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Windows Phone Wednesday; Over 15,000 apps and Marketplace failures

By | May 11, 2011, 7:53am PDT

Summary: Windows Phone 7 continues to do well in the software department with over 15,000 apps now in the Marketplace. There has been lots of WP7 news lately and it is an exciting time to be a WP7 user.

It has been a couple of weeks since my last Windows Phone Wednesday, but lots of things continue to happen with this platform. We have been seeing FCC revelations that the HTC Trophy is coming to Verizon Wireless shortly and that is great news. We also heard of some upcoming Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) features and can’t wait to upgrade. I was also invited to the WP 7.5 preview event, but it is in New York so I will just have to try to meet with the Microsoft team here in Washington State.

Mary Jo also reported on a couple of Windows Phone 7 service failures and it appears they continue as the store hasn’t updated since sometime yesterday so neither of the deals mentioned in this post can actually be found yet. Harvest appears as the DoTW, but the price is still shown as $6.99 so do not buy it yet and wait for Microsoft to fix their store.

I was reporting app counts from Marketplace Browser, but one of my astute reader, Sreenu, mentioned that most sites count apps that have been deleted from the Windows Marketplace so I tried to find a place giving me a bit more accurate count. The WP7 App Explorer site states that as of yesterday there were 15,047 apps so the 15,000 application threshold has been reached and continue to roll.

Enigmo was the featured Xbox LIVE game last week and was a game I enjoyed on my Dell Axim X51v back in the day. This week takes me back to my youth again and came out when I was just 10 years old in 1979. Lunar Lander was a classic that is now available for $2.99. It’s too bad there is not another modern Xbox LIVE game this week though as I personally like when Microsoft releases a modern title along with these classics. There are likely not as many of us old time gamers out there wanting to play these type of games on their WP7 device as there are modern gamers.

According to my buddies over at WPCentral the Deal of the Week (DotW) is Harvest which is on sale for $4.99 instead of the normal $6.99 price. I played the demo and the game is pretty amazing, but now that I can save a couple bucks I think I will actually go buy it once the Marketplace is fixed.

There are a number of Twitter apps available in the Windows Marketplace and this week I switched from the official Twitter app back to Birdsong as my primary app. I will have to go update my WP7 Twitter app table as there are a large number of Twitter apps available and more are finally adding notifications and Tile support. My top right now is Birdsong, followed by Rowi, moTweets Pro, Beezz, Seesmic, and then Twitter. What is your favorite Twitter app(s) on WP7?

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Matthew Miller started using a Pilot 1000 in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since.

Disclosure

Matthew Miller

Matthew is a professional naval architect by day and a mobile gadget freak at all other times. He purchases his own devices and then sells them on eBay or Craigslist to buy more. Many other devices are sent for review on a 30-day loaner basis and then returned to the carrier or manufacturer. If any are provided as “long term loaner units” this will be clearly disclosed in his reviews.

Biography

Matthew Miller

Matthew Miller started using a mobile devices in 1997 and has been writing news, reviews, and opinion pieces ever since. He is a co-host with GigaOM's Kevin Tofel on the MobileTechRoundup podcast and an author of three Wiley Companion series books. Matthew started using mobile devices with a US Robotics Pilot 1000 and has owned over 125 different devices running Palm, Linux, Symbian, Newton, BlackBerry, iOS, Android, webOS, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone operating systems. His current collection includes an HTC Radar 4G, Dell Venue Pro, Apple iPad 2, HTC Flyer, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Nokia N9, Apple iPhone 4S, MacBook Pro, and many more, along with tons of accessories and classic devices like the Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 and Sony CLIE UX50. Matthew can be found on various discussion forums under the user name of "palmsolo".
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RE: Windows Phone Wednesday; Over 15,000 apps and Marketplace failures
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
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Favorite Twitter App is Birdsong, but the new upgrade isn't letting me set the live tile feature.
Rowi is by far the best...
0 Votes
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The apps are great
voyager529 11th May 2011
But they're missing the core functionality that they actually had RIGHT in Windows Mobile 6.5...

--File system browser.
--USB Mass Storage Mode.
--USB Sync with Outlook.
--Swype.
--SMS Sync with Exchange 2010.
--Tethering.
--Opera Mobile (I don't care how good IE supposedly is, I want the choice).

I wouldn't mind if these were Android or iOS features that were simply never implemented - every single one of these things work just fine on my HTC HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5.

If any of those 15,000 apps allow me to do that list, I'll upgrade tomorrow. Until then, I'm not holding my breath.

Joey
@voyager529
With WP7, you really don't need swype. I don't say Swype is bad, but WP7 keyboard is much blended with user experience than rest of the keyboards available on other platforms.
0 Votes
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I've used the WP7 keyboard
voyager529 11th May 2011
@Rama.NET

and while it's the best virtual thumb piano i've used, give me Swype any day.

Joey
@voyager529
Opera is not Microsofts product. You need to complain about the maker not supporting WP 7 not the other way around.
@jmallit Not when it's the closed architecture of the WP7 platform that makes it non-conducive for any 3rd party to produce a browser for it.
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@Socratesfoot, How can u say its closed. There are many 3rd party browsers for WP7, so its not a closed platform. Opera has not yet come out wiht WP7 Browser.
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RE: Windows Phone Wednesday; Over 15,000 apps and Marketplace failures
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RE: Windows Phone Wednesday; Over 15,000 apps and Marketplace failures
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