[REF] Possible OS Improvements

tk-093

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The things that bug me the most that need to be fix/implimented. Still an awesome platform, don't get me wrong. Not missing iOS or Android at all, but I consider myself a MS ****** anyway.

  1. Different volumes for apps/notifications/whatever
  2. Notification/Toast Center of some type...
  3. Custom sounds for Text messags and such. (Really shocked this didn't make it in yet... I want my R2D2 text message sound dang it!)
  4. Custom sounds for toasts. The best example I can give is the ESPN app on iOS. They have their own little ESPN sound everytime it gets a score update so I know exactly what it is. Duh duh duh.... duh duh duh!! It's pretty cool actually.
  5. S/MIME for encrypted email. It's actually gone a step backwards since WP7.5. Before I could at least READ encrypted email by importing my certificates. Now I can't even do that. Can't get users off Blackberry until I have this.
  6. Let me add my Twitter account without linking it to my Live Account. I have a "family" live account as my main account and I don't want to link Twitter to it. I can add Facebook by itself, let me add Twitter too.
 

awesomeplant

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Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't understand the "fix" to auto-hide the current song playing on the lock screen after a few seconds. Maybe this should be optional? I barely have time to hear what song it is before it goes away. Maybe a hybrid approach... if I wake up my phone, and actually skip a song... keep the playback UI alive for an extended time. If I wake up the phone, but don't interact with the playback UI, then auto-hide as normal. Would that make everyone happy?
 

AngryNil

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Although it isn't a perfect solution, you actually can now.
I've found this setting before, didn't know it worked on the phone as well. Thanks for the pointer!

Problem: Inconsistent behavior of the capacitive back button... the music app is resumed either from the app mamger or the volume control (by tapping the current track info). In this case IE opens the music app, but there is no way to navigate to higer level music screens without relaunching the music app from either the start screen or app list.
This is a big topic and I'll try to summarise it soon. Just a little note here though: you can tap the artist & album text above the album art to go back to the artist screen.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't understand the "fix" to auto-hide the current song playing on the lock screen after a few seconds. Maybe this should be optional? I barely have time to hear what song it is before it goes away.
Perhaps others can chime in on whether this is default functionality on WP8? With WP7, the music controls stay on the lock screen during playback.
 
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AngryNil

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Better skype integration. Add it as an Account in Email/Account. Then allow skype calls (using credits) to mobile/fixed line from WITHIN People Hub. Right now this can't be done. If Android can do this, Meego can do this, then I expect MS to be able to do this.
While I added this, Microsoft's current approach allows all VoIP services to get identical treatment. If you want Microsoft itself to do the integration, then you end up with the social network functionality on Windows Phone - you have Facebook and Twitter, but no Instagram, no Pinterest, no Google+, etc. I also added a lot of your suggestions, I'll address a few that I didn't below.

Display Album art in the lock screen when playing music instead of a blank screen.
Artist pictures are shown on the lock screen. Where do you live? If you live somewhere with no Xbox Music support, your problem is not with the functionality, but with the availability.

USB Drive mode in Mac instead of relying on Windows Phone app.
I believe WP8 uses the Media Transfer Protocol, which Apple doesn't support. Might be asking a bit much here. To read about MTP and its advantages over mass storage, I attached an article below. I've always been against mass storage support because partitioning is such a mess.
Ice Cream Sandwich explained: MTP - what is it, why use it, and how to set it up | Android Central
 

AngryNil

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No copy text from received messages.
Should be possible by long pressing on messages.

Can't clear "current playing" list (currently only able to by power cycling the phone)
Lots of duplicates in music after awhile.
Be able to add Podcasts from other sources.
- I have this on the list already, but in the meantime, download an app called "Stop the Music!".
- Not too sure what you mean here, could you elaborate?
- No podcasts are hosted by Microsoft, Apple, etc. I think what you'd want here is the ability to add podcasts by their feed URL, which I've added.

More speech recognition in more areas of the phone (all text boxes).
I assume you mean voice dictation.
 

thor_molecules

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Fixed the podcasts issue. I found the solution while searching around today:

WP8 won't download or subscribe to Podcasts? - Microsoft Community

It seems as if previously attempting to sync podcasts with iTunes is the culprit. I use a Mac (OS X 10.8.2) as my primary computer. Not sure if that matters or not.

Anyhow, I'll recap for those still having issues:

Problem: Attempting to subscribe to podcasts in the WP Store fails. Pressing 'subscribe' has no discernible effect, and manual downloads fail with similar symptoms (e.g nothing happens). Issue arises after syncing podcasts from iTunes to WP.

Fix: Per the above link, restoring the phone to factory defaults appears to resolve the issue. I did not do this, instead electing to do the following:

1) Connected my Lumia 822 to my Mac.

2) Opened WP desktop app, and UNCHECKED all of the sync options (***Warning: BACK UP BEFORE PROCEEDING***).

3) Last, I hit the 'sync' button at the bottom of the app.

Once the sync completed, I disconnected the phone and attempted to subscribe to a podcast in the WP Store.

Success!

As an aside, some of the users in that other thread reported that simply removing the podcasts synced from iTunes is all that's really required. I was not able to do this, as I did not see any podcasts on my phone browsing through the WP app (strange). When I first got the phone I did attempt to sync podcasts from iTunes (several times) and to my knowledge it never worked successfully. Eventually, I just gave up.

In any case, it looks like we managed to get one gripe scratched off the list. :wink:
 
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AngryNil

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I've amended the point, it's still a bug. You shouldn't have to remove iTunes podcast syncing in order to subscribe on the device, and if there is some low-level issue that Microsoft can't work around there, then you should be notified on the device that you cannot subscribe while syncing with iTunes.

I've also added the Portico changes.
 

Guzzler3

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Should be possible by long pressing on messages.

- Not too sure what you mean here, could you elaborate?
- No podcasts are hosted by Microsoft, Apple, etc. I think what you'd want here is the ability to add podcasts by their feed URL, which I've added.

I assume you mean voice dictation.
For the life of me, I can not figure out how to copy part a SMS message from someone. I have done a long press, short press, jab, swipe, held the edge, all I get is copy ALL the msg. I'm lost. All for something as simple as getting a text message that says "Meet me at Macayo's Bar". I have no clue where Macayo's Bar is, and would like to just copy "Macayo's Bar" and paste it into the search function.

XBox Music+Video is just a mess period, and should be rethought out. Apple fired the guy in charge of their maps fiasco, Microsoft should do the same. Oh... wait... they did. Never mind. :winktongue: But, yes to be able to add a podcast by it's RSS feed.

Yes, more areas in the core apps that understand Voice Dictation. I have always been amazed at how well Microsoft's speech recognition works from Windows 7 and on up.

As for the question of why I would like to disable the lock screen. When I'm driving in the car, I connect my phone to my car stereo to listen to music (connected via 3.5mm cable to AUX in). I do a deep shuffle of all my songs. Sometimes I want to skip a song that comes up in the rotation. If the screen is locked, I have to reach down, find the power button, press, then press the skip forward button on the screen (to find that on screen button I sometimes have to look for it and take my eyes off the road).

It's a lot easier to just disable the lock screen, leave the Music player running, and just swipe the screen from right to left to skip a song. I can do it without looking down at the screen.
 
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tk-093

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For the life of me, I can not figure out how to copy part a SMS message from someone. I have done a long press, short press, jab, swipe, held the edge, all I get is copy ALL the msg. I'm lost. All for something as simple as getting a text message that says "Meet me at Macayo's Bar". I have no clue where Macayo's Bar is, and would like to just copy "Macayo's Bar" and paste it into the search function.

It's over on South Ash. :)

Yeah, currently you can only copy the entire message. It would be nice to be able to do what you've described.
 

AngryNil

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For the life of me, I can not figure out how to copy part a SMS message from someone. I have done a long press, short press, jab, swipe, held the edge, all I get is copy ALL the msg.
Okay, added this part. I often run into such problems like this on my WP7 device, usually because selecting text in the browser is pretty hit-and-miss for me - I often have to just copy a huge portion because the selection goes awry when I drag the selectors around. Your best shot is to pin a note application to your start screen and just edit it down in there - it sucks, but it's workable. I also added your justification for the "never" lock screen time out.

Problem: Inconsistent behavior of the capacitive back button
So, to finally address this. Your first point is that the back button functions "normally" when you freshly launch an app and navigate through it. Back returns you to the previous screen, and at the first screen of the app, will boot you back to the start screen or wherever you launched it from. I think we're all fine with that. Your problem is with resuming apps. To be clear - resuming should not reset the navigational history within the app. Try this with a typical third party app - for example, Metrotube - and you'll find that you can switch to and fro, and a single tap of the back button will not kick you out of the app.

Your two examples are with Internet Explorer and Music. While they are both bundled, first party apps, they also operate in a different way from all other apps - third party and first party. Both IE and Music can function as multiple instances. To explain: each IE tab, to the best of my knowledge, is recognised as a separate app by the task switcher. Music has its "library" instance - which includes the panoramic first screen and browsing your library, but also creates a separate "app" for the music playback screen.

I can only comment from my experience with Windows Phone 7.x, but here's my take on what's going on. I don't think your examples show a flaw in the general philosophy of the back button. The problem with Music is that the Now Playing screen is a separate app. There is no navigational continuity between your music library and the music playback - you can launch the playback app from the library app, but otherwise they are separated. This can be addressed by Microsoft making them a single app.

The problem with IE seems twofold. First, you aren't guaranteed the ability to cycle through your navigation between tabs because of the issue outlined above - each tab is a separate app, and so their order can get mixed up. The second problem is that IE, from a navigational standpoint, launches a new instance when you press its tile - but you don't notice this because you see your last opened webpage showing up. It keeps the webpage you had open, but otherwise launches a completely new instance with the open webpage as the new first screen. You can see the problem is with the tile launch by testing it yourself - if you use the task switcher, you keep your history, but if you use the tile, you don't. The fix here is for Microsoft to keep the navigational history when the tile is launched (make IE use proper "fast resume").

My question for WP8 users, though: is the problem I outline for IE the same for all fast resume enabled apps, when resuming from the start screen? For example, if you navigate to your inbox in the Facebook app, press the start button, and resume through the tile, can you press back from the inbox and return to the first screen? If not, fast resume itself is a severely flawed implementation.
 
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supertramp02

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So I've been using the WP Store quite a bit these past days and I realised that almost every app is plagued with the issue of spam reviews. This is quite a serious matter and could undermine the quality and reliability of the entire Windows Phone Store. A suggestion would be to have some sort of screening process for app reviews. I have submitted a separate feedback to MS as well on this but just thought I'd put it here.
 

AngryNil

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So I've been using the WP Store quite a bit these past days and I realised that almost every app is plagued with the issue of spam reviews.
Best option here would probably have some automated system that would catch someone submitting similar responses / ratings on a regular basis. What exactly are you finding to be spammy - no responses, usernames, high / low ratings?
 

casab1anca

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Undo in OneNote and Office apps. This is especially annoying in OneNote because it auto-syncs to the cloud, so if you delete something by mistake, there's no way to get it back.
 

supertramp02

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Best option here would probably have some automated system that would catch someone submitting similar responses / ratings on a regular basis. What exactly are you finding to be spammy - no responses, usernames, high / low ratings?

Many apps have one word reviews like 'good' and multiple of such comments
 

AngryNil

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Many apps have one word reviews like 'good' and multiple of such comments
So you're suspecting these are coming from the app developer? I know I personally provide longer reviews and contact devs if I have a problem, others may not and just enter "Good" because they saw there was a comment field and felt obliged to write something.
 

anon(1019781)

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Why isn't this thread being liked and thanked for like crazy? The more Microsoft addresses this list, the more users Windows Phone will have and the better for everybody.

Anyway, I'd like to suggest for "Basics" to add a feature request for custom UI colors or at least add WAY more colors than they already have.
 
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a5cent

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This is a great list. At some point once the list is more final it would be great if someone threw it up on the Microsoft feature suggestion site.

Feature Suggestions: Hot (19536 ideas) Maybe it has a chance of being seen there.

Microsoft's feature suggestion site is a complete mess. That site desperately needs a moderator/organizer, but it doesn't have one, so I wouldn't feel bad about slapping this entire list into a single feature suggestion (if this were to be done properly, each feature suggestion would require it's own entry). At least it would be superior to all the other compilation-entries on that site. It certainly would get all of my 10 votes.

Even better, delete everything on WP's feature suggestion site and just replace it with this! ;-)
 

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