Initial thoughts on Windows Phone 8.1?

[mozman68]

Can someone tell me if battery % can be set on status bar in windows phone 8.1

If it can, I can't find it...so I'm guessing "no."

Store updates that were automatic on my 1520 include: Games, Calendar (weekly view is awesome...now my default calendar), HERE Drive+, Video, HERE Transit, Podcasts, HERE Maps, and Facebook.

All my personal email accounts (i.e. Gmail) needed to be re-synched. Was nice that the notification center made me aware of that.

 

[radmanvr]

I agree. 90% of the accent colours are way too saturated and has way too much contrast. It's literally painful in the eyes sometimes. I think there shouldn't be any accent themes, so each tiles can get their own designs and colours. And I want the tiles to have gradient too.

Find a color you like set as background image for live tiles. profit.

 

[hysonmb]

FINALLY, Data Sense on AT&T!
I hope they don't strip it out of the actual update...

 

[PipoDj]

I love it!

 

[Akash Patel]

initially on my lumia 520 8.1 was bit laggy so i did a hard reset now it works perfectly.
i like the new store look,notification centre.
hope to see new lock screen theme soon.

 

[radmanvr]

too bad they're removing social networking integration from the hubs.
At least we'd have something they dont. And it was useful, of course.

Its still integrated and its separate at the same time

 

[Live2Deliver]

Go to Glance settings ppl, you will be asked to restart your phone for update reconfiguration
So far the changes i noticed is the new lock screen font used in Glance

Phones without glance, nothing to see here

 

[mozman68]

XBox music will need to update your music...not sure what it is actually doing, but initially looked like I lost all of my music. Must be synching, checking album art...something.

 

[The Skizzle]

Initial thoughts:

1. Update process took FOREVER! Over an hour on my HTC 8xt
2. Facebook didn't work. Said I needed to purchase the app from the store, which obviously didn't work or uninstall and reinstall. Since I was planning to anyway, I did a complete reset of the phone.
3. Before resetting, I did notice that many of my apps needed to be reinstalled.
4. After a reset, the setup screen has a newer, nicer look. White background, different font, but overall similar setup experience (Note: HTC has their own part of the setup with instructions on how to secure your phone. This switches back to the old screen and font. I wonder if this will get fixed in a firmware update.)
5. Tried out the swype feature when typing "outlook" for my email address, got "Olympic" in return Epic fail on HTC 8xt. Hoping this will get better with use or an HTC firmware update. Probably better on Nokia phones. Just my guess though.

Update: Before the reset, when I went to change my background image, my only Online folder was Facebook. Onedrive is now showing after the reset.

 

[mozman68]

Not sure what was actually updated in Facebook....still have to tap on comments to see them in a post. Was hoping they would actually show them below the posy like in every other platform. Still can't see pics posted within comments....

 

[Carlos M Duarte]

Disappointed, to be honest.

I couldn't care less about Cortana (and NOT being in the US and NOT using English as my primary language, even more so), so I'll just skip this part.
Calendar looks nicer (good), live tile still doesn't do what it should: show upcoming appointments AND tasks (3 of each would be fine). It will only show ONE upcoming appointment TODAY. So, back to Simple Calendar...
Email is the same (which is good), haven't tested attachments yet.
No more extra languages on TTS. Yes, would very much like continental (i.e. non-Brazilian) Portuguese.

So. much ado about nothing, IMO.

 

[MazoMark]

First impressions.

A very solid update that fixes almost all previous hesitations I had to making WP my full time daily driver.
New Swype style keyboard is fantastic. I've always preferred this type of entry and this one works great on my Icon.
Cortana really looks promising on first test. I really relied on Google Now on Android and Cortana looks to be strong competitor for it.
New calendar app looks great.
So glad we finally have option of VPN. Something I use a lot for business and has been missing for too long.
Notification center is fantastic! One of my most used features on Android and so glad to see this come to WP.

This update really shows that WP is maturing. I am very impressed by what I see so far.

 

[hysonmb]

I do not like that they've untied the ability to post to multiple social networks at once from "post and update" on the Me tile.

 

[mozman68]

Yeah...I forgot to mention the word flow feature....I was on iOS since iPhone1 before switching to WP and my 1520 at the beginning of this year. Never understood why Android folks were always chiming in about lack of Swype on iOS. Now that I've tried it this morning...whoa...fast, accurate, easy...

 

[yuvalnyk]

Music app is really bad! Slow and not comfortable to use.
Beside that and the panoramic photo on the gallery that Microsoft deleted from the os everything is great!

 

[Destructobrat]

Here's where we still haven't caught up to Android yet - emailing an attachment. The only available options are to send pictures and files on OneDrive. What if you needed to send files off your sdcard?? You can't.



That's pretty lame.


Sent from my Lumia 1520 using Tapatalk

 

[Pavan_95]

I'm not able to access the store... Is anyone facing this same problem??

 

[alpha beta gaga]

Windows Phone 8.1 review: A magnificent smartphone platform | Ars Technica

At the start of this, I said that Windows Phone needed to do a few things: enable OEMs to go after the growth markets and growth price points in emerging markets, do more to appeal to high-end buyers, give developers a better platform, and get people talking.

I think Windows Phone 8.1 delivers on all these fronts. With Cortana, it has a splashy, highly demonstrable feature?though one I hope will deliver genuine value too. With the new hardware support, we should see more phones at more price points in more markets than ever before. With Universal Apps, we have a platform that can (almost) seamlessly span the phone, the tablet, the PC, and before too long, the console/TV, too.

The result feels a whole lot more mature and a whole lot more capable than its predecessor. The 0.1 version bump, chosen to align the phone platform with its desktop sibling, belies the true nature of this upgrade. It is substantial, and makes Windows Phone tremendously better.

We might still wish that there were a few more apps, and that developers spoke of the platform in the same breath as iOS and Android, but even in spite of this, Windows Phone 8.1 is a polished, fun, clever, and personal smartphone platform that's just about everyone can enjoy. It's a magnificent smartphone platform.

 

[captainnalgas]

Pretty damn cool!

Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Tapatalk

 

[Reaper7]

Hi
question.

can block the background applications and WP8?

someone can tell me how?

thank you!