Mobile phones & tablets thread

Yep you can't transfer apps between OSes on phones. They are incompatible in the same way as applications on desktop OSes are. So yes, if you change your OS you'll have to buy your apps again. Which is to the advantage of the smartphone OS producers so you won't leave!

I had this issue with going from Symbian to iPhone, but I didn't have many apps for my N97. The one exception to the above was the Viewranger mapping application, I had to pay again for the app itself but they allowed me to transfer the maps I'd originally purchased for my Nokia, which is good as they were like £150 worth and them coming out with that was the final push towards me getting an iPhone.

And I must have bought TomTom in one form or another about 6 times :mark;

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Originally Posted by Mark

Yep you can't transfer apps between OSes on phones. They are incompatible in the same way as applications on desktop OSes are. So yes, if you change your OS you'll have to buy your apps again. Which is to the advantage of the smartphone OS producers so you won't leave!

I had this issue with going from Symbian to iPhone, but I didn't have many apps for my N97. The one exception to the above was the Viewranger mapping application, I had to pay again for the app itself but they allowed me to transfer the maps I'd originally purchased for my Nokia, which is good as they were like £150 worth and them coming out with that was the final push towards me getting an iPhone.

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Tbh I see this as a reason to never invest in anything particularly expensive for my phone :mark:

Apps, no scrap that, good apps are what make smartphones so good.

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Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior

Exactly. When a major component of any supply chain is disrupted, it takes some amount of time to move tools, prepare facilities, hire and train workers, etc. And that's assuming that the same company is involved in both locations. If not, then things like intellectual property come into play. And if moving production to China (of all places), I'd say that would be a MAJOR concern. Apple may own the component designs in many/most cases... but the suppliers likely own the processes. From what I've read, Apple will get chips and other components (from Japan) even if others don't, because Apple has advance purchase agreements in place with many of its suppliers. But if a factory is down, then nobody gets components. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out for the various electronics players (with all due respect to the human tragedy of the quake). I just read that first week sales of the iPad2 have already exceeded 1 million units: roughly four times the sales rate of the original iPad (which took about a month to hit 1 million units). One major analyst (Gene Munster) estimated March quarter sales of 5.5 million units. But I don't see how that can happen if flash memory, DRAMs, batteries and overlay glass supplies stay throttled for much longer. Apple reportedly has 2-3 weeks of component supplies in the pipeline. But after that... :dozey:

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Tbh I doubt there is much in terms of Apple IP most Apple products other than the ARM based A4 and A5 processors. Flash memory, DRAM and so on can come from anywhere tbh.

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Originally Posted by Jag_Warrior

When you have a 10% failure rate for an update, and roughly half of the failed updates brick phones, that's kind of hard to deny, right? But Microsoft *tried* to put a spin on their press release too, by saying that "90% of the WP7 phones successfully updated." In my world, a 1 in 10 failure rate would mean that you better start updating your resume ASAP.

"Stuff happens" when speaking of any manufactured product. So I'm not trying to single Microsoft out. But it is simply a fact that Apple has the highest customer retention rate in the mobile phone market, as well as the highest customer satisfaction rating.


Microsoft is trying really hard to (re)establish itself in the mobile phone market. I don't think MSFT is doing a bad job with WP7 thus far, and I've heard more positives than negatives about the WP7 platform. But it's not an easy market to get into, what with all of the different OS's and makers vying for attention. So any stumble hurts a smaller player more than it would a well established player. It also doesn't help when one of the biggest players (Verizon/Vodaphone) takes a swipe at your platform, and the recent MSFT/Nokia partnership:

Verizon Communications Chief Technology Officer Tony Melone:



To be truly successful here (or anywhere), I think Microsoft is going to have to build better relationships with carriers, so that they'll feature WP7 phones... because that's who makes the difference here. If MSFT spends any amount of time just trying to point out iPhone negatives, the WP7 platform will end up dying on the vine, just as their Zune has. Right now, I'd say the iPhone is the Mercedes of the mobile phone market - and Android is sort of like Ford/GM/Honda (more of a mass marketshare player). And just like in the auto market, there is room for others. But MSFT better start doing a better job of courting carriers or they're going to be left on the sidelines.

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It is a very complex market. You not only have to please users but also carriers as you say. Apple can do what they want in terms of updates, update support for Android devices is patchy at best and Microsoft have slightly alienated carriers by forcing them to push updates out. Carriers can slow things down by "testing" the updates but in the end they have to push them out and some carriers like to stop updates coming out so the phone that the customer has in his/her hand doesn't have as many features as those the carrier will try and hawk to them. I remember my n95 being several updates behind what Nokia had released, I debranded the phone and it ran much better!

Also traditionally carriers wanted to install their own bloatware to advertise their own services. And they didn't want to have to redo that for different firmware so they didn't bother. Apple was one of the first to say that this wouldn't happen with their phones, and it was widely predicted at the time they would fail for this reason!

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Originally Posted by Mark

Also traditionally carriers wanted to install their own bloatware to advertise their own services. And they didn't want to have to redo that for different firmware so they didn't bother. Apple was one of the first to say that this wouldn't happen with their phones, and it was widely predicted at the time they would fail for this reason!

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Well Apple took the risk and it's paid off.

WP7 is quite good in this regard. There isn't any carrier related bloatware on there, though carriers are allowed to put an App on the phone but you can delete it or just not use it.

The clock on my iPhone change to British Summer Time all by itself last night. My alarm clock also went off at 6.45 for the Grand Prix this morning which also happened to be the time I'd set it to go off. All is well on the alarm clock front for me. :p

Karen is thinking of getting an iPhone. How does the two iPhones from one iTunes account work then?