The Dumb things of Windows Phone OS

[Bagzton]

The music player when the phone is locked. The fact it disappears and to make it reappear I must lock my screen then skip my songs. Think there should be a transparent or permanent way to keep the music player visible in the lock screen?

Pressing the volume rocker when the screen is locked brings up the music controls.

 

[Bagzton]

No way to turn on/off data connection without going to settings... why they don't add it to action centre

You need to update your phone buddy.

 

[Bagzton]

The three things that absolute drive me insane (and on some previous version, probably WP7, they didn't exist-- i.e. MS introduced these problems and has tried to pass them off as improvements):

1. The music control overlay USED to be transparent. Why does this matter? Because a) the solid block of gray is ugly; and b) it completely obscures all of the icons for as long as it is on the screen. Transparent controls were a godsend but apparently some idiots out there complained they were hard to see and now we have the gray block.

2. The cursor is impossible to place properly because it is DIRECTLY UNDER YOUR FINGER. How is that a good thing? Didn't anyone at MS realize that, you know, if your finger is on the screen, maybe you shouldn't place the graphical element you're trying to manipulate directly underneath it? Oh wait, someone did-- originally, a long press in a text field would bring up a cursor about a cm above your finger, which you could then move while seeing it. Apparently, more stupid users complained about this, since it wasn't obvious, and rather than educate users, we're stuck with not being able to see the cursor.

3. The #1 complaint of mine-- IE tabs that constantly reload. It's obviously some sort of memory management but I can't figure out when it decides to reload and when it doesn't. I can come from a soft reset, with one tab open, and it will reload. Once again, this is not how the behavior was originally: there used to be a hard limit of 6 open tabs (now it's more or less unlimited) but the upside was you NEVER reloaded a page. It all stayed in memory. Not anymore, also because of stupid, short-sighted users who complained about the hard limit. It's a phone, people. You don't have infinite RAM. Of course a compromise needed to be made if you wanted unlimited tabs "open"-- they would need to reload. So they're not even really open and you just ruined an otherwise good experience.

MS had some really nice UX elements that they completely kneecapped because of user feedback. That's why I wish they took a more Apple-like attitude: end users are, by and large, morons who only care about their one particular usage scenario. These companies have smart software engineers and UX experts working for them and I trust them more than joe schmoe on a message board (see the new OneDrive file implementation in W10 for another example of a great feature being ruined by end user complaints).

I totally agree with you! User feedback is mostly responsible for these annoying things we face.

 

[dmm96452]

The seemingly random settings list.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

I believe this is coming with Win 10.

That's the one part that worked well in W10 before I rolled back. Voice tweeting is a breeze.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

The seemingly random settings list.

Fixed in W10.

 

[Chris Sandiford]

2. The cursor is impossible to place properly because it is DIRECTLY UNDER YOUR FINGER. How is that a good thing? Didn't anyone at MS realize that, you know, if your finger is on the screen, maybe you shouldn't place the graphical element you're trying to manipulate directly underneath it? Oh wait, someone did-- originally, a long press in a text field would bring up a cursor about a cm above your finger, which you could then move while seeing it. Apparently, more stupid users complained about this, since it wasn't obvious, and rather than educate users, we're stuck with not being able to see the cursor.

It is pretty crap, I agree but you can actually slide your finger elsewhere on the screen once you have pressed and still move the I-bar. Not ideal but at least you can see.

 

[Depechie]

For the people with taps instead of swipes...

Check sensitivity setting for touch if you are on a lumia phone! Set it from high to normal, should help with this problem... High is enabled to allow touch to work even with gloves so screen picks up fingers very fast when not wearing gloves.

 

[King Nickles Saintil]

What I don't like is the constant battery killing capacitive buttons being on. The only way to permanently kill them is to turn on battery saver which will cause me to miss notifications and alerts. Sometimes the buttons turn off by themselves in high sunlight but numerous times they are on in normal light and its not necessary for me cause I can see them. Its just killing my battery. Give me an option Microsoft.

And another thing again. Battery saver is buggy. Some apps I have to run in the background don't. No notifications or anything even if I have to always run.

 

[Microsoftjunkie]

What I don't like is the constant battery killing capacitive buttons being on. The only way to permanently kill them is to turn on battery saver which will cause me to miss notifications and alerts. Sometimes the buttons turn off by themselves in high sunlight but numerous times they are on in normal light and its not necessary for me cause I can see them. Its just killing my battery. Give me an option Microsoft.

And another thing again. Battery saver is buggy. Some apps I have to run in the background don't. No notifications or anything even if I have to always run.

Depending on which apps, you can just option the run while battery saver is on.

 

[Bagzton]

My problem with battery saver is that the remaining time is so funny with it's readings. Like, sometimes when I turn on battery saver, the estimated time remain is far lower than the time I get when battery saver is off. That is, I get more battery time when battery saver is off than when it's on. I thought it was supposed to work the other way round?

 

[King Nickles Saintil]

Depending on which apps, you can just option the run while battery saver is on.

Like I said in my post...i have to always run meaning that even if battery save is on that they will run. BUT SOMETIMES THEY DONT.

 

[EspHack]

the resuming screen, period

 

[mbrooks78]

I recently picked up a certain android device and the first thing I did was disable to keyboard vibrations. I do not want my presses to vibrate or make any sort of sound. Not only can I not stand the feature, it has to affect the battery life when typing a lot.

 

[chmun77]

Very simple requirements from me:
1. No more resuming or reloading BS. Don't tell me Android / iOS have their loading animation as well because I don't see such thing when switching over to another app via the app switcher on those platforms. It is not about loading of information within the app, but seems like WP tends to redraw the UI everytime apps are switched.



2. Allow downloading of stuffs from the Internet without the need to have the app in focus on the screen. Maybe the OS already allowed this to happen, but I'm not seeing it happening for lots of the apps I'm using. Devs fault? I highly doubt so.

3. Reduce the amount of animation used. Everything when I hit Start to go back to the Start screen, I have to wait for the animation to stop (where all tiles flip in) in order for the phone to start registering my scrolling gestures. Is just annoying.

4. Notifications icon on the top status bar. Do not clear it away until I have all the new notifications cleared! I only pulled down the notification center to see what came in and the icon is gone. There are still pending events up there for me to discover!

I shall see what Windows10 for phone will bring to the table....

 

[MirthRock]

Two things I haven't heard mentioned yet:

1) No long press to choose a list of Apps that can open a file or attachment
2) If the phone is on Speaker (not up against your head) and you swipe down to access the action center while talking, the screen blanks out and locks because it thinks you put it to your head. Super annoying when talking to a client and trying to pull up an email via the action center. And unlocking it automatically brings you back to the phone app, not the last app you had open which makes trying again even more difficult.

 

[TxPepper]

1. Can't do a search in the Calendar.
2. I wish the calendar function could be uncoupled from the telephone time zones. If I use my phone for timekeeping while traveling in a different time zone, all of my calendar time entries have shifted that amount of hours forward or backward making the entry useless. Example: If I'm in CDT and make an entry for 2:00pm on X day while I will be in England, then I have to figure out how many hours ahead England will be on that calendar day (let's say six hours for illustration purposes) and make my entry at 8:00pm so it will show up at 2:00p when that day and time shows up. I missed an appointment when I didn't realize that the calendar was time zone sensitive. Grrrrr!
3. Already mentioned earlier, would like to make email attachments from more than just the default of Pictures.
4. Pin a specific phone number to Start screen. Right now, it seems I can only pin a full contact/tile to the Start screen.
5. Would like to add a couple of my own specific widgets (Brightness setting for example) to the drag down window...or whatever it's called. Love that we finally have this function with Denim update.

I pretty much love WinOS.....and try to demo it every chance I can. Using Lumia 925 with Denim on T-Mo.

 

[coldfilter]

I jugar

 

[coldfilter]

How difficult can it be to allow users for example to easily see date, time taken and size in the stock photo app. I don't want to open every individual photo in another damn app every time I want to see this data

 

[Hans Korving]

Only one appointment in the agenda tile...?!?!?!?
It's a SMARTphone, used for businesses....