WP going back to the store....going to Android

[eLseStudio]

Grab some developers in WPCentral. Tell them how you envision your Streaming Apps. Hire them, monetize your Apps. Use it as you wish, earn some money from it. Keep in mind that there is no streaming App that suit your need in the market right now. Mean there are thousand or more of same people with the same need! Profit!

 

[westex74]

In regards to the "TellMe" issue...I have an SGS3, in addition to my new 920. Samsung's version of SIRI is complete and utter crap. Totally unusable to the point where I am wondering whose idea it was to include it on the phone. For the record, even SIRI sucks. Neither me nor my wife EVER used it for anything other than the weather. So I wouldn't think lack of a digital assistant is really much of a deal breaker.

 

[TaliZorah]

Intelligence is strong in this one.

Smartest thing you have posted.

 

[Joelist]

To be fair to Android, Jelly Bean really did improve the UI performance in terms of reducing the epidemic stutter and lag issues. That said, WP is still FAR more fluid and responsive and can do it on lower end hardware too. Even on Jelly Bean, Android needs pretty massive hardware to run with any speed and smoothness.

 

[lordofthereef]

You shouldn't have to buy a "right" phone to get updates, just sayin

It's the way Android was built. I agree, it's a bit of an achille's heel. But if updates REALLY matter to the user, the user can pretty easily do their due dilligence and pick a phone that is going to get this support. Google has caught on quite well. Look at what they are doing with their Nexus line. They are catering directly to those that complain about updates, fragmentation, etc.

 

[Diamondx_8]

They screwed up the stream/podcasts thing for sure. how could they even miss that? I think instagram is overrated, if you want photo filters there's photogram.

What happened with podcasts/streaming?

 

[socialcarpet]

To be fair to Android, Jelly Bean really did improve the UI performance in terms of reducing the epidemic stutter and lag issues. That said, WP is still FAR more fluid and responsive and can do it on lower end hardware too. Even on Jelly Bean, Android needs pretty massive hardware to run with any speed and smoothness.

That is because of a fundamental flaw in Android which will never be remedied. When they first started working on Android, it was intended to be a non-touch OS, and their prototypes were Blackberry-like ripoff keyboard phones.

Later on when Eric Schmidt got a look at the iPhone in development, since he had privileged access as a member of Apple's board of directors, he realized the Blackberry ripoff was going to look pretty dated. So Google decided they needed something more like an iPhone ripoff instead and went in that direction.

Well the foundation of the OS was already built and they were on their way. As a result of it not being originally intended to be a touch OS, touch input was NOT prioritized by the OS. Basically the touch input from the user is handled on the main thread with normal priority. So your touch request to scroll the screen or open an app has the same importance to Android as animating your tacky undulating ocean background and your 50 widgets. So that means it won't seem as responsive as OS's like Windows Phone or iOS which were designed to prioritize touch input from the beginning.

This is something that will never, ever change unless they rewrite Android from scratch and break all the apps in the process. So what do they do? Keep heaping on ghz and cores to try and overcome it, while adding more stupid bells and whistles which have the opposite effect. Android is fundamentally flawed in many ways, but this is one of the core reasons it is inefficient and an embarrassment to the open source/Linux community.

CLIFFS NOTES:

When you touch your Android phone, it says "Oh, I'm being touched, OK.. hang on, let me refresh these waves moving on your background and make the sun sparkle on your tacky weather widget, then I'll see about making the UI respond to your touch, m'kay?

When you touch a Windows Phone or an iPhone it says "Oh, I'm being touched. My user wants something, the most IMPORTANT thing for me to do right now is respond to that, everything else must get in line behind my users immediate needs."

 

[brmiller1976]

Look at what they are doing with their Nexus line. They are catering directly to those that complain about updates, fragmentation, etc.

Even the "Nexus" is fragmented. If you have a Nexus 1, you no longer get updates. If you have a Nexus S, it is slow, stutters and freezes with the latest update. If you have a Galaxy Nexus on Sprint or Verizon, you're not running the latest update (and if the carrier decides to not let you have it, you never will). If you buy the Nexus 4, you get a phone with an obsolete radio and slow data speeds.

I understand the appeal of Android from a propellerhead perspective. I also understand its serious usability flaws from an end user perspective. Android is that "all you can eat" buffet for $7 where you gorge on food but never talk about the taste.

 

[brmiller1976]

People who join this forum and have 3 posts which are all about their complaints and how they are returning their Windows Phone after 2 days are what hurts the community. We don't need people who aren't looking for answers and instead come here just to vomit bile all over our forum.

Not fair. I'm sure that if I want to the Android forum to complain that my Nexus One will not receive any updates and that my Nexus S crashes all the time after the 4.0 update, and so I am buying a vastly superior Windows Phone and departing FOREVER, they'd acknowledge my wisdom. No doubt they'd also be quite open to being called fanboys when I point out all of the ways that Windows Phone is better, and they happen to disagree.

We are just uniquely evil here in the WPCentral forums, since we refuse to acknowledge our clear inferiority. This is something we have to work on... millions of Android users depend on us!

 

[ryude]

That is because of a fundamental flaw in Android which will never be remedied. When they first started working on Android, it was intended to be a non-touch OS, and their prototypes were Blackberry-like ripoff keyboard phones.

Later on when Eric Schmidt got a look at the iPhone in development, since he had privileged access as a member of Apple's board of directors, he realized the Blackberry ripoff was going to look pretty dated. So Google decided they needed something more like an iPhone ripoff instead and went in that direction.

Well the foundation of the OS was already built and they were on their way. As a result of it not being originally intended to be a touch OS, touch input was NOT prioritized by the OS. Basically the touch input from the user is handled on the main thread with normal priority. So your touch request to scroll the screen or open an app has the same importance to Android as animating your tacky undulating ocean background and your 50 widgets. So that means it won't seem as responsive as OS's like Windows Phone or iOS which were designed to prioritize touch input from the beginning.

This is something that will never, ever change unless they rewrite Android from scratch and break all the apps in the process. So what do they do? Keep heaping on ghz and cores to try and overcome it, while adding more stupid bells and whistles which have the opposite effect. Android is fundamentally flawed in many ways, but this is one of the core reasons it is inefficient and an embarrassment to the open source/Linux community.

CLIFFS NOTES:

When you touch your Android phone, it says "Oh, I'm being touched, OK.. hang on, let me refresh these waves moving on your background and make the sun sparkle on your tacky weather widget, then I'll see about making the UI respond to your touch, m'kay?

When you touch a Windows Phone or an iPhone it says "Oh, I'm being touched. My user wants something, the most IMPORTANT thing for me to do right now is respond to that, everything else must get in line behind my users immediate needs."

As an Android XDA-Developer I have to say, your understanding of the OS inner-workings is utter ****.

 

[brmiller1976]

He's explaining the user experience quite accurately. Just pick up any Galaxy S III with "Live Wallpaper" and touch the screen. Suddenly the paused animations start running faster, and whatever you're trying to do takes FOREVER. That's part of the "lag" which Phandroids keep insisting doesn't exist.

Eventually, unless you reboot your S III a couple of times a day, the animations will just lock right up and crash your phone too. That's part of the "freezes" that Phandroids also insist never happen.

 

[rgba32bit]

Got an 8X from Verizon a week ago so far no reboot issues. Turning off NFC helped a lot with the battery life. I was really missing Pandora until I found MetroRadio a 3rd party Pandora app which I like better then my wife's android Pandora app. I don't like the metro W8 sync program so I'm just sticking to WMP. On the whole I'm really liking it and don't regret going WP8. I hope the people having problems can get fixes for what they need but it seems like it's spotty so maybe it related to a carrier or an app. It seems like the last Iphone launch went awry too.

 

[woodbane]

He's explaining the user experience quite accurately. Just pick up any Galaxy S III with "Live Wallpaper" and touch the screen. Suddenly the paused animations start running faster, and whatever you're trying to do takes FOREVER. That's part of the "lag" which Phandroids keep insisting doesn't exist.

Eventually, unless you reboot your S III a couple of times a day, the animations will just lock right up and crash your phone too. That's part of the "freezes" that Phandroids also insist never happen.

But as most serious Android users would tell you: turn off the damn live wallpapers! They're a gimmick, a battery drainer and slow the OS down anyway!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[ealexand#CB]

But as most serious Android users would tell you: turn off the damn live wallpapers! They're a gimmick, a battery drainer and slow the OS down anyway!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

As most wp7 users would tell you. That's supposed to be the beauty of WP. In 7, they dont really affect battery life. Mist be wp8 issue

 

[socialcarpet]

As an Android XDA-Developer I have to say, your understanding of the OS inner-workings is utter ****.

Well a former Google intern says otherwise.

Here is why Android is laggy and why it?s going to remain like that in the near future

At least he did before Dianne Hackborn came along to mince words, but even her backsliding explanation doesn't deny the flaws in Android so much as it gives a more complex and nuanced set of excuses for them.

Either way, the fact is that Android is very capable. More capable than Windows Phone, I won't deny that. But 90% of the users out there don't give a **** whether or not their phone can function as a web server, they just want the UI to be consistently responsive without requiring a quad core processor and 2 GB of RAM.

The point is Android misses the forest for the trees. Forever focused on building in functionality that 90% of users don't care about while neglecting good design, reliability, consistency, quality and ease of use. Jelly Bean or whatever the latest stupidly named version is, is an improvement but Android always and forever will compromise the quality of the end user experience in it's pursuit to try and be all things to all people. Runs like crap on anything without top of the line hardware, an ugly mess of inconsistent UI themes in apps that lack any kind of serious quality control.

At best, it's a propeller heads dream come true, but when it comes to the average user, it is rife with compromise.

 

[masterchief1984]

I am an avid instagram user, but i just got tired of the iphone. i dont want to have to jailbreak my phone just to change things up on it. never been a fan of android and i was always a windows boy at heart. im sure microsoft knows that their customers want the app and doing everything in their power to get. we just have to be patient.

 

[brmiller1976]

But as most serious Android users would tell you: turn off the damn live wallpapers! They're a gimmick, a battery drainer and slow the OS down anyway!

True. Then you have widgets with animations that do the same thing. Got to turn them off as well.

 

[brmiller1976]

Either way, the fact is that Android is very capable. More capable than Windows Phone, I won't deny that. But 90% of the users out there don't give a **** whether or not their phone can function as a web server, they just want the UI to be consistently responsive without requiring a quad core processor and 2 GB of RAM.

I define "capability" by "practical usage." A Cray supercomputer is "more capable" than my desktop PC, but it's also less capable, since it doesn't run Office.

Android's problem is that it's barely tolerable across every imaginable area, and best-in-class in none. It's a classic OS built up by a checklist of functionality so it can say "see, this is a long, long list." But just about every item on that checklist is buggy, crash-prone, or difficult to use.

WP is an optimized experience. Its checklist is shorter, but every item is directly relevant to a use case, and Microsoft has delivered best-in-class performance for many of the items on the list.

 

[hary536]

Unfortunately, I too am contemplating this. I have an 8x which I think is a really nice phone (apart from the very flush buttons which makes for poor usability IMO). I liked it better than the 920 and compared to my iPhone 4, can't say I feel like it is much of a step down (though, Apple does have that extra 5-10% of polish and finess in its hardware - but it beats everybody in that respect).

Although I've only had the 8X for a few days, these are my major issues:
- No way to close apps in the multi-task app viewer. I know this is a popular request and I imagine will be fixed, but it is such a glaring mistake IMO.
- Poor battery life. I've heard it takes about 2 weeks for the battery to "settle", but so far I'm barely getting a full day's worth of usage. My iPhone 4 used to be at like 80% at the end of the day with the same usage patterns.
- TellMe is still far behind Siri and Google's version. I don't know where to find a comprehensive list of commands, but things like "Set calendar appointment" doesn't do anything. Without some of these what I call "basic" functions, TellMe is just a gimmick. Finding the distance between the moon and the Earth makes for a cute ad, but support for these workflow improvements is the real key IMO.
- No built-in turn-by-turn GPS. Given that every other phone offers this, it has morphed into a table stake for mobile devices these days. Any WP8 apart from Nokia is missing this key function. You might say, there's an app for that, but...
- Lack of apps! In the first couple of days, I thought this wouldn't bother me, but now it is starting to getting frustrating. I know Spotify, Pandora, and Mint are allegedly coming and in the meantime, I'm using Xbox Music and Slacker (but missing Mint), but the sheer lack of quality in the app store seems to be an issue. If you have any suggestions for a decent navigation app, I'm all ears! I am trying a 30-day free trial of Scout right now. Leaving on a trip soon, so I needed something. Also, to the people saying "Instagram doesn't matter" - you're totally missing the point. LOTS of people use Instagram - if the app isn't available to them, why in the world would they switch to WP8? It's like if a BoA app wasn't available - I would be thinking really hard why I would switch over when I wouldn't be able to do mobile banking. And the right solution is not "just switch your bank".
- The OS X Windows Phone Connector basically is useless. It doesn't sync at all. It crashes 100% of the time when I connect the phone (even after numerous re-installs).

Of course, this list is just a few of the things that bug ME in particular. The issue of course is that these are all better / not problems in Android / iOS. I switched over from an iPhone 4 and MSFT needs to ensure that people who do that don't feel buyer's remorse. That's the only way to turn them into evangelists because WP8 does have some GREAT things about it (the lock screen customization, the live tiles, the People hub, etc. etc.).

If the Google Nexus 4 actually becomes available, I would have to think hard about what I want to do. This saddens me because for various reasons I won't go into, I'm really hoping WP8 does great.

I just bough Lumia 710(before 2 days). WP7.x phone. I synced it((music so far) with my MAC, upgraded OS software all with MAC connector. No issues.
Regarding navigation, even iphone didn't have anything inbuilt till iphone5. Yet you bough it and millions bought it. (I don't count google maps as turn by turn)

Apps, agree. Will take time to catch up.
Regarding voice commands, I have to say, voice recognition of my Lumia 710 works better than my iphone 4s with iOS 5. (I am from South-east Asia)
WP recognizes my words much better than siri. For me that is more important than other assistant functions, since those are useless if Siri can't recognize
my words.

My biggest complaint(based on WP7) so far, after 2 days is there is no easy way to transfer contacts from my iphone 4s sim to WP, nor from iphone phone memory.
I haven't yet been able to transfer contacts.

(Btw, Lumia 710 is supposed to be a gift for my dad, but am just checking it out for few days, so I can set it up for him and show him around the phone and OS).

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Highly unlikely.

Actually, my family is very Android centric. I'm the only one in the family that is having lag issues with Android, and that's with the HTC Flyer, and even then they're not that bad. And this is ranging from devices like the Samsung Galaxy Ace to the HTC Desire Z to the HTC One X. I however am a WP fan and will be buying myself a Lumia 820.