20, 2011 - link

    Which one has the bigger GBs?
  • dcollins - Friday, October 21, 2011 - link

    I feel like a broken record because I have to say this over and over. The biggest advantage of having dual cores is RESPONSIVENESS, not performance. With two cores, you never worry about a system or background process slowing down the program you're using. Plus, one program can deadlock and consume !00% cpu and the system will remain responsive. This is more important on a full computer, but still an important consideration on phones and tablets.

    Once dual core SOC's become ubiquitous, I can also see Dalvik supporting things like garbage collection in a separate thread, which will give both better performance and responsiveness. Needless to say, dual core processors will have real advantages for regular consumers outside of technology nerds like us.

    PS. the nerd in a basement stereotype is getting really old; for all those well adjusted, society-contributing nerds like me and most of you all, please don't repeat it.
  • Belard - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link

    Thats a pretty nice looking phone.

    Will have to see how it looks and works in the real world. Its resolution would have to equal at least an Android screen, such as a Galaxy S.
  • Orionsbelt - Friday, October 28, 2011 - link

    Id pick it up. It's great looking. I prefer the apple like simplistic elegance in design too. It's not some black brick copy cat. I'll use my phone like a phone and my iPad 2 and pc for all else. Like the guy said: the average user don't give a rats ass about dual core PHONES for gods sake. Only wonks do. Two, three, ten cores who cares...it's a phone with a tiny screen, so there's only so much you'll want to do with it regardless of specs.

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