Video: Angry Birds on the Nokia Lumia 610
Do you remember that Skype was reportedly working on the Nokia Lumia 610 fine? Installing was prohibited through official channels but once you get it on the device it actually works properly.
http://mynokiablog.com/2012/05/24/video-skype-on-the-nokia-lumia-610/
Regardless, Nokia/MS were ‘unhappy’ with the performance and will not yet bring it officially.
Angry Birds faces this odd problem too. It officially is unable to install on the Nokia Lumia 610 – but it can work pretty well. So, it’s not about not being able to run it – it’s just not at the super fluid standards of previous WP. There are small lags but I suppose but not really noticeable to most people.
TheVerge reports that an official 256mb version is coming.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/28/3047773/windows-phone-tango-256mb-ram-app-games-restrictions
Once games are recompiled for Tango they will be allowed to install. I believe we posted a while ago about building Tango apps – they were meant to be more efficient. By working smoothly on 256mb, they work even better on 512mb devices.
Hmm. Perhaps it would have just been easier to keep the standard gen1 WP hardware? You can’t really expect people to think cheaper phone means less apps are compatible. This is not the PC World. Keep the optimisation process of apps in Tango but don’t create that initial install hindrance.
by WeLoveWPHK
Arts said:
more nokia/microsoft red tape shenanigans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnVFpibXH9w&feature=g-u-u
angry birds RUNNING on lumia 610.
since its in cantonese ill give a brief overview:
1. The first stage was smooth, due it being relatively uncluttered.
2. When the guy starts stage 20, there is a noticable lag at the beginning. However, he continued to say that panning and dragging were still relatively smooth.
3. When the guy starts stage 19, where there is noticeably longer loading times and more objects. Panning is still smooth unless it pans to the pigs where there is alot of objects. Dragging back the birds on the slingshot also show lagg.He concludes by saying the gameplay mechanics are basically ok, is just that the lag that might occur at times might affect user experience.
To me the lag seems so miniscule a problem. Why not release the damn thing? =.= i guess aiming for consistency is good, but angry birds seems pretty playable to me.
Cheers arts for the tip!
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- Angry Birds in funzione su Lumia 610 (video) | May 30, 2012
I wonder if this device will ever get WP8 in any form.
I also wonder if WP8 brings similar situation to all current devices, WP8 apps won’t work without special optimization.
same here. =s
Jay how far will you go to prove that WP is best OS in world. You are joining leagues of Elop!
Blahblahblah WP sucks blahblahblah screw Elop
Oh shut up. Really.
First of all I think MS have handled this badly. If they were going to drop the specs of WP then they should have made sure that the developers, particularly for the main titles, were up to speed. I mean, Skype… that’s just embarrassing.
However, action is being taken and it seems that the problems are more to do with minor lag than a fundamental inability to play the game. I recall my N8 also suffering from lag on Angry Birds from time to time. I didn’t think it was a huge issue, MS obviously do.
So, right intetnions but handled badly.
WP is a good OS. Is it the best in the world? I don’t know; that’s rather going to depend on individual needs. From my point of view it’s the OS I prefer because, despite missing a few features and having a number of irritations, it is by far the easiest, fluid and most intuitive mobile OS I have used. YMMV.
Please clarify what you mean. In what way am I trying to prove WP is the best OS?
There is never a ‘best OS’ for all. There is a ‘best OS’ for some and it depends on what’s important for you. For many of our readerbase, that’s Symbian. I’ve acknowledged this many times and have said WP is not for them.
For others, the best OS for them is Maemo 5 /MeeGo-Harmattan on N9
For some others, it is S40
And for the non-Nokias, some have gone to Android/iOS or even BlackBerry..
I’m not happy with what the 610 hardware is doing. As such I said:
If you have misinterpreted my reason for posting this, let me clarify for you. It is thought that 256mb devices cannot physically run these apps. Here is a video (and we previously linked Skype too) showing this is NOT aligning with what Nokia/MS have said with regards to that limitation.
Android is now the best OS and that’s not just an opinion but a fact. Android has the flexibility, rich functionality and more of Symbian, the “openness” of Meego, the fluidity of Windows Phone, and the vast number of available applications of iOS. Android is all OSes combined.
Fluidity of WP haha you joker you. Android cannot even get its Quad core phone to do a pinch to zoom gesture as smooth as a 1st gen single core WP lol.
The massive downside to Android has to be its UI (icons icons icons widget icons) and the virus plagues Google play store (resulting in random battery loss, information loss, identity theft and so on – found on even official respected apps – barely any app control with Google!).
“Android is now the best OS and that’s not just an opinion but a fact.”
No it isn’t. Batery consumption is still unacceptable, it requires a skin to be commercially acceptable and the menus remain unintuitive.
Opinion =/= fact.
Yeah and I agree with Mark
When you say it’s a fact, you are already trolling. There’s no such thing as best or whatever.
We all enjoy different things and perseive them differently. I hated my buggy GS and Android seems to get always slower more you use it.
I love WP and iOS as the user experience is to me better and it will remain smooth no matter what you do.
It may take a lot of effort to optimize a more demanding app for Tango.
If you read the Microsoft’s/Nokia’s recommendation, you immediately see there are some pain spots:
http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/Best_practice_tips_for_delivering_apps_to_Windows_Phone_with_256_MB
For example, Tango apps may not use integrated maps. I’m developing an app with integrated Bing maps and it works well in 256MB emulator, but I for example refrained from using integrated compact SQL database and implemented some very lightweight data solution, because both Compact SQL and Bing maps in one app may be to hard to swallow for Lumia 610.
In general, I think this 256MB thing is a mistake.
As a starter on Qt Apps development for Symbian, I am quite impressed the integrated maps and SQL lite is working smoothly even on the first batch of Symbian^3 devices.
Those devices are having an ARM11 680MHz and 256MB RAM and they are capable to run almost all Qt apps. I would prefer Nokia to use Symbian for these 5xx, 6xx cost down devices. The ease of developing Qt apps is also a plus.
Similar things worked on Windows Mobile with even poorer specs years ago too.
Uh oh, this is bad news. I’m not a developer so I don’t know how much effort it takes to make apps Tango compatible, but I could imagine it may make developers to think twice before bringing their apps to WP. I still can’t see the reasoning behind the low-specced WP handsets, they aren’t THAT much cheaper compared to e.g. Lumia 710.
Let’s hope the boys at Microsoft and Nokia manage to work things out. While some might argue otherwise, I think this is the beginning of the fragmentation of the Windows Phone ecosystem.
It’s already getting much worse with Windows 8/RT tablets…
See the comment of Scripticus here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465136.aspx
**********
All my existing games are 2D or 3D XNA or XNA/Silverlight hybrids. I have taken tons of time to build up my XNA libraries and codebase. The games run wondefully on WindowsPhone. Unless there is some kind of managed C# Direct3D support in WinRT I won’t be able to port them over. I can’t rewrite thousands of lines of code that took me years to create in the first place.
**********
There are two groups of API on Windows Phone 7.0/7.5 – Silverlight and XNA. Silverlight is usually used for apps, XNA for games. And since Mango they may be combined in one app or game.
Windows 8 has no Silverlight and no XNA. Silverlight is replaced by a WinRT XAML implementation, that is almost identical and rather better, although some small pieces are still missing. The important point is it can be used from C#, C++ and Visual Basic apps.
BUT, XNA is just missing. There is a full native WinRT DirectX implementation, BUT IT CAN BE USED FROM C++ ONLY!
So, there is NO WAY to migrate Mango XNA game – the vast majority of WP7 games – to Windows 8/RT without complete rewriting. No kidding! I know bot C# and C++ but I’m an exception and even for me it would be crazy to rewrite a big deal of C# code to C++. It’s much easier the other way around! C# is more similar to Java than to C++.
This is bad, folks.
But I’ve heard some 3rd party libraries are being developed for the XNA -> DirectX porting of games. It may help a lot!
There is official word of no XNA when WP8 isn’t even revealed yet? With it being almost 100% that most of the old apps will work on WP8?
Silverlight\XNA has been dropped for Win8(both x86\x64 and ARM). Considering MS is said to unify their mobile\tablet\pc offerings with WIn8, that seems to be the logical assumptions.
The WP7.x apps may work on Win8\WP8 with a backward compatibilty layer but that doesn’t devs can continue to develop using the old techs.
I was talking about Windows 8 for tablets (ARM version is called Windows RT), not Windows Phone 8.
Official statements:
1. Windows Phone 8 will run all existing apps, so it will run XNA too.
BUT there is a strong feeling in the dev community, that XNA and Silverlight will be supported just as obsolete technologies, perhaps for one more version, not beyond WP 10.
2. Windows 8/RT will NOT run XNA apps natively. There is no way to develop in XNA for W8 and it is officially confirmed.
BUT Microsoft could provide some emulator for current Windows Phone apps, including XNA-based, to be able to run on W8 tablets without modifications. Although there were some rumors directing this way I consider it rather a dream.
Correction: “Not beyond WP 9″
And I have to add that some independend developers may come with libraries that would dramatically ease conversion of current XNA games to WinRT.
Agree.. Also, MS hasn’t spoken about the dev platforms for WP8 (whether it’ll go for Win8 XAML\DirectX or for WP7.x Silverlight\XNA) iirc.
I think MS should have gone for XAML\DirectX for WP from the start since the news of dropping support for XNA\Silverlight must have been know inside the company for quite some time(it came out in public about a year ago).
its just the matter of time all apps start running on the lumia 610 , these apps just need to be optiised for tango , tats it . so chill out guys ,
Yes, but with limited features. Even MS+NK recommend swithing off some features on Lumia 610.
Fortunately, Lumia 610 has even stronger GPU than the 1st gen WP handsets, so these troubles with top games (PES, NFS, Splinter Cell…) are probably purely memory-related, not GPU-related. But it still may reuire simpler 3D models somewhere, for example. Which is the situation we all are familiar from PCs, but phones should be rather consoles than PCs.
It does have a slower CPU, though, then the 1st gen. That might explain some things.
Anyway, the Lumia 610 is a cheaper model. It would be unrealistic to expect it to have top specs and thus worse performance. Still, overall seems like a quite smooth experience. Once this base-spec hits even lower pricepoints I think it will start making more and more sense…
The performance of 610 is similar to what was expected due to its specs. The problem I think is MS’s claim that the fluidity of WP(which is its strong point) will remain. Although MS had requested devs to make changes to support for Tango, many of the devs including the big ones didn’t go through that process and assumed their apps would work.
I still don’t know if my apps run, or even install, on Lumia 610. There no way to prove it without the actual device and I haven’t been lucky enough to find it somewhere yet.
Microsoft has provided the emulator with the 256MB option, but it can only prove the app doesn’t work at all (my apps work), not its fluidity and the user experience in general. You just need the real hardware.
In fact, any serious dev should get L610 and develop on it from now on. But he/she needs a WP8 device ASAP too… This is a fragmentation.
But Lumia 610 is going to my country, Czech Republic, this Friday. All three carriers will sell it.
Oslik: But then that goes with any evolutionary change in an ecosystem, unless it stays the same forever. There are three Windows Phone specs out there: the new base as well first and second generation. So, you need three devices to test with. Compare to Android, where you need… what.. a hundred?
I do think Microsoft should evolve the emulator to emulate speed, unless it does so already. The poor emulator for Android is a pet-peeve of Android developers that have a hard time making things fluid because testing is so hard.
I think much to much has been made of this. So, Windows Phone has a brand-new base spec, out with the Lumia 610 and similar devices (expect other low-end WPs to adopt this same spec). Since this spec is new, application developers have not had (much) time yet to adapt to it.
Once they do, it will be just one more very standard spec to target (base spec, first gen spec, second gen spec). In the fall there will be a few more specs with Windows Phone 8, but overall the situation is very much in control. Developers manage with the same with iOS and much worse with Android.
In time, there would be generational spec-levels anyway. This is just adding a new base-spec to the existing first-gen and second-gen spec-levels. Three spec-levels to target? Count how many there are on Android…
Comparing Android & WP in this regard isn’t valid at all. Android is known for different specs-levels but WP isn’t since MS has designed the OS with limited specs-levels.
If devs are having issues with 3 spec-levels of WP, it will prove to be a bigger problem when WP8 comes out with its multi-resolution\multi-chipset combinations (with rumoured different user experiences for those specs + current WP7.x devices) unless MS finds a better way to handle them..
Why on Earth would this be a problem for Windows Phone and not for Android? The situation is far worse on Android and will continue to be. On WP developers have clearly defined guidelines to target, that evolve from time to time. Now was such a time, last time was with Mango release.
People are making a mountain out of a molehill. All controlled ecosystems evolve, including iOS, and with evolution come changes. Call it controlled fragmentation. It is necessary unless you want to stay the same all the time. As long as that evolution is well-managed, fragmentation is minimal compared to what happens on Android.
WP is new and such evolution is thus more new for developers, but time will take care of that. Sure, the 256 MB SDK and devices could have come to developers earlier so this would have been a less of a problem, but the cut-throat pace with which Nokia is moving forward requires some compromises.
Microsoft has already admitted the 256 MB base-spec was not on their roadmap, but instead was a demand of Nokia.
I’m not saying it isn’t a problem on Android. It is but this point wasn’t considered a requirement while developing Android. Everyone related to Android knows that. But it isn’t same for iOS & WP. They are designed with this consideration (else WP would have got lot more hardware choices since the start) and both take pride in it (and mock Android).
Also, I agree that the 256MB requirement is from Nokia and not MS. They could have gone with 384MB RAM instead which would have allow most (if not all) apps to run perfectly and they could have reduced the number of background agents instead of not supporting them al together for 3rd-party apps.
The reason why people are making a mountain of this is because of MS & Nokia themselves. MS & Nokia priding themselves for fluid WP interface and mocking Android at every possible chance has caused it. Android fans (and MS\WP-hater) were just waiting for such a chance and they got the chance with 610.
The fragmentation with 610 isn’t controlled. Noone yet knows which all apps play foul to it since I don’t think any one has gone through the entire marketplace apps. This is more of a app fragmentation(which exists on iOS either because of 4X resolution or because same sized app designed for iPhone & iPad).
Of course the fragmentation is controlled, it is a clearly defined spec in a pool of few (three to be exact, three!). Sure, some implications might not be controlled, as is the case with any 3rd party issues, but the target market for Windows Phone apps is still controlled. You have specific specs to target (or choose from) and those specs are known and limited. Get one Lumia 610 and you can expect that other base-spec devices will play similarly. Of course there is now one more spec now, but that would have been the case over time anyway. Same with iOS. It started without fragmentation and over time some came of course.
Look, this again is not some black and white issue. Just because WP has three spec-levels (and over time will have many more as evolution progresses), does not mean it is fragmented like Android. That is just silly talk. A little fragmentation is different from a wild-wild-west of fragmentation. On a fragmentation spectrum WP is till very close to “none”, while Android is way close to (or over) “a lot”. Some fragmentation is must, to have diversity, choice and evolution. This base-spec was designed so that they could push WP price way, way down. I’m sure it will become more apparent over time as the line-up fills up. Today Lumia 610 is still a bit of an odd man out, but over time it will be a part of a low-end Windows Phone family that will find its place in the ecosystem.
Now, 256 MB vs. 384 MB and all that is of course debatable. I don’t know enough to argue it. We shall see is the new base-spec a good or a bad idea. Time should tell…
I’m not defending Android nor attacking WP and .
Android is as fragmented as fragmentation can be even more than Symbian in it S60 2nd\3rd edition days and it was bound to happen due to no restrictions on hardware or software or even the OS itself(Android forks used in Amazon Kindle Fire and others). Moreover, Google seems to be happy with that.
I personally think MS will not allow any more 256MB RAM devices to be released even from Nokia. It is generating negative PR and MS would like to hold on to whatever growth WP has got since Nokia Lumia came to the market and would like to hold to that. Also, I believe Nokia should rethink its strategy regarding 610-range devices as any negative PR with those devices will hurt its future sales.
BTW, AAWP has an article regarding the incompatible apps for 610 & other 256MB devices. The number of apps is more than I anticipated. http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/14920_What_apps_are_incompatible_wit.php
I can’t believe this. Why on earth is Nokia using so little RAM on the WP? Didn’t they learn their lesson when they crippled the N8 by using only 256 RAM on it?
This is stupid!
N8 is a much more higher-end device than what Lumia 610 and possible future 500 series devices with the base-spec are supposed to target. N8 is an 800-level device. We are talking 500-600 levels here. Obviously the set the new base-spec to be able to compete with cheap Androids.
Something had to give. I think the base-spec is just fine if they can keep evolving enough within those constraints and push the price a lot more down thanks to it… I think sticking with WVGA resolution was wise. Time will tell how much of an issue the memory is.
Looks like the culprit is the bloated WP itself as it has big problems with scaling. Good that Elop killed N9/Linux because Nokia wouldn’ be able to use it on different HW. Lets see how much the WP8 rewrite will fix this.
Porting N9 on to different HW is a different story all together. Check this for reference – http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/my-disagreement-with-elop-on-meego/
Yep, my attempt at irony was reference to just this link.
nn: Yeah, should have stuck with the very frugal N9 with 1 GB of RAM and virtual memory to boot…
They are very lucky they scrapped Linux altogether and there are no rumours they are attempting to use it with Qt and N9 UI on very low level HW, somebody at Nokia would look like complete fool.
It would be a very bad idea to bring the UI of the N9 for the low end. First of all it requires way too much processing power. Second the low end devices should be very easy to use and the MeeGo paradigm is not so easy to use if you are looking for a low end device for the uneducated masses.
The way MeeGo’s UI works may be very confusing in some cultures where you don’t move from left to the right like in the US. Just think about books in different parts of the world. It’s very probable that the designers of the MeeGo targeted the UI just for the culture they came from.
Actually, MeeGo-Harmattan’s UI works for LTR & RTL languages since it supports both left & right swipes. N9 has supported RTLs like arabic since PR 1.1.1: http://mynokiablog.com/2011/11/28/video-n9-update-with-arabic-language-support/
RTL support is yet to come for WP, only expected for Q2 2012 from Nokia – http://wmpoweruser.com/nokia-arabic-support-coming-to-windows-phone-in-second-half-of-2012/
Could you explain in little more detail what is so fundamentally confusing and not so easy to use in N9 UI to “other” cultures? Especially in comparison to WP?
read.
woops wrong location.
I honestly don’t think WP is bloated. And I remember Windows Mobile running fine on 64MB. But only geeks were able to use it.
It is very easy to code for WP. But it isn’t easy to code for it efficiently. Just because efficiency is never easy.
Microsoft+Nokia still behave as they are the darlings of the dev community. But it’s an illusion. Windows or iOS are able to sustain crowds of devs, but WP isn’t. WP devs are mainly hobbyists and the, don’t want to spent the extra time – extremely boring time – on extra, unpredicted, optimizations to keep their apps working on new classes of devices. Nobody has warned them upfront. To the contrary, a substantial part of WP promise for devs was forward compatibility with no unexpected investments.
“And I remember Windows Mobile running fine on 64MB. But only geeks were able to use it.”
Real geeks never used Windows, and they still don’t
Not true. Perhaps you are too young to understand it.
To be clear, I’m not as uneducated as you may guess, I’ve used Silicon Graphics IRIX, NeXT Step… (NeXT was that other computer company founded by Steve Jobs.)
It’s funny how things in mobile world are so much different from PC world.
If you buy a cheap PC, you won’t be expecting to be able to play all the games out there, because of the HW limitations.
If you buy a cheap mobile though, you demand that you can do everything with your cheap model that the more expensive model can do.
It’s especially funny because vast majority of those apps that are currently experiencing problems in Tango are indeed games as well. With Tango it’s not all bad though, since there is at least some way to bring those apps to the cheap devices even though it requires some extra effort from the developers.
Also, try to play Angry Birds on a cheap Android. You can’t. Because it lags too much.
Angry Birds will get optimized, because Microsoft (or Nokia) will pay Rovio for it.
Less visible devs won’t be so lucky.
What exactly stops them from doing the optimization by themselves?
Dev & testing costs + allocating resources for them when they can invest them for something different & new..
Costs.
Sometimes it’s just as simple as recompilling the app. This is the case of the Mango Fast app switching. Still, many old and prominent apps don’t support Fast app switching, because their authors didn’t bother with their recompilling.
In this case, it may be similarly trivial in some cases, or really tough in some others. As Microsoft and Nokia admit, some apps will have to switch off some features on 256MB devices.
The biggest problem is that the Marketplace still doesn’t generate much money, so the majority of developers just doesn’t see the value in this necessary and boring work.
On the other hand, many devs are just waiting for real 256MB devices to test their apps and will act when they realize they’re broken.
Oslik: But what did you expect? Low-end devices with same specs as high-end devices? I don’t think that is realistic. Also, I think you are making this out to be much bigger than it actually is.
I agree the Lumia 610 level SDK should have been out sooner and devices fielded to developers sooner to smoothen out the transition, but forgive Nokia for being in a hurry. They are punching out stuff much faster than normally to catch up…
“Hmm. Perhaps it would have just been easier to keep the standard gen1 WP hardware? You can’t really expect people to think cheaper phone means less apps are compatible. This is not the PC World.”
Should say the same thing to Android OEMs like Samsung and HTC. Unfortunately, they seem pretty content in pushing the hardware race, while at the same time introducing lower spec phones which cannot run the OS decently, in Samsung’s case, and benefiting from it.
At the same time, if these people buy these high-spec phones just to play high-end games on it, why not invest in a console or a gaming PC/laptop instead? I just don’t see the logic of playing games like Need for Speed or Grand Theft Auto 3 on a mobile phone.
“I just don’t see the logic of playing games like Need for Speed or Grand Theft Auto 3 on a mobile phone.”
You apparently have no children.
I play 2-3 games on my WP. I played 1 game on my iPod before. BUT I still consider games important. Because of my children.
The most played game on my two WPs is PES 2012 (Pro Evolution Soccer – similar to FIFA) by now. Just because of my two sons (8 & 11), I’ve never played it, not once. It’s a beautiful and engaging game – for them.
Not available on Lumia 610.
And what have children got to do with gaming on a mobile phone? If I want to play high-end games (e.g. Crysis) on a phone, I can, but I’d prefer playing those type of games on the PC or a console, not a mobile phone or a tablet.
Even if I do have kids, I’d rather introduce gaming to them via the PC/Console than some mobile phone or tablet. The only disadvantage of the former is the lack of mobility, and I agree, but that is something I can live with.
I do have games on my Lumia 800, but only when I’m bored and mostly use it to browse the internet and update my fb feeds. Besides, most of those games are 2D types, no 3D games at all.
guys its microsoft, they will probably demand money to get those apps working. Microsoft is an perfect example of american greedness
Where did TheVerge report that an official 256mb version is coming? I read the link above but I didn’t find anything similar.
Bad link. See this one:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/28/3048498/angry-birds-nokia-610-version-256-mb-memory
ok, I see. Thank you