I'm new to the windows phone. So far my only smartphone up until I purchased a nokia 520 was the iphone 4. I wanted to give the windows phone a try as my iphone is getting old and I think apple might be slipping a bit since they lost Steve Jobs. Plus I heard nokia makes really good phones. I also upgraded my son's iphone4 on Verizon to the nokia 928, very nice looking phone. I'll probably switch to the 928 in the next week or two unless I decide to wait to see if the 929 comes out soon.
So far the phone seems pretty good. The windows 8 ui also looks good and is intuitive. There are a couple things that I've noticed that make me think that there's quite a bit more work to do. Maybe that's wording it wrong. Maybe these things just point to an OS still in its infancy, though you would think it would be a lot farther along since there's been a windows phone OS for some time now.
1. The first thing that drove me nuts when I started using the phone (which I mentioned in a different post), was that someone seemed to forget to add a simple way to create and edit music playlists. I was able to get it done, but that was after watching a youtube video and then several attempts and repeating that process on the phone. You would think just about everyone who has the phone might be planning to use it to listen to music and might want to organize their music with playlists. Kind of hard to believe they forgot that one. Did they not use these phones for months before selling them to the public?
2. The ui is inconsistent and/or not intuitive in certain spots. What I'm referring to here are a couple places where I was presented with check mark icon and an 'x' icon. The 'x' I assumed was 'cancel' but the check mark doesn't scream out 'done' to me. The disk icon they use for 'save' would seem more appropriate. I was presented with this ui when setting the alarm times. The same ui was in settings - email+accounts - Microsoft account. There was another spot I ran into it which I can't remember. I assume it's used in many places. I'm just complaining about the non-intuitiveness of the check mark. While it was somewhat obvious what 'x' was, I would say they should probably get rid of that also and put something better in its place.
3. I wanted to see what other weather apps where at the store, other than the weather channel that was pre-installed. I opened the store app and clicked on search. I typed 'weather' (without the quotes) and hit return. It told me there were no matches under apps+games. As I was typing I could see matches, like weatherbug and bing weather. I was shocked that searching for weather returned nothing.
4. There are some things I thought could be better with nokia drive. It mentions the street name only once, roughly about 1/4 of a mile before you get to it. Further away it just tells you you're going to make the turn in some amount of distance. Then you get the street name announced when you get about 1/4 mile away. Then when you're coming upon the street they tell you to turn now. In my opinion they should be announcing the street name each and every time. What happens if while they're announcing the street name your kids in the car are making noise and you can't hear it. Obviously not hearing it doesn't mean you can't still follow the directions, but I usually like to validate that the street I'm turning onto is the street that was told to me. I guess this is more of an application gripe as opposed to the phone or OS.
If I want to suggest fixes or changes to the phone or applications, is this the site to do it or is there another site for that?
Thanks,
Nick
So far the phone seems pretty good. The windows 8 ui also looks good and is intuitive. There are a couple things that I've noticed that make me think that there's quite a bit more work to do. Maybe that's wording it wrong. Maybe these things just point to an OS still in its infancy, though you would think it would be a lot farther along since there's been a windows phone OS for some time now.
1. The first thing that drove me nuts when I started using the phone (which I mentioned in a different post), was that someone seemed to forget to add a simple way to create and edit music playlists. I was able to get it done, but that was after watching a youtube video and then several attempts and repeating that process on the phone. You would think just about everyone who has the phone might be planning to use it to listen to music and might want to organize their music with playlists. Kind of hard to believe they forgot that one. Did they not use these phones for months before selling them to the public?
2. The ui is inconsistent and/or not intuitive in certain spots. What I'm referring to here are a couple places where I was presented with check mark icon and an 'x' icon. The 'x' I assumed was 'cancel' but the check mark doesn't scream out 'done' to me. The disk icon they use for 'save' would seem more appropriate. I was presented with this ui when setting the alarm times. The same ui was in settings - email+accounts - Microsoft account. There was another spot I ran into it which I can't remember. I assume it's used in many places. I'm just complaining about the non-intuitiveness of the check mark. While it was somewhat obvious what 'x' was, I would say they should probably get rid of that also and put something better in its place.
3. I wanted to see what other weather apps where at the store, other than the weather channel that was pre-installed. I opened the store app and clicked on search. I typed 'weather' (without the quotes) and hit return. It told me there were no matches under apps+games. As I was typing I could see matches, like weatherbug and bing weather. I was shocked that searching for weather returned nothing.
4. There are some things I thought could be better with nokia drive. It mentions the street name only once, roughly about 1/4 of a mile before you get to it. Further away it just tells you you're going to make the turn in some amount of distance. Then you get the street name announced when you get about 1/4 mile away. Then when you're coming upon the street they tell you to turn now. In my opinion they should be announcing the street name each and every time. What happens if while they're announcing the street name your kids in the car are making noise and you can't hear it. Obviously not hearing it doesn't mean you can't still follow the directions, but I usually like to validate that the street I'm turning onto is the street that was told to me. I guess this is more of an application gripe as opposed to the phone or OS.
If I want to suggest fixes or changes to the phone or applications, is this the site to do it or is there another site for that?
Thanks,
Nick
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