The WP feature I miss the most + what put me off WP

[martinkr]

I couldn't get into the black-background/tiles concept much hence why I bought a Galaxy Young mere 2 months after my Lumia 520 back in 2013.
And yet, the one feature I truly miss is the People tile. I really loved the way it suffled photos of people in my contacts list.
I also like the Pictures tile for the same reason, although it doesn't have the same animations nor a 9-objects grid. It was fun looking at photos of my friends, coworkers, relatives shuffling. :winktongue: I have this laptop running Win 8.1 but I need an MS account to use it. :angry: I wish someone could port the People tile for Android phones as a widget or sth.

I also miss the WP keyboard, much better than Android or iPhone keyboards!

There might be other WP things I miss but I don't remember them now, haven't used WP since ages.

My main WP peeve & why I switched back to Android is that I just prefer the Win 8.x start screen rather than the version on the WP.
On Win 8.x the background of the start screen is customizable - you can change its color/graphic. In WP one couldn't customize the background to the sides of the tiles. It was a choice of black or white. In later WP updates you could use a wallpaper or a photo as tile background but that didn't look as good imo.

Also, Win 8.x start screen tiles have more colors (IE & Weather tiles are blue, People orange, Camera purple, Store green). On WP most tiles used the same system-wide color and only the Games and a few others were green.

Had the WP looked like a smaller version of Win 8.x's start screen I would've stayed. Sometimes it's little things like that that put you off a product. Btw, I'm writing this on a Win 8.1 laptop as I prefer its UI to Win 10.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

What I miss most is the feature that also won me countless bets (many with welchers).

By 2013 WP could announce texts over automobile Bluetooth, read them to you and let you dictate a response. Wasn't too much later you could initiate a text (or do any phone voice commands) all hands free over even the dumbest of auto Bluetooth.

I've always test driven lots of cars and when a salesperson rode along (remember that?), I'd comment that whatever car I bought needed to do those things. Never ran across a salesperson carrying a Windows phone and every one of them swore that was impossible. Many would even take a small bet on it. More than one got dry mouth from it hanging open in surprise.

 

[TechFreak1]

For me it's rooms and it's Windows live messenger integration.

Rooms had ability to share notes, calendars, photos and send messages to a group of people therefore making communication with people such as family, colleagues etc soo much more efficient (making team working a breeze as well).

You could pin each room and get seperate notifications via the tiles.

Since this was natively integrated into the o/s battery life wasn't impacted by using other apps.

The other functionalities I miss is Kids Corner and Apps Corner.

With the latter I could lock the phone to a fixed app and then give it someone - perfect for busy body family members and friends lol. Kids Corner, could lock the phone to games and then give my phone my nephews and nieces and not worry about accidental purchases.

Another under rated feature is continuum ( I have a continuum dock as a failsafe incase I need a PC to do some basic productivity tasks in a remote location / PC+Laptop is out of commission etc), this would have been perfect for the current situation as all work places would have needed to provide was a continuum dock. Saving money, time and hassle in shipping out laptops / full desktop set ups to employees.

Continuum is also perfect for social distancing and Covid-19 pre-cautions as the cleaners have less equipment to clean and you only have to press one button in the office to use a PC - the monitor screen or with a firmware update the monitor could have turned on when the phone was connected to the dock.

With geofencing, WiFi, bluetooth and NFC you wouldn't have even needed to press any button at all - as you could just hover your phone over a NFC puck (the puck could also double up as a wireless charger) on the desk, typed in your login credentials on your phone and voila - authenticated, connected and ready to go.

Sooo much potential just squandered due to bean counting and lack of foresight.

 

[RTGent]

I'm still enjoying my 950, thankfully: I've never been sufficiently discouraged by "little things" or bigger ones, martin. And Hoosier: Cortana, remarkably enough, is still graciously and reliably reading and responding to my texts through my car's not-so-dumb, though after-market Bluetooth -auto-interrupting and resuming Groove playing my 950's music collection through Bluetooth, BTW. I didn't even know I won't have that -eventually- on my angroid phone -geeeez... -thankful, again.

What I'll miss the most is the so-clear notifications (with discrete counts!) of 3 email accounts, texts, calls, and voicemails, along with my next calendar appointment, on my unerring and always-bright Glance screen. Next is probably the replaceable battery on my 950, though that's device-specific.

 

[jeffchapik]

And yet, the one feature I truly miss is the People tile. I really loved the way it suffled photos of people in my contacts list.
I also like the Pictures tile for the same reason, although it doesn't have the same animations nor a 9-objects grid. It was fun looking at photos of my friends, coworkers, relatives !

You can still have both of these features on Android with Launcher 10. I do.

 

[cbreze]

You can still have both of these features on Android with Launcher 10. I do.

Also square home 2 is another good option. But both are the closest thing there is to windows phone ui on an android.

 

[beman39]

What I miss most is the feature that also won me countless bets (many with welchers).

By 2013 WP could announce texts over automobile Bluetooth, read them to you and let you dictate a response. Wasn't too much later you could initiate a text (or do any phone voice commands) all hands free over even the dumbest of auto Bluetooth.

I've always test driven lots of cars and when a salesperson rode along (remember that?), I'd comment that whatever car I bought needed to do those things. Never ran across a salesperson carrying a Windows phone and every one of them swore that was impossible. Many would even take a small bet on it. More than one got dry mouth from it hanging open in surprise.

This! I miss this so much!!!

 

[martinkr]

You can still have both of these features on Android with Launcher 10. I do.

Thanks for this but it doesn't look as nice with those round photos (I know they're that way in Android). And perhaps the animation is not the same...
The truth is Live tiles as they're now on Win 10 make no sense, I don't even have a People app installed nor a tile. I really dislike it when MS let a feature or app decline like that, they're also doing it with Skype. Anyone who remembers NetMeeting and Web Channels is not surprised that MS are into dropping stuff like hot potatoes or leaving them into oblivion at the first sign of struggle...