I’ve got a new phone, and it’s made me sad.

So, it’s finally done. The new phone, a Lenovo Moto G5S Plus has arrived and I’m currently setting it up.

New technology and toys always make us happy (at least for a short while), and while I’m pleased to have it, what the move over to Android represents that makes me sad.

That is the fact Windows Phone is now in maintenance mode, but it could have been so different.

The Windows Mobile OS offered so much and delivered on most of it. But incompetence at Microsoft in marketing the devices, dis-interest and arrogance towards the consumer market (especially outside of the United States) by Microsoft, and a general mocking but consumers who’d never even used the phones to any extent lead to poor take-up by the public. This, in turn, meant companies had little incentive to invest in writing apps for the platform, so in turn, developers had little incentive to learn or target the OS themselves.

This, in turn, meant companies had little incentive to invest in writing apps for the platform, so in turn, developers had little incentive to learn or target the OS themselves. So without the array of apps offered by competitors, who would choose a Windows based device?

Now I’ve had my hand forced and had to move back to Android on my phone. I’ve always had plenty of Android-based devices around the house, most notably several tablets, but nothing phone based since my Desire HD.

Ironically, it’s been my Lumia 950 phone itself that’s made me move now rather than later. Stability has been terrible on the 950 of late (possibly something hardware related since even a device recovery didn’t help much). It’s ironic because I move away from Android 5 years ago due to the reliability issues I was having on several devices.

So at least now I’ll be able to load a few of the Apps I’ve been finding myself missing due to their absence in the Windows Store.

Why the G5S Plus though?

Well, you’d think I’d go for a top end phone, but I thought about what I actually use it for and came to the realisation that I’d do OK with this one for £259, rather than something from OnePlus/Samsung/Google for somewhere between £650 to £1000.

I don’t play games very often. I’d like to do VR, but can wait until my next refresh for that. The screen is bigger than some of the higher end choices out there without being silly. It’s a capable device for a decent price.

But it is a step back in several areas, for example:

• The camera isn’t anywhere near as good as the still impressive L950 camera (although I’ve been finding night shots particularly disappointing of late, even with a clean lens).
• No wireless charging. After 5 years of carrying Qi capable phones (welcome to the party Apple) I’m going back to solely wired charging. It won’t make much difference day to day, but grabbing the phone to do something and not worrying about wires, especially from bed, will be missed.
• No compass. Sounds like a small thing, and may well be if general GPS duties are not affected, but this one has me a little worried.
• No NFC. Now that’s a real shame, especially with the presence on Android Pay on the OS. I guess I’ll just have to get a FitBit Ionic 😉
• I’ll miss the OLED screen (again, welcome to the party Apple), but the reduced resolution will be fine I’m sure. I’ve never been a fan of screens of such a high DPI that nobody can tell the difference between them… apart from battery life.
• It’s Android. That gets me lots of apps, but what I consider an inferior OS.

However the phone is scheduled to get upgraded to Oreo, so hopefully the OS will get better.

Of course, I’ll end up installing several Microsoft Apps due to the way my life is now organised, but I’ll be spending more money with Google that would have been destined for Microsoft. I won’t make a lot of difference to their bottom line but add in the millions of other users that have or are making the switch, and it surely can’t be seen as a good thing for the company.

Oh well.

Anyhow, I’ve got a phone to continue setting up. No doubt I’ll let you know how I get on…

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Watch Out!

With the market for wearables being currently much smaller than anyone expected, I admire Apple for sticking with it.

Microsoft didn’t, and yet again abandoned a promising product line in the band, rather than investing in it.

I wonder what Satya’s master plan is?

Probably just cloud everywhere.

Not a bad plan I suppose, but ask Apple how it feels having the vast majority of your income come from one product.

You’d think Microsoft would already be wise to this having stood by to watch Windows become less relevant as the world moved on to the mobile platforms they largely overlooked.

Band was only ever going to be a bit player, but it could have been another piece of the services puzzle to pull people in.

Possibly a bit like Apple is doing with their watch.

Now we’ll never know, apart from watching Apple continue to innovate and iterate with their Watch.

Haven’t we seen this happen before?

Time to Look Again at FireFox?

Eons ago all we had was the Mosaic we browser (not strictly true, but that was the big one).

No matter, Netscape came to the rescue with many of the Mosaic team on board, added the blink tag, and started charging for essentially the same thing.

Somewhere along the line Microsoft woke up to the internet and started knocking out their own Internet Explorer for free, eventually bundling it with the OS and taking 95% market share.

A lot of people took issue with this, and it formed the core of the anti-trust lawsuit that shaped Microsoft to this day.

I was suspicious of Microsoft abusing their powers back then, but I could see the logic in using the same rendering engine in the browser for the OS itself, I quite liked IE3 (the proprietary extensions and lack of standards didn’t concern me back then), and Netscape was large and wasn’t yet free.

After a while my Main browser became IE. It worked well for me. Netscape faded away.

Somewhere later along the line Netscape transformed into FireFox in an attempt to right some of the wrongs that Netscape had come to be known for (primarily bloat) and to claw back some of the gains made by Internet Explorer which would see it reach 95% market share.

It worked to a large extent. FireFox was more standards compliant, lighter and faster than IE, and gradually millions of people started to switch.

But as time went on FireFox also started to suffer from bloat. Microsoft had all but lost interest with IE failing to make any significant updates for years. And then there was Chrome.

Google launched its own web browser that was sleek and the world started to take notice. Chrome was to eventually take the crown from a neglected IE, and a struggling FireFox.

Microsoft tried to fight back with later versions of IE, and subsequently Edge (which has become my primary browser, with Chrome always on standby), while FireFox and others like Opera carved out more of a niche market and held onto their respective diehards.

But now it appears the Mozilla Foundation has been hard at work reworking FireFox to correct its ills and prepare it for a bright new future. But with the likes of Edge and Chrome providing a very good gateway to the internet, is there still a place for FireFox on my desktop.

I have some good memories of FireFox being a good browser, and am interested in taking a look out of curiosity, but I’m not sure this is enough to spur me into action.

Has anyone out there used the new release? I’d be interested to know what you think.

If I do give it a try, I’ll be sure to let you all know what I think.