Why does WP 8 need a file explorer?

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ag1986

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ok you made it clear but that is your sister we are talking about not the whole would. like N_larue stated the majority of users will not use a file manager so how can you imply that windows phones need a file manager to make or fail in this market ?

The majority of users are not choosing Windows Phone.
 

ag1986

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There are many reasons why it's necessary, but the biggest one is to get files into apps.

The only way right now to get epubs into an epub reader is to use a ridiculous workaround with Skydrive or other cloud storage services. You can't put files onto the protected storage area (which again, doesn't let you touch any system files) and read them from there. That means if you want to import ROMs into an emulator, or video files into a third-party video player or anything of that sort, you need to use the internet as a go-between.

This, a thousand times this.
 

xratola

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If you need to transfer a lot data from device to device how is the phone the best choice??? They have these crazy inexpensive things called Flash Drives! They are like super cheap, portable, fast, and much easier to use! You can put one in your hat! You can keep it on your belt! On your keychain, shoelace, drawstring, pocket, backpack, wallet, purse, socks, underwear for god sake! You could swallow it if you wanted to! They are so small you could tape it to your leg and forget about it for weeks! (unless you bathe which I always suggest).

These things are more portable than a phone, less money than a phone, way WAY faster than a phone, and universally work with any computer you can find. Why is the phone a better choice?

As mentioned above in emerging countries like Latin America and India, where the WP's maket share is bigger getting the second place, people use phones as the main computing device. That's why your argument "pick a pendrive" is not valid since if you picked a pendrive then necessarily you'll need a computer and because the majority of people in this countries DON'T have Surfaces or fancy tablets nor laptops having a phone is the easiest way they have to live connected. Even the cheapest chinese-manufactured Android has one and that's why people say WP is unusable (wp has high rates of refunding)
 

ag1986

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So the increase in WP percentages in most markets, with some overtaking iPhone is 'nobody' in your eyes. I see we have a difference in opinion in what nobody means.

"overtaking iPhone" is a questionable statement. Most of those markets (afaik Italy, India, Mexico) are places where the iPhone never had much penetration - no contract, iPhone horribly expensive. It's not surprising that a cheap yet value for money handset like the 52x sells well.

That aside, WP has had ONE quarter of sales where it exceeded the iPhone. Note that ONE quarter. This is what we call market share. The installed base, total number of phones on each platform in use, is likely going to paint a very different story.
 

cckgz4

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The majority of users are not choosing Windows Phone.

You're splitting hairs, and trying to be funny. You know that he was referring to the majority of people that have ALREADY purchased Windows Phone, which is increasing in marketshare
 

xratola

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You're splitting hairs, and trying to be funny. You know that he was referring to the majority of people that have ALREADY purchased Windows Phone, which is increasing in marketshare

In fact the real majority is not since we only have a 1-digit market share number. But yes we're growing quickly ;)
 

ag1986

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If you need to transfer a lot data from device to device how is the phone the best choice??? They have these crazy inexpensive things called Flash Drives! They are like super cheap, portable, fast, and much easier to use! You can put one in your hat! You can keep it on your belt! On your keychain, shoelace, drawstring, pocket, backpack, wallet, purse, socks, underwear for god sake! You could swallow it if you wanted to! They are so small you could tape it to your leg and forget about it for weeks! (unless you bathe which I always suggest).

These things are more portable than a phone, less money than a phone, way WAY faster than a phone, and universally work with any computer you can find. Why is the phone a better choice?

It's not about transferring a lot of data, it's about carrying it around. If you walk around the mobile 'markets' in India, you'll see every shop or stall offering "downloading services". That means, for 100-200 INR (about 2-4 USD) they'll connect your phone to a computer, copy music, movies, apps, whatever you want (all mostly pirated, of course). You see, most of the people purchasing the cheap phones (like the shoddy but functional Micromaxes, Karbonns, other brands like that) do not have access to broadband or Wifi and most likely 3G. These are the people who trust the Nokia name and decide to purchase the Lumia 520, and then come and return it in frustration.
 

berty6294

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As mentioned above in emerging countries like Latin America and India, where the WP's maket share is bigger getting the second place, people use phones as the main computing device. That's why your argument "pick a pendrive" is not valid since if you picked a pendrive then necessarily you'll need a computer and because the majority of people in this countries DON'T have Surfaces or fancy tablets nor laptops having a phone is the easiest way they have to live connected. Even the cheapest chinese-manufactured Android has one and that's why people say WP is unusable (wp has high rates of refunding)

I understand that, but a phone is no computer. If you need to do computing then get a computer? It's like saying I need to drive somewhere but I can't afford a car so I'm going to drive my pencil to work, but I'm going to complain that my pencil doesn't have comfortable seat....
 

cckgz4

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As mentioned above in emerging countries like Latin America and India, where the WP's maket share is bigger getting the second place, people use phones as the main computing device. That's why your argument "pick a pendrive" is not valid since if you picked a pendrive then necessarily you'll need a computer and because the majority of people in this countries DON'T have Surfaces or fancy tablets nor laptops having a phone is the easiest way they have to live connected. Even the cheapest chinese-manufactured Android has one and that's why people say WP is unusable (wp has high rates of refunding)

A) I highly doubt this file explorer issue is the main reason for refunds, but moreso mainstream apps not being available

B) Someone made a great point earlier:

So I'm a bit confused by those who want a file manager so badly. If the phone is your 'only' computing device what files are you worried about? How do you go about transferring files about? We keep hearing Skydrive isn't an option but then I hear words like 'email'. I don't get it. It's the same thing isn't it?

You can store any file you want on the SD card (using it like a USB storage) and on the phone. You can put documents (PDFs, Office) in the document folder on your phone and use them. You can store files on Skydrive and share them.

So where is the system falling down for you? Is it only with the SD storage? Is you phone storage completely used up? Do you not know about the folders in the phone storage or how to use them correctly? If you don't have access to WiFi or data how are you transferring files? Bluetooth?


I have yet to see this be explained in this topic outside of emailing a few documents. So, you're saying you have access to internet by "emailing" someone a document, so how did you get this document? By creating it all on your phone? When you OPEN documents, you have the option to save them to skydrive, which require internet access, and which can act as your "file explorer". So........yeah I'm not understanding

The only way right now to get epubs into an epub reader is to use a ridiculous workaround with Skydrive or other cloud storage services. You can't put files onto the protected storage area (which again, doesn't let you touch any system files) and read them from there. That means if you want to import ROMs into an emulator, or video files into a third-party video player or anything of that sort, you need to use the internet as a go-between.


Why is this workaround, ridiculous? I have a Game Boy Color and an SNES emulator on my 520, and the Skydrive option actually works fluidly for me. I don't have a third party ebook reader so I can't vouch for that, but I know that I'm personally disappointed that I can't access my Nook library on this phone
 

cckgz4

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In fact the real majority is not since we only have a 1-digit market share number. But yes we're growing quickly ;)
So........you're saying that we can't take a sum of users that are on the platform and assume that most of them aren't the majority?
 

ag1986

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You're splitting hairs, and trying to be funny. You know that he was referring to the majority of people that have ALREADY purchased Windows Phone, which is increasing in marketshare

The flaw I was pointing out is, that the majority of ALL smartphone users are clearly not choosing WP8. Thus, with a tiny (4% global) marketshare, it is useless to talk about what your current userbase may or may not want. You need to consider why all the rest, the 81% who choose Android and the 15% of the remainder, do not choose WP. It could perhaps be due to certain functional deficiencies, a useful file management system among them.

As I've stated before, I'd be happy with shared local storage and the ability to store and open files with apps that you specify, rather than be restricted to the file types that Lord Ballmer in His wisdom has allowed us to use.
 

jhoff80

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Why is this workaround, ridiculous? I have a Game Boy Color and an SNES emulator on my 520, and the Skydrive option actually works fluidly for me. I don't have a third party ebook reader so I can't vouch for that, but I know that I'm personally disappointed that I can't access my Nook library on this phone

Sure, it works okay (with small files). The files exist on your PC though. You then have to upload them to some third party service. You then have to download them to your phone. Not everyone has the fastest internet, or giant bandwidth caps, so being forced to use the internet as a go-between can be both drastically slower, and much more costly.
 

ohgood

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No reason to be snarky. Just trying to get my head around what you're doing. What app is that you're using to do those things?

wasn't being snarky. :)

sorry, didn't answer the second part earlier... none of the apps that share the files, create them, or edit them are available on the wp platform yet. vlc is coming, i believe. that's as close as i've got right now.
 
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cckgz4

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It's not about transferring a lot of data, it's about carrying it around. If you walk around the mobile 'markets' in India, you'll see every shop or stall offering "downloading services". That means, for 100-200 INR (about 2-4 USD) they'll connect your phone to a computer, copy music, movies, apps, whatever you want (all mostly pirated, of course). You see, most of the people purchasing the cheap phones (like the shoddy but functional Micromaxes, Karbonns, other brands like that) do not have access to broadband or Wifi and most likely 3G. These are the people who trust the Nokia name and decide to purchase the Lumia 520, and then come and return it in frustration.
Great scenario, and yes that would be a major inconvenience.
 

jhoff80

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I understand that, but a phone is no computer. If you need to do computing then get a computer? It's like saying I need to drive somewhere but I can't afford a car so I'm going to drive my pencil to work, but I'm going to complain that my pencil doesn't have comfortable seat....

That analogy just doesn't work. A phone is for all intents and purposes a computer with a smaller screen. Any assertions otherwise are just plain wrong.

The thing about it is that Microsoft has a third-place market share. The fact that they're missing giant chunks of functionality like this that both of their competitors can do... well that's just going to keep them far behind.
 

xratola

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I understand that, but a phone is no computer. If you need to do computing then get a computer? It's like saying I need to drive somewhere but I can't afford a car so I'm going to drive my pencil to work, but I'm going to complain that my pencil doesn't have comfortable seat....

In fact that's what a smartphone is and as I mentioned all the android devices have that feature even symbian had. Talking about iOS they don't have an in-built file manager but the apps can do that https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/file-manager-free/id479295290?mt=8&at=10l3Vy as you can see at least microsoft could give developers the ability to do it.
 

cckgz4

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Sure, it works okay (with small files). The files exist on your PC though. You then have to upload them to some third party service. You then have to download them to your phone. Not everyone has the fastest internet, or giant bandwidth caps, so being forced to use the internet as a go-between can be both drastically slower, and much more costly.

Well, most of these roms are small files unless you're talking about N64 and up, and even then, are there emulators to support that on this platform? And yes, I agree that everyone doesn't have fast, cheap internet, but if you can't afford the internet for a PC, are you saying that mobile data doesn't have the same flaws/caps? You're able to download large movie files using your network on your phone and not have a costly fee??
 

cckgz4

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The flaw I was pointing out is, that the majority of ALL smartphone users are clearly not choosing WP8. Thus, with a tiny (4% global) marketshare, it is useless to talk about what your current userbase may or may not want. You need to consider why all the rest, the 81% who choose Android and the 15% of the remainder, do not choose WP. It could perhaps be due to certain functional deficiencies, a useful file management system among them.

As I've stated before, I'd be happy with shared local storage and the ability to store and open files with apps that you specify, rather than be restricted to the file types that Lord Ballmer in His wisdom has allowed us to use.

No one, in this topic, is ignoring the fact that Windows Phone is not winning by a landslide, nor are they CLOSE to seeing the competition, but this topic about file explorers seem to have taken the notion that adding this option will help Windows Phone close the gap? Personally, I disagree. I think having options added will help Windows Phone grow, but I think that this issues is very low on the totem pole.
 

berty6294

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That analogy just doesn't work. A phone is for all intents and purposes a computer with a smaller screen. Any assertions otherwise are just plain wrong.

The thing about it is that Microsoft has a third-place market share. The fact that they're missing giant chunks of functionality like this that both of their competitors can do... well that's just going to keep them far behind.

I don't think I've met a person in my life that would say the phone is suppose to replace a full blown computer... AFAIK a phone is a companion device, which Windows Phone does very well! I would say it does it better than any other OS on the market.

I agree there are some API's Microsoft needs to open up for developers as I have said in my posts before, but a full blown completely open file manager is not at all what is needed or wanted!
 

ohgood

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If you need to transfer a lot data from device to device how is the phone the best choice??? They have these crazy inexpensive things called Flash Drives! They are like super cheap, portable, fast, and much easier to use! You can put one in your hat! You can keep it on your belt! On your keychain, shoelace, drawstring, pocket, backpack, wallet, purse, socks, underwear for god sake! You could swallow it if you wanted to! They are so small you could tape it to your leg and forget about it for weeks! (unless you bathe which I always suggest).

These things are more portable than a phone, less money than a phone, way WAY faster than a phone, and universally work with any computer you can find. Why is the phone a better choice?


the phone is a better choice for the same reason that watches are redundant in 2013:

because the phone is already in my pocket. and it does a really good job of displaying, sharing, creating, capturing, and otherwise managing,

files. :)
 
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