The handset that Nokia sent me was the black model that’s the first time come to market.  The Lumia 800 will soon be available in several colours including a very fetching pale blue.  It’s almost identical in the hardware to their recent MeeGo handset, the N9 and is very fetching too.  The glass expanse on the front that covers almost the entire front of the handset is extremely attractive and the build quality overall is of an extremely high quality.

Internally it’s a little better than other Windows Phones with a 1,400MHz processor, the usual 512Mb of RAM but a healthy 16Gb of storage.  There are also all the features you’d expect in a modern smartphone.  Externally the handsets sports a 3.7 inch AMOLED screen and an 8 MP camera with a Carl Zeiss Lens, usually the preserve of companies such as Sony, a a dual LED flash.

There is little doubt in my mind that the Lumia 800 is a thing of beauty and every bit as desirable as the Apple alternative, if not even more so.  When you actually live with the handsets though is the experience always as pleasurable?  I set about finding out.

The Lumia 800 has had a difficult birth.  When Microsoft and Nokia first announced their strategic partnership early this year there was a great deal of pressure already on the Finnish phone maker.  Their ageing Symbian operating system was failing in the market, their MeeGo platform with Intel was going nowhere and the company was admitting it was in trouble.  Nokia needed Microsoft as much as Microsoft needed Nokia.  This wasn’t a love-in, it was more like a desperate marriage to keep both parties afloat.

Despite a huge marketing campaign surrounding the Lumia 800 rumours have abounded of sluggish sales.  The company has also had to rush out a patch to fix an issue with poor battery life.

I was definitely looking forward to trying the Lumia 800 and have been looking forward to it for ages now, right from when I saw the first leaked images.

It’s a little heavier than some other Windows Phones, at 142g, and there’s not really any indication as to why as there’s not much more here than you’d find anywhere else.  Some people do like a slightly weighty phone though so they can feel it on their person.  It’s far from heavy though and will fit in a shirt pocket without sagging.

The screen is slightly disappointing.  It actually looks small under such a huge expanse of glass.  It’s lacking contrast too with whites looking a bit creamy on medium brightness.  Finally it suffers from the curse of all AMOLED screens with the live tiles in Windows Phone looking a little fuzzy around the edges if you get close.  The camera is a little disappointing too with images looking a bit washed out.  The camera with the Xenon flash on my Own HTC Mozart is far better and even the camera with an LED flash on the new HTC Titan is a big improvement over the Lumia.

I also have concerns about the USB socket.  This sits behind a plastic pop up flap on the top of the handset, next to the headphone jack.  The effect makes for a very clean outer but I can’t escape the nagging feeling that this flap will probably break over time, especially as you need to charge modern smartphones every day.The battery, like the iPhone, is non-removable but this shouldn’t be a problem for most.

It’s in the software though where this handset shines.  The Nokia Drive satnav app is by far the best addition with downloadable maps for most countries in the world available for free.  This enables you to use your phone as an in car or walking satnav without having to worry about maintaining a data connection.  This single app makes the Lumia 800 worth having on its own.  Elsewhere the custom Nokia software is less inspiring and mostly duplicates, though happily doesn’t replace, the in built Windows Phone apps for music and mapping.

So what do I think of the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone overall and am I disappointed?  In short I’m certainly not disappointed and I’m looking forward to using the phone in anger over Christmas and New Year.  It’s s perfect fit in the hand and very comfortable to hold when making calls, something not every Windows Phone is.  The software and hardware package overall is quite simply superb and the inclusion of a protectivive silicon rubber case and a low-profile charger means that for a first Windows Phone from Nokia I believe we can expect some very exciting things from the company going forward.

Firstly let’s look at the internals.  There’s a 1.5GHz processor and 512Mb of RAM running the thing, but the specifications are good.  To start with there’s a healthy 16Gb of RAM, though like other Windows Phones it’s non-upgradeable and an excellent 8MP camera with dual-LED flash.  All the extras you’d expect from a modern smartphone are there too with a range of sensors and other gadgets.

That screen too is excellent.  While not quite as bright as other Windows Phones it’s clear and easy to read even in direct sunlight.  Then comes the overall build quality.  I was a bit concerned about the back which has a section at the bottom which looks like it slides out and unclips to provide access to the battery and SIM card slot.  In fact it doesn’t and trying to force it could break the back of the handset.  Instead there’s a small clip that enables the entire back of the phone to come away.  I’m not convinced about how wise this is but the clip is solid and doesn’t look prone to breakage.

The front of the phone is almost all glass from edge to edge and it’s truly luxurious to behold if not hold.  At 131.5mm x 70.7mm x 9.9mm and 160g it’s big and bulky.  It’s a stretch for even my hand to hold and grip firmly and you’ll certainly notice it in a pocket.

You might find it odd then to hear that I absolutely love this phone.  Scaling up the operating system by around 30 or so percent brings new levels of clarity and usability to it.  All of a sudden things like the on-screen keyboard work properly almost all of the time, and everything else becomes much clearer to read and see.  There’s no pixelation at all in fact and the screen is almost crystal sharp.

So who might want the HTC Titan?  Well if you want a phone to keep in your jeans pocket then stay away otherwise you’ll look like you’ve got a stiff leg when you walk around.  There are a great many people for whom this phone is brilliant.  For starters there are people who want a proper PDA replacement.  With the full integration of Office and SkyDrive into Windows Phone with the new update, which is pre-installed, this phone is almost perfect for this role.

There are also people who may have motor or vision problems and who would carry their phone around in a bag anyway.  This is a huge market and if you’re one of these people you can be reassured there’ll be no squinting at this phone to read tiny text.  In fact for these groups of people I believe that the HTC Titan is a great introduction to smartphones and a product that very neatly and effectively fills an important hole in the Windows Phone market.

So overall I can safely say the HTC Titan won’t suit everybody’s needs, but for those people it helps, it will be a tremendous help indeed.

I’ll start this conversation by getting all teary-eyed.  It’s a huge pity that two operating systems as capable as MeeGo and WebOS both seem to be on their way out forever.  We all know that the worldwide smartphone market is easily big enough to support them, but support is the issue as it costs millions for companies to develop and maintain these operating systems.  This is money that Nokia simply don’t have and that HP may not be willing to pay.

But what will this mean for you in the coming years?  For the moment people who have iPhones seem to want the next iPhone when their mobile contract ends, and people who are on Android seem to like it too.  Windows Phone hasn’t yet been around long enough for anyone to reach the end of their first contract using it but RIM’s Blackberry’s also have a loyal following.

There are several main reasons for smartphone loyalty.  These include people being resistant to change and not wanting to learn something new, just getting really comfortable with an operating system and also having paid a lot of money for all those apps you won’t be able to port to a new OS.

But loyalty and favouritism for the operating system isn’t the whole picture.  There is also loyalty to the handset manufacturer.  Many people love Nokia, or HTC because they’ve always had a good experience with their phones.  Many more people like Sony Ericsson (soon to be just Sony) for their gaming integration and so on.

In the end though we all tire of the mundane and want a change occasionally.  This could mean iPhone users jumping ship to Android or Blackberry users jumping ship to Windows Phone.  In short, it could mean anything and there are a whole lot of factors to consider.  There is also the question of if you have loyalty to any one manufacturer and how you feel about this?  I’m very fond of HTC but I’ve owned phones by LG, Sony and others and all have been very good too.

So I’m interested ot ask here what platform you are currently loyal to, if indeed you’re loyal to one at all and what other ones you would consider in the future if you’ve even thought that far ahead?  To start I’ll say I’m very loyal to Windows Phone but, as and when I get bored I’d consider either the iPhone or a BlackBerry.  This would be for several reasons, I’m not happy with the malware problem that still exists on Android and while I don’t like iOS very much, you can’t easily complain about Apple’s hardware.  For BlackBerry, they’d have to produce another handset similar to the Storm, a full touchscreen as I’d never want a full QWERTY keyboard.

So what are your preferences?

This is not a widely advertised feature though and there’s no information before, during or after you update your phone to even let you know it exists.  I thought, with my new found ability to get screenshots on my own Windows Phone, that I’d write a short tutorial here for you on how to use this very useful, if not essential, new feature.

1)     Firstly you want to open Settings from the main apps menu

2)     When in the main settings panel, open Lock + Wallpaper

3)     You should now turn on the Password feature for the operating system

4)     Windows Phone will now ask you to enter a passcode, this will always be a numeric value.

5)     When you’re returned to the main Lock + Wallpaper screen, scroll to the very bottom of the screen and tab Require a Password After

6)     You can now select how long a period of time will pass, of up to 30 minutes, before Windows Phone activates the passcode.  Personally I prefer 30 minutes as the others are perhaps a bit short.  With this set you can check your phone regularly without having to worry it will lock you out and require the passcode to be entered every time.  However you will know that if you lose your phone it is very likely that the passcode will automatically turn on to protect your contacts, emails and files.

7)     It’s always a good idea to check the settings have been accepted afterwards.  Here you can see it’s accepted my 30 minute delay on the lock.

I can’t recommend enough that you turn on a passcode for your Windows Phone (or iPhone or Android Phone or Symbian Phone etc.) as we’re all now carrying around increasingly large volumes of data with us.

For example, Windows Phone 7.5 now allows you to easily access any files and documents you may have stored in Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service.  On mine I have all manner of word processor and spreadsheet documents, some of which contain personal and sensitive information.  It’s extremely useful being able to access these files on the move, but critical to know they’re also secure all of the time.  Even if this feature had been in the previous version of Windows Phone, I never would have used it without a good, strong password on the handset.

It can be royally annoying though when a phone asks you to enter your password every single time you pick it up, especially when you’re only doing something simple such as checking your email or updating Facebook.  With this new feature activated you can rest assured that your phone and data will always be safe… well, after 30 minutes anyway.

Now, website This is my Next is claiming a Microsoft insider is telling them that sometime in 2015 or 2016, ie. around the time Windows 9 will be due Microsoft will make a switch to put it’s core operating system on all their devices.  This would put it around the right time for a next generation Xbox to be introduced.

The plan, will mean there will be just one operating system across all these devices.  They are also saying that Microsoft is ‘seriously considering ditching the Windows brand name in favour of something new when this all goes down’.  So let’s have a look at what’s realistic and unrealistic here and try and put it all into some perspective.

It makes complete sense for Microsoft to want to bring a unified interface to all its devices.  This helps people get up to speed with them easily when they’ve used the interface on one device.  There are limitations to this however as there’s only so much porting that’s appropriate and workable.  The Windows 8 tablet interface isn’t suitable for day to day desktop working, and that won’t be going away by 2016.

It also makes complete sense to put one OS on all their devices, after all Apple have already been doing this for years.  The timing of this all boils down to which version of Windows finally pulls all the legacy code from its kernel.  If it’s Windows 8 then we can expect this to happen quite quickly, and indeed the CEO of Intel hinted way back in January that they will be making phones running Windows 8.

If this doesn’t happen for Windows 8 though, and we’ll find out for certain in September when the OS is unveiled, then it will definitely happen for Windows 9.  By this time we’ll see a unified launch for new Windows, tablets, smartphones and the Xbox.  This means that the first of these two rumours is nothing more than an educated guess that anybody with just a little current product knowledge would come to.

As for the other rumour, the ditching of the Windows brand, this is much less likely.  A couple of years ago if someone had suggested this then it might have been taken seriously.  At this point in time the Windows brand was mud after years of security scares with XP and the debacle that was Vista.  Now though Microsoft have pulled it around and, even though people thought using the brand on their new smartphone OS, after all the bad publicity Windows Mobile had received over the years, was a terrible idea, it doesn’t seem to have done them much harm at all.

Windows is a very strong brand with worldwide recognition, it’s up there with Coke and Ford.  It’s very unlikely then that Microsoft would want to drop the brand.  The sole exception here would be in gaming.  Xbox is also an incredibly strong brand so if there was to be a move to a single brand either Windows or Xbox would have to go.

I think it’s more likely that we’ll see the unified interface, and the same underlying OS, and the names remaining the same.  This is what Apple are doing with OS X and iOS and it’s not doing them any harm at all.

It’s is possible that Microsoft might bring back the name Windows Next however, which was the codename used for Windows 8.  If they were moving towards a unified platform and major a interface overhaul across their devices then this branding would make sense.

The thing to remember with these rumours though is that any discussions within Microsoft on branding will be taking place in quick words exchanged between meetings.  It’s simply far too early to decide what a product is going to be called, especially given that it will only exist in a very early Alpha at the moment, if at all.

A unified platform is a very exciting prospect though that can only have benefits for everyone, and we’ll no doubt hear much more about this in the next three years.

Here you can update and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents you have stored in the cloud and it’s the one feature I’ve been looking forward to the most.  I have for many years had spreadsheets that I want to use on the move and used this facility as far back at the late 90′s with handheld computers like the Psion Series 3.  Needless to say then I found that the omission of this feature from Windows Phone at launch, and the inability to be able to transfer and sync documents with PCs made the Office hub almost completely unusable for me, and a waste of time.

Now though I have full access to these spreadsheets.  I’ve stored them on SkyDrive ever since I first installed Office 2010 on my PCs.  The main reason for doing this was security, with the files not actually residing on my computers and hidden behind a password and encryption there, the theft of anything from my home wouldn’t reveal personal and critical financial data to others.  How could anyone resist the opportunity to make their financial data so secure!?  There was also the added benefit of having access to these spreadsheets on any device and from anywhere in the world.  This is something I have also found extremely useful when on trips and holidays.

What I really wanted though was to be able to carry these files around with me too, on my smartphone.  After all, this is what a smartphone is for isn’t it?

You would imagine then that now I have achieved spreadsheet nirvana I would be ecstatic and as happy as happy can be.  You might be surprised then to hear that I’m feeling quite the contrary.  In fact I’m now deeply concerned about the security of these files, and it all comes down the lack of adequate security features in the smartphone OS itself.

Now I won’t speak about iOS or Android here, though all smartphone and tablet operating systems have got some faults in this area.  I’ll concentrate here on Windows Phone.  With this operating system you have a simple choice between ease of use and secure and safe, but sadly it’s very difficult to have both together.

What upsets me so much is that true spreadsheet nirvana for me would be an incredibly simple thing to achieve, if only Microsoft would put in one or two tiny little features to the main lock screen on the OS and one more feature to their Office Live platform.

At the moment the way things stand is like this.  You have a choice of either a lock screen that you swipe up to unlock the phone, or a lock screen that swipes up to reveal a numeric keypad onto which you have to type a code.  The latter of these two options is fully secure but the former will just allow anybody access to all your files and data.

You would imagine then that I would have my phone behind a password, to be safe and secure.  I don’t do this though as I use my smartphone an lot, an awful lot in fact and for a great many different things.  The process of having to swipe the lock screen up and then type in a password is annoying, cumbersome and frankly too much to ask people to do.

This makes me think of Android phones I have used where unlocking the phone involves swiping your finger across the screen to make a pattern that you yourself can set.  This is what I would call secure and with this I would be very happy.  A very similar feature to this is being added to Windows 8, or so it appears, but so far (and we should remember that Mango is still in beta, though Microsoft have a history of only releasing ‘near final’ betas these days) there’s no similar feature in Mango at all.

What Mango does bring to the table is the option to only ask for the password after X minutes of inactivity.  The options only go up to 30 minutes however, which may seem fair enough.  It is at least a huge improvement over what we had before.  It’s not configurable enough for many people though and will need to be looked at.

Then there’s the problem that the phone will automatically show, on it’s Office hub main page, links to every file and document I store in Microsoft’s cloud services.  There’s no option to hide any or just show some.  It’s all or nothing with this OS!

The other problem resides with Microsoft’s Office Live service.  This service is still failing to support passwords on documents.  This would make the problem go away for me (though it still wouldn’t sort out everything else on my phone being easily accessible to a thief).  This means that anyone clicking a link to a file on my phone will find that the file just opens for them, straight away and without worry.

It amazes me then that security on Smartphones is still not being given the importance by many companies that it truly deserves.  We’re all doing more and more with our smartphones these days and many people are literally carrying their entire lives around in their pockets, unsecured and open to theft and abuse by anyone that finds or steals the handset.

This situation has simply got to change, and change quickly.  If Microsoft, Apple and Google are ever going to convince the world, especially business, that their smartphone platforms are ‘the way forward’ then they need to bring security front and centre.  Unless and until this happens we’re all in trouble.

The expanded features list comes courtesy of WPSauce.com and includes…

• AppChecker - a feature that will find appropriate applications in the marketplace to enable you to open X or Y file type that isn’t supported either natively by the device or by the software you have pre-installed.
• A special Battery Saving Mode which will be a boon for road warriors.  The phone will be able to be set to go into a special low-power mode when the battery reaches a certain percentage.  This will cut off apps, stop the syncing of emails and more to help conserve the life of the handset.
• Deeper Facebook Integration which will be very welcome along with the addition of support for Twitter and LinkedIn.  This will include such things as check-ins and events which will be piped through to your people hub and your calendar.
• Better Email features include threaded conversations and the ability to flag emails.
• The Calendar gets support for lunar dates to help the phone expand sales in Asia.
• Messaging gets additional features too including nudging people and multi-party conversations.
• It’s Office where some of the biggest and most welcome changes are taking place.  In addition to Skydrive support there will be Microsoft’s new Lync communications platform coming to the app store.
• Finally Connectivity gets a major boost with support for manual IP address setting (essential in business) and far better networking support, including the ability to join hidden wifi networks.  There will be no VPN support in this update however.

There’s little doubt that nearer the time to the final release of the software there will be much more to pour over in this update, and it’ll be a big one.  Possibly the one that brings this smartphone platform into the mainstream.

Much of this will rest on how successful Microsoft are in fixing the problems with business support including issues with Exchange usernames and Outlook syncing.

The error, commonly 801811A5 for those who are interested, is caused by the Zune desktop software hasn’t enabled a particular service in Windows when you’ve set up your Windows Phone.  Fortunately it’s extremely easy to fix.

If you find that your Windows Phone won’t update when it’s telling you that an update is available, follow these simple instructions.

1. In the Start Menu search box type services
2. When it appears in the search results, run Services, you’ll see it has a small cog icon
3. In the window that appears, navigate down the list of services until you find System Event Notification Service.
4. The problem is commonly caused by this service not running, so do one of two things here (or both)
   1. Right click on the service and select Start from the context menu that appears
   2. Right click on the service and select Properties from the context menu that appears, then in the properties dialog that appears change the startup type to Automatic.

Starting the service will help make sure the current update will install, but additionally changing the startup type to automatic (you will probably find it’s currently set to manual) will prevent the error from recurring.

Many people have yet to receive any notification that even the first of these two updates is available to them.

Now Microsoft have published details of when mobile carriers worldwide will be issuing the updates to consumers. The website which you can find here categorises each update as being in Testing, Scheduling or Delivery.

The testing phase doesn’t carry a time-limit though it’s widely agreed that this should be one month maximum. The website defines the scheduling phase as typically lasting 10 days or less, though personal experience has taught me that this phase can go on for much longer depending on which carrier you are with.

The website covers carriers worldwide, though has a seperate page of information for users in the US where the updates are listed by handset rather than carrier.

The website isn’t a difinitive guide as even when an update is in the delivery phase it could still take several weeks for carriers to deliver the update with Microsoft. The problems users of Samsung handsets received with the first update roll-out, where to up 10% of updated handsets had to be returned to the carrier to be reset, will have slowed matters considerably as this is a very time-consuming and costly process, and there would be some debate about where the blame and, therefore the final bill, would end. Whether this be with the carrier, handset manufacturer (in this case Samsung) or with Microsoft for their coding.

The new features include…

• Twitter Integration in the People Hub.
• Support for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that are stored on Microsoft;s cloud services.  Currently Windows Phone 7 only suports OneNote in this regard.
• IE9 Mobile with HTML5 support for the phone browser
• Multi-tasking for third-party applications

These features are all slated for later in the year but the first update has now been confirmed for release in early March and will include CDMA support.

What’s not been mentioned is better Exchange integration and support.  Ironically for a Microsoft product this is somewhat lacking in the operating system so far and is the reason why Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets are still selling.  Microsoft have said nothing about this but they badly need to provide a better experience for corporate and business users if they are to gain market share.

Also in the press release Microsoft said they had sold 2 million phone OS licences in the first two months, though how many of those licences are currently in use by the public remains to be seen.  They also said that Windows Phone is being used by 60 mobile operators in 30 countries, which, let’s be honest is worth shouting about.

They also said that their app marketplace now has 8,000 apps and 28,000 registered developers.

Many employees didn’t like this announcement though, primarily the 1,500 workers employed on the Symbian side of the company who are now worried about their own futures. Many of these workers all took advantage of flexi-time to leave work early yesterday, apparently in protest at the wholesale move to Windows Phone.

Bloomberg reported that shares in the company fell 14% today, which is the largest drop for the company since last summer.

 It’s not all bad news though, as the first concept image of a Nokia Windows Phone have leaked to Engadget, you can see it below.  I think you’ll agree that if Nokia release handsets that look this good then the fortumes of both Nokia and Microsoft can be turned around.

Nokia has had mixed fortunes in recent years and its CEO was forced to admit they’d fallen years behind their rivals.  While the company was working on a new smartphone OS, MeeGo, it could never have had it market-ready in time to get back in the race.

Nokia is still the world’s largest phone manufacturer and needs to maintain this position.  So far uptake of Windows Phone has been lukewarm.  This is due to a combination of factors that include smartphone fatigue, Android’s current dominance and a poor set of enterprise features.  Nokia is the partner Microsoft need to make Windows Phone trendy.  It looks very much from this image that Nokia will not be letting them down.

The cause for the delay is apparently last-minute changes that Microsoft has implemented.  Carriers also need two or three weeks to test the update before it can be sent out to users.

It was expected that Microsoft would release the update in time for the World Mobile Congress conference which begins in a little over a week, now though it’s expected that Microsoft will instead use the event to formally announce the release date for the update.

Microsoft have never specified a firm date for any Windows Phone updates, merely saying the first would be out in “early 2011″.  The company really does need to move away from the occasional “service pack” updates it’s been used to delivering for Windows desktop and server systems, and provide more frequent updates to its smartphone platform to keep users happy.

The news which was being broken by LiveSide today could appear on that day.  The update is going to bring cut and paste and some performance improvements.  This would put the release of the update a week before the World Mobile Congress event and, consequently, stop people asking when it would be out throughout the entire event.

Steve Ballmer is set to give a keynote at the event at 5pm GMT on Monday 14th February where he’ll be talking up Windows Phone and perhaps giving us some insight into where Microsoft intends to take the platform in the next couple of years.

While copy and paste isn’t likely to be the feature most people really need on their mobile phones I have to admit that I would have found it useful a few times in the last couple of month’s I’ve had my own Windows Phone handset.

There are no other features expected, the rest of the update will fix bugs, but the full update has now been with developers for a while.  This means that while there is no confirmation of the February 7th date, it does make sense for Microsoft and is in the timescale that we’ve all been expecting.

We’ll bring you more news on the first and any future Windows Phone updates as and when they break.

Most complaints about the data leaks were form the US and Microsoft said it was affecting on a “low-single digit” percentage of customers.

Now the company has completed its investigation into the leak and has reported that it’s a “third party” service that’s responsible.

Microsoft are refusing to name the culprit, though they are saying that “We are in contact with the third party to assist them in making the necessary fixes.” and that in the interim they were looking at “potential workarounds” to the problem.  One workaround for instance could involve the developer of said app coming clean and users uninstalling it until a new, bug-free, version can be released.  This could cause a company tremendous harm however in the long term which is what Microsoft are clearly trying to avoid.

It’s still also possible at this stage that the offending app has been written and deployed either by a carrier, AT&T have been mentioned, or by a handset manufacturer.

At this stage though it’s anybodys guess and its unlikely that Microsoft will ever spill the beans.  A software update for the offending software will appear and it’s possible that only if its a carrier’s fault will we find out.  They would do this to make sure that none of their customers are billed for the excess usage.

Either way it’s good to know the fault has been found and better to know that it’s not a serious flaw with the operating system itself.  We’ll keep you updated if and when further news about this is released.

On the bad news front, somebody has produced a proof of concept program that steals every one of those programs, free or paid for, from the Windows Phone Marketplace and downloads them for you to use free of charge.  Admitted no Windows Phone has enough installed memory to run them all, and who would want to, but for those few people who like pirating stuff and getting everything for free, this will be tempting.

Fortunately the developer of the hack is actively working with Microsoft on this to block the hack and the beginning of the new year should see changes made to the underlying architecture of the Marketplace which will see this blocked.  This is a white hat hack and will not be released into the wide world.

What’s concerning though is that Microsoft have, for their online services at least, a formidable reputation for security.  Hotmail has only faced 1 or 2 major exploits in its entire 15 year life and their server products and server security products are better than they’ve ever been before.

This crack for the marketplace was apparently put together very quickly and easily however, which raises serious questions about Microsoft’s security for the marketplace.  It’s not just apps that are kept here but details of the app developers, including financial information used to transfer royalty payments to them.

Hopefully Microsoft will act quickly over this holiday period to avoid a serious data leak.  In the mean time a video demonstrating the software used to crack the marketplace is available at NeoWin.

The best way to start is to discuss why I went with Windows Phone 7.  I want to be frank here, I both love and hate smartphones with equal measure.  I like being able to do a little light web browsing and check and update Facebook and Twitter, but primarily I want a phone to be a phone.  This is the overriding concern I have about modern smartphones, they’re simply not phones first!

So what do I mean by this.  Well I discounted both iOS and Android because the former monopolises your main screen with icons for maps, games, utilities and more while relegating the actual phone features to a couple of small icons on the screen.  The latter is even worse, treating your phone’s screen like a desktop with a mouse cursor and widgets.  I have enough trouble sometimes with my desktop on my PC at home.  The last thing I wanted to do was translate those problems onto a tiny 4 inch screen and exacerbate them further.

Windows Phone on the other hand does things differently.  You don’t, for example, ever have to go into a Facebook app if you don’t want to.  All the information you need about your friends is right there in your contacts lists (we can also look forward to twitter and other services being integrated here in the future).  The OS also prioritises the phone functions of the device.  While any smartphone OS will live or die on the quality and quantity of the apps available for it, Windows Phone shunts these off, by default, to a second screen.  This is where I want them to be.

The other reason for wanting a phone that works in this way is that I use my mobile phone mostly as a clock and calendar.  For the last couple of years I’ve been struggling along with an HTC Touch HD Windows Mobile handset.  I’ve upgraded the firmware many times to try and make the thing more usable and some firmware implementations have almost worked in that regard.  The thing I’ve always liked the most about it though is simply being able to switch it on and see at a glance the time and any forthcoming appointments.  Android can do this, but with widgets, the iPhone won’t do this at all, and I believe Windows Phone does this best of all.

Then there were the Symbian handsets from Nokia and Sony Ericsson.  These were all discounted early on because the OS is simply not up to the polish that iOS, Android and Windows Phone have.  Palm’s WebOS was also discounted because the OS is in such a dubious place right now that future updates and support are uncertain.

The HTC Mozart Windows Phone

So what about the handsets?  Here is where I faced a real problem because without a shadow of a doubt, the iPhone and many of the current Android handsets are much better than the first batch of Windows Phones.  Phones such as the HTC Desire have been picked up by many of my friends because they’re just so good.  Indeed I’ve been very impressed by the build quality of HTC handsets in general.  The iPhone 4 though is also a fantastic piece of design and a wonderful handset I’d be delighted to have in my pocket.  It had to be a Windows Phone though so I had to make a choice.

My own carrier in the UK is Orange which gave me a choice of three.  The HTC Mozart, the Samsung Omnia 7 and the LG Optimus 7.  The LG was out straight away as I feel the plasticky buttons along the bottom of the screen are both cheap (in look and feel) and will eventually break.  Both the Mozart and the Omnia are excellent handsets but I wasn’t strictly tied to Orange so I had a look at the other carriers.

The HD 7 I felt had a very poor screen, it felt pale and washed out, so this was discounted early on.  The only other handset available was the HTC Trophy on Vodafone that feels like the poor cousin of the Mozart.  So sticking with Orange it was.

This is where the choice became very difficult and let me tell you why.  I had a Mozart for 10 days a couple of months ago when Microsoft sent me a review unit.  It’s a lovely phone, the gorgeous metal case and its smallish size make it an absolute pleasure to pick up and hold.  Because it’s not too big, with a 3.7 inch screen, it feels like a phone and not a computer too.

There is one major flaw with the Mozart though and it almost became a deal-breaker for me.  Because Windows Phone will let your switch off the phone simply by pressing and holding the power button, with no on-screen prompt to turn it off as well, this is exactly what happened every time I sat down to put my shoes on (I keep my phone in my front trouser pocket).  It is hugely irritating finding out your phone has switched off AGAIN just because you’ve sat down and leant forward!

This made me seriously consider the Omnia 7, one of only two Windows Phone handsets (and the only one in the UK) to come with an AMOLED screen.

This screen is an absolute joy.  It’s incredibly bright and the contrast is clear between blacks and whites.  But even this fantastic AMOLED screen isn’t without its problems.  At 4 inches it’s a little large for its resolution and a sort of fuzzy pixellation can occur around the edges of icons and the Windows Phone live tiles on the front screen.

It’s not noticable at a distance but for close work, which is what you do with a mobile phone most of the time, I knew that looking at these fuzzy edges and knowing that the operating system is really drawing a straight line, would annoy me.

There was also the build quality of the phone.  It’s made from solid-feeling metal but has a cheapness to the edging and the back that just could have been done better.  It’s just not up to HTC’s high standards and the large Samsung logo plastered across the front is too large to have to look at every day for the next couple of years.

Even so it was a close run thing.  The Mozart’s power button issue meant I had to consider the Omnia very seriously indeed (the Omnia’s power button is on the side), taking friends to my local Orange store to see it for themselves and reading review after review of it online (I’d already had a Mozart so knew what to expect with that handset).

In the end the HTC Mozart simply came out with more pros than the Samsung.  The only other choice was to wait and see what additional handsets came down the line in the next few months.  It was at this point though that I looked back at Windows Mobile 6.5 on my HTC Touch HD and knew I had to run away screaming and embrace a new handset whatever it’s foibles.

There can be no doubt that the second generation of Windows Phone handsets will improve on and fix these problems and be far better.  They will probably challenge the current crop of Android handsets, though whether anything will be a serious challenger to the hardware of the iPhone in the next few years is debatable at this point.

So there it is, laid out in bare metal for you why I chose my Mozart.  It can be such a difficult decision these days choosing a handset and the reason I wanted to write this up as an article is two-fold.  Firstly there may be some of you out there about to go through the same agony, but also because it’s just supposed to be a phone…  Why should this be a difficult choice?

There is no doubt that smartphones have made choosing handsets increasingly difficult, but I’m happy with mine now and it should be delivered tomorrow  :)  You can read my full in-depth review of the HTC Mozart and the Windows Phone 7 operating system at our sister site Windows7News.

A video which you can see here shows shows Google’s Andy Rubin showing off a prototype Motorola tablet running the OS which is very unlike the Android I’ve come to know.

Honeycomb will be released next year and proves that Google is taking the tablet form-factor seriously, and far more seriously than companies such as Microsoft.  The OS has none of the familiar Android buttons and a much more streamlined user interface.

Rubin says the OS also includes new APIs which allow split-view applications, much as were introduced in iOS with the iPad.  These will allow applications to be split into multiple views.  He then goes on to describe something that sounds remarkably like Microsoft’s new Metro UI on it’s Windows Phone platform.

I’ve been holding off buying a tablet because I knew that big changes would be coming in 2011, and here’s the proof.  This looks to be a very exciting product and if it’s even half as good as the video suggests, I’ll be a complete convert.

This is fantastic news as many commentators, no myself I might add, are saying that this platform will live or die on the number and quality of its apps, just as iOS and Google Android will.  I’m not one of those people because these commentators, who are all techies let’s face it, are overlooking the glaringly obvious fact that people need a mobile phone first.  Even if the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone handsets had no apps AT ALL, people would still buy them in great numbers.  On this score I personally believe, because I’ve used all three, that for casual mobile phone users Windows Phone has the edge over the competition.  I’ve been made to eat my words before though, so we’ll see how it goes over the next year or so.

In other Windows Phone news, tech blogger and author Raphael Rivera and Chris Walsh have released the first unlocker for the platform, which if you’re so inclined you can download here.  While the idea of an unlocked mobile OS is a tempting one for some power users who want to be able to install whatever apps they want on the device, I wouldn’t recommend that anybody actually unlock their phone, be it a Windows Phone or an iPhone, at all.

The reason for this is that an unlocked phone is an insecure phone that is vulnerable to all types of malware.  We’ve already seen examples of this on the iPhone and criminals will be sure to quickly take advantage of this new gap in Windows Phone’s security.

The other reason is simply that you’ll invalidate your warranty on the device so if it breaks during the first year or so you could be faced with a $500 charge for a replacement.  Like I say, be very careful before choosing to unlock your phone.

Now Engadget have discovered that the Windows Phone OS makes permanent changes to a card that can prevent it from being read, written to or formatted on any other device.

Samsung have documented the feature for the Focus, saying that inserting a MicroSD card into a Windows Phone can be considered a “pernament modification” adding ”it will no longer be readable or writable on any other devices such as computers, cameras, printers, and so on”.

Microsoft too has warned of the permenant change, though it’s not entirely clear exactly what the OS is doing to the card.  Engadget say…

”The Windows Phone 7 operating system treats the SD card as an integrated part of the phone. This is in contrast to other devices, where you can use an SD card to increase the memory available to the device at any time or to transfer files to other devices,” the page reads.

Meantime, AT&T has warned customers via Engadget that only ”Certified for Windows Phone 7” microSD cards should be used in Microsoft’s mobile devices. The reason, according to the mobile carrier, is that the Windows Phone platform ”requires a certified high-speed microSD card for optimal performance.”

At present, no such ”certified” cards exist and no indication has been given as to when they will hit store shelves. According to Microsoft support documents, certification comes down to more than just ”a simple matter of judging its speed class.”

”Several other factors, such as the number of random read/write operations per second, play a role in determining how well an SD card performs with Windows Phone 7 devices,” the page reads.

 The lack of clarity over the expandability of Windows Phone handsets could damage sales of handsets from people looking to harness the on-board Zune software to use their phone as an MP3 music and video player.

If you missed any of the previous parts of this review, you can catch up with them here…

Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 1 – Unboxing
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 2 – Setup & The OS in General
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 3 – The Main Apps
Windows Phone 7 Review, Part 4 – Living with Windows Phone

But the time has finally come for a verdict on the OS and my recommendation on whether you should actually buy one.

Now I’d like to think that I’ve praised Windows Phone 7 where it deserved it, and criticised it where it didn’t deserve any.  One thing is very clear and this is that Windows Phone is 7 a version 1 product.  The mistakes and problems that exist are all minor, Microsoft have released a much more polished OS than Apple managed with the first iPhone, and I would expect some of these problems to be fixed early in the new year and the rest by the end of 2011.  e can be certain that, for the next year at least, updates to this phone will be regular and frequent.

For the last part of this review I want to focus on switching to Windows Phone for owners of various different mobile phone operating systems and handset types.

You can read the rest of this review at Windows7News.