Re: (Official) Why I don't like WP8 Part 2 (What WP needs to succeed)
After having my WP8 device for about a month I'll start by saying that I love it. However, there are a few things that I find a bit... annoying?
The biggest issue for me, and something that WP needs to address is their music player. For... the.... love... of... God..... Fix it. I came to my WP8 from an iTouch, and I really liked my iTouch. It was the best music player I've ever had (still is) and I enjoyed the layout of the music player a lot. It was simple, easy, and fast. WP8 does not take any clues from this. Instead the music player is cumbersome and obnoxious. Here's why:
1. When I click music it doesn't go right into my music, or my last song played. It brings me to this screen "Music+" which gives me a list of things I can do in the app. That's all well and dandy, but I don't care much for the extra click to get to my music. I think music and video should be separated and when I click the music link it should bring me to the last "section," i.e. songs, albums, playlists, genres and let me pick up from there, if not the last song I listened to.
2. syncing music is a hassle. I decided to use WMP (windows media player) and didn't have too much of an issue there. However, it should work like itunes. I should be able to click on my device within WMP, see the media on my device and edit such media. I like dragging and dropping selected songs. Also WMP needs better ways to list music, like listing the songs alphabetically. However, this is mostly a WMP rant, but I'm going to assume WMP is the iTunes of Windows Phone, and if not, I need to know what is, and Microsoft should make that clear. For the record, I hated iTunes, but geeze, I hate WMP more.
3. Playlists. Who at microsoft forgot the most integral feature of a music player: Playlists. Making one on the phone is more painful that giving your 90 year old grandmother a spongebath while she complains about her various medical conditions, and your grandfather whom you love dearly. The only way to make one on the phone is to add all the songs you want to "now playing" and then select "save as playlist" however, you can't remove songs on a playlist from the phone, you have to delete the whole playlist. You also have to remember what songs are already in your "now playing list" lest you make a repeat. There is also no way to order the songs easily, unless you write them down, and then find each song in that order. You can also add playlists from WMP or iTunes, but that means you have to be at a computer, so no playlists while you're on a plane or train, unless you want to spend a solid 30 minutes making a playlist only to find out that you forgot that one song, so you have to add your new playlist to the "now playing" and then add that one song to "now playing" and then save it as ANOTHER playlist, or you accidentally added the whole album to your playlist, in which case you have to start all over.
4. Switching from Songs to Playlists takes too long, swipe swipe, and they added a, in my opinon, pointless "genre" option for music. I don't know many people, if any, who listen to their music by genre or use the genre menu to find music.
5. When I'm playing music, I'd like to see my album art on my lockscreen, but that is the least important thing in the world.
An orientation lock is also something that needs to find it's way to WP8. I find it horribly annoying to pick up my phone, when it rings, while I'm laying down to have the screen play games with me. Round and round it goes, when it will stop, nobody knows!
I'd like to see different volume controls as well. I have to currently go into settings to throw my phone on silent. If I put in my headphones it should change volume settings, like in IOS.
Night-time mode: If I don't want woken up there should be an option for this.
Internet explorer also needs a "forward" button. Sure you can save it in your favourites as javascript, but why is it so hard to just stick it in. It's in the actual BROWSER for goodness sake.
Finally, better microsoft apps:
The microsoft youtube app is terrible, but I realize that this may be attributed to google itself, however that makes no excuses on the Facebook app, which lacks many basic features, and the native twitter app, which I can't even understand.
Support different NFC tags. Android tags don't work for WP8. NFC was supposed to be a standard, but microsoft has muddled it. Read all types or no types. Also allow NFC to interact with core settings, like tapping an NFC tag should be able to turn wifi on and off, not take me to the wifi menu.
The Good:
Everything else.
But all these things seem to be software issues, so hopefully they'll be fixed.
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