Starting next week, I'm going to swap to a Windows Phone 7 phone (that still sounds awkward) as my primary device for a bit. I picked up the Samsung Focus on a whim but really haven't spent any time with it to judge it either way.

Anyone have any questions or things they would like answered about it? I'll be setting it up from scratch this weekend.

Not really, but on a related note I remember the thread you made a while back on wanting to test out the Android platform. I've read the entire thread but I'm still wondering how the overall Android experience was for you? (like a 'conclusion' post ) I'm still in dubio weather my new smartphone will be an iPhone or an Android.

Personally I find Android slow. It can take up to 10 seconds just to bring up my text messages screen sometime. And it's not intuitive, my wife can't pick it up and use it without getting frustrated at it. That's usually a pretty good indication that something is not intuitive. I will be switching to Windows Phone 7 as soon as I can.

Depends on your phone model and what else you're running. Not all Android phones run the same OS version, have the same applications or UI layers.


Again, depends on your phone as most Android phones have manufacturer specific UI modifications.

The Android OS world is fragmented which is a big problem but you can't tar & feather the entire OS because your specific phone is slow. It would be like me saying that OSX is slow but not mentioning that I'm running it on a PowerPC Mac Mini with 256MB RAM and every application possible running at the same time.

I didn't do a full summary, but did have a conclusions post of sorts here. Since you're interested, I'll make a longer post sometime this weekend more directly comparing the iPhone and Android to see if it will help your decision. I've had some new insights into both sides since then.

Back on the WP7 topic, I'm also going to ping a friend of mine who picked one up about a month ago. He's a big Microsoft guy, so I'm kinda curious to see how we see things differently, and what we see eye to eye on as far as the benefits and downsides.

My friend pick up whatever W7 phone it is that came out on Orange and they seem happen with it. They had some HTC Android phone previously. I used it for a few minutes and it was weird but I just assume it was because I'm not used to it.

Sorry I don't buy this. My old Windows Mobile 5.5 phone would load the text messages screen instantly- even when I had literally two years of text messages from someone I talk to frequently on the screen. This is just bad design period. And I'm using an HTC Hero which is supposed to be one of the "bread and butter" Android phones, not super fast but not the slowest either.

I've used a craptastic Xperia X10 on 1.6 and 2.1, Motorola Droid, an original Nexus and a Nexus S. All of them managed to bring up the Messaging application instantly.

If the Android OS was to blame then wouldn't I have had issues with it?


The HTC Hero was the first HTC Android phone with their Sense UI so I wouldn't call it a representation of the stock Android OS which you're blaming. What version of Android is on your HTC?

I'm sorry to say this, but yes, that is the slowest of Android phones. It has the same CPU as all the first-rounders just like the G1. Compared to the Snapdragon and Hummingbird phones out there today and the phones set to come out soon, it's quite slow...

It also uses HTC Sense, which is not plain Android, and one of the manufacturer skins that's blamed for creating a poor user experience on these phones.

I will never buy another Android phone unless it has the plain Android experience on it. It works beautifully on my Nexus One, so I'm happy.


Re: WP7, I'm very curious to hear your results, Tom. I do think Phone 7 looks like a very nice OS, and I give MS all the credit they deserve for daring to completely ditch their old OS and start fresh. Then again, I gave the same credit to Palm. I think MS has more weight they can put behind the products, though, and they don't have most of the same problems Palm did (however you feel about the WP7 commercials, they're nowhere near the failure of the Pre ads).

How well does the phone integrate with the services you use? I know that was a big issue with your Android phone. Heck, how exactly do you use it on the Mac? Is there MacOS software?

Good to know I have the slowest of Android phone and that HTC has slowed everything down. As usual poorly-built third-party software ruins everything.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to put down your phone or anything! I'm impressed it's still working well enough for you to stick with it. I had the G1 and I'm very happy that I traded up, even though my phone is outdated too at this point.

From what I can tell, it looks like your phone may have been upgraded to 2.1. Is that so? If so, you're unfortunately still not getting the speed benefits of Froyo, which are actually quite substantial. Have you considered a 3rd party ROM?


Wow, that doesn't look very sturdy. What is your experience with it like?

A friend of mine has a Droid: the original. It was updated to Froyo ages ago, but he commented that he didn't see much of a performance benefit.

Turns out that not all Froyo builds got the JIT that we got with our Nexus Ones. I don't know why. Maybe CPU architecture? Anyway, the Droid didn't get it. There's, unfortunately, no reason to expect that other Froyo builds did. I mean, I'm sure some did, maybe even most, but definitely not all.

One of our TA's has this and he loves it. He spends most of our meetings playing "Fruit Ninja".

I don't care for what I've seen of the UI at all- but I think I'm just used to my iPhone, which I love.

Ok, to get this back on topic for Matt, I moved off the gaming subthread. Today is going to be day 0 for the phone, setup and initial syncing. I know right up front 8GB of built in storage won't be enough for me, so I'm currently researching what MicroSD card to buy. The Samsung Focus has a slot (since it's just a tweaked Galaxy S phone), but due to the way Windows Phone 7 works, it's very picky on cards. From what I can tell, the phone will stripe the onboard storage with the MicroSD, so the card becomes unremovable. The benefit of this is the phone will just have one solid chunk of usable space, with no need to manage what goes where. The downside is that it makes it harder to slap any old SD card in, as putting in a slow one (read/write or latency) can kill performance, or just make the phone not work at all.

I'm going to initially try the Mac software, but may end up switching over to a VM to manage the phone. The connector does allow me to transfer stuff from iTunes and iPhoto (good), but the downside is that I don't gain access to the Zune music subscription service. The phone comes with 3 free months, so it is something I want to try out. I guess as long as Windows 7 is contained in a small box on my OS X desktop, I'll tolerate it for now :-)

Tom, will yuo tell us how the memory expansion goes? I've been considering WP7 for a while, but one think that is keeping me from it so far is that I would really like to use it to replace my Zune as well, and 8 or 16 GB is by far not enough.

Also, what is needed? Do you just reset the phone and it will wipe everything, reboot and see the extra memory, or do you need to flash the device from a PC?

*sigh*

Came home after being distracted by the nice weather here, and it seems my Windows 7 VM decided to die. I'm going to just nuke and reinstall. This may delay the start of my use of the phone a bit.

As far as expandable memory goes, the Samsung Focus has had problems with various cards causing slowdowns, crashes, or data loss. No cards have been officially certified yet, but I found a forum discussion it, and most people have had luck with the SanDisk Class 2 cards, so I got one of those in 16gb size today. They also mention registry tweaks to make it work better *groan*.

Yup my phone is upgraded to the latest version of 2.1- speed isn't really a noticable issue anywhere else- it just takes 10-15 seconds to bring up text messages. Maybe there is something else going on. I do plan on rooting and installing a 3rd party ROM at some point- mostly because I want to get easy Tethering capability.

I was using a friend's HTC Wildfire last night, HTC Sense and a slow CPU. Text messages opened just about instantly.

I expected it to be slow phone, but in fact everything was snappy. The screen however was far too small for a proper touchscreen smartphone. 240 x 320 just isn't big enough for a phone that has an on screen keyboard.

Also the font rendering in the browser was very poor, not sure what was going on there.

Yes I agree the screen's much to small. When I really get down to texting I have to turn the phone on it's side just to cut down on the inevitable touch-screen mistype. My touch screen error rate is very high- I have to rely heavily on the autocomplete which sometimes makes for odd text messages when I'm not paying attention..

I didn't have much problem with the keyboard itself, more the tiny sliver of screen that was let to view the app for when the keyboard was visible. Made it very hard filling in the settings* for an IMAP account.

*not helped by the layout of the settings page. You get half way down the page, find a button saying "Manual settings" (or something like that), press the button and the extra settings don't appear below the button on the page, but somewhere further up the page and thus not visible. Very confusing design.

Just as a quick update, this is on hold for a little longer. I need to decide on how I'm going to sync contacts and get some setup done first, and a trip this weekend will be occupying most of my time.

So, how do you practically expand memory? Sorry if it has been said before, but I can't find it. Say you get a Phone with 8 GB and find a 32 GB compatible, fast enough miniSD. What do you do then? Power off, remove old card, plug in new card, and then? Just curious...

If you change cards, you have to do a hard reset of the phone and let it format the flash space. The internal and SD storage are then joined together into one contiguous space. Microsoft uses the "secure" part of SD to also lock the card to the phone, preventing accidental writes if it's put into another device. If you want to reuse the SD card later, you have to completely wipe it out too.

From doing research on it, it's not raw sequential read/write speeds that are critical. It's more important to have better random access and seek times. Some users reported really bad instability with the "fastest" class of SD cards due to them being optimized only for sequential.

Thanks. Ok, so it's good there's no need for PC software to do this. I think I found on line somewhere a list of "known good" SD cards. I'll post it here if I can find one.

My work contract may include a WP7 phone or a RIM, in which case I'd go with WP7 and expand it as much as possible.

Keep in mind the known good cards may vary between devices too. The Samsung Focus I have seems to be very picky, and owners have discovered registry settings (yes, Microsoft even has a registry in their new mobile OS) that help. Mostly related to how the phone deals with power management of the SD card.

If the phone doesn't like the SD card, it may resume from sleep slow, run slower in general, or have stability issues. The really bad SD cards will also cause the phone to reset, and in certain cases, data loss as well.

Just because a card is on a list, doesn't mean that the insides are the same on your card. I'm more pointing at the fact that the controller and flash may not be the same and not the fact there are many fakes.

First hurdle, trying to get my contacts into Windows Live and keep them synced. I have a Windows 7 VM, installed all the Live pieces, Zune, and MobileMe. MobileMe lets me sync to Windows Contacts (the equivalent of Address Book on a Mac). And I have a Windows Live Mail program that also shows Calendars and Contacts. But the contacts there are from when I used MSN Messenger in the past, and aren't my Windows Contacts.

Also, it looks like I managed to blow up my MSN contact list somehow. I saw people online, made a change to use my miniinfo.net e-mail instead of the 11 year dead e-mail address I had previously. Everyone is in my list still, but no one is online now. Every time I try a new mobile OS, I blow up IM stuff, as something similar happened to Google Talk. *sigh*

Day 1: Left the phone plugged in via USB to my machine overnight, and verified the phone was still charging when the machine was asleep. So far so good. Woke up, and the phone is showing around 20-25% charge.

Brought the phone and the USB cable to work, and it's sat plugged in for 3 hours, and the battery bar isn't moving at all. I haven't applied any of the power tweaks for the SD card, I wonder if the phone is just spinning and draining the battery now that it has content on it. Going to be hard to test this thing as my daily phone if it can't even hold a charge. Beginning to think it might just be wise to avoid any Samsung phone regardless of the OS, as I'm seeing tons of similar charging complaints even without the SD card.

Been using the phone daily this week as my only phone, and so far it is going well. The main difference between this phone evaluation and the Android attempt is that up front I know this won't replace my current iPhone. With the Android side, I was lead into believing Android was on par with the iPhone, and I found that to be greatly untrue based on my use for a smartphone. With a more honest start to the evaluation, I'm having an easier time looking at the platform's strengths, instead of being frustrated with the parts that don't live up to my expectations.

Still not sure why the battery won't stay charged if I have the USB cable attached to a computer overnight, but for now I've moved to just using the wall adaptor. That seems to be the only way to ensure the battery will be at 100% when I leave in the morning, instead of nearly dead.

Some initial impressions:

Notifications that work. The phone shows a lot of info on the unlock screen, such as an alarm indicator, the next appointment on the calendar, and indicators of how much unacknowledged e-mail exists on each account. Also the indicator on the home screen works the same way. Instead of trying to show unread e-mail (like iOS) or never clearing notifications (like Android on IMAP), it shows how many new messages exist since the last time I checked. If I open a mail account, and then close, the notification clears. Really handy for being able to just skim topics, and not have to read the full message to clear it, thus allowing me to decide if I'll read it fully on my desktop.

Also another nice thing about email when compared to Android, I have an IMAP and an Exchange account set up. Both work equally well and are treated as first class citizens. IMAP folders are handled well, and overall it's a good mobile e-mail client. I'm not feeling like an Exchange or Hotmail account is required for the best experience. Android really made me feel I had to be using GMail and nothing else for the best experience.

Internet Explorer so far has been disappointing though. I understand that down the road the phone will get a version of IE 9, and it's clear it needs it. The rendering of smaller items is pretty bad, and made worse with the PenTile OLED screen this particular phone has. I'd prefer even the older iPhone over this for browsing. And the iPhone 4 screen and browser solidly beats the browsing experience here. Rotating the phone also takes about 2 full seconds for IE to reorient the view properly, compared to half a second on my iPhone. Rotation in other places like Mail is only a second, with most of that delay being due to the slow eye candy effect.

I am using the Windows Zune software for syncing to take advantage of the Zune Pass. I really don't like the software, the interface just seems wrong. Browsing, downloading, and even just generally working with the program, it takes a while just to figure each task out. I do like the syncing though. If the phone is on my WiFi network and charging, I can sync. It also seems to do multiple syncs. With the iPhone, I have to make sure I sync in the morning, otherwise I miss the podcasts that came out after I docked my phone the previous evening. Just now, I opened Zune, and it downloaded 15 songs it thinks I'd like. As the download was still going, it saw the phone on the network and also began syncing. Really hoping Apple copies both the idea of wireless syncing and a subscription service.

I'll probably go more in depth into the marketplace this weekend. So far my use has only been of the native apps. It does work fine as a phone, and SMS seems to work properly too, with nothing really special for either thing. I haven't used the camera yet either, but I do like the dedicated camera button. If you push and hold it, the camera app opens, even if the phone is locked. And every time I've opened the camera, it's ready to take a picture after only a short delay. Both the iPhone and the Android phone seemed to put very little priority on getting the camera ready.

I know it's not really about the phone, but I'm curious what you think of Zune Pass. I have it for my Zune HD and I love it, and my friend has it and he's a voracious music listener. There are some holes in the selection, but on the most part I think it's a nice service.

I agree about the software whole-heartedly, though. I hate it. It's very pretty for the most part, but it's entirely form over function. I'm constantly running into little things that bug me.

I also know from using the Zune HD that the wireless syncing is pretty damn cool. I wish Google would do that for their music content, but I suspect they haven't because they're waiting to launch their music service. I bet Apple beats them to the punch, though...

It would be great if Apple addressed this. However there is already a solution on iOS for syncing podcasts on the move, the Podcaster app. It even has scheduled downloads and push alerts when new episodes are available.

It isn't the most stable app though, it does crash on me occasionally.

The downside of Podcaster for me is lack of integration. I just checked their latest version, and it still seems to silo the podcasts in it's own storage area instead of using the iPod area (not sure if it even can). It's also lacking AirPlay support, so I can't play a podcast on my home audio setup easily. With my short commute these days, I've been more dependent on the ability to play a podcast at home for a bit before heading out the door, and the iTunes syncing including playback position makes this convenient.

I do like the app concept though, as it's similar to the Google Listen that I used on the Captivate.

Microsoft has just announced it's killing Zune-specific hardware to concentrate solely on software...

Yikes! I wonder what this is going to mean for me down the road. I'm sure my Zune will remain supported (or at least I HOPE).

It's too bad, too. I think the Zune is flat-out the best MP3 player out there (I'm talking dedicated devices). It's quite beautiful hardware. Too bad MS was just too far behind in the category and the category simply died.

Heretic.

Empeg FTW!

It's a shame that with so much effort put into the Zune, it seems that promoting it and advancing it as a viable music platform was done so half-assed, like MS has done with everything else in recent memory. They seem to really be trying with WIndows Phone, and I think that's where the Zune software component will live from now on. If they're smart, they'll release new hardware down the road with the same software - it will be more than the Zune ever was since it will support all the same native apps the current phone platform does.

They have a fantastic opportunity right now that it's shame they're missing out. There doesn't seem to be anything worthwhile with Android on it in the non-phone portable media player game. At least nothing that can touch (no pun intended) the iPod.

My apologies! Of course I meant portable players. (Sorry, Rio)

Yeah, MS really put almost no effort into this one. They finally released incredible hardware, then didn't back it up with much marketing.

But really, the star in the Zune ecosystem is the Zune Pass. I'm hoping that lives on for a long time, I really can't think of consuming music any other way...

Did you ever try a Rio Karma? The iPod hardware is (IMHO) better, but for software the Karma beats any iPod hands down. Yes, the Touch has far more capabilities, but for playing music the Karma was as much better than any other portable MP3 player as the empeg was better than other in-car players.

tanstaafl.

Yeah the Karma was the only one that had insert and append. Why can't anyone get this right ?

I thought that would be brought up. I suppose it's hard for me to argue, not having owned one. No, the Zune does not have things like insert, but sadly the Karma is a little outdated at this point, and hardware-wise you can't tell me the Karma stacks up with anything today.

For the time, I'll agree that the Karma was great, but I stand by my assertion that when it comes to dedicated [portable] MP3 players, the Zune is hard to beat. It has its problems, but it's a great device.

But nobody wants dedicated MP3 players anymore, and that's understandable. I think MS is going the right route here, and it was only a matter of time before they killed this thing off.

Tell that to iPod Touch customers, which is as dedicated an MP3 player as Zune could have been.

I disagree. It is not a device dedicated to playing MP3s. Just because you take the phone out of the iPhone doesn't mean that you're left with JUST an MP3 player. The iPod Touch does a lot of things really well, and it's a great device, but I completely disagree that it's a better music player.

The Zune was technically designed to do some of the same things as the Touch, I admit. It has a browser and it technically has "apps," but these were never the forethought of Microsoft or the people buying the devices. I know that sounds like an excuse, and I guess it is, but I still feel like for an MP3 player, the Zune is pretty much as good as it gets because music was the first thing that was thought about, and it does this better than anything I've used. The hardware is also a lot more compact than the Touch.

That is why I said "as dedicated an MP3 player as Zune could have been" rather than "as dedicated an MP3 player as Zune".

Hadn't realised that the Zune HD was smaller and lighter than the iPod Touch, but then I've never seen one in person, which says a lot about how many they sold in the UK !

Very true. I'm certainly not defending how well it was marketed, just how good the device its self is.

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making, though.

You connected Zune's end with people not wanting dedicated MP3 players anymore.

I was suggesting that they could easily (relatively) have made the Zune HD less of a dedicated MP3, like the iPod Touch that still sells well.

I agree with Andy. They could have back-ported the rest of the Windows Phone OS to Zune, turning it into a full-fledged PMP and current app platform.

The announcement hasn't been made officially yet, so who knows, maybe they'll spin something new. There's likely a lot going on behind the curtain to influence this decision as well.

Do they keep pouring money into a brand that's not making the required returns? Do they keep this non-phone version of the platform out of the hands of their OEMs?

I can see MS moving to a more traditional (for them) software and spec model for the PMP market. Simply not having a PMP is a very foolish move. The iPod has helped the iPhone gain traction and it plays a large part in the overall iOS landscape.

... I see the "Zune" name deisappear in the future. I think MS will simply incorporate the software Zune concept into WP7 completely, and rename Zune Software into something more related to Windows Phone 7.
And, I don't see this necessarily as a bad thing, provided GUI and effectiveness of Zune PC software (which I do prefer to iTunes in most respects) and Zune device software (which I too consider better than its iPod conunterparts) is preserved/improved.

I just hope that by moving entirely into the WP ecosystem, hardware remains good enough in terms of audio quality - because yes, even there I find my Zune 120GB better than my iPod Classic, and so does a Zune HD I've been using for a while.

I have not listened to any of the WP7 devices currently in the market, and I don't know how they sound. Maybe they're good, maybe not. I hope some good hardware is out there, now or at some point in the future, especially by Nokia or Sony-Ericsson. Or whoever, provided it sounds good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqTYI55K1eo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The guy at work with a Zune thought this bit was really funny.

It is.

Haha, yeah, I remember laughing at that when it aired. Though the iPod they're using appears to be an old black and white one

Well, that too, alone, indeed sold more than the Zune, I suppose

I was always impressed by that. While the physical size isn't all that different, the weight is. I'm guessing the difference is due to the OLED screen and lack of dedicated separate backlight, along with a lower capacity battery from having a more power efficient display. The fact that Microsoft could make a device with the industrial design quality normally associated with Apple was impressive.

Even the newest iPod Touch 4th gen is heavier at 3.56 ounces. Thinness has dropped to 0.28 inches (7.2mm), though height increased to 4.4 inches. Makes me wonder what a newer Zune HD would have looked like.

It's really a shame Microsoft is slow on some of these things. They do still have the ability to compete, but by the time they arrive, the party has moved on.

On the initial topic of the thread, I'll try and compile a bit of a summary soon. I ended up only using the phone as my primary device for a week before needing to return to my iPhone. I knew up front it wouldn't replace my iPhone, but I did appreciate a fresh look at another platform, and do see promise for people who don't currently have smart phones.

Still no official statement, but this comment on a forum.



Translated to English: The Zune hardware is dead.

In my opinion, the Zune was dead on arrival when the featured color was brown. And not a nice chocolate brown, either. More like '70s rec-room fake wood paneling brown.

Sorry, I have to always counter this stuff. OLED is *not* power efficient in many scenarios - in fact, it's ONLY a win when it's mostly off (ie, lots of dark pixels). I've no idea how the OLED marketing guys managed to get this one into the collective consciousness, but it's a total lie.

If you're displaying white content (eg web pages), then you'll find OLEDs are up to 2x higher power than an LCM. That likely accounts for why the Zune UI (and actually, a lot of android UIs) use black backgrounds.

I've found battery life to be pretty darn good, and if you've seen shots of the Zune/Window 7 interface, you can see how heavy it is on the black pixels Perhaps that's the reason?


I'll just point out that the Zune HD was a pretty different device.

I think initially it was touted as a big win due to the lack of backlights back when CCFL was still the primary LCD backlight mechanism. CCFL backlights were made even more efficient since the initial OLED hype, and LED backlighting and regional dimming (on TVs) helped too. Of course the OLED side won't point that out.

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

I'm sure the marketing teams have always glossed over that white part, leading to many (including myself) to only remember the general power efficiency argument without quantifying when.

From my experience, The Zune HD hardware did try and keep things black as much as possible. Windows Phone 7 does too, but to a more limited extent. It's probably much like Android where a mixture of LCD and OLED screens are out there, so there isn't as much focus on optimizing just for OLED.

Battery wise, looks like the Zune HD does indeed have a smaller battery then the iPod Touch 3rd gen.

... which is why I actually think they do not really WANTED to, sadly (and "Insanely" :)) enough.

As I was saying before, I have used the ZuneHD for a while and I've been impressed on how light it is, among other things. Unlike any mobile device I've owned, with the exception of the Nokia 6310i, it is something you can put in your jacket pocket and completely forget about. My current, old and almost dead, Palm Treo 750 is a brick compared to that. Also the Zune 120 previous generation is a brick compared to that. As is my iPod Classic, or as is the iPhone 4 (which at least is a remarkably beautiful and beautifully done piece of hardware).But yes, the Zune HD beats them all in that regard.

Interesting... I too always assumed oled meand lower consumption, always.

Yes. And, if you notice, also plastic used for its case, while sturdy and resistent, and nicely put together, was just as plain as it can be. "Unintresting" as it can be.
This while the iPod was already in the market and already being credited for being nice and beautiful.

2x the power per unit brightness, or 2x brighter?

Peter

When Microsoft doesn't want to compete they'll still do something to be disruptive. Like releasing things for free in hopes of destabilizing an established market.

They wanted to compete. They just didn't know how to do so while at the same time differentiating themselves enough to matter. They also recognized that simply throwing money at the problem was not likely going to change things in the short term.

Or maybe it's because black backgrounds are easier on the eyes, since you're not staring into a giant light source.

Only in a dark room.

Dark backgrounds with light coloured text are an enormous strain on the eyes in daylight or normal lit-room ambient lighting. Most dark background websites or blogs are a complete usability disaster.

That said, the Zune and Windows Phone seem to compensate with very large and clear typefaces. This is must and it's part of what makes the UI work as well as it does.

Black text on white or light-coloured background is by far the easiest in the eyes.

Try reading an all-black background site for 10 to 15 minutes and then go walk around your normally lit house for a while. Notice anything disorienting?

It doesn't matter if the room is dark, or not. The screen is still a light source (barring various e-ink technologies).


You'll forgive me, of course, if I don't take your word for gospel on this. Of course, your opinion is shared by many, but the opposite opinion is also held by many, too. Don't get me wrong, I've seen my share of dark-background websites/blogs that are usability disasters, but the useability issues generally neither start, nor end there. If it's anecdotes you want, then if I had a dime for every light-background/dark-foreground website I've seen with usability issues, I could retire in comfort.


Maybe, maybe not. I'll agree that's true for printed dead-tree material (hey, there are even studies backing it up), but it's certainly not something you can accept as fact where computer monitors are concerned.

For example, I'm currently typing this message in a black-text on white background vim window, and I find myself frequently looking away to other places, because it's too damn bright (and no, I don't have the monitor brightness cranked). Yet I can stare at a printed sheet of white paper for hours without the same problem. I also don't have the same issues when working in my default light-on-dark colour scheme.


No. I spend 8 hours a day in the shell and vim, with a light-on-dark colour scheme. I've never noticed anything disorienting when getting up to walk around. In my previous jobs, I worked in offices where the only lighting was via 40-60 watt desk lamps. Overhead lights were off, and windows were covered in heavy fabric, to prevent screen glare. For the last year, I've been working in an office with all the overhead lights on. (It's a refreshing change, even if they are flourescent tubes. :)) In both cases, I find my light-on-dark colour scheme far easier on the eyes, and less fatiguing, than the inverse.

As you know, I disagree that MS has a golden rule to apply in all occasions, as you seem to suggest.
See, companies give signals to each others, on what they can and cannot do. It is part of the strategy.

Of course, mine is just my best educated guess.

I'm not suggesting that MS has a golden rule, but rather just looking to the past at their actions. MS seems very resistive to change.

Typically too, OLEDs can't go as bright as an LCM - which is one reason why they're a pain to see in sunlight. OLEDs often top out around 300ish nits, whereas LCMs are often 500+