[Official] Initial thoughts on Developer Preview of WP8.1

[EwingMCSE]

I've enjoyed everything about this preview except the catastrophic battery drain.

Unless I put the phone in airplane mode and disable literally everything the battery straight up hemorrhages (Lumia Icon).
Last night I left the house at 50% battery. On standby with no active use the battery didn't last through dinner and a movie.
According to my phone the biggest drain on the battery is....battery saver.

Once they fix the battery issue I will be very happy with this update. Until then my phone has been turned into a land line since it can't survive more than an hour or two unplugged.

 

[Faraaz96]

The location tends to activate automatically quite a few times on its own :/
Which drains too much pic my battery

 

[jwort93]

I think this might be related to WiFi sense trying to find nearby hotspots. I disabled it, and it seems to have helped my battery tremendously.

 

[Faraaz96]

I think this might be related to WiFi sense trying to find nearby hotspots. I disabled it, and it seems to have helped my battery tremendously.

Thanks man I'll try this tip

 

[harsh mathur1]

hey.. is there any disadvantage if i change my region to US.. im using indian region right nw..

 

[AndrewL920]

hey.. is there any disadvantage if i change my region to US.. im using indian region right nw..

It is fine but just set your region to India.

 

[harsh mathur1]

I am using indian region right now.. But if i change it to US for cortana.. Will I face any problem of any kind?
Thanks

 

[SSK the Gr8]

You wont. Just that I'm finding cortana, not really useful. Gives temps in fahrenite. Gives US news instead of Indian. Btw, there will be some indian apps you wont be able to install which are region limited to India like flipkart. That's all I think

 

[mikosoft]

Finally connected fb app to people hub ... What a mess. All my fb contact pictures are gone and only appear if i open the contact and let it load. The integration seems like a good idea but the execution is horrible imho. It would be much smoother if the app acted as data provider and the phone did the UI. Now it just looks like it's a quick patch (and the app failed to open up properly at times).

 

[Saksham Sharma]

I am using indian region right now.. But if i change it to US for cortana.. Will I face any problem of any kind?
Thanks

trust me, there's nothing wrong if you change it to India. I'm still on wp8 and I've set my region to usa since the past 2-3 months and never regretted it. There are no major apps in my notice which wont work in usa (the guy above who says that flipkart isn't available in usa is wrong, i have seen it in my store) and you'd get cortana !
Go ahead and enjoy ! Oh but keep the date format etc to Indian to avoid confusing between months and days.
You shouldn't have much of a problem really, i just find it tough to call contacts via voice but that's okay because i wasn't going to use indian english, its accent is terribly poor and my android using friends would laugh on hearing that sound. So i keep voice language to usa English only.

 

[SSK the Gr8]

Just checked. Flipkart is available. Last time I checked, it was not. But there might be some other apps which are region limited

 

[Kram Sacul]

Anyone else notice this?

Volume Controls in Developer Preview


Volume Controls in 8.1 SDK


The above matches what is seen in the WPCentral video and others seen during Build 2014.

So we're somehow missing the silence all and sound settings options from the developer preview build unless they decided we need less options. I know you can mute each sound bar individually by tapping the bell and music note icons but there's nothing to indicate that you can. They're missing the circle to indicate that they do something. 8.0 also got it right with being able to cycle thru ring, silent, and vibrate modes all with one icon:

 

[shmsnh]

You're right. There's no silent mode. We'd have to manually get the volumes down to zero and turn vibration off to get silent mode. Maybe this will be changed with future updates.

 

[alpha beta gaga]

for those that have updated to 8.1, did you do a full factory reset at all? either before or after the update? i'm thinking starting 'afresh' might be a good idea with a major update like this.

 

[mark nt]

Things I like about 8.1
Tile back grounds
Things I don't like about 8.1
No more me tile notification while I don't mind the notification centre I personally liked the me tile notification better, the Xbox music app and removal of the hub, I liked the hub wish they kept that. I like the new data sense. Will have to keep looking for more things that are useful to me

 

[Roderick Aspiras]

Re: Initial thoughts on Developer Preview of WP8.1

Its there so first time users of the platform can easily figure out how to close an app plus I think its better than swiping down.

Close button still appear at the right top to close pages otherwise you can pull down to close the page , I think removing the ( X ) icon will be cool

 

[luke_grech1]

Live tile enthusiast which the music+videos hub on wp8 had? Fire your votes here! Bring back that gorgeous live tile!! – Xbox Music Suggestion Box

 

[ChanceNC]

Re: Initial thoughts on Developer Preview of WP8.1

I'm a little over 24 hours in with WP8.1 on a Lumia 928 and I love-love-LOVE it. I thankfully have experienced virtually none of the bugs (yet) from the compilation thread, and I'm blown away by all the upgrades this update brought. The only thing I've noticed (and, really, it might have been present before the update) that might be considered an issue is an occasional and brief dropout in audio, happening once this morning while listening to Pandora in the car (could've been shoddy cell signal), and again this evening while playing NBA Jam (could've been something running in the background competing for resources).

Battery life is the same as it was pre-update. I took the phone off my charger at work around 6 PM this evening. I've been pounding it, browsing the internet, checking social networks, listening to music, giving it little chance to sleep or stay off. I'm at 55% battery remaining. That's a win.

The Action and Notification Center is a nice and overdue addition.

Separate volume adjustments was long overdue and works very well.

Cortana has not proven to be very useful yet, but that's because of my lifestyle. Functionally, it's excellent.

I was worried after reading reviews about the "neutered" hubs but, honestly, I prefer the way they work now over how they did before. And, with time, the "new way" will work even better.

My favorite feature upgrade is the ability to increase the number of tile columns and use an image for the tile backgrounds. It looks great and lends a very personal touch to the phone that wasn't there before.

Hoping for smooth sailing till the official carrier release!

(and, no, I did not do a clean install, but this is my first toe-dip into dev releases, so my OS was official from the get-go)

 

[SAM 77]

Initial thoughts, well I think they've done a pretty good job.
It looks amazing, I have more apps running in background and the battery life is as good as before.
I wish they didnt mess with the Phone and Photo features but hopefully they hear the discontent and bring em back.
Some stuff doesn't work but you had to expect that.
Can't wait for the official release.

Especially with the Nokia firmware to enhance operations.

 

[jgl95]

I'm a new Lumia 525 user (switched from a sucky low end android) and I'm really loving everything about it so far. That said, I think I feel like there are a few things I wish would be updated in WP8.1, but since I'm too busy(/lazy) to update to the developer preview, I hope some of you who have played around with it can confirm it for people like me:
1) Is there finally a Nokia Counters app counterpart for WP8.1? I mainly need it to monitor my SMS/calls usage.
2) Is there a way for me to use my phone as a remote control for my Surface RT?
3) Is there some kind of file manager to attach pdfs and other files to emails (last time I tried I couldn't make it work)?

Btw, if I just switch my region to USA, would the Nokia Mix Radio app work for me? I'm thinking of doing this now so when WP 8.1 rolls out I'll get Cortana as well. Thanks!!!