Switching platforms? | Thinking of leaving?...comment here!

[fatclue_98]

I hate to say it, but I feel like things like this is kind of a downfall of being one to update early. It's so stupid that this has to be done.

It's not like Android has any competition to be delivering one bad update after another. I can understand Windows sending out a half-baked update because they're trying to see if anything sticks but iOS and Android are established and should be introducing individual features as minor feature updates rather than new OS versions.

Horrible battery life, broken messaging and crashing apps should be a thing of the past on Android. The OS is too "mature" to be having these issues at this stage of the game. Apple is not exactly immune to similar snafus. There was an iMessaging problem a few years ago and a battery drain problem with the 6 and 6+ when they were released not that long ago.

Say what you will about BlackBerry OS10, and to a lesser degree WP8.1, OS10 was rock solid and I've never seen app crashes on native apps. OS7 was a different story altogether made worse by boot-up times lasting a hockey season.

 

[libra89]

It's not like Android has any competition to be delivering one bad update after another. I can understand Windows sending out a half-baked update because they're trying to see if anything sticks but iOS and Android are established and should be introducing individual features as minor feature updates rather than new OS versions.

Horrible battery life, broken messaging and crashing apps should be a thing of the past on Android. The OS is too "mature" to be having these issues at this stage of the game. Apple is not exactly immune to similar snafus. There was an iMessaging problem a few years ago and a battery drain problem with the 6 and 6+ when they were released not that long ago.

Say what you will about BlackBerry OS10, and to a lesser degree WP8.1, OS10 was rock solid and I've never seen app crashes on native apps. OS7 was a different story altogether made worse by boot-up times lasting a hockey season.

I believe you on that. I miss how nicely 8.1 worked even it had a lot of quirks LOL.

I know that Apple has messed up too. I understand that errors and such happen but silly things that can/will affect communication to me is a big problem. I'll probably never forget how iOS 10 at first broke some things.

 

[HeyCori]

Say what you will about BlackBerry OS10, and to a lesser degree WP8.1, OS10 was rock solid and I've never seen app crashes on native apps. OS7 was a different story altogether made worse by boot-up times lasting a hockey season.

I'm currently using BB10 and it has been pretty rock solid aside from a few random restarts. I can't think of any apps that have crashed on me.

 

[Travis Flenker]

I picked up an S8+ over the weekend with the intentions of trying it out for about 10 days to see if I could make the switch.

I hate to say it, but it took about 2 hours for me to decide the answer was yes. It's definitely not perfect, but the difference was eye opening. I'll share my experience coming from a 950.

First, the negatives.
-I vastly prefer the UI of W10M. Fortunately, Android is easy to customize and there are a lot of "W10" type launchers you can get. They do an okay job, but missing live tiles is a huge step back.
-Had to fire up my old Google account. I really dislike this part of it, but no choice.
-DeX requires (I believe) the $150 cradle to operate. I was really excited to try this feature as I love the idea of continuum, but I'll wait until some used ones show up on ebay. This was a bummer since I already have an MS display dock and Screen Beam.
-Fingerprint sensor is in a really dumb place. Not at all convenient to use, very disappointed as fingerprint seems to be the most natural, fastest way to unlock a phone.

That's really about it for bad things to say about the phone. I know I'm comparing a 1.5 year old phone to a new one, but the 950 is still pretty solid as far as specs... so keep that in mind for the rest.

Positives
-Fast. Unreal how quickly apps open, websites load, etc. Again, old phone vs new phone but FB would take 10-20 seconds to open on my 950. Opening it cold on the S8 is literally instantaneous. This is largely do the coding on the apps, but there's essentially no load time for any apps. This makes a huge difference in my experience.
-App availability. Obviously. Not going to beat a dead horse here.
-Iris scanner is usually instantaneous. Misses once in a while, but a big improvement over the 950.
-Stability - haven't had any apps randomly close, no mystery reboots so far.
-MS apps (and even the WC app) are better. Sad, sad thing but it's true.
-Typing.. I've posted about how bad swipe/predictive is in W10M; it's much better on the S8+.
-Battery life. Night and day. I did everything I could on my 950 to maximize the battery and could still barely make it through a day.

There are a ton of similarities between the two OS'es, switching between them has been easy despite not using an Android as my main for 4 or 5 years.

Keeping my 950 to keep an eye on the OS and for whenever I need Continuum. Really the main thing that pushed me to give the S8+ a shot is the lack of any plans for a flagship phone this year with W10M, plus MS's complete silence about the future of the OS. I'll definitely be back if W10 on ARM leads to something.

 

[camaroz1985]

@libra89 You are a bad influence. After reading your glowing reviews of the iPhone SE, I decided to see what was on my local craigslist, even though I swore I didn't want an iOS device. Well for less than half the price of a new 32GB one I have a gently used 64GB(though the screen has some decent scratches), and now have the trifecta of newish phones from each platform (Lumia 950, Google Pixel, and iPhone SE). The small size is really nice in the hand, and it feels great. I never had an iphone 5 or 5S, so it isn't a nostalgia thing for me. I figured this way I can keep up with all the new stuff on each platform, and for the price, why not. I most likely will not use it as a daily driver (that is still my 950), but it will keep my Pixel company on my desk.

 

[libra89]

@libra89 You are a bad influence. After reading your glowing reviews of the iPhone SE, I decided to see what was on my local craigslist, even though I swore I didn't want an iOS device. Well for less than half the price of a new 32GB one I have a gently used 64GB(though the screen has some decent scratches), and now have the trifecta of newish phones from each platform (Lumia 950, Google Pixel, and iPhone SE). The small size is really nice in the hand, and it feels great. I never had an iphone 5 or 5S, so it isn't a nostalgia thing for me. I figured this way I can keep up with all the new stuff on each platform, and for the price, why not. I most likely will not use it as a daily driver (that is still my 950), but it will keep my Pixel company on my desk.

Haha! Congrats! I think you're all set now, awesome that you found a great deal too.

 

[camaroz1985]

Helps to find the mom of a spoiled girl who wanted to upgrade from the SE to the 7+ after a month, and mom just wanted to get rid of the phone. I offered $50 less than listed price and she took it without question. Should have gone lower...

 

[sd4f]

Ok, so I'm going to go against the flow a little here. I've been on the hunt for a L950 for the last month, as they've been rather difficult to find of late, and prices for some strange reason have been going up.

So, I have the choice between a brand new L950 or brand new L950XL both Australian CV models, so no mucking around with carrier apps or delayed updates. Thing is, the XL is cheaper. So which should I get?

Seeing that there's absolutely nothing planned for build, should I give it a last hurrah to delay the inevitable, or just wait one month until the rest of the SD835 android phones come out and just go with something there.

My sights have been set on either the rumoured nokia 9 flagship, or a oneplus 5.

Lack of the FB messenger app on my L920 is starting to drive me mad.

 

[Wbutchart1]

It's been fun but I'm out

Hi all, signing off from the Microsoft world as of build yesterday. Disgusted at the continued disrespect of Microsoft towards their own customers in the mobile world, however this is not the key reason.

The key reason is this, microsofts new strategy is literally they have their heads in the cloud! The reality is through the customers are down here. I don't want a cloud first mobile whatever strategy they are trying to sell! I want to invest my money in a company that has a clear strategy for the things I use now. That isn't Microsoft, taking their strategy to its logical conclusion where does windows 10 as a operating system even fit in with that?

I am going to google, enemy or not they at least seem to have a clue what they are doing. Ordering an s8 and leaving this sorry mess behind. I'm also cancelling office 365 too, great service but again the mess behind it means I'll use google suite.

This may get me heat, fair enough, many will like microsofts new strategy, I'm not one of them, I see it as chaos, so I'm departing. Enjoy the journey folks.

See you at android central forums if you visit there

 

[nasznjoka]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

Very good decision. There's nothing more over here

 

[Drael646464]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

Todays sposed to be about win10 (yesterday was cloud), and build is a dev conference, but seeya!

 

[Wbutchart1]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

Todays sposed to be about win10 (yesterday was cloud), and build is a dev conference, but seeya!

Absolutely, and in those videos of smartphones they showed oh so frequently, how many were windows phone? They can't even have the dignity to throw this community a crumb let alone a bone!

But thank you for your pleasant dismissal, gracious.

 

[dov1978]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

It's Microsofts arrogance that bothers me most tbh. Yeah tech fails sometimes and this ongoing experiment of theirs is coming to an end but like several times before when they hit the reset switch on a platform the customers/fans/devs have invested time and money in they just expect us all to blindly jump back onboard as if nothing happened and because they're Microsoft we won't question it. It still makes me wonder why I and many others still defend them and this platform when they couldn't really give 2 sh**s about us

 

[Drael646464]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

Absolutely, and in those videos of smartphones they showed oh so frequently, how many were windows phone? They can't even have the dignity to throw this community a crumb let alone a bone!

But thank you for your pleasant dismissal, gracious.

The pitch is for developers - how many developers for cloud services are using windows phones? (the azure app is coming to UWP btw, and the chatbot for the video tech, is merely a bot, it can run anywhere). You want to pitch an idea to devs, and companies, your going to want to show them the devices they use, right? If you ran it all on windows 10 mobile devices people would wonder - does this work with my device?

Cortana was by far the most exciting part of day 1, and that works best on windows devices on the creators update. Should be an interesting first year or so for windows users with the Cortana api when it moves past preview stage.

If we were going to hear about windows 10 mobile now, which is probably a stretch given MSFTs need to build up UWP before making this catergory of device a priority, it would be today during the windows 10 talk, rather than yesterday during the cloud/edge talk. But it probably won't happen. There's no commercial viability to pushing that rock up that hill without either apps or a game changer. Both of those things are a strategic work in progress.

It is a developers conference anyway, clearly you and I are not the target audience.

IMO by the sound of it, you were waiting for a reason to leave. I left google services and platforms in similar disgust, so it's not like I don't relate. I do. I wouldn't touch google products with a barge pole these days. If you feel that way about MS products -

Go well, and enjoy your Sammy device I hope you find satisfaction in it!

 

[sumton]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

2017 is not like the old days windows is not feeding Microsoft like it used to be they have bigger dreams and their future belong to the cloud

 

[Drael646464]

Re: It's been fun but I'm out

2017 is not like the old days windows is not feeding Microsoft like it used to be they have bigger dreams and their future belong to the cloud

While enterprise services are their biggest earner, I'm not sure that's really true. Every company that's big enough, has dreams of expansion.

Apple makes far more just selling iphones than MSFT does selling azure. It's more that, MSFT wants to REALLY protect its economic moat, lock down its profits and cashflow and make sure no other company can climb its enterprise walls.

Considering how much money they make from azure, it makes sense to try and expand that. Doesn't mean they don't also want to grow windows 10, or even shock horror, enter into mobile, VR/AR, autonomous cars, AI or whatever else. If they want to invest in those, they'll want as much cashflow as they can.

Enterprise does flow into consumer too, and vice versa. If for example MSFT locks down the enterprise IoT (honestly a lot more useful to them than consumers anyway), that offers a bridge to IoT on consumer devices due to developer support, hardware, communication protocols and so on.

But what is it they say - one bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. MSFT would be silly not to keep riding the azure train.

As a sidenote- Consumer wise, I think this "edge" idea of cloud based local distribution could have a lot of consumer application, especially in the IoT. You could use that same logic they demonstrated to control your home, or car with lower latency.

You could also use the visual recognition tech, to protect your home from burglers, or to alert the police of assault, or simply find your missing keys. It could also provide access to electronic locks, automatically turn on devices etc. How much safer would most people feel if their _house_ called emergency services when they had a heart attack, or gave an alert when their toddler was in danger?

As much as they were pitched to enterprise I think a "google for real life, with logic variable switches" could honestly be one of the most powerful new ideas I have heard of. It could literally revolutionise society. Obviously it wouldn't be cool if I could just say "where is such and such", and they were some public citizen I didn't know. or 'find me some crack'. And there are ethical issues with police using such technologies. But for workplaces and around the home alone, I think my mind is pretty much blown how much stuff could be done with that.

You could have private settings for each person in a house, so certain lighting, heating, humidity, music, network streaming options. It could map everything contextually - run and get into a bath - hit the chill playlist and dim the lights automatically. Get on the treadmill? Hit the workout playlist, and lower the room temperature.

 

[andrewje_home]

Why I'm leaving Windows 10 Mobile!

Why I'm leaving Windows 10 Mobile!

1. Inconsistent operation with emails shown in the Action Centre. E.g. Click a new email from the action centre you will either get navigated to:
   • The all email list
   • The last viewed email
   • The actual email you were expecting
2. Camera looses pictures. If you snap a pick and switch the screen off too quickly you will loose the picture completely.
   
3. Pictures take ages after been taken before you can zoom into the picture (ie. Check that the picture you took is ok). Also sometimes loses the picture if you snap another too quickly after the last.
   
4. Camera autofocus is sometimes so slow it can take 10+ seconds before the picture is captured.
   
5. Music background playback task should remember what song is paused/stopped indefinitely. At the moment it seems to forget the playback stream anywhere between 1 and 8 hours. Sometimes it will remember the playback stream for a few days.
   
6. Why have the music playback controls still not been moved to the action centre (like other mobile os's)? This would help fix problem 5 above.
   
7. Music playback randomly pauses. Sometimes it can do this every couple of songs.
   
8. Flip to silence - where has that gone? Was on my 1020 but gone on the 950.
   
9. Opening links from a Cortana search sometimes open an old, previously viewed web page. New tab is there but you need to change tabs.
   
10. Back button on edge is utterly inconsistent.
    E.g. Opening a web page from link in application and then hit the back button should take me back to the application. Instead it either opens a page I looked at previously and then returns to the application on the next back button press. Sometimes back will keep taking you back through previous pages you viewed in a previous session. Back should me going back through the user navigation path like it used to do on 8.1
    
11. Hey Cortana doesn't wake the Lumia 950 all the time. If you train Cortana it never wakes up.
    
12. Headphone button double tap and triple tap are utterly inconsistent for skipping or repeating a music track. Complete box of chocolates.
    
13. Saying "Call my Wife" to Cortana will quite often say Calling ..... But then not actually make the call.
    
14. Windows Hello Iris scanner was supposed to be quicker to log in with the creator update. It's still as slow as ever.
    
15. Windows Hello Iris scanner doesn't show up if you are listening to music until you swipe up to get to the pin.
    
16. Battery life. I barely make it to 6pm even with light use. My wife's dirt cheap Android device lasts two days easy an has a much smaller battery. My 1020 was also equally bad so it isn't the hardware.
    

There are many other issues but this is just a few of the more serious ones. It's not even like these are new issues. These are all long standing issues since W10 mobile launched. Before you ask, yes I did report these a long while back but I guess nobody at Microsoft cares anymore?

What will I get? Not sure really but I do know it won't run windows 10 mobile. It's sad because I have had may windows phone devices right back to the WP7 days. I don't really like the other two OS's but the above list makes it impossible to be a satisfied Windows 10 Mobile fan.

 

[bing722]

I recently got a midrange ZTE Axon 7 on sale. It's super fast, reliable, has good battery life, and excellent build quality. The camera is pretty decent, but not as good as a PureView. It charges very fast, has every app I could ever want, and syncs very well with my Microsoft account. The speakers are loud and clear. I'm already running Nougat 7.1.1. If MS ever gets their act together regarding Mobile, maybe I'll be back someday.

Based on my experience, the only advantages I'd give to the Lumia 950's are better cameras and a nicer-looking OS.

 

[Keith White Jr]

Re: Why I'm leaving Windows 10 Mobile!

Why I'm leaving Windows 10 Mobile!

1. Inconsistent operation with emails shown in the Action Centre. E.g. Click a new email from the action centre you will either get navigated to:
   • The all email list
   • The last viewed email
   • The actual email you were expecting
2. Camera looses pictures. If you snap a pick and switch the screen off too quickly you will loose the picture completely.
   
3. Pictures take ages after been taken before you can zoom into the picture (ie. Check that the picture you took is ok). Also sometimes loses the picture if you snap another too quickly after the last.
   
4. Camera autofocus is sometimes so slow it can take 10+ seconds before the picture is captured.
   
5. Music background playback task should remember what song is paused/stopped indefinitely. At the moment it seems to forget the playback stream anywhere between 1 and 8 hours. Sometimes it will remember the playback stream for a few days.
   
6. Why have the music playback controls still not been moved to the action centre (like other mobile os's)? This would help fix problem 5 above.
   
7. Music playback randomly pauses. Sometimes it can do this every couple of songs.
   
8. Flip to silence - where has that gone? Was on my 1020 but gone on the 950.
   
9. Opening links from a Cortana search sometimes open an old, previously viewed web page. New tab is there but you need to change tabs.
   
10. Back button on edge is utterly inconsistent.
    E.g. Opening a web page from link in application and then hit the back button should take me back to the application. Instead it either opens a page I looked at previously and then returns to the application on the next back button press. Sometimes back will keep taking you back through previous pages you viewed in a previous session. Back should me going back through the user navigation path like it used to do on 8.1
    
11. Hey Cortana doesn't wake the Lumia 950 all the time. If you train Cortana it never wakes up.
    
12. Headphone button double tap and triple tap are utterly inconsistent for skipping or repeating a music track. Complete box of chocolates.
    
13. Saying "Call my Wife" to Cortana will quite often say Calling ..... But then not actually make the call.
    
14. Windows Hello Iris scanner was supposed to be quicker to log in with the creator update. It's still as slow as ever.
    
15. Windows Hello Iris scanner doesn't show up if you are listening to music until you swipe up to get to the pin.
    
16. Battery life. I barely make it to 6pm even with light use. My wife's dirt cheap Android device lasts two days easy an has a much smaller battery. My 1020 was also equally bad so it isn't the hardware.
    

There are many other issues but this is just a few of the more serious ones. It's not even like these are new issues. These are all long standing issues since W10 mobile launched. Before you ask, yes I did report these a long while back but I guess nobody at Microsoft cares anymore?

What will I get? Not sure really but I do know it won't run windows 10 mobile. It's sad because I have had may windows phone devices right back to the WP7 days. I don't really like the other two OS's but the above list makes it impossible to be a satisfied Windows 10 Mobile fan.

Sorry to hear about all of those issues... glad I'm not facing them on my 1520. If I was, I would probably be preparing to leave as well.

 

[anon(50597)]

Re: Why I'm leaving Windows 10 Mobile!

Sorry to hear about all of those issues... glad I'm not facing them on my 1520. If I was, I would probably be preparing to leave as well.

I agree. It sounds like a bad device though, not the OS. I looked through them and don't have the same experience on my multiple devices.

Sent from mTalk on my SP4