Browsing posts in: Featured

Jan 10, 2014 |

Nokia App Folders – Why I Think They Are Wrong

Today all the rage was about Nokia’s announcement about their App Folder app. This is essentially a way to group tiles into another tile and give it a title. Let us just establish that I am the biggest Nokia fanboy around, and I think the App Folder app not only is pointless, but it also encourages the wrong behaviour, which may damage the perception of the platform.

Apple and iOS, as well as Android, has had a similar feature for a long time, in act the first version was very similar to the App Folder app. This feature on iOS has now moved on and is must more polished. But it fits into a platform that is all about icons and more icons. They can be grouped.

On the Windows Platform it is a completely separate matter. The entire point, in my opinion, with the home screen is to be able for users to “glance and go”. I have said this over and over again, both in conversation and in my online courses: Live tiles on the Windows Phone platform is the single most effective way to engage your users and keep them returning to your app. If they don’t want to pin a tile to the home screen, then they use the list of apps. By allowing apps to be on the home screen, but not fully, and placing the app icons on a tile, the whole purpose of the home screen becomes polluted.

To me the appeal of the Windows Phone platform has always been that it was simple, intuitive (except for the back button) and predictable. Especially as a developer you can provide great value through a live tile by updating and customising them frequently. This is potentially lost now.

To comment briefly on the app itself, it is a very first attempt. It is not terribly intuitive, and it is really cumbersome to use. Because it is not part of the OS itself, you have to go into the app, then set up the tile, then pin it to the start screen. Unlike iOS you then can’t just tap to expand, but has to tap, tap, tap to get to the icons.

If you need the folders, then you are not understanding the thought behind the basic Windows Phone OS. Instead I would have loved to see a way to organise the long list of apps by for example category or by user choice. That would have been both useful and in line with the design of the platform.

app nokia

Jan 9, 2014 |

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Featured in the latest PSA from Pluralsight

Today the latest promotional video from Pluralsight was released. It takes form as a public service announcement (PSA) to highlight a world where everyone is a developer. It is pretty funny, and I just happen to be featured in it too. Check it out below

Jan 3, 2014 |

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Building Quality Apps for Windows Phone

This post was originally post on blog.dvlup.com

With the rise of Windows Phone globally, mainly thanks to amazing Nokia Lumia devices, the number of apps has started to grow rapidly. With more than 200,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store, it is now more important than ever to build quality apps and distinguish yourself from the competition.

It is really important that the first time a new user tries your app they are amazed and impressed. Users have to feel confident that you can solve their problem, whether it is showing a list of nearby museums, taking a photo which puts moustaches on all the faces, or provides a list of recipes for a certain ingredient. Whatever it might be, there is no second chance for a first impression. If your first impression is not up to scratch, you might have one or more of the following unintended consequences:

Users will leave negative reviews, which can take a long time to balance out. We always want to start with positive reviews, and then build on that momentum
Amazing features lodged deep inside your app might not be discovered.
Download numbers will suffer.

There are many apps in the WP Store, and users can find an alternative to your app with a couple of clicks and a spare 30 seconds. If your app is not impressing users on a first run, they are very likely to just discard it all together. I know I have.

Make Every App Amazing – Right from the Start

Here is a list of easy steps you can use to ensure your new app is truly amazing from day one:

Use unit tests to ensure logic is sound and accurate (more on that soon). This can easily be set up when you develop your app.
Use a beta release to invite trusted users to help test and evaluate your product before a public release.
Use a logging framework such as Bugsense to capture any failures and events such as usage counters of important areas and features.
Provide a feedback mechanism for such as email or form from within the app, rather than only depend on reviews for feedback. Be responsive to your users, and act on their requests and feedback whenever possible.
Release many small enhancements on a consistent basis, rather than large overwhelming updates.

If you make these simple points part of your development plan and roadmap, there is very little overhead. It will become second nature to you, and the pride you will have in your product will shine through.

It really is a true win-win scenario for you and the users of your app.

If you want to know more about unit testing, integration testing, performance testing, error management and much more in that area for Windows Phone, watch my latest Pluralsight course on the topic, Windows Phone Testing and Error Management. It will make your app robust, reliable and successful.

Bugsense testing

Dec 10, 2013 |

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Using Bugsense with Windows Phone – Part 1

When you develop and app for Windows Phone there is always an urge to get the project published and start making an impact on your future users. However, if you don’t make sure you have some visibility of usage and behaviour in the wild, it becomes a guessing game to enhance and maintain it.

Why Use a Logging Framework?

Once you have published you app, it is in the wild. You can decide which markets it is in and what types of devices, such as high powered and certain hardware requirements, but you can’t pick and choose the users that download it. Once you get that message saying your app has been published, you got to let your baby go. Or do you? One of the problems I have had, is that as well as you can test your project there is always that niggling doubt that you missed something or that a certain edge case will cause your app to break. I don’t like uncertainty, and when your app is in the wild that is pretty much what you are left with. How do you know when something fails? What can you do if the app does crash on the devices, displays the information incorrectly or can’t find that web service half the times it tries. With a traditional web application or desktop application you can monitor things and set up event logs. Further, how can you tell how often it fails? So not only might your app fail on a particular scenario, but how often does it happen? You need to know if it is a part of a critical path, resulting in a large percentage of failures, or if it is only in some obscure edge case, in order to prioritize the bugs you have to fix.

How can you know which features are popular and could benefit from being extended further? How do you update the project in the right places and with the most valuable features, if you are blind to how the app is used?

How can you manage the bugs that you do become aware of? How do you keep track of current and future bugs? There might be a number of bugs that come to your attention in various ways, but if you don’t have the full picture, you might be fixing inconsequential bugs instead of the real road blocks.

By being a developer for the Windows Phone platform you do get some help out of the box. You can use the Microsoft Crash Reports that are part of the Developer portal, which does give some indication of errors, but the information is only available for unhandled app process exceptions thrown.

Crash report from Windows Phone Developer Portal

You can get the stack traces from those crashes, but I have had apps crash that produced no reports and I only knew because users were telling me. You have no context, and relying on users to tell you what happened when the app crashed is like finding bitcoins at the end of the rainbow. You could also catch exceptions and events and store them manually in your own proprietary logging system, which a number of high profile apps do. But that is effort building a non-core part of your project and will waste time. Time you need to build features that will sell your app and give you that return on investment you want.

Bugsense Setup

What you need to use is an already existing logging framework. Introducing Bugsense. There are several plans with Bugsense, even a free one which is a great way to get started. Go and sign up for a free account now. Go. Do it. Done? Okay, excellent. Let us get started with the fun part then. Put your code hat on and away we go.

First create a new Windows Phone project, or choose an existing Windows Phone project you want to implement Bugsense into.

New WP8 Project

Next step is to install Bugsense which is done via a simple NuGet package update. Use either the Package Manager Console

Package Manager Console

Or the Package Manager Dialog in Visual Studio.

Package Manager Dialog

Next we need to add one line to the installation. Yes, one line. That is all. Open up your App.xaml.cs and in the App constructor insert the following

Insert Bugsense API key

Now you are ready to start logging. Bugsense lets you log both exceptions as well as manual events for areas you want to monitor and log. You can also now remove the default unhandled exception handler, as Bugsense will take care of business for you.

Remove Unhandled Exception Handler

That is it. You are now capturing exceptions with Bugsense. I could imagine you are after a bit more flexibility and functionality though.

Part 2 of this series on Bugsense will look at manual events and how you log custom information.

Bugsense debugging logging

Dec 9, 2013 |

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DDD Brisbane 2013

On Saturday 7 December I presented at the developer conference DDD Brisbane on my favourite topic of Windows Phone. Despite some flight issues I managed to get to QUT and deliver my talk Building Your First Windows Phone App. The audience was very keen to learn about Windows Phone, and there was a lot of great questions and discussions during the 60 minute session. I managed to convince most that Windows Phone is the superior platform and best opportunity for developers (at least if you ask me). The attendee with the best and most thoughtful questions I decided to give a brand new Nokia Lumia 625 generously sponsored by Nokia Australia. I also gave out Nokia Luna headsets and trial subscriptions to Pluralsight, so people can go watch my online training courses on Windows Phone.

Me explaining how awesome Windows Phone is.

The conference also had a special guest speaker in Scott Hanselman, who talked about all the new amazing features in Visual Studio and what is to come in the near future. Scott also joined a panel of Joe Albahari from Linqpad, Joel Pobar from FaceBook and Hadi Hariri from JetBrains in a panel Q&A session, which was very interesting and very unscripted.

Me and Scott Hanselman

I hope to join everyone at DDD Brisbane again next year and if you want more photos check out Bronwyn’s blog post. Thanks also to my awesome employer Kiandra IT for getting me to Brisbane and supporting my efforts in Windows Phone world domination.

DDD speaking WP8

Oct 23, 2013 |

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First Pluralsight Course Published

This morning I published my first online video course with Pluralsight, titled Building Windows Phone Apps that Stand Out. It has been a long journey with an insane amount of hours spent writing, recording, editing and polishing everything off. It has given me an appreciation of how much work goes into producing high quality content for the World’s best hardcore developer training site, and I am immensely proud of the outcome.

Below is a small taste of my course, giving you the outline of the content. If you are a Windows Phone developer, this course will add that important knowledge gap of how you can make your app be awesome (and make you more money in the end).

So go ahead and check it out. You can get a free 30 day trial, so there really is no excuse to not start learning now.

WP8

Oct 16, 2013 |

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A Guide to Choosing Native or Web for Mobile apps

As a consultant for one of Australia’s leading software development houses, I often come across the inevitable question from a client, when talking about mobile development: “should I have a native app for each platform I want to target, or should I just have one mobile web application”. Often the answer to that question is not that clear cut. In essence it depends on two factors, namely requirements and current technology.

You obviously always have to listen to the client’s needs and requirements, get to the core of the problem they are wanting to solve and provide a solution accordingly. With that in mind it becomes an exercise in fitting in to one or the other path to successful mobile app development. It is important to get this decision on native or web app right from the start, as it can be an expensive exercise to switch mid project. However, if you are prepared you can guide the client and inform them on the best choices they can make.

[pullquote]

In essence it depends on two factors, namely requirements and current technology.

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On the other hand you have to stick to what the technology can provide you once you start developing the product. You can of course push the boundaries, which we like to do at Kiandra, but there will be some limitations in whichever technology you choose.

Because this question comes up regularly, I developed a matrix to help myself, and the clients, out in determining whether to go native or web. It goes a little somethin’ like this:

Pros and Cons of Native vs. Web App

It is meant to be a quick guide to identifying the pros and cons of each approach and help you choose the appropriate one in a particular situation. You have to take into account factors such as requirements, time and flexibility, but in general it is a great starting point.

For both approaches there are people who are for and against, and it is important you choose the solution that will get the job done in the best possible way. Don’t just chose an approach because it is the most popular at that moment.

If you have any other points that I have missed or would fit into the matrix let me know in the comments below.

First published at blog.kiandra.com.au

guide native web app

May 7, 2013 |

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Top 5 Web Developer Browser Tools

In a world which increasingly relies on the internet for pretty much everything from funny pictures of kittens to complex Super Annuation calculations (ask @alexjmackey about fun with those), the modest web browser is not so modest anymore. Gone are the days of cumbersome web apps with full page reloads and spinning gifs (and who could ever forget <blink>Awesome Sauce!</blink>). Today web applications has to work on desktop, tablet and mobile formats. They have to work across all modern browsers (and sometimes in some archaeological ones too), be lightweight, responsive and unit tested.

As a software developer you have to be aware of all these areas when you set out to build the next web app of the future. You will most likely have specifications to build after, but what tools can help you really excel in your build process? Below I have listed some of the tools which have helped me nail some issues, or made some tasks much much easier. Let me know in the comments, if you have other tools that are awesome/interesting.

User Agent Overrides

Because the web is now available via pretty much every device with a screen, as a developer you have to accommodate all these different resolutions. You have to make sure your latest post on Estonian knitting looks awesome on a PC, a MacBook air, an iPhone, Nokia’s Latest Windows Phone and many other devices. All of these devices have different user agents, which tell the browser which device it is. The browser and, more importantly, the requested web site can then change it behaviour accordingly.

In Google Chrome you can access the user agent overrides via the Dev tools settings. Hit F12 and go to settings in the lower right hand corner (little cog).

On the settings screen select “Overrides”

Here you can override the user agent and the screen size. This is really handy to simulate all your target devices, and it actually works!

Similar functionality is available in Firefox via a plugin, or in Internet Explorer via the developer tools as well (that is via F12 too).

Page Speed

One of the key ingredients to a successful website is performance. As the below infographic from StrangeLoop indicates, just a 1 second delay in page load time can decrease customer satisfaction by 16% and almost half of visitors will not return to a poorly performing site. On top of that web users now expect the site to work equally fast on mobile devices. Major sites like Google and Yahoo records increase in traffic in the millions for just getting fractions of a second faster page loads. Yes, page load and performance are truly important on all platforms.

Fear not, Page Speed to the rescue! This add on to your developer tools in Chrome made by Google (there is also a FireFox version) instantly gives you an insight into yours or anyone’s site performance.

Once you click on the “Start Analysing” button, the site will reload and all manners of metrics will be recorded. The really cool thing is that you don’t just get a bunch of numbers for sections or areas. All of the data is presented as suggestions on what to improve and how to improve it. Very cool.

You can immediately tackle the high priority items, and prioritise the rest.

WhatFont

One of the pain points of developing smick looking web sites for your local Russian dance association is to deal with fonts. Fonts can be missing, they can be overridden they can be served from different sources. It all makes it complex to keep track of. WhatFont lets you inspect fonts on a page with ease.

Very simple, very easy to use. Makes the font task easy to handle.

Knockoutjs Context Debugger

There are a lot JavaScript frameworks around, and they can do vastly different things. There is the omnipresent jQuery, the pweetty and versatile three.js and the more interestingly named pyjamas and handlebars.

A framework I am starting to really get the hang of is Knockout. It is an MVVM framework, which makes all the JavaScript magic so much easier. Using a viewmodel, your front end code becomes very dynamic and updates through binding of properties. The problem with this is that all of the bound properties and code becomes hidden or obfuscated. Knockout Context Debugger to the rescue! This is a Chrome exclusive plugin that I was made aware of my @Nazulu.

It installs as an extra section in your developer tools, which is accessible on the elements tabs. Select an element that has knockout binding to it, and watch the magic JS fairies populate your knockout context section. It is extremely valuable if you work with Knockout.

NHProf

Going hand in hand with performance of a web site is the server side response time. Often the backend of a website has some form of database interaction, whether you are storing recipes or the latest AFL results. If this database connection is slow, your site will be slow. A large majority of sites will be using an ORM to help interaction with the database. One of the more popular ORMs is NHibernate.

Although it is not a browser tool, I use NHProf every time I use the browser to optimise performance. NHProf is a profiling tool for the SQL executed on the database using NHibernate. Because NHibernate makes it difficult to see exactly what is being executed, optimising your NHibernate code is sometimes difficult. But with NHProf you can see exactly what was sent to the database and perform detailed analysis of the queries and results.

The licensing for NHProf is a bit on the expensive side, but the benefits are huge if you are serious about database performance.

top 5 Web Developer

May 5, 2013 |

3 comments

Top 5 Software Development & Software Management tools

Previously published at blog.kiandra.com.au

When it comes to tools for building software, there are about as many opinions as there are software developers (affectively known as code monkeys). Compiling a list of the top tools of any discipline within software building will be highly subjective. As such this list (well, there are actually two lists as you’ll find out) is a reflection of talking to a small sample of developers. These developers are all highly passionate about software and the creation of such, and all have their personal preferences. This article is not meant to tell you what you should use, but rather (hopefully) present new ideas and inspire you to try out alternatives. Take what you can use and leave the rest.

The first list of tools is leaning more towards the software crowd that has the business analyst or project management hat on. Having said that, all the tools in this list are very useful to developers as well. Chances are, if you are a disorganised developer your code will be disorganised as well. These tools could help organised your day, your project and your code.

Software Management

Any management of software building is complex. Acceptance criteria, customer expectations, development lifecycle, defects and unexpected events are all part of producing a successful outcome. For those task and more, below is a list of tools that can make your software management journey feel like a two week holiday in the <destination type=”dream”> Siberian Tundra.</destination>

Trello

Thought up by Joel Spolsky and his company Fog Creek Software, Trello facilitates easy collaboration between teams. Using a method known as Kanban, Trello has a series of boards which define various steps in a project. Boards contain Lists, which has a number of Cards on them. Cards, or tasks, are the basis for managing the finer grain of a project, and the cards are meant to move from list to list to monitor progress. Users are then associated with boards and can be assigned cards.

The application of Trello is limited only by the imagination of the user. You have complete control of boards, lists, cards, who can see a board and who is doing what. You can attach photos, files and web links. You can tag and label cards for more categorisation and you can track changes to cards.

Top this off with a superb user interface that feels natural and straight forward. The learning curve is very mild.

JIRA

If you are working on projects that are just medium in size or are working in a medium sized organisation, chances are you have heard of JIRA. Built by Sydney based company Atlassian, JIRA is a one stop option for project tracking and task/issue management on any project. At the time of writing version 5 is the current iteration and offers the end user complete oversight of a particular task’s status, a project’s progress and everything in between.

Just to test the flexibility (and because I am a developer, hence love cake) I once created a JIRA task for my business development manager to bake muffins. I tagged the task with the ingredients required, set the status to “blocker” and put a deadline on the task. The description allowed for some flexibility in the style of muffins and I even contemplated putting additional resources and cost estimates on the task too. The outcome was a healthy dozen muffins enriching my entire team’s day.

pm.stackexchange.com

Chances are that you have heard of stackoverflow.com, one of the largest technical forum sites on the interwebs. As part of the Stack Network there is pm.stackexchange.com, which is a portal for project managers in particular. Questions relating to project management are put forward, then answered and rated for relevance and quality, much like Stack Overflow.

Podio

To organise team communication, business processes, data and content in project management workspaces, Podio supplies a web-based platform which is free to sign up to. You can also select business apps from an online app store or build your own as you see fit.

Being a relatively new service (started in 2011), Podio is very ambitious and does offer a great range of tools for managing leads, tracking job candidates, doing accounting and everything in between. It is a social take on project and team collaboration.

As an aside, I don’t mind either that Podio is yet another quality software package to come out of Denmark. The motherland seem to have a lot of interesting products and ideas coming out in the last few years.

Zoho

The online office suite has been around for eons in web speak. Launched in 2005 Zoho offers a range of products including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, wikis, bug tracker, chat, mail and much much more. They were one of the first to offer proper cloud office services, negating the need for software and hardware updates.

Software Development

The main mantra for a software developer is “why do something, someone else has already done (well)”. If there is a tool that makes your life as a developer more productive, makes you produce better software, allows you to refactor code easier, can massage your back while playing soft soothing music and feeding you snacks or whatever it might be, then we use it. There is always a better way of doing a particular task, and if someone offers you a shortcut to do that, then why try and invent the muffin tin yourself?

Cloud 9

If you are like me and always on the go, being in a car, commuting to work, at a client or spending time away from your normal work station in some fashion, then you will quite likely have come across the desire to have your work/pet project/library reading list app with you. Cloud 9 allows you to have a complete development environment within a browser. You can collaborate on projects with other likeminded developers and even edit in real time with another party. Pretty cool.

The IDE in the cloud supports the most popular languages such as PHP, Javascript, SQL and XML. However, you also have support for the languages used less often such as Lua, Scala and SH. You get intellisense, code completion and integration with the most popular cloud services, such as Windows Azure, heroku and Cloud Foundry.

Live.js

Ever had to edit CSS or Javascript, then view it in the browser to see your change? The typical workflow is something like

Load browser to see what is broken/needs fixing
Open up the file to edit
Save change
Alt+Tab or click on browser window
Hit F5
Observe change

With Live.js you get to skip step 4 and 5. A small piece of JavaScript will automagically update your browser to always show the latest HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It is efficiency++.

BrowserStack

As a web developer testing your work in a plethora of different browsers is always arduous. Not only is it easy to skip over the browsers with little use, but even more importantly, where do you get access to IE version 6 or Firefox version 13. And not only that, but you have to test on Windows XP, Windows 7 and Mac OS Mountain Lion. Welcome to the party BrowserStack. These guys have made the effort of keeping around almost any modern(-ish) browser/platform combination you can think of.

It is a truly invaluable tool if you want to make sure you have all your bases covered. Every new browser and platform combo is spun up in a new Virtual Machine, so you have your own instance. You can set up a secure tunnel, so you can test your local html and design on the remote server.

ReSharper

It has almost become part of the default toolset for web developers working with the Microsoft stack to use ReSharper. A lot developers I talk to almost can’t use Microsoft Visual Studio now without this comprehensive productivity tool. Just to name a few features, ReSharper will give you real time code analysis, keep you compliant to agreed coding standards, search huge datasets and thousands of files instantly, code refactoring with ease, code cleanup, multiple refactoring tools and oh so much more.

Chances are that your productivity as a developer will increase significantly, but that is not the best bit. ReSharper takes care of all the boring stuff, such as renaming “cat” to “kitten” in your Fantastic Feline application (@alexjmackey has written that one), so you won’t have to. The team at JetBrains has put a lot of effort into making sure you don’t do the boring repetitive tasks of old grey beard developer days.

<tool>your favourite</tool>

As I said in the beginning, this list is highly subjective. This last item is your chance to let us know what your favourite tool is. Fill in the comment below and tells us your favourite tool and why you think it is valuable. It can be anything, as long as it doesn’t involve ducks. Ideally it should be something which improves the dramatically interesting live of developers.

Give it your best shot. I want to know!!

software top 5

Dec 9, 2012 |

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Windows Phone 8: Show Me Your Live Tiles (Part 2)

The first part of my review had the focus set on the great software Microsoft has created for mobile, so in this second half my attention is on the hardware that arrived at my front door. My choice of handset is a bright, loud, solid, neon yellow Nokia Lumia 920. First impression is “come pick me up and touch my shiny screen”. At least most people I show it to, or see it on my desk, get that message loud and clear. Initial reaction from friends and colleagues is that it is a solidly built device. So why don’t we start with the physical forms of the phone. I won’t bore you with dimensions and other detailed technical specifications. Rather I will focus on the attributes that are the result of the factual data.

You can’t deny the yellow on my phone. When I ordered it I thought it would be more of a mustardy type yellow, but oh no. It is a loud, safety vest, almost toxic looking yellow. I like it. You can’t help but look at. The phone itself feels very durable, solid and well-built once you have it in your hand. Compared to other smartphones it does pack a whole lot of technology and most of it is best in class, so the slightly increased weight is to be expected. I have read some reviews that hammer the phone mainly based on the weight. In my experience you notice it the first dozen times you pick it up, then it becomes negligible.

Camera

The camera is awesome. That is my official technical verdict of the 8.7 megapixel Carl Zeiss lens with optical image stabilisation. Awesome.

(Yep, that is me and Santa).

Whatever witchcraft Nokia has packed into the camera, it works. The colours are vibrant and natural, the focus is sharp and the video now comes in HD. I take a lot of photos, but generally not with my phone. I lug around a Nikon DSLR, plus accessories, the size of Luxembourg, whenever I go somewhere where there is a potentially good photo opportunity. Now, I am not going to suggest that the Nokia camera comes up better than my trusty old Nikon, but I do think that it is on par with most compact digital cameras and better than a lot. This means I will use the Nokia as a “I’m just going on a short outing” camera, and keep the Nikon for longer trips, once off events etc. Yes, the camera on the Nikon really is that good.

Most phone cameras can take a decent still picture in sunlight or daytime, but night time or actions shots always come out looking like you were jumping on a trampoline and covering the lens in Vaseline. The Nokia has optical image stabilisation which means you can shake the camera and it still comes out sharp. Night time uses more magic and fairy dust to set the ISO (light sensitivity) and remove the usual grainy look from your happy snaps.

The video function is equally impressive. Way less shaking than your normal YouTube style handheld videos, and it is just as vibrant and sharp (in HD too).

Oh, I almost forgot about the different lenses that you can download, use and abuse. When using the camera, different apps hook into the camera and you can choose a different lens, which means that app take over the camera. Allow me to demonstrate. You use the impressive Translator app from Microsoft to translate text on a page using the camera. Now you can launch the camera, then switch to the Translator lens, which will take you directly to the right spot in the app. It is a shortcut to the functionality within the app that uses the camera. Kind of neat, and does provide more deep integration between apps, which is what Windows Phone is all about.

Sound

I listen to music from my phone all the time. On the train, working on projects, writing this post and even practising my river dance routines. I have invested in a decent pair of earphones from AudioFly and the Lumia 920 gives good output through the wires. I can fiddle with the equaliser settings and switch Dolby stereo sound on and off.

The built in speakers are okay, but they are still teeny weeny and you can only expect so much from speakers made for the people of Whoville.

Battery

A bit of a boring subject, but just briefly: Bigger battery (2000 mAh) + bigger HD screen (4.5”) + more things to chew power = still not great battery performance. Oh, and you can’t remove it. So there.

Connectivity

It seems the good folks at Nokia made a checklist of every single mode of connectivity you can possible put in a phone. Short of having a mini Hadron Collider, this device has it all. Wifi in the b,g and n flavours, Bluetooth, NFC, Wireless charging using the QI standard, compatibility with 14 different network frequencies (2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G) as well as the new Dual Core Snap Dragon processor. Not to mention the most sophisticated camera seen yet (yeah, I kind of like the camera).

But enough about all the delicious, crunchy hardware making up the Lumia 920. Let’s have a look at the software side of things. Nokia has produced a rather impressive suite of software for the Lumia range, in an aim to make their WP8 offering more attractive.

Nokia Maps

The Bing Maps app has been replaced by Nokia Maps, which to a large extent are better than the standard maps. The maps are very fluent and does provide useful information about local businesses, even though it is in no way up to par with Google’s localisation. However, the maps are very useful and seem 100 times more useful than Apples failed attempt at a mapping application (Apple does not acknowledge that Echuca in Victoria exists for example).

Nokia Drive

Nokia Drive is the Turn-By-Turn navigation. It does one thing, and one thing very well. It is a fully fledged GPS navigation app, which even has TTS (Text To Speech), which works. My car navigation TTS for some reason can’t pronounce “road”. It comes out as “rod” in this over the top American accent. You would have thought that is one word a GPS should get right, but I digress.

The application is free and comes with downloadable maps from all over the world. So not only can you always have up to date maps, but they are also stored offline, so you can always use your GPS (given it has any battery left, see above).

Nokia Music

Every single platform seems to have their own flavour of iTunes now. There are so many offerings out there you would be excused for not really caring. So what is different? iTunes has music purchases of every song on the planet almost, Xbox music has a monthly subscription, Google Music lets you upload your own catalogue of music to the Cloud and many many more.

Nokia Music is in essence free listening. It comes with radio mixes, which lets you listen to everything from @alexjmackey’s favourite Genesis and Spandau Ballet to the current hits of local and international artists. Now, you can’t choose the exact songs to listen to, but you can select genres from Country and Western to Death Metal. And if there is a particular song or album you like, you have the option to buy it.

Because all the music is streamed in the mixes, Nokia has been so kind as to let you download up to four mixes to your phone.

Now, all that is good, but you could ask why Nokia has even bothered to make their own music service? It is a massive undertaking and there are so many services out there as mentioned above.

And I have to mention that Nokia Music is quite buggy. The application decides to stop randomly, it has restarted my phone twice from crashing and even bricked my phone once to the point of a reset (hold down power button and volume down for about 10 seconds).

Nokia City Lens

I first saw this idea in a French research project using Google information on an iPhone. The name of the project eludes me, but the idea of holding up your phone and it presenting an overlay of nearby attractions based on GPS coordinates and compass was mind blowing.

Well, Nokia City Lens is just that. Choose from eight different categories of places nearby, and the app will tell you what is nearby in this category. It works quite well, but the compass seems to be a bit off sometimes. And Dental Surgery came up under “Fun”. Not sure if that is a particular Finnish version of “Fun”. To be honest I haven’t looked up “Fun” in the Finnish dictionary.

Tapping any of the icons on the screen (which move about a bit due to calibration issues I am assuming), will take you to the location in Nokia Maps and you can get directions. Very impressive app, but to be honest, I am not sure how much I will use it.

Conclusion

I can only hope Microsoft gets traction with this latest iteration of their mobile platform. I truly believe it is a more user friendly and efficient platform than the competition. Taking the whole ecosystem into account with Surface devices, Windows 8 and Xbox, it all just works together. Traditionally Microsoft marketing has been very fragmented and seemingly random, so hopefully this time around it is more successful. As I said in Part 1, I have shown WP7 to two friends deciding on a new handset, and both chose it over iOS, Android and *cough* Blackberry. Not because I told them to or persuaded them, but because they tried them all and chose the best one.

I haven’t touched on other handsets, but all the new WP8 devices are amazing. I had a very hard time choosing, but the outstanding camera and the gorgeous screen on the Nokia made it for me. If you want choice and personalisation in handset and user experience, but without having to be a geek (like me), it is the superior platform. If you don’t want to be a sheep and follow the flock for no other reason than following them, try out a Windows Phone.

I am not looking back.

camera WP8

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