Coming from Blackberry 10 a few questions

[cgk]

I find it slightly bizarre that people are still claiming that there is no demand or need for a notification centre when Microsoft themselves planned to add one but simply ran out of time.

 

[ChemEngr]

Other things that bother me :-

No lock screen orientation (people say its application specific but even stock email , sms , people etc apps dont have it)
No universal search in the phone.
No sound profiles for your phone . And every time you have to toggle vibrate u have to do it from settings.
I kind of got use to the no LED notification , but its definitely something i miss from my old Symbian phone.

call a spade a spade

I agree with your assessment of WP8. There are several missing features that I've gotten used to with other platforms. Although for me, the UI and design philosophy somewhat fits my style. WP designers did get some things perfectly right for me.

And the reason for this truncated quote, I wanted to pass along a tip for an easier way to switch to vibrate/silent. When waking the phone and while at your lockscreen, press the volume button, then tap the bell. This will switch to silent or vibrate depending on the vibrate toggle you have in settings. Although, I would suggest to MS that repeatedly tapping the bell should cycle between ring+vibrate, vibrate, and silent.

Lastly, I've been a smartphone user a very long time. I have to say that WP has a lot of merits along with faults. But I will be sticking with MS's platform for a long time and give them a chance to grow.

 

[cgk]

And the reason for this truncated quote, I wanted to pass along a tip for an easier way to switch to vibrate/silent. When waking the phone and while at your lockscreen, press the volume button, then tap the bell. This will switch to silent or vibrate depending on the vibrate toggle you have in settings. Although, I would suggest to MS that repeatedly tapping the bell should cycle between ring+vibrate, vibrate, and silent.

I think that is what he meant - drives me bonkers along with the podcast limitations (or at least did, went back to android this evening).

 

[raacut]

And every time you have to toggle vibrate u have to do it from settings.

How is this not clear ? why does everybody give the tap the volume button then tap the bell solution to this ? THAT DOES NOT TOGGLE VIBRATE !

If the vibrate was on in settings then u can switch between siltent+vibrate and Ringer+vibrate. If the vibrate was off in settings then you can switch between silent and ringer. I dont understand how my statement that you cannot toggle vibrate quickly always gives the tapping the bell solution.

It happens so often , its not even funny anymore..........

 

[cgk]

Expanding on what I said earlier about going back to Android - for me, any OS choice is hard for others to make for you because everyone has their own usage... with that said, here's why I want back to android after 2 years on WP - it's usability against usefulness - I prefer the look and feel of WP over android which I still think is pretty ugly and confusing and I'd actually still recommend WP over android to most users (just got my father-in-law a 520) because it is much more fluid than android...

but I find android far more useful to what I actually do - for a range of reasons - those include but are not limited to:

1) Smart actions - I can set office hours in android, so email and other things simply shut down at certain times - on WP, I had to keep going into the settings and switching email from push to manual, or turn data off or some other fudge.

2) I can download podcasts where ever and whenever - this isn't a deal breaker for a lot of people but I travel a lot and pod-casts keep me sane - on WP unless I'm plugged in and on Wifi I can't do that.

3) I'm a gmail user - yes people say swop to outlook but I don't want to - I can't beat the gmail experience on a WP device

4) Even more generally - I can't whitelist email addresses to allow images?

5) Too many hidden settings that you have to go into settings to toggle on and off

6) I can cycle Volume >>> Vibrate >>> Silent and back without having to decide between Silent OR vibrate

7) Screen rotation lock I can control

8) Notification centre - yes I know live tiles have their place but I found half the time they simply didn't update and before someone claims a notification centre isn't need, even Microsoft thinks it is - they simply ran out of time. If you are happy with live tiles, great but it wasn't enough for me.

 

[robert_in_la]

Expanding on what I said earlier about going back to Android - for me, any OS choice is hard for others to make for you because everyone has their own usage... with that said, here's why I want back to android after 2 years on WP - it's usability against usefulness - I prefer the look and feel of WP over android which I still think is pretty ugly and confusing and I'd actually still recommend WP over android to most users (just got my father-in-law a 520) because it is much more fluid than android...

but I find android far more useful to what I actually do - for a range of reasons - those include but are not limited to:

1) Smart actions - I can set office hours in android, so email and other things simply shut down at certain times - on WP, I had to keep going into the settings and switching email from push to manual, or turn data off or some other fudge.

2) I can download podcasts where ever and whenever - this isn't a deal breaker for a lot of people but I travel a lot and pod-casts keep me sane - on WP unless I'm plugged in and on Wifi I can't do that.

3) I'm a gmail user - yes people say swop to outlook but I don't want to - I can't beat the gmail experience on a WP device

4) Even more generally - I can't whitelist email addresses to allow images?

5) Too many hidden settings that you have to go into settings to toggle on and off

6) I can cycle Volume >>> Vibrate >>> Silent and back without having to decide between Silent OR vibrate

7) Screen rotation lock I can control

8) Notification centre - yes I know live tiles have their place but I found half the time they simply didn't update and before someone claims a notification centre isn't need, even Microsoft thinks it is - they simply ran out of time. If you are happy with live tiles, great but it wasn't enough for me.

You have some valid points, especially about having to go into settings to do some simple tasks. For myself I find Gmail to be a bit of mess after switching to exchange (did this once I found out Gmail was no longer allowing new accounts, without paying, to use active synch). Honestly I prefer BB and how they manage emails... but using the setup I have now is totally seamless - which includes my Gmail as I am grandfathered in with actives synch which albeit I barely use anymore.

 

[cgk]

I have an exchange account as well - but that works fine on android so the switch wasn't an issue in that sense.