Is lack of apps the real WP problem?

[eddieDOTexe]

nevermind the app gap, try the stability gap between Windows and Android/iOS.

Its ridiculous. This thing is unfinished. It runs like **** on low end phones, mid-range phones, and even phones like the Idol 4S.

This morning I couldn't even get a damn song to play on Groove.

Wanna play a song while your car warms up? TOO BAD.

Says the Windows 10 phone.

I gotta reconnect to your wifi first. And then disconnect from it because of its almost out of range. And then I have to try to connect to it again, only to drop signal because its too far. I'll do this over and over leaving you with a song that just pauses in between reconnects or doesn't play at all because I for the life of me could not figure out that this wifi signal is not close enough to bother connecting to.

Fine, I said to myself. I'll just swipe down and turn off Wifi

HOLY ******* **** YOU TURNED OFF WIFI. Now I have to skip every song on the album and give you the little exclamation point telling you I can't play it because I ahave no connection. And then endlessly buffer the last song before you finally decide lto go back to your Artists page, play a completely different set of songs, and then go aback and try to play the album that you wanted to play. Because otherwise I'll be rforever stuck trying to stream the last song on your chosen album, and any attempts mto change back to the same first song will be met with the same fate of me endlessly sbuffering despite having 4 bars on LTE.

Its literally a never ending battle with this stupid thing.

You want to unlock me using your fingerprint reader?
**** YOU, I MEAN "Sorry. Something went wrong"
You want to quickly look for a file on Onedrive?
**** YOU, you're navigating too fast so I'm going to crash until you decide to slow the **** down.
You want to clock in to work through the web portal with Geolocation on?
**** OFF, 4 bars of LTE aren't enough and "This Page cannot be displayed" without a restart first.
Lets take a picture. That quick pic preview that shows before going back to live image(thats probably an unintended bug) looks like it came out great!
WOOPS, sorry, camera shutter too slow so here's this mesh of blurry colors and lights that were supposed to be you and Gene Simmons killing shots of tequila. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME

I can go on and on but this post is already pretty long and guess what? My keyboard is starting to lag.
How's that for an OS designed and marketed as "productive".
God forbid you type more than 4 paragraphs worth of text.

Trash, is the real WP problem. It runs like absolute garbage and it went from the most fluid, intuitive, fast, and downright gorgeous mobile OS to second-rate-android-without-the-apps tier.
>Hurr well it must be your phone cause I dont have these problems at all durr
It was **** on my 810, but hey, old phone without firmware updates, cut it some slack.
It was **** on my Fierce XL, but.. but maybe.. maybe its because its a low end phone.
Th-the lumia 520 was k-kinda slow too.. right?
well SURPRISE!
ITS **** ON THE IDOL 4S TOO!!
>derpaderp stop restoring from backup and start fresh
yeah **** off been there done that

 

[fatclue_98]

nevermind the app gap, try the stability gap between Windows and Android/iOS.

Its ridiculous. This thing is unfinished. It runs like **** on low end phones, mid-range phones, and even phones like the Idol 4S.

This morning I couldn't even get a damn song to play on Groove.

Says the Windows 10 phone.


Fine, I said to myself. I'll just swipe down and turn off Wifi

Its literally a never ending battle with this stupid thing.


I can go on and on but this post is already pretty long and guess what? My keyboard is starting to lag.
How's that for an OS designed and marketed as "productive".
God forbid you type more than 4 paragraphs worth of text.

Trash, is the real WP problem. It runs like absolute garbage and it went from the most fluid, intuitive, fast, and downright gorgeous mobile OS to second-rate-android-without-the-apps tier.
>Hurr well it must be your phone cause I dont have these problems at all durr
It was **** on my 810, but hey, old phone without firmware updates, cut it some slack.
It was **** on my Fierce XL, but.. but maybe.. maybe its because its a low end phone.
Th-the lumia 520 was k-kinda slow too.. right?
well SURPRISE!
ITS **** ON THE IDOL 4S TOO!!
>derpaderp stop restoring from backup and start fresh
yeah **** off been there done that

So what you're saying is you're having issues. It was hard to understand since there were so many ***** sprinkled hither and thither.

 

[Kot Prada]

I guess that depends on what their user base is. Take BlackBerry for example, they smashed Wall Street's estimates this quarter by ditching their handset business and focusing on software for their Enterprise clientele. They were smart enough to identify their base and jettison the unwanted baggage. I'm not advocating this for Microsoft but they are a software company first and foremost. I've stated many times my disdain for having to carry multiple devices but it's appearing more and more that business will be MS's path forward when it comes to mobile. Yes, that will be me carrying 2 phones from 2 supposedly dead platforms. Make that 3 with my Touchpad.

Blackberry is a software company as well. Why no one cares about the fact, this "software company" failed with their own OS at the beginning of their "software business"?!

 

[anon(50597)]

nevermind the app gap, try the stability gap between Windows and Android/iOS.

Its ridiculous. This thing is unfinished. It runs like **** on low end phones, mid-range phones, and even phones like the Idol 4S.

This morning I couldn't even get a damn song to play on Groove.

Says the Windows 10 phone.


Fine, I said to myself. I'll just swipe down and turn off Wifi

Its literally a never ending battle with this stupid thing.


I can go on and on but this post is already pretty long and guess what? My keyboard is starting to lag.
How's that for an OS designed and marketed as "productive".
God forbid you type more than 4 paragraphs worth of text.

Trash, is the real WP problem. It runs like absolute garbage and it went from the most fluid, intuitive, fast, and downright gorgeous mobile OS to second-rate-android-without-the-apps tier.
>Hurr well it must be your phone cause I dont have these problems at all durr
It was **** on my 810, but hey, old phone without firmware updates, cut it some slack.
It was **** on my Fierce XL, but.. but maybe.. maybe its because its a low end phone.
Th-the lumia 520 was k-kinda slow too.. right?
well SURPRISE!
ITS **** ON THE IDOL 4S TOO!!
>derpaderp stop restoring from backup and start fresh
yeah **** off been there done that

I have an Idol 4s and the OS runs like a dream. Every OS has issues - apps crash on my wife's iPhone 6/god phone. Android is so fragmented you don't know what you're going to get.
If I felt like you about an OS, I would definitely be using a different one, not continuing to use it and bashing it on a fan forum.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[fatclue_98]

Blackberry is a software company as well. Why no one cares about the fact, this "software company" failed with their own OS at the beginning of their "software business"?!

Say what? Windows Mobile (the CE-based versions 6.5 and prior) had tons more features than any OS do today and that was in the Mobile Stone Ages. WM6.5 on today's hardware? That would be something special.

 

[eddieDOTexe]

So what you're saying is you're having issues. It was hard to understand since there were so many ***** sprinkled hither and thither.

Considering only about 1.6% of the entire 1250 character post were asterisks maybe you ought to practice your reading a bit more.

Back on topic, lets not forget alarms.
Need an alarm to wake you up for work?
Be sure not to put your phone notifications on silent!
Because if you do, guess who's not getting woken up in the morning??
I think they've broken and fixed that like twice now. (after release).
But now I can't really trust it lol, I mean..

You know I can't really be all that mad though.
I should have expected it from the same company whom it took THREE years (3) to give the Zune basic clock functionality.
So I suppose these e s s e n t i a l features not working make sense.

I have an Idol 4s and the OS runs like a dream. Every OS has issues - apps crash on my wife's iPhone 6/god phone. Android is so fragmented you don't know what you're going to get.
If I felt like you about an OS, I would definitely be using a different one, not continuing to use it and bashing it on a fan forum.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

>u kno if u rly didnt like the os you'd just chuck that $400 phone and buy another $400 phone i mean its not like you should have expected a $400 phone to function to a certain extent anyway

Yeah in fact I switched from iOS to WP7 back in the day because I couldn't stand how garbage third party apps were. Although they seem to be doing a lot better from what I've seen.
Android was never really an option jumping into. Simply because its known for being unstable. Unpolished. But if I'm going to be dealing with basic things like my keyboard not showing up when I'm trying to text back I might as well throw it into consideration.
I kind of want a iPhone SE but continuum was the last thing Win10Mobile had going for it. Now with Dex on the Galaxy S8 I'm really having a hard time deciding on which to get between the two.

But there's still that bit of hope that this upcoming Creator's Update really gets things going right. I want to stick with Windows.
But I mean, third party devs don't support it.
And Microsoft's first party support is spotty at best. Which I'm sure kills moral for third parties. UWP is just about the only thing holding it together. Because I don't see many developers using their iOS porting tools to bring their apps to Windows phones.
Facebook has done a decent job with their own ports. Especially with Instagram. Its not as far behind in features as their Facebook app is compared to other platforms (in fact I'm almost certain IG is 100% on par with Android/iOS). But they work decently enough.
And many native Windows apps are for desktop/tablet only. Phone is strangely being left out.

 

[fatclue_98]

Back on topic, lets not forget alarms.
Need an alarm to wake you up for work?
Be sure not to put your phone notifications on silent!
Because if you do, guess who's not getting woken up in the morning??
I think they've broken and fixed that like twice now. (after release).
But now I can't really trust it lol, I mean..

I guess you've never bothered to set Quiet Hours have you? I have my alarm set to go off every morning at 5:15 but my Quiet Hours lasts until 7:00.

My alarm goes off faithfully every. single. morning. without. fail. and. not. a. single. notification. goes. through.

 

[anon(50597)]

I guess you've never bothered to set Quiet Hours have you? I have my alarm set to go off every morning at 5:15 but my Quiet Hours lasts until 7:00.

My alarm goes off faithfully every. single. morning. without. fail. and. not. a. single. notification. goes. through.

I've never had an issue with that either. Not saying it doesn't happen, just that I haven't experienced it.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[anon(50597)]

Yeah in fact I switched from iOS to WP7 back in the day because I couldn't stand how garbage third party apps were. Although they seem to be doing a lot better from what I've seen.
Android was never really an option jumping into. Simply because its known for being unstable. Unpolished. But if I'm going to be dealing with basic things like my keyboard not showing up when I'm trying to text back I might as well throw it into consideration.
I kind of want a iPhone SE but continuum was the last thing Win10Mobile had going for it. Now with Dex on the Galaxy S8 I'm really having a hard time deciding on which to get between the two.

But there's still that bit of hope that this upcoming Creator's Update really gets things going right. I want to stick with Windows.
But I mean, third party devs don't support it.
And Microsoft's first party support is spotty at best. Which I'm sure kills moral for third parties. UWP is just about the only thing holding it together. Because I don't see many developers using their iOS porting tools to bring their apps to Windows phones.
Facebook has done a decent job with their own ports. Especially with Instagram. Its not as far behind in features as their Facebook app is compared to other platforms (in fact I'm almost certain IG is 100% on par with Android/iOS). But they work decently enough.
And many native Windows apps are for desktop/tablet only. Phone is strangely being left out.

I can't do iPhone. Was an original user through the 3s. Tried the 6 and sold it after 2 months because it seemed so locked in.

Android is OK but just so darn fragmented. There's 30,000 different variations. Frustrating.

MS is in the middle of reinventing itself so you have to be patient to survive. It works best of the 3 for me though.

Maybe ill go back to carrying a dumbphone and taking back a large part of my life that is being manipulated by large corporations out to strip me of every last penny.


Sent from mTalk on my SP4

 

[fatclue_98]

I can't do iPhone. Was an original user through the 3s. Tried the 6 and sold it after 2 months because it seemed so locked in.

Android is OK but just so darn fragmented. There's 30,000 different variations. Frustrating.

MS is in the middle of reinventing itself so you have to be patient to survive. It works best of the 3 for me though.

Maybe ill go back to carrying a dumbphone and taking back a large part of my life that is being manipulated by large corporations out to strip me of every last penny.


Sent from mTalk on my SP4

There's an idea. The early 90s were an Ultra Classic and a Bravo beeper for me. Motorola ruled back then.

I did have a life though, very few had my cell number. It was expensive back then, 60 cents per minute racked up $200 bills quick.

 

[kenzibit]

Not to me. I use the office apps, twitter, readit, lil facebook and a few others. My app gap is solved by edge and the app called App it! The inly problem is most of our apps aren't feature proofed but lite versions. I'm using the photos app right now and need to make some inking on it but can do on the phone until I get back to the office to a pc...that's what makes me feel limited.

 

[marpamcy]

Yes,

bla bla bla ........bla bla .............. bla .....................bla bla bla bla.......
........ bla bla....

So to sum up yes, the lack of apps is the real WP problem.

 

[pedmar007]

No it's the OS plain and simple. Consumers use the OS more than any APP period. Settings, Camera, app list, phone calls, texts, Battery life etc. Windows phone users complain more about the OS experience right now over the App parity on rival OSes. Makes little sense for developers to create apps for W10M that wouldn't have good functionality due to OS bugs/issues. Let's say Facebook created an update that made that App on the 3 OSes work flawlessly and with same features, now let's say that W10M when you opened Facebook and starting using it, it cut your battery life in half in comparison to IOS or Android that used 1-5% of total battery life. Would that W10M user enjoy the app as much or use it as much? NO so it's not the app it's the OS. My L950XL's battery life is ok for the entire day if I only looked at the screen and nothing else.

In order for Apps to be on Windows 10 Mobile, The OS itself has to attract USERS, when MS can do that to the point that any current IPhone or Android user can truly pick up any current W10M device and have the like functionality then they will start buying w10m devices and developers will see the #s increasing and hence look to update apps and create along side the IOs and Android counterparts well.

Seriously why would any developer in his/her right mind create any app for Windows 10 Mobile for that app to have functionality issues created due to a buggy OS still under MS's development. After RS3 depending on how much that update improves the OS for any consumer to use it as a true daily driver device, then anyone can have any App argument from then until cows can actually jump over the moon.

 

[AbhiWindows10]

Well, the last 2 to 3 years, the APP GAP *was* the problem. But now, for me its more about the lack of stability in the OS.

There are issues and more issues popping up day by day. It doesn't seem to get better even if Zac Bowden says so. Sure, the OS looks better with enhanced settings, etc but it's still buggy in places.

 

[mayconvert]

Yes. I am not talking about Super Mario and Pokémon, I am talking about apps like Geico, my bank, etc.
I waited for YEARS for a starbucks app because I am a coffee junkie and want my rewards since I am spending money anyways, but even the starbucks app is TERRIBLE compared to the iOS version.

If there were No apps on any platform, the Core OS only, Windows is BY FAR the BEST OS ever put on a phone, but what's the point if I can't have GOOD, USEFUL apps that help me thru my day. NONE of them are there.

Some of the stuff I want to do "could" be done thru the web browser, but Edge is the worst browser in the history of web browsers. Complete Joke.

 

[James Hancock]

The app lack is a real problem because of fringe apps. Microsoft needs to re-enable the Android emulator and then quietly curate certain apps that are never going to end up in the store otherwise. A short list:

1. Kevo (Lock)
2. Rachio (watering system)
3. TD Bank (Banking with check deposit which doesn't work online)
4. Whirlpool
5. Harmony (remote)
6. Jaguar Apps (remote start etc.)
7. DirecTV Now
8. UE Boom
9. Roku
10. Amazon Instant Video
11. Amazon Photos
12. Amazon Drive
13. Sonos
14. Waze (current version sucks)

That's a short list for me, but everyone will have specific apps. If the emulated quietly they'd still have mindshare and people using it and the more people use the phone the more likely you'll get to have real windows apps (Yes even though they could just let MS add the android version)

Also MS has a developer issue. Right now you can have a JavaScript/Typescript developer that can code everything: Server, Browser and Mobile.

Using Microsoft's preferred C# language you have C# for the server, Typescript for the browser, Xamarin C# with a different XAML for iOS/Android and C#+XAML for UWP.

They desperately need to get UWP ported to iOS and Android as it is in UWP and just warn on things that won't work so that you can build a UWP app and hit rebuild and it goes to iOS And Android (and they need to provide developers with free iOS build in the cloud with emulator on Windows so you don't have to buy a Mac to dev for iOS which will cause devs to switch back to windows).

And then they need to buy Bridge.NET or similar and get an excellent "build UWP and get HTML5" story going so that you can write in XAML/C# and you get your website too.

Because for the average small/medium size dev shop having C# developers and JavaScript developers increases costs compared to just JavaScript developers.

They do the above and they can win back Mobile and developers like crazy. But the patchwork of Xamarin, UWP and Web isn't going to cut it.

 

[steve_w_7]

It's all a mess now. The OS is ugly. The app gap is real. No exciting hardware. Nothing but false hope and empty promises on the horizon. But other than that, everything is great!

 

[anon(3463402)]

1. We need more apps
2. We need more Windows phone manufacturers, more models
3. We need better promotion

Sent from my beautiful Lumia 950 XL

 

[gano101]

Yes.

The OS itself is more beautiful and fluid however there are parts of it that appear to be under developed due largely to it's relatively 'newness' (if such a word exists) however project Neon looks to be the answer to this concern. The tiles are not just practical but customisable which helps users get a unique look. The hardware and I'm thinking mainly of the Lumia cameras are still up there, although the iPhone 7 is very good.

Cortana is the best personal assistant out there, bar none.

It's always been the apps that's been the deal breaker for some. If MS can reveal a road-map with a commitment to mobile which includes tools for devs on other platform to port their wares to WM there would be a lot of happy users who are willing to commit to the OS for a while longer and would no doubt attract other OEMs to the platform.

 

[anon(9995677)]

It seems that the "World" is based on IPhone and Google apps. Direct TV, major networks plus a multitude of others create only for the two not Windows...but I do like my 1520 Lumia!