Oh boy is this going to be a rant.
I live in Australia, and as you may be aware, support for 2G is ending at the end of 2016. So I needed a new phone. Sure there was plenty of time but I saw a Lumia 532 for AU$30 and thought 'I've heard Windows phones have a magnifier,, sure why not' and bought it. That was the first problem, the default settings are useless for someone like me. The brightness was so pathetically low I could barely see anything so I had to bet my wife to set up the 'Ease of Access' features the first time around. Even after I knew where everything was I couldn't operate it with the default settings. I had to do that after a hard reset, I'll get to why that happened later. It took me over an hour to get the settings to something usable, my wife wasn't home at the time. Anyway, this is a pain, but I can deal with it.
Anyway, then I discovered some other annoying things about the platform. You have to have a Microsoft Account connected to the thing for some very basic stuff. I didn't want to connect any accounts to this thing, I only wanted to use it for making phone calls and sending the odd text, that's it. However you need a Microsoft account to store contacts in, because it doesn't store contacts locally. What!? So, this thing can't do something every phone since at least the 90's, and maybe even the '80's ,could do perfectly simply!? Okay, okay, I can deal with that, so I connected my old Hotmail account to it and that was that.
I also found that the Phone app doesn't give you a keypad right away when you open it and you need to bring that up yourself every time you open it. So great, even the simplest, and primary, feature of the phone is poorly designed? Okay I can deal with that too. Also, I didn't really want all these extra apps like Xbox Games and the like, can I delete them? Nope! Okay fine, they can just sit there and rot then.
Now is where the big issue comes in, texting. The messaging app has a very poor on screen keyboard. It's way too squished up for one, that can be fixed by rotating to landscape mode so fair enough. The main problem is that the keys are white with black writing. For me that makes them almost impossible to read. Can you change it to black with white writing? Nope! Well, great, this is a problem. I know, I'll get me one of those Bluetooth keyboards and use that, I don't text very often should work fine right? Those of you familiar with this platform can probably see what's coming.
I got a Bluetooth keyboard and of course it didn't work, nothing else of this platform has been easy so I don't know why I was surprised. Well, I do know, Bluetooth keyboards have been around for ages and surely a phone that was released earlier this year (I think) should be able to accept it right? Nope! Turns out you have to have Win8.1 GDR2 to get bluetooth keyboard support. Why,the smeg is that!? What took them so long? Alright fine, I just need to get this GDR2 update, and that is where I hit a brick wall.
I go the Phone Update, only to find that I am up to date as far as it's concerned. It doesn't want the GDR2 update, why? Smeg knows. So, I searched around for ways to get this update. I found a method using the Windows Insider app that involved interupting and upgrade to Win10. Didn't work, I ended up with Win10, which I didn't want. I have nothing against Win10 except that this was a Developer Preview version and I didn't want something like that on an everyday use phone. So, I used the Lumia Recovery Tool to get Win8.1 back. I then found a method that involved changing things in the registry to get the phone to think it was a different type of phone and then ask the system for the update. I couldn't get the registry editing thing to work for some reason, so that failed too. What really cheeses me off about this is that people with similar phones to mine (I've seen a 520 and a 535) have got this to work and their phones function properly. So why the hell doesn't Microsoft just let me download the damn update?
Anyway, this is where I need help, can someone please tell me a way to get GDR2 on this peice of... inefficient technology? Or failing that at least a way to get a Bluetooth keyboard to work?
Anyway, all I can say is that I'm glad Microsoft are getting out of the Mobile game. I don't think they've screwed up this bad since WinME. This is the most frustrating device I've ever had to deal with.
I live in Australia, and as you may be aware, support for 2G is ending at the end of 2016. So I needed a new phone. Sure there was plenty of time but I saw a Lumia 532 for AU$30 and thought 'I've heard Windows phones have a magnifier,, sure why not' and bought it. That was the first problem, the default settings are useless for someone like me. The brightness was so pathetically low I could barely see anything so I had to bet my wife to set up the 'Ease of Access' features the first time around. Even after I knew where everything was I couldn't operate it with the default settings. I had to do that after a hard reset, I'll get to why that happened later. It took me over an hour to get the settings to something usable, my wife wasn't home at the time. Anyway, this is a pain, but I can deal with it.
Anyway, then I discovered some other annoying things about the platform. You have to have a Microsoft Account connected to the thing for some very basic stuff. I didn't want to connect any accounts to this thing, I only wanted to use it for making phone calls and sending the odd text, that's it. However you need a Microsoft account to store contacts in, because it doesn't store contacts locally. What!? So, this thing can't do something every phone since at least the 90's, and maybe even the '80's ,could do perfectly simply!? Okay, okay, I can deal with that, so I connected my old Hotmail account to it and that was that.
I also found that the Phone app doesn't give you a keypad right away when you open it and you need to bring that up yourself every time you open it. So great, even the simplest, and primary, feature of the phone is poorly designed? Okay I can deal with that too. Also, I didn't really want all these extra apps like Xbox Games and the like, can I delete them? Nope! Okay fine, they can just sit there and rot then.
Now is where the big issue comes in, texting. The messaging app has a very poor on screen keyboard. It's way too squished up for one, that can be fixed by rotating to landscape mode so fair enough. The main problem is that the keys are white with black writing. For me that makes them almost impossible to read. Can you change it to black with white writing? Nope! Well, great, this is a problem. I know, I'll get me one of those Bluetooth keyboards and use that, I don't text very often should work fine right? Those of you familiar with this platform can probably see what's coming.
I got a Bluetooth keyboard and of course it didn't work, nothing else of this platform has been easy so I don't know why I was surprised. Well, I do know, Bluetooth keyboards have been around for ages and surely a phone that was released earlier this year (I think) should be able to accept it right? Nope! Turns out you have to have Win8.1 GDR2 to get bluetooth keyboard support. Why,the smeg is that!? What took them so long? Alright fine, I just need to get this GDR2 update, and that is where I hit a brick wall.
I go the Phone Update, only to find that I am up to date as far as it's concerned. It doesn't want the GDR2 update, why? Smeg knows. So, I searched around for ways to get this update. I found a method using the Windows Insider app that involved interupting and upgrade to Win10. Didn't work, I ended up with Win10, which I didn't want. I have nothing against Win10 except that this was a Developer Preview version and I didn't want something like that on an everyday use phone. So, I used the Lumia Recovery Tool to get Win8.1 back. I then found a method that involved changing things in the registry to get the phone to think it was a different type of phone and then ask the system for the update. I couldn't get the registry editing thing to work for some reason, so that failed too. What really cheeses me off about this is that people with similar phones to mine (I've seen a 520 and a 535) have got this to work and their phones function properly. So why the hell doesn't Microsoft just let me download the damn update?
Anyway, this is where I need help, can someone please tell me a way to get GDR2 on this peice of... inefficient technology? Or failing that at least a way to get a Bluetooth keyboard to work?
Anyway, all I can say is that I'm glad Microsoft are getting out of the Mobile game. I don't think they've screwed up this bad since WinME. This is the most frustrating device I've ever had to deal with.
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