I refuse to go back to PROD from Developer's Preview to get Cyan

[d3ad connection]

I feel a lot of problems are caused by the user's inexperience, even though a lot of 'em say, "I've been doing this for years!!!"
Of course, then it is the fault of WP or MS... Never the user.
Already there are complaints about Cyan... Battery life, phantom taps etc.... Funny how the majority of users of users have not experienced this, and is difficult to reproduce. If these 'bugs' could be repeated time after time, I agree there may be a need for 'fixes'.
Often, I have found that the majority of problems are caused by the idiots in front of the keyboard or touch screen!!

I completely understand, I work in IT and that really is 90% of what causes problems. The people who know the least always complain/whine the loudest too, I've noticed. (That applies to forums and comments as well.)

I say, if you want to stay with the DP, be my guest. Hopefully Cyan never makes it's way to you and you are stuck with a 'half' a phone..... May you both be happy!!!!

The funny thing is I use a Lumia 810, still on Lumia Amber firmware and probably never going past that. Yet, I haven't had any issues with 8.1 and honestly I'm happy Microsoft is still letting me stay up to date through the Dev Preview.

 

[Geddeeee]

I completely understand, I work in IT and that really is 90% of what causes problems. The people who know the least always complain/whine the loudest too, I've noticed. (That applies to forums and comments as well.)

The funny thing is I use a Lumia 810, still on Lumia Amber firmware and probably never going past that. Yet, I haven't had any issues with 8.1 and honestly I'm happy Microsoft is still letting me stay up to date through the Dev Preview.

Great attitude. If Amber is working for you, why upgrade?
Again, 'real' experience through hours of trial and error, can't be beat. It makes you learn quickly and that experience is invaluable.

The constant need to upgrade to the 'latest' software or hardware is a bit of an addiction nowadays.
Granted, it may solve issues in a lot of cases, but the users who already have problems, usually of their own making, think an upgrade may sort the problems out. More often than not, it leads to more problems, and a lot of tantrums!!!

For the sake of a couple of hours work to downgrade to WP8 and then OTA and reinstall the apps is a small price to pay I believe.
Cyan is really good. A lot better than I thought it would be. My 1520 is running as it should be. Even better than when I was using WP8, which despite what people have said, wasn't without it's problems.

Let's be clear... MS are NOT s**t, nor is WP. If that were the case, it would have disappeared without trace years ago.

The users who constantly moan because of their own incompetence, or refusal to adhere to what the makers of the software advise, need a right good slap!!!!

 

[d3ad connection]

If Amber is working for you, why upgrade?

Believe me, I would update if I was able to, but the Lumia 810 has been discontinued and barred from anything past Lumia Amber. My point is that it works just fine still, and without the Dev Preview, I wouldn't be able to enjoy 8.1 at all! (Until either the 1525 comes out or I shell out $500+ for a 1520.3...)

I do agree with the rest of your post though. People in general are stubborn and not willing to research to find out if it would cause problems.

 

[David P2]

Believe me, I would update if I was able to, but the Lumia 810 has been discontinued and barred from anything past Lumia Amber. My point is that it works just fine still, and without the Dev Preview, I wouldn't be able to enjoy 8.1 at all! (Until either the 1525 comes out or I shell out $500+ for a 1520.3...)

I do agree with the rest of your post though. People in general are stubborn and not willing to research to find out if it would cause problems.

I think the actual issue was some part of the Black firmware interacting in a bad way with the 810, which is why it never arrived - so there's the possibility Cyan would work fine, and if it didn't it would go against MS's vision that all WP8.0 devices can get WP8.1. My 620 is classed as discontinued as well.

 

[RumoredNow]

I think the actual issue was some part of the Black firmware interacting in a bad way with the 810, which is why it never arrived - so there's the possibility Cyan would work fine, and if it didn't it would go against MS's vision that all WP8.0 devices can get WP8.1. My 620 is classed as discontinued as well.

And so also, my 925 is classed "discontinued," yet I'll get the Cyan update same as your 620.

The 810 was a T-Mo exclusive and they discontinued it before Amber, if I remember correctly. As it will get no carrierware, there is no point passing a Cyan update on from the Nokia level. 810 is marked as "Not Available" for Cyan:



* Source: Availability in North America - Nokia

 

[HeyCori]

I will wait for Microsoft to fix the issue. There's simply not enough differences between DP8.1/Official 8.1 and Black/Cyan to warrant wiping my device. I would begrudgingly wipe my device if we were talking about dramatic changes that significantly impacted use. Honestly, I could be running the official 8.1 and Cyan right now and wouldn't even notice.

 

[rockstarzzz]

I will wait for Microsoft to fix the issue. There's simply not enough differences between DP8.1/Official 8.1 and Black/Cyan to warrant wiping my device.

I wouldn't be so sure about the "no difference". I have a 1320. On WP8.1 without Cyan, it lasted max 36h. With WP8 and Black, its 50h+

Correct firmware goes a long long way!

 

[RumoredNow]

I wouldn't be so sure about the "no difference". I have a 1320. On WP8.1 without Cyan, it lasted max 36h. With WP8 and Black, its 50h+

Correct firmware goes a long long way!

Can you say, Optimized.

 

[KSilcox]

I wouldn't be so sure about the "no difference". I have a 1320. On WP8.1 without Cyan, it lasted max 36h. With WP8 and Black, its 50h+

Correct firmware goes a long long way!

also, the 'click instead of swipe' problem with my 1520 seems quite a bit better with Cyan. That was driving me crazy.
the downgrade wasn't very hard, just a little time consuming. It was certainly worth my time though.

 

[MrWhiteman]

All you have to do is backup, flash, update, restore. Simple as that. You know that with 8.1 your app settings and start screen gets backup up as well right? (well most apps).

 

[JasonKruys]

All you have to do is backup, flash, update, restore. Simple as that. You know that with 8.1 your app settings and start screen gets backup up as well right? (well most apps).

Have you actually done it, or just talking in theory?


No, not most, SOME app settings get restored! Many still do not backup settings, probably 15% of mine did. Even Big name apps such as ebay, amazon for example, you have to input username/password/settings. If you have lots of apps (as you might do if you leverage the full potential of a smart phone), there is an awful lot to do. Start screen gets restored. Some contacts don't get linked. Apps get reinstalled.

I did mine a couple of days ago, and to backup, reset to 8, update, restore, and then get everything working again as it was, took 6-7 hours. Some people just don't have that time.

I will say, however, it was worth it. We all know a refresh/reinstall on a PC improves things. It did on my 1520 - battery life has increased by 5-10%, things seem faster, and the phone heats up far less whilst doing the same things. No doubt Cyan helped, but it can't account for ALL of the improvements.

There are people that dispute this fact, and claim that if a reset does improve things, it means the OS is rubbish. Not true. Think of all those apps you have installed, some written by inexperienced developers, updated a few times - is it really that impossible to imagine they might introduce small issues fixed by a reset and download of new version also?

If you can get and want cyan now, and see the benefit of a refresh, then downgrade now. If the answer is no to any of that, don't downgrade and wait for the fix (however long that takes) and quit whining!

 

[HeyCori]

I agree, it can take a while to restore your phone. I just got my 1520 earlier this week. Restoring everything took several hours since a lot of settings don't get backed up. Then there was also the issue of reinstalling all the apps and transferring 11 gigs of music and another 2 gigs of photos. At least now all my photos/music is on the SD card for easy restoration. Still, I'm in no rush to get Cyan. There's just not enough difference even for a few hours of work.

I wouldn't be so sure about the "no difference". I have a 1320. On WP8.1 without Cyan, it lasted max 36h. With WP8 and Black, its 50h+

Correct firmware goes a long long way!

The battery life on my 920 was definitely worse on DP8.1. However, my 1520 is on DP8.1 and the battery has been freaking amazing!

 

[flapadlr]

OP here. I decided that I am not of great conviction when it comes to having the latest and most stable version of my phone.

I downloaded Nokia Software Recovery Tool and backloaded to 8.0.

I don't have access to WiFi here at work (due to the Cisco Wifi router bug) so when I get home I will download 8.1 PROD.

The NSRT was easy to use, it only gave me one option of firmware to download and install. Although it did say it was downloading the same version that was in the phone.

It did take many retries to add passwords for my accounts (that were recovered from backup.) I think the bandwidth in and out of my phone was being used by app downloads so it gave me connection errors on most accounts, including intermittents on my Microsoft account.

Luckily it's a corporate provided phone so I don't pay for bandwidth and it's big pool of it. I don't understand why my apps had to download when they are all on my SD card.

My justification to myself for going through with this is that I take a lot of photos and I look forward to the improvements there. I miss the Notification spot already and the snappy interface and the seperate app for Podcasts. I miss my 4th column on the Start screen.

I don't look forward to organizing my Start screen again and setting up my emails again, but that is the path I have chosen.

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

 

[Harris Hussain]

I rolled back to wp8 from wp8.1 do last week thinking that now that the prod version is released, it won't be long before I get it on my phone ..... Been a week now ....still waiting .... Its excruciating but I will not upgrade to the preview again because I feel I should go back to getting used to wp8 so that I can truly appreciate the enhancements on wp8.1 prod

 

[David P2]

OP here. I decided that I am not of great conviction when it comes to having the latest and most stable version of my phone.

I downloaded Nokia Software Recovery Tool and backloaded to 8.0.

I don't have access to WiFi here at work (due to the Cisco Wifi router bug) so when I get home I will download 8.1 PROD.

The NSRT was easy to use, it only gave me one option of firmware to download and install. Although it did say it was downloading the same version that was in the phone.

It did take many retries to add passwords for my accounts (that were recovered from backup.) I think the bandwidth in and out of my phone was being used by app downloads so it gave me connection errors on most accounts, including intermittents on my Microsoft account.

Luckily it's a corporate provided phone so I don't pay for bandwidth and it's big pool of it. I don't understand why my apps had to download when they are all on my SD card.

My justification to myself for going through with this is that I take a lot of photos and I look forward to the improvements there. I miss the Notification spot already and the snappy interface and the seperate app for Podcasts. I miss my 4th column on the Start screen.

I don't look forward to organizing my Start screen again and setting up my emails again, but that is the path I have chosen.

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

It's more a recovery tool than anything else. It's primary function is to restore the connected phone to a clean state, using "the most recent commercial version" that the app is currently looking for, which is 8.0 GDR3 + Black, until it's updated again where it will restore Cyan instead.

As for your apps, I have a rough idea of why you can't carry them over after a reset - when you set the phone up initially, it's given a unique identifier Any apps installed to the SD card are linked to that identifier. A hard reset or restore by recovery tool will result in a new identifier being generated during setup. The main reason behind it I believe is to stop people from purchasing expensive apps/games and lending the SD card to their friends so they can get said app/game for free.

Windows user accounts operate in the same manner - every account created has a unique identifier. Deleting that account but giving it the same username won't make any difference as it will still get a different identifier and the old files will be inaccessible until a user with administrative privileges runs the "take ownership" procedure.

 

[Geddeeee]

I will wait for Microsoft to fix the issue. There's simply not enough differences between DP8.1/Official 8.1 and Black/Cyan to warrant wiping my device. I would begrudgingly wipe my device if we were talking about dramatic changes that significantly impacted use. Honestly, I could be running the official 8.1 and Cyan right now and wouldn't even notice.

Believe me, there are loads of differences between the DP and Cyan.

'Under the hood' changes just make 8.1 so much better than when it was running DP with Black. there are also extra features. Some hidden and some in full view.
MS/Nokia have done a great job with Cyan.

I thought DP was OK, and wasn't really expecting much from the offical Cyan update either. After I updated to Cyan, I was glad that I was made to eat my words. My 1520 is just about perfect.
It runs as well as my old Omnia 7 on WP7.8.... Magic!!!!

 

[MrWhiteman]

Cyan only brings improvements to the latest models, 930, 1520 etc

 

[Geddeeee]

Cyan only brings improvements to the latest models, 930, 1520 etc

I believe that Cyan will also bring speed and a few other things to other models too despite what other people believe. I still have my 920 which I will upgrade as soon as Cyan is available for it... Should be good!!!

 

[a5cent]

My 1520 is just about perfect.
It runs as well as my old Omnia 7 on WP7.8.... Magic!!!!

Not really magic... considering the 1520 has over 4 times the "horsepower" of your Omnia 7. That it ever once didn't run as well is a disgrace... ;-)

How well the Omnia ran on comparably laughable hardware... if anything was magic, that was...

There is still a ton of potential for optimization in NT kernel based WP.

 

[Geddeeee]

Not really magic... considering the 1520 has over 4 times the "horsepower" of your Omnia 7. That it ever once didn't run as well is a disgrace... ;-)

How well the Omnia ran on comparably laughable hardware... if anything was magic, that was...

There is still a ton of potential for optimization in NT kernel based WP.

I agree. Obviously more features and optimisations will be forthcoming, but it's such a step up from the DP. That's what is most impressive. It seems as if MS has taken on board a lot of the negative criticisms and done their utmost to make sure that Cyan is as close to perfect as it can be.
I'm sure that's not true for users of other models, but I have tested my 1520 as hard as I can, trying to trip it up, but it seems pretty bulletproof.

Let's see what Update 1 will bring to the table!!!