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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