Can we all just agree, right off the bat, that Windows 7 is, essentially, Vista? Yes, I know there are some improvements, and yes, I know it’s been better optimised but it is, basically, at its heart, Vista. Trust me, it’ll make the rest of this blog post make sense if we agree that now.
Okies? Good.
Now, there seems to have been a spate of phones being announced recently (and by spate, I mean two), which run on Windows XP. Most recently, there was the ViewSonic VPC08, but before that, there was the xpPhone. And at the end of the blog post about the VPC08, you may remember that I said it could be worse, it could be Vista. Yeah, well, now it turns out that the first of those two handsets (and you’ll see why I’m calling them handsets, not phones, in a minute) to get announced, the xpPhone, is in fact going to be available with Windows 7, according to Pocketables. And as we’ve just agreed, Windows 7 is, basically, Vista.
Ah. I have to confess, that makes me disinclined to think the phone will actually end up being any good. Not because Windows 7 is rubbish, but because they’re trying to run a brand new OS on something that’s not really optimised to run it. I remain to be convinced that it’ll actually be able to run at a decent speed, now.
Oh, and not only that, but calling it the xpPhone now makes precisely no sense, if it’s running Windows 7…
But then, the ‘Phone’ part of its name isn’t making a great deal of sense, any more, since ITG have decided to offer it with 4.3, 4.8 and 7 inch screens. A phone with a 7 inch screen? Hell, that’s too big even for me. No, what they’ve done is take it straight out of phone territory, and into MID (mobile internet device) territory. And, of course, in the world of phones, there’s no possible way it can be as good as the Windows-powered HTC HD2, but then, what can?
And yet… despite that, I am damnably intrigued to see this thing in action. I’ve realised that despite thinking it will fail hard, I really, really want it to work. It’s something that’s never been done before, and I really want it to succeed, because if they get it right, it could be brilliant, especially given the customisation options. If they succeed, they’ve not only made a phone running on XP (or, as the case may be, Windows 7), they will have made a phone that you can customise the spec of, as if it were a laptop.
That makes me excited.
Of course, if they don’t get it right, it’s one massive BSOD waiting to happen, but hey…
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