Nokia Windows Phone 7 Predictions

It's been an awfully long time since I done updating the blog. What happens is that newer devices tend to have better video support. There's less need to transcode and also people are generally better equipped to understand  what it tales to play video on their devices.

But mostly I think people use YouTube, Hulu, iPlayer, and other "free" streaming services to get to content other than downloading/converting/transferring which is a hassle.

This is not really the point of this post. I was reading about the imminent release of the Nokia Windows phones and that started me thinking about what could be expected from them.

Bear in mind that I have no insider knowledge and have frankly little experience with Windows Mango so consider this in the realm of wild speculation. This is what I think could happen:

• For starters Windows Media codecs will feature more prominently both for Video and Audio. Expect WMA/WMV to be the best supported codecs. 
• Windows Media Player (Media Center) is the main Media Hub in your computer to manage the contents on your phone. This could finally put an end to OVI Suite, NSeries Suite and PC Suite. At least for the new smartphones. This also means that if your Windows Media Player can play it then it can transfer it to your device. So if your Windows Media Player (in the PC) doesn't play nice with H264 or DIVX it may not work also to the device.
• Limited support for DIVX/XVID, H264, .MKV and others due to focus on WMA/WMV.
• Limited support for subtitles, mutlichannel sound (AC3 aka Dolby 5.1) maybe only with WMV family codecs
• 720p playback. I don't know why but from what I've seen WM7 phones don't seem to support more than 720p so I expect the Nokia phones to do the same but we'll see
• Limited app support to enhance video playback. You may be limited to use the built in media player
• XBOX Live streaming service. This is most likely coming already at launch provided you have an XBOX Live account. The thing is, do they charge for it just like they do for gaming?

I think for some the Windows Phone 7 will feel like a step backwards in terms of features and functionality. Let's see how much Nokia was able to add into the WP7 software and how much they differentiate with other WP7 competitors like HTC.

What do you think?

Dual screen Smartphones

The last couple of years we've seen an explosion of new products. We have tablets, PADs, Android Smartphones, Smart /Connected TVs, Nooks, Ereaders, etc.

And among all these gadgets we are also seeing a few dual screen devices.

The latest one I've seen is coming form Imerj Design http://imerjdesign.com/ there's also a couple of videos on youtube.

Android, Symbian, iOS or others

Hello,

It's amazing everything that's been happening since I last took some time to write. In a short span of time we went from a few devices supporting HD to a whole slew of operating systems, form factors and companies that have phones or devices that have connectivity and support HD video.

Not only that but things are accelerating.

There were a lot of new devices shown at CES that had HDMI out connection, then there are some bizarre new convergences. TVs with Google TV and other streaming services onboard. Tablets with HDMI out to connect to TVs and monitors and even the Moto Xoom and Moto Atrix that are a Pad and a note-pad-smartphone-something are creating some neat ways to not only consume video but also work. I wonder what's next.

The codec support on these devices is also making it feasible to even forget about those old days when you had to re-encode the video so it would play on your device. I can only say, amen to that.

Now if only Netflix will start using something that will work on my devices (other than Silverlight) then it would also be great.

The gap between the main OS for these convergence devices is closing, at least when it comes to Video support. Android, iOS, Symbian and even Microsoft Phone 7 are having good enough support that transcoding is becoming a thing of the past. HD video is present on many of the top end devices and audio support is also very good. Now it will be something else that I'll need to think of before I decide which device to use.

One thing that doesn't seem to go away and it seems that each year there's a product announced but I haven't seen them in the wild is the micro projector phone. I don't see the point of using your phone as a projector. Maybe I'm not the only one that doesn't get it because these devices have been around for a few years now and are not catching on. Or are there any readers out there really waiting eagerly for them?