Does WP8 add real notifications ?

[MathiasVerden]

Does anyone know if WP8 has <real> notifications for things such as facebook updates, twitter posts etc.? I've never gotten any notifications other than SMS/MMS in 8 months, even with facebook+twitter installed and notifications turned on. If this is the way, there's a place called Android and I might wanna go there for a cheaper and more powerful phone.

 

[tumaykilinc]

I get notified by picture comments and such on FaceBook app, though it seems to be delayed a bit like 1-2 minutes.
Toast notification must be on.

As for twitter, i don't use it.

 

[Dave Blake]

What device do you have that's not getting notifications?

 

[anon(5370748)]

Notifications for Facebook are janky at best on any platform, even Android. Usually with my Droid (Gingerbread, and never going to be upgraded past that, thank you Moto), if I had the little F in the notification bar, there was maybe a 60% chance that I had a for-real notification. This is mainly an issue with Facebook and their horrible lack of support for mobile of all flavors. That being said, I find notifications for FB to be completely unusable on WP8. When I have live tile on, it just keeps building the notification count forever until I have like 60 items no matter how many times I refresh the app or reboot the phone, and it always shows some random post in the tile that I put up from ages ago. At this point, I just turned off toasts, push, and everything else and just regularly open the app to check FB (having to manually refresh the feed every time). Annoying, but expected - the FB experience was horrible on iOS when it first came out (iPhone 3G), and damn near unusable on Android when that first came out. They fixed it enough over time, and will for this platform as well.

Notifications for Gmail and Outlook.com have been flawless on this phone, though - so that's really nice

 

[philpeeps]

Notifications for Facebook are janky at best on any platform, even Android. Usually with my Droid (Gingerbread, and never going to be upgraded past that, thank you Moto), if I had the little F in the notification bar, there was maybe a 60% chance that I had a for-real notification. This is mainly an issue with Facebook and their horrible lack of support for mobile of all flavors. That being said, I find notifications for FB to be completely unusable on WP8. When I have live tile on, it just keeps building the notification count forever until I have like 60 items no matter how many times I refresh the app or reboot the phone, and it always shows some random post in the tile that I put up from ages ago. At this point, I just turned off toasts, push, and everything else and just regularly open the app to check FB (having to manually refresh the feed every time). Annoying, but expected - the FB experience was horrible on iOS when it first came out (iPhone 3G), and damn near unusable on Android when that first came out. They fixed it enough over time, and will for this platform as well.

Notifications for Gmail and Outlook.com have been flawless on this phone, though - so that's really nice

For FB notifications, once you have viewed all the notifications, online or on the phone, if you back out completely from the FB app, they disappear. If you just press the Windows key, they will not clear reliably.

 

[MathiasVerden]

What device do you have that's not getting notifications?

I'm on an HTC Titan and unsure wether or not to go WP8.

 

[MathiasVerden]

Notifications for Facebook are janky at best on any platform, even Android. Usually with my Droid (Gingerbread, and never going to be upgraded past that, thank you Moto), if I had the little F in the notification bar, there was maybe a 60% chance that I had a for-real notification. This is mainly an issue with Facebook and their horrible lack of support for mobile of all flavors. That being said, I find notifications for FB to be completely unusable on WP8. When I have live tile on, it just keeps building the notification count forever until I have like 60 items no matter how many times I refresh the app or reboot the phone, and it always shows some random post in the tile that I put up from ages ago. At this point, I just turned off toasts, push, and everything else and just regularly open the app to check FB (having to manually refresh the feed every time). Annoying, but expected - the FB experience was horrible on iOS when it first came out (iPhone 3G), and damn near unusable on Android when that first came out. They fixed it enough over time, and will for this platform as well.

Notifications for Gmail and Outlook.com have been flawless on this phone, though - so that's really nice

On iOS everything on facebook comes up immediately as a notification, twitter also works flawlessly and there has never been any trouble with notifications what so ever. I asked because notifications on Windows 8 are also very poor, and I've never actually seen a notification from the People app. To me, live tiles are completely useless. They NEVER update and I'm not going to pin each one of my contacts just to see what they're up to on facebook, if that worked at all.. The only tile that ever moves is the People tile, and I don't have to see my contacts' pictures a million times.

 

[PG2G]

The People app isn't supposed to do notifications.

I actually have found the official Twitter app's notifications to work really well. I normally receive a toast before I even get email notification when something happens. Facebook's notifications do suck, I'll agree with that much.

 

[MathiasVerden]

The People app isn't supposed to do notifications.

I actually have found the official Twitter app's notifications to work really well. I normally receive a toast before I even get email notification when something happens. Facebook's notifications do suck, I'll agree with that much.

I believe I have seen notifications from the People app, but it's a rather terrible integration if you can't get updates without pinning everything to your start screen and going into every app just to check your news. Live tiles are supposed to be about getting the notifications that YOU care about and not just resizing application icons..

 

[scottcraft]

The notifications on WP8 are very similar to WP7. The only thing I consider a real improvement is you can have more things provide notifications on the lock screen. For me the rest of the os outweighs the notifications, but I consider the way android does it to be considerably better.

 

[oakfan52]

On iOS everything on facebook comes up immediately as a notification, twitter also works flawlessly and there has never been any trouble with notifications what so ever. I asked because notifications on Windows 8 are also very poor, and I've never actually seen a notification from the People app. To me, live tiles are completely useless. They NEVER update and I'm not going to pin each one of my contacts just to see what they're up to on facebook, if that worked at all.. The only tile that ever moves is the People tile, and I don't have to see my contacts' pictures a million times.

My FB notification on iOS is the same as on android and WP. It sucks. It's horribly unreliable.

 

[rockstarzzz]

You clearly are misguided my friend. If you don't want to pin what matters to you, you are on wrong platform.

Windows Phone is re-invented around YOU. Everything that matters to you, can be pinned on a blank page. If you did not pin that on your home screen, I don't believe it is important to you.

However, if all that sounds non-sense or mindless to you, yes Android is your best bet. I would recommend Nexus 4, very cheap.

 

[MathiasVerden]

You clearly are misguided my friend. If you don't want to pin what matters to you, you are on wrong platform.

Windows Phone is re-invented around YOU. Everything that matters to you, can be pinned on a blank page. If you did not pin that on your home screen, I don't believe it is important to you.

However, if all that sounds non-sense or mindless to you, yes Android is your best bet. I would recommend Nexus 4, very cheap.

Everything I care about IS pinned to my Start screen, yet Live Tiles are nothing but resizable application icons that never display any important information other than an icon or picture. Live Tiles are the heart of Windows Phone, but when they're not doing anything and not working at all, Windows Phone has no life and no meaning. I'd like to use my phone as a social device where I can actually see what my friends are up to and what's happening in the world, but if I need to go into a bunch of apps just to get information, Windows Phone isn't anything but an expensive alternative to other smartphones.

 

[scottcraft]

You clearly are misguided my friend. If you don't want to pin what matters to you, you are on wrong platform.

Windows Phone is re-invented around YOU. Everything that matters to you, can be pinned on a blank page. If you did not pin that on your home screen, I don't believe it is important to you.

However, if all that sounds non-sense or mindless to you, yes Android is your best bet. I would recommend Nexus 4, very cheap.

Live tiles are no benefit when inside an application like the browser. If you get an email you don't even get a toast notification so you can quickly read the mail and come back to the browser. If an app does give a toast if you don't tap it when it comes through you lose it and have to go to the start screen to open the app and read what gave you the notification. All in all notifications are weak on WP compared to android and ios. I use WP in spite of the notification. The rest of the platform is strong enough to me to make up for the poor notifications.

 

[mlm1950]

Where is the location of this place they call Android?

 

[jeremyshaw]

For FB notifications, once you have viewed all the notifications, online or on the phone, if you back out completely from the FB app, they disappear. If you just press the Windows key, they will not clear reliably.

This, I feel this needs to be reiterated. Back button kills apps, windows key pushes it into the background. Like android, and sort of like the old iOS, "hold the home key to force kill apps," function (though since ios4, you could double tap the home key for the multitasking menu, and since iOS 3 voice commands, you had to bring up the power off screen, before holding down the home key).



Edit; and posting this from my 920 froze it :/. Posted from iPhone 4S instead. The tapatalk client is still world better than the junk we get on WP.

 

[Etyrnus]

To clarify, the Me tile is where you would see your twitter and facebook notificatons when someone like, comments, or mentions you. People hub provides a stream from both sources for your friends posts.

 

[MathiasVerden]

To clarify, the Me tile is where you would see your twitter and facebook notificatons when someone like, comments, or mentions you. People hub provides a stream from both sources for your friends posts.

Which is fine, for just that, but I just stopped using my phone at all for anything but SMS/MMS because I never get any notifications from facebook.

 

[rockstarzzz]

You are purely an isolated case, may be check your privacy settings. Because ALL social networking live notifications, London Travel notifications, eBay, Amazon, Words with Friends, BaconIt, WPCentral - come on my tiles and they are alive!

 

[blehblehbleh]

I'm kind of confused by your complaint OP, what notifications are you complaining about? The People Hub will show the stream of activity from your FB buddies wall under "What's New" or through their contact info. I don't use the official FB app so I don't know how flaky the notifications are, yet I don't understand the use case scenario you're looking for.

You mention that you didn't want to pin a Live tile for each of your contacts to see what they're doing on Facebook, but as I stated earlier you can see that in the What's New feed, or open up the Facebook app, where it's reasonable to believe that if a user is checking up on what their buddies are doing on Facebook they'd probably be opening the app to respond in the form of a comment or like.

So what kind of "real" notifications are you talking about? You mean you want more than a number displayed? If so, send feedback to the developer. It's up to them to utilize the different types of Live tiles available. Alternatively, if you feel that the People Hub isn't giving you enough info have you considered whether your buddies have restricted the privacy on their profiles?