Some reason why sales of windows phone is down each year

I see a lot of issues during early windows phone development that creates a bad impressions and from what I believe it affects growing number of apps. Let's face it, isheeps and fandroids sees number of apps dictates the quality of the product.

Nokia Lumia 920 hangups / unresponsive fixed in Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview

Yes, I said it in the title of my blog: Nokia Lumia 920 hangups fixed in Windows 10 Mobile Insider Preview! or was it accidental?

The thing is since the update of Windows Phone 8.1 I started to get intermittent hangups. I thought the hangups was all software issue but it turns out the OS works fine and the camera using the dedicated camera button but the screen doesn't so I suspect a hardware issue.

Apple biased pfeifferreport.com reported iOS7 beats out all others in user experience

The news...

Apple's iOS 7 beats Android, other mobile operating systems in user experience report

With its release last week, iOS 7 has immediately become one of the most popular mobile operating systems on the planet. The question of whether it should be considered the best, however, still lingers. That's why one consulting firm known for “quantifying the intangible” set out to examine each of today’s most popular mobile operating systems to find which actually offers the best overall user experience.

Nokia Lumia 720 vs 820?

My personal thoughts?

The model number of Lumia 820 and 720 really speaks for itself. 820 is indeed a higher model. Why? CPU!

I tested the Lumia 720 and my immediate disappointment is the speed especially navigating and loading apps which is really pretty close to my good old HD7 than on my Lumia 920.

So, do I love or hate Windows 8?

I hate metro originally (like I mentioned in my previous blog post : Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 thoughts...) but for the sake of catching up on development trend so I installed it in my laptop together with Visual Studio 2012 Express and for Windows Phone 8, off course.

Kinda weird seeing there is no start menu and all metro screen at first, but somehow in just 1 day I finally starting to love it for few reasons:

iPhone5, worth the upgrade?

I guess I'm a bit stupid to answer this since I love windowsphones, but hey I used to have iPhone3gs+iPodTouch and shifted to HTC HD7 and never actualy looked back. Now desperately waiting for Lumia920/AtivS/8X to reach here so I could choose from them. :)

Anyway back to topic and just want to share. Maybe if you're coming from iPhone4s then the answer for me is NO, as I don't see any interesting features of 5 compared to 4s unless you're dreaming of an iPhone with 4" screen or just a die-hard apple supporter.

Laggy Galaxy S3 vs. Kiddie-screen iPhone 4S vs. Beautiful Lumia 900

Tried to be open here and not being bias (lol). I read the content and posts of Yuga's Galaxy S3 vs. iPhone 4S vs. Lumia 900

You will see some posts like...
"Samsung Galaxy SIII is a clear winner here"
"Overall, Samsung Galaxy S3 is a great phone!"

What a day... (1st time blogging thru windows phone)

Yesterday it was a hot sunny weather, then this mid noon it was raining like there's no tomorrow.

I was stuck in Edsa for almost 2hrs due to heavy traffic with heavy rains.... And it really sucks as I'm like driving in 1st gear for about 30min!!!

XNA Game Engine Update - Multiplayer support!

I finally done working with multiplayer support for my game engine. The really challenge for me is to have a NetLobby class that must be generic across the projects and encapsulates all common functionalities in handling network lobby sessions especially in dealing with UDP or non-reliable connection to make it more reliable.

I've wrote a lot of network code for games for the past years in C++ and I must say that my NetLobby code is really neat, simple but complete. I should have done something like this years ago!

A very productive week..

...for my game engine, that is.

I was recently motivated and able to finish most of the issues and some remaining features that needs to be added. Here's my update so far:

- Persistent data storage for save games
- Trial and Full mode
- Game interruption handling
- Ad banner placement

Does AMA Computer College school sucks?

I choose AMA QC kasi malapit sa bahay... super lazy ako nun pero ngayon lazy nalang (improving!).

I believe na napakarami magagaling sa computers at doon ako naging competative at naging adik narin sa computer specifically programming. In my college days in AMA, I won a programming contest twice and joined AMA team for Microsoft Philippines competitions several times with the Dean's Listed guys.

Dean's Listed... henyo? hell no! I took Trigonometry 3 times and Calculus 2 times. Hahaha :D

Accelerometer with Windows Phone's SDK 7.1 - Mango

I've been trying out Accelerometer in Non-Mango or Nodo sdk version but it's nearly impossible to test it without using your actual device. Now with the release of Mango SDK, they finally added accelerometer in the emulator. I'm quite amaze how easy to code and use it on the emulator... why would Microsoft took so long to develop/release this such useful feature?

Anyway, the moment I test it I immediately integrate the Accelerometer in my engine.

    device.AcceleratorActive = true;
    ..
    foreach (SphereObject obj in listBalls)
    {
        obj.Force += device.AcceleratorReading * 50.0f;
    }

There are so many new features in Mango SDK update that I wanted to try out but I'm more exited with Sockets... here's my rant before: Programming Sockets with Windows Phone 7

Programming Sockets with Windows Phone 7

I've been coding sockets for more than 10 years and it is very important because most of my ideas are all network based or multiplayer based - it's just part of my coding life.

So, I spent hours and hours looking if there's a Socket for WP7 and the only information I got is Windows Communication Foundation using single request/response access to HTTP.

Windows Phone 7: No offline Contact/Calendard synchronization...

PocketNow stated...

Everyone has always complained about problems with ActiveSync on the desktop. Many people often ran into errors and wished it would just go away. Well, with Windows Phone 7, ActiveSync is gone. Windows Phone 7 only connects to Zune when you plug it into the PC and only syncs music/videos/podcasts/pictures. That means there will be no more errors or frustrations for you when trying to sync all of your personal information management data between your Windows Phone and Outlook.
...
How to Sync Windows Phone 7 with Outlook

That's PURE CRAP!

Migrating to new blogspot?

I've been thinking lately to start blogging again though one thing bothers me is that I'm still using the old blogspot templates. For sure using the new blogspot templates will make my blog full featured like adding of widgets. Honestly I like it this way but the way I want to expand this seems to be a headache if you ask me.

WindowsMobile Customization : IPhone

I'm not into customizing things, I like things simple, fast, and practical to use that makes my XP OS skin is in classic style and my windowsmobile devices are all in defaults homescreen. This morning while doing some research about IPhone. I got a feeling that most people are being fooled by it's UI screen and on some level I know what pocketpcs are capable off. So I end up customizing my 3 yrs old HTC BlueAngel (WM5) to make the screen look like IPhone! Not exactly because of IPhone's hardware features especially the touchscreen.

Running projects

I just had this very unpleasant event happen this past few months... it will be easier for me to just put the whole thing behind me.

Well i'm back and will keep you updated.

What's new... i'm currently working on different windowsmobile projects from foreign companies, one from Singapore and one from Denmark. Why not locally? i believe here in Philippines there are like only 1% who knows what the hell is 'windowsmobile'. heheh. I hope it's gamedev project y' know.

Anyway I already managed my time for this project and so far everything still goes into plan.

Cheers.