There is a post going around the internet written by SamKB on a site called MySymbian.com called 101 Reasons Not to Buy a Windows Phone. Not shockingly it is extremely biases and Anti-WindowsPhone. I decided to take it point by point and just debunk the bigger “Facts” on it that are not really facts. Come with me won’t you?

I am just going to put down the “fact” with the it’s corresponding number on the original post and why it’s not a fact.  Mind you I didn’t look into all the “facts” on the original post I just corrected what I knew off the top of my head so I am sure more of these 101 Reasons are also not true I just don’t have the time right now to research it.

4. No micro-SD card support.

Not true even the 1st Gen Samsung Focus takes up to a 32 Gb card and Windows Phone 8 will let the manufacture decide if they want to use micro-SD card support or not .

8. Your contact details are automatically uploaded to cloud service whether you like it or not.

By cloud service he means your Windows Live account and it’s great when you change phones.

9. Limited to 800×480 resolution.

Getting fixed with WP8

10. No wi-fi hotspot.

Not True that Nokia Lumia 900 is a wifi hotspot with all the Lumias to follow. So this is manufacturer choice not a limit of the OS itself same could be said about Android, Symbian, Bada, MeeGo, iOS, Tizan, BB10, etc…

11. Cannot use any MP3 file as ringtone except those with strict constraints.

Not true there are many 3rd party apps that fix this.

14. Cannot sync directly with Outlook without syncing to Cloud

Not like those other email servers that don’t use the internet at all to get your email.  WHAT? This one is just confusing. Does he mean it when you delete an email on your phone it does it also on your computer?

19. No centralized notification page.

Expect for the lock and your tile page

21. The idle screen is completely blank and cannot display time or notifications.

Not true when you get a text message it gets pushed to the lock screen

27. Cannot silence ringtone or alarm by flipping the phone.

Not true you can on the Nokia Lumia 610 and it coming to the other Nokia phones as well.  This is manufacturer choice not a limit of the OS itself

29. Cannot be upgraded to WP8 (Apollo)

Not true Nokia’s US president just stated that Lumia would be getting “Major update” coming soon. Which is WP8.

USABILITY ISSUES

30. No always visible status bar for battery life, signal strength, carrier, 2G/3G wi-fi, Bluetooth on.

Hmmm…the phone tile shows if you have signal and all you have to do is tap the top of the screen for battery life.

31. Taskmanager has no option to shut down apps you don’t want running in the background.

There is an option for this  Go into settings, pick applications, than background tasks!  TaDa!

33. Lockscreen need to be activated to show missed call/sms notification.

Not true if phone is “sleeping” notifications will pop up also if you are using the phone.

34. No way to close an app except pressing back button all the way to the first screen.

Not True….if you push the Home button, the back button, the search button, or the lock button the program closes, and saves a it’s spot for next use. So pretty much ANY BUTTON will close a program.

35. Tiny fonts in messages is very hard to read for those over 45.

Really? By tiny font you mean a full text message can take up to half the real estate on my screen? How much bigger do you want it?

39. Cannot close music player, can only pause. Music player on lockscreen will stay until you reboot. Be careful not to touch it in a meeting.

Unless of course you download a free app that does this oddly enough it’s called “Stop the music”

40. No draggable progress bar for current track playing and no indication which track in an album is currently playing…

What? It tells you what song is playing on the lock screen and the music player itself!  As for no draggable progress bar if you hold down on the skip track button it does the same thing.

41. Cannot lock screen orientation.

Umm..yeah so only apps work in landscape mode so no need to lock the screen.

42. Online and phone contacts are mixed together with no ability to filter.

Not true try using the options menu.  You can have just your contacts, your contacts and Windows Live contacts, Your contacts, Windows Live contacts and Facebook…you get the point.

43. Cumbersome dialing with no smartdial. Not able to enter alphabets into dialer for name lookup.

Not true…Rap dialer free app does exactly that!

44. Cannot save draft sms messages.

Unless you don’t send the text than it saves it Automatically for you.

46. Cannot recognize phone numbers in sms or email to save or use as calling number.

Unless of course you edit your contacts to do this.

47. Text messages can only be deleted one by one or the whole thread.

??? How else would you do it?

50. Apps are listed alphabetically with no way to group by category. Can be hard to find if you don’t remember the name.

Windows Phone 8 has folders coming also..Plus you can pin whatever you want to your start screen.

51. Calendar scheduler has no weekly view and monthly view is non-zoomable.

No monthly view unless of course you hit the icon that looks like a calendar.  (That one is tough to figure out I know)

52. No peak time/off-peak time scheduling for email downloads to prevent unnecessary email downloads at overnight.

So this is an issue how? My Windows Phone will let me know I have an email when someone sends it to me?  Such a horrible feature!

53. If both wi-fi and data connection are available which one it chooses to use is unpredictable. User experiences don’t agree with Microsoft that it “typically” choose wi-fi over 3G.

Not True you can shut off either one at any time therefore you can pick which one to use.

FEATURE LIMITATIONS

54. No video call.

Hello…..Skype?

62. No auto wallpaper changer and no app to do it.

Again of course unless you want it to and download the free app that does it.

65. FM radio doesn’t work on speaker.

Because you can’t get any radio stations on I heart Radio right?

66. IE browser has no text reflow, no download capability and no offline reading.

Right unless it’s the last page you read on the internet and you push the back arrow and choose that tile. So it pretty much does do it.

68. No built-in pdf file reader, need a separate app.

The Horror!!  I have to download a free app!

72. No native Google maps and Bing maps is useless for most countries outside U.S.

Not true…There is Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, HTC GPS, ATT’s GPS, etc….

73. Email time stamp does not show the year.

Really? Now we are just reaching

74. Wide difference in apps availability in different markets and users locked to one market??

So those apps that will tell what the weather will be in India I can’t get here stateside?  There will ALWAYS be apps tailored to specific market.  Symbian has a TON  of them.

DUMB AND DUMBER

77. Wi-fi disconnects when screen sleeps. Too bad if you are in the middle of a download.

Ahh…phone continues download on wifi when it goes to sleep.

79. Can only enter one mobile phone no. for each contact. Mobile nos. entered in other fields will not accept sms.

So all those people you know with 13 cell phone numbers are out of luck!!

80. Cannot send/receive MMS without enabling 3G data connection. MMS does not use 3G data.

This one is just confusing…I can’t send MMS without enabling data connection so it clearly uses it to get the MMS (how else would you get it?)  but it doesn’t use the MMS data contection?

81. Phone cannot be charged when off.

True but who cares?

82. Need to be plugged in to wall charger to sync wirelessly.

Again True but who cares?  (This list was made to compare to Symbian and Symbian doesn’t sync wirelessly at all.)

83. Oversized fonts for headings with cut off words treat you like an idiot

Umm…IT’S A HUB!! the screen you can see is one out of many.

84. Phone will wake up and display sms content on lockscreen when locked – a privacy violation.

Hold up lets go back to number 21. ” The idle screen is completely blank and cannot display time or notifications.”   You can’t tell me that it doesn’t do it than complain that it does!!

85. Phone can be rebooted without entering security code.

Unless of course you want it to and choose that in the options screen.

FEATURES EVEN DUMB PHONES HAVE BUT WP7.5 DOESN’T

86. No bluetooth file transfer.

Tango update fixes this.

92. Call history does not group calls by contact.

Unless of course you make a group in tile on the homescreen than it does it all day long.

93. Call history does not show the time of call for calls older than current day.

What?  It does this I just checked.

94. Cannot set custom sounds for different types of notifications.

Again What?  I have a different sound for calls, texts, emails, a special ring tone for my wife, for my one friend, etc…

96. No silent option (no vibrate and no ring) from ringer menu. Need a trip to settings and another trip to revert.

Half true touch the volume button and than push the button that pops up to do just that on your screen. So you don’t have to go into the ringer menu it can be done from ANYWHERE on your phone at ANYTIME.  Super inconvenient right?

99. Cannot save contact to SIM card.

Because it saves to your Windows Live acct automatically …remember your own rant about it in number 8?

As you can see Windows Phone does a TON of things that the original post claims it does not do. Again these were just things I know off the top of my head. If I can rebuke almost of half these claims without ANY RESEARCH AT ALL how do you think the other half of the claims hold up?

It is true that Windows Phone doesn’t do everything that Symbian does…but it’s a young OS and with Nokia on board now I have a feeling that Windows Phone 8 will address many of the outstanding  issues.

It looks like even though Nokia can’t catch a break from the rating credit rating gurus it seems the general population is starting to give Nokia some love again. The white version of  Nokia Lumia 900 just came out for AT&T and they are already having a hard time keeping it in stock. This white version of the Lumia 900 just became officially available on Sunday and is already out of stock.

Also the cyan version is still out of stock on the official AT&T website. (however at time of publishing Amazon.com still had them in stock) This means that AT&T is out of stock of two out of the three versions of the Lumia 900 device. I was wondering if perhaps Nokia just didn’t make enough of these phones and in my searches I ran across this from Nokia President Stephen Elop stating that they “can’t make the them fast enough.”  While these they of statements are expected from the president of a company, demand still seems to be strong for this device.

I am of the opinion that Nokia was not really expecting this wave of Lumias to take over the smartphone world. They were just expecting them to be the beachhead that gets them back into the US Market. By looking the buzz the Lumia 900 has created and the limited information we have on sales numbers it seems they have already succeeded at that.

VIA

We already learned earlier this week that Verizon has plans to push Windows Phone to make it “Third Eco-System” however recently Reuters put out a report in which we learn a little more.

Quick recap: Last week Verizon’s CFO Fran Shammo came out and stated that Verizon will soon actively push Windows Phone in hope of bring in a Third Eco-System to compete with Android and Verizon’s number one loss leader the iPhone.

Now we find out that they will only start pushing Windows Phone when it evolves into Windows Phone 8.  Also we learned “that Verizon Wireless expects to have phones based on the next Microsoft software in time for the 2012 end of year holiday shopping season” and is ramping up for a big push than.

To quote Shammo:

“We’re really looking at the Windows Phone 8.0 platform because that’s a differentiator. We’re working with Microsoft on it.

So even though Microsoft never officially put out a time frame for Widnows Phone 8 one can concluded that Microsoft will have WP8 ready by November of 2012 at the latest.  Windows Phone is finally starting to pick up steam and Microsoft worked long and hard to Verizon on the Windows Phone train.  You can be sure that they will do everything in their power to make sure that the nations number one carrier Verizon gets it’s WP8 phones in time for the holiday season.

Nokia Lumia 900 was released a couple of days ago and is selling like a hot cake, but some owners are experiencing issues with data connectivity on the phone. It seems that guys at winsource.com found a way to temporarily fix the problem.

Check the video after the break

Some phones are shipped without correct APN info, so you have to add your own. The correct info to enter is:

APN = wap.cingular
USER = wap@cingulargprs.com
PASS = cingular1

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Yesterday HTC updated their Locations application and now allows you to download maps for offline use for various countries around the world.

Check the video comparison after the break

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wldMy-3ArCw

The GPS navigation speaks to you with voice prompts that tell you where to go (walking or driving) even if you don’t have an internet connection. HTC Locations also has a wider breadth of features that many will find useful, while Nokia Drive is very basic and simple.

However, while Nokia Drive provides you free lifetime maps, HTC Locations offers only a free trial period of 30 days counting on the download day. After this testing period, you will have to buy extended licenses in-app per country/region. For ex. :

US and Canada $7.99/30 days, $29.99/1 year, $39.99/unlimited

US only $4.99/30 days, $19.99/1 year, $29.99/unlimited

Canada only $4.99/30 days, $19.99/1 year, $29.99/unlimited

Western Europe $9.99/30 days, $37.99/1 year, $49.99/unlimited

Note: To download the maps your phone has to be plugged into a PC or a wall charger.

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The long awaited Audible app is coming to Windows Phone. Currently is in private beta stage, and is expected to arrive in Marketplace in next few weeks.

Check the video overview of the upcoming Audible app for Windows Phone after the break

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD6vfehr3Do

Features:

-Primary Live Tile that flips with recent history on the back

-Secondary Live Tiles based on book title; enables 1-touch playing of audio; flips to show bookmark history

-Configurable “jump back” feature to re-hear a section (default is 30 seconds)

-Button – less playback which uses gestures instead of buttons to control the audio

-Badges and statistics viewer

-Sharing of book info and general news via the Windows Phone built in social networks

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Microsoft has raised the stakes to $1000 in their Smoked by Windows Phone challenges running at their Microsoft stores.

This weekend you have a chance to win a Hunger Games Special Edition PC, valued at over $1000 if you phone wins the speed challenge. If you lose you will be offered to swap your current phone (iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handsets) for a Windows Phone (excluding a Nokia Lumia 800 however) without any contract.

The $1,000 Windows Phone challenge starts today in Microsoft stores across the US, and will end on March 29th.

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Today Microsoft launched their first Windows Phone in China, the biggest mobile phone market in the world.

The press conference was held in Beijing where Microsoft introduced the operating system and their new Chinese language interface for Windows Phone.

The first Windows Phone handset on the Chinese market is HTC Eternity (rebranded HTC Titan), it features a 4.7 inch WVGA display, 8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front-facing camera, 1.5GHz single-core processor, and 16GB of internal memory, and is available as a free market phone.

Nokia will hold a special press conference in China next week on the 28th of March, where we will see the Lumia series variants for this market.

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Damian Dinning,  the head of the Nokia camera division over Twitter confirmed that a native Panorama application for Lumia 800?s camera is on its way.

According to rumors and analysis of leaked ROMs update should include image quality improvements and plenty of new features, but still there is not an official statement about its release.

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Marko Ahtisaari, Design Chief at Nokia confirmed that the company is working on Windows 8 tablet.

In an interview for Finnish magazine Kauppalehti Optio, Ahisaari said that he spends a third of his time on creating a tablet. Availability is expected to coincide with the launch of Windows 8 and we can hope to see the tablet in action at Nokia World in Helsinki, Finland, on September 25-26. In a separate article by the Finnish newspaper, Ahtisaari also said that Nokia was working on a “revolutionary phone” that he says that when the device is ready, “people don’t have to look down to use it and poke their finger at it.”

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