New user, lots of questions: Notifications, polling and 3G

[Moothz Jeann]

Hello there!

I bought my first WP7 phone yesterday, hooray! It's a Nokia Lumia 710
I'm really enjoying this phone and the operatin system is great.

However, there are some stuff I'd like to configure and couldn't find how anywhere on the internet (or manual, or it's menu)
The closets I was from a smartphone before this one was an iPod Touch, I used it at work/univecity. Every chance he got it would try to connect to a WiFi network and automatically download all my emails and notify me, and also login on facebook chat. If I received an email while it was on standby, I would get instantly notified, same goes for the facebook/gtalk messages, it even bipped before the messages showed up on my PC, really fast.

But in my WP7 phone this does not happens. When it's on standby I do not receive ANY notificaions about Emails or new facebook messages, ONLY calls and SMS.
However, if it's not on standby, I receive notifications with no problems (sound and visual). If I let it sit on standby for a while and then unlock it, it receives ALL 'queued' messagens at once, even tho I already read those messages on my pc, making everything a mess.
I want my notifications to be "instant", "real time", just like it was on my iPod touch.

Also, another thing that really annoys me is the fact that when it polls the messages from facebook to the message apps, it WILL NOT INCLUDE MY MESSAGES, only messages of whoever sent me them. Another thing is that the messaging app does not allow you to view older messages.
I know those things won't happen inside apps, but I wanted to use the default messaging app of the phone. I think that was the idea behind it, why do you have to make the user open up an especific app just to check some older messages, or even, your OWN messages?


By the way, all facebook apps I could find on the Market sucks:

- On the official facebook app the icons on the upper right corner won't work, or only work after 4~5 clicks, it's also pretty laggy for such a simple app...
- Other apps will simply send you to the mobile/touch facebook interface... Acessing it through the browser is not what I'm looking for (those apps are just using the system from the browser, how do they call that an app?)


My last two questions about the 3G network.
Is there an app to automatically switch off 3G network whenever it conects to an WiFi? I'm currently doing this manually, using the "Toggles" app.
Is there an app to view/monitor 3G traffic usage? to check how much I've used from my 3G plan.

I hope some more experienced users are willing to help me on those questions

Thank you all in advance!

 

[jonathanrn]

While I can't answer all your questions, I can offer my advice about some of them. With regards to your e-mail, when you setup the email account on the phone, it automatically picks to sync every 30 minutes. This is to help conserve battery life. If you go to settings, choose email + accounts, and pick the e-mail account, there is a pull-down labeled "Download New Content". If you want things instantly, choose "As items arrive". I think the reason you are getting e-mails that you've already deleted on your phone is because, for example, it synced your e-mail 29 minutes ago, but you deleted those e-mails on the PC 23 minutes ago and it hasn't re-synced yet. If that is the case, you can always tap the Sync icon when you are looking at the inbox to force a sync. I hope that helps.

I totally agree with you about the state of the official Facebook app. I send them feedback about every month asking them to add features and fix problems.

As far as the automatically switching off the 3G when WiFi is available, I know there is an update coming that will allow the phone to maintain a WiFi connection while the phone is in standby, which I think is the answer to your problem. I'm not sure if that update is for WP8 only, or for 7+8.

Other forum members can chime in and suggest things about your other issues.. I hope my suggestions help!

 

[thed]

I think you answered your own question. The problem is that you're turning off cell data. On WP7.5, wifi unfortunately shuts off 30 seconds or so after turning off the screen. So if cell data is off while your screen is off, then your phone has no internet connection and you won't get any notifications until you turn the screen on and reconnect to wifi. There's no real explanation for why wifi behaves this way, just a bad decision by MS.

And yes, the Facebook app isn't very good. I've pinned touch.facebook.com to my home screen if I need to do something that can't be done from the people hub. It seems to work a lot better than the actual Facebook app.