This is Marketplace??

[jdd77]

There is a good explanation of this, how/what would update the tile? Would you like to waste battery by hitting your phone with push notifications every minute?

Background Agents aren't up to the task because they run, at most, once every 30 minutes.

So yeah, its not possible right now.

Push notifications for the time?
I think it would make more sense than the "people" tile. There is no need for all those little squares to be constantly flipping and fading in and out..cycling through images of your friends. That's an unneeded waste of battery..

 

[red grenadine]

Push notifications for the time?
I think it would make more sense than the "people" tile. There is no need for all those little squares to be constantly flipping and fading in and out..cycling through images of your friends. That's an unneeded waste of battery..

Scroll around on the main screen and then stop. Watch the people tile without touching your phone or anything - it'll flash and flip around for a bit then stop

Whatever battery hit there is minute compared to what you are talking about - a background pull every minute (second?) from a server for a clock.

These are the limitations of the platform. If you want a clock widget, or if you want a different keyboard you are going to have to go to Android.

As to the calendar, I don't see how a third party calendar's month view is going to be any different than the stock calendar's view. You only have a finite amount of pixels to display the calendar. I do think they should have a week / workweek view for the stock calendar however

 

[jdd77]

Not sure if this will work but try clicking on this link from your phone.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-GB/search?q=Plancentric Timesheet v4

thanks for the link.. I downloaded it but not really sure how it works

 

[desmonium]

Push notifications for the time?
I think it would make more sense than the "people" tile. There is no need for all those little squares to be constantly flipping and fading in and out..cycling through images of your friends. That's an unneeded waste of battery..

Whatever battery hit there is minute compared to what you are talking about - a background pull every minute (second?) from a server for a clock.

hmm are you sure just 1 min difference? cuz the people tile is even flipping in the lock mode.

Anyway, just think it's a bit distracting and it would good if we can turn it off somehow.

 

[jdd77]

Scroll around on the main screen and then stop. Watch the people tile without touching your phone or anything - it'll flash and flip around for a bit then stop

Whatever battery hit there is minute compared to what you are talking about - a background pull every minute (second?) from a server for a clock.

These are the limitations of the platform. If you want a clock widget, or if you want a different keyboard you are going to have to go to Android.

As to the calendar, I don't see how a third party calendar's month view is going to be any different than the stock calendar's view. You only have a finite amount of pixels to display the calendar. I do think they should have a week / workweek view for the stock calendar however

I didn't realize a clock would require a background pull, every second from a server. Why wouldn't it run the same way the little clock in the upper right runs? That clock doesn't use data, does it? Is this the case for all the alarm clocks in marketplace too? And of all the useless things there are in marketplace to pin to the home screen, I still think a clock would look nice.

As for a calendar not being able to be big enough- look at the lettered squares of your keyboard. There are 26 of them among 8 more wider squares. The keyboard only takes up half the screen and everythings easily visible. Double the size of those squares and you have the days of the month on a calendar, that would clearly be visible.

 

[red grenadine]

I didn't realize a clock would require a background pull, every second from a server. Why wouldn't it run the same way the little clock in the upper right runs? That clock doesn't use data, does it? Is this the case for all the alarm clocks in marketplace too? And of all the useless things there are in marketplace to pin to the home screen, I still think a clock would look nice.

As for a calendar not being able to be big enough- look at the lettered squares of your keyboard. There are 26 of them among 8 more wider squares. The keyboard only takes up half the screen and everythings easily visible. Double the size of those squares and you have the days of the month on a calendar, that would clearly be visible.

Tiles can't be self contained programs so they can't run anything on the home screen. They can only pull in things and display them.

Even doubling the size of the "keyboard calendar" to fit the whole screen, you can't expect to read anything (appointments, etc) in portrait mode. Even in landscape mode that would be a stretch. Sorry, I just don't see it. Try turning the stock calendar in month view to landscape and make out the text

A week view would be a better solution in my opinion

 

[red grenadine]

hmm are you sure just 1 min difference? cuz the people tile is even flipping in the lock mode.

Anyway, just think it's a bit distracting and it would good if we can turn it off somehow.

The people tile doesn't flip around in lock mode

 

[desmonium]

The people tile doesn't flip around in lock mode

hmm. try use a transparent wallpaper and you will see.

 

[desmonium]

The people tile doesn't flip around in lock mode

hmm. try use a transparent wallpaper and you will see.

Halo 4 - Windows Phone 7 Transparent Wallpaper & Theme - YouTube

Well, yeah, fine. more like in the semi-lock mode. =D

Plus sleep != lock...

 

[jdd77]

Tiles can't be self contained programs so they can't run anything on the home screen. They can only pull in things and display them.

Even doubling the size of the "keyboard calendar" to fit the whole screen, you can't expect to read anything (appointments, etc) in portrait mode. Even in landscape mode that would be a stretch. Sorry, I just don't see it. Try turning the stock calendar in month view to landscape and make out the text

A week view would be a better solution in my opinion

I like the stock calendar but the month view is poorly designed to be able to read text..not because it can't be done. If you look at landscape mode, you can see plenty of unused space around the calendar.. About 40%. And in portrait mode, there's even more unused space..about half the screen.

 

[canesfan625]

Push notifications for the time?
I think it would make more sense than the "people" tile. There is no need for all those little squares to be constantly flipping and fading in and out..cycling through images of your friends. That's an unneeded waste of battery..

I don't think this would work either. Waste of a push channel (there is a device limit) and Apps running under a locked screen aren't allowed to do anything unless its playing music.

"All applications that run under a locked screen must stop any UI updates, active timers, and other non-critical processing when notified that the screen is locked. "

Between the 3 other clocks (lock, notification, HTC hub)I don't think a 4th one would qualify as critical processing.

 

[jdd77]

I don't think this would work either. Waste of a push channel (there is a device limit) and Apps running under a locked screen aren't allowed to do anything unless its playing music.

"All applications that run under a locked screen must stop any UI updates, active timers, and other non-critical processing when notified that the screen is locked. "

Between the 3 other clocks (lock, notification, HTC hub)I don't think a 4th one would qualify as critical processing.

I'm starting to see the limitations of this system. This is why devs can't come up with cool and useful things for this OS. If something as simple as a clock is gonna use up a push channel, severely drain the battery, and stop under the lock screen... I'd hate to see what anything more advanced would do. When using Wp7....."it is what it is".

 

[canesfan625]

I'm starting to see the limitations of this system. This is why devs can't come up with cool and useful things for this OS. If something as simple as a clock is gonna use up a push channel, severely drain the battery, and stop under the lock screen... I'd hate to see what anything more advanced would do. When using Wp7....."it is what it is".

This is kind of a mixing of issues. The fact that its a clock is irrelevant. They only allow 30 endpoints for push notification to be received and Push only accounts for like 20% of battery usage. I can't remember but I think in mango they allow tiles to be updated under a locked screen once every 30 min. None of this really has anything to do with the variety of apps out though. That's an APIs weren't there until Mango issue. To say there aren't any "cool and useful things" is ridiculous though. Stopping under a locked screen makes perfect sense. When I had Android I had to use apps to kill apps because everything running willy-nilly would kill my battery in like 4 hours tops

**EDIT** I'm not sure about your last statement. More Advanced? I think a clock would probably be the worst. Push data is limited per push so it would just be a matter of frequency which a clock probably would win.

 

[jdd77]

This is kind of a mixing of issues. The fact that its a clock is irrelevant. They only allow 30 endpoints for push notification to be received and Push only accounts for like 20% of battery usage. I can't remember but I think in mango they allow tiles to be updated under a locked screen once every 30 min. None of this really has anything to do with the variety of apps out though. That's an APIs weren't there until Mango issue. To say there aren't any "cool and useful things" is ridiculous though. Stopping under a locked screen makes perfect sense. When I had Android I had to use apps to kill apps because everything running willy-nilly would kill my battery in like 4 hours tops

**EDIT** I'm not sure about your last statement. More Advanced? I think a clock would probably be the worst. Push data is limited per push so it would just be a matter of frequency which a clock probably would win.

The point Im trying to make is a clock would be a good option for decorating and customizing the home screen. I'm seeing these kind of apps slowly trickle into the marketplace, as more people wanna have more customization of the metro UI. You have "tile it" which allows you to stretch a picture over 4 tiles and so on. You have the option to change the theme color, pin a pic to the home screen..there are tiles that flip and tiles that update and change images. These are all strictly decoration. So in practical terms I'm not saying you "need" to have a clock app to see the time, I just think it would be something people would maybe wanna add to their home screen for the look (like tiles that flip or pinning a picture from the camera roll).
But as you pointed out, it would be far too difficult and power-demanding to have something like that, especially just for deco. And I have to thank you because you answered one of the the questions I originally posted at the start of this thread.

 

[ryude]

Hey it saves one extra button push!

Just trying to help...

And we get your gripes-but remember the OS is only a year old..

And when Apollo comes out and we still have no apps worth a damn, will you say "it's only 2 years old!"

 

[canesfan625]

And when Apollo comes out and we still have no apps worth a damn, will you say "it's only 2 years old!"

Plenty of useful apps now. Complaining just to complain? Haters gonna hate? etc. Now that more APIs are open with Mango and the juicy rumors surrounding Apollo and the unification of devices this could be interesting.

 

[Pronk]

To anyone complaining about lack of apps, I recommend the "starvation diet" technique. I used to have an iPhone 4, and could have more or less an app for anything I needed - there's no way round it, the iOS app store is incredibly well stocked with a lot of very high quality apps. But I couldn't justify the cost of owning a ?400 smartphone when I could get one for ?150 that did 95% of the same core job, so I switched to a Palm Pre 2. Nice OS, but didn't like the hardware, which is how I ended up with a WP7 phone in the end as I thought I'd give it a try. And I'm still on the whole very happy with it.

But what my time with the Pre and the dead, dead wilderness of the WebOS marketplace showed me is that when you can't get access to any apps at all you actually realise you don't *need* that many apps at all. Sure, a lot of them are nice, but WP7 has a choice of at least 3 or 4 really good apps in all the key areas bar a few such as Skype, which are coming. If I'd come straight from the iOS app store I'd be thinking "this is poor". But coming via the WebOS marketplace means I can see that really, I'm actually still spoilt for choice.

The one genuinely weak area is still games, but even then it isn't as if there are *no* games, and it looks like Nokia are pushing this too. It's not the length of time since launch that's the issue so much as the growth of the platform - and now WP7 really is the only realistic "third platform" I can only see the breadth and depth of what's on the marketplace growing.

 

[Big Supes]

All this mumbo jumbo over a pointless clock?

 

[power5]

I have like 70-80 apps on my iphone. I use 5 per day. Most just sit there taking up space. Apps is about the only thing critics can complain about with windows phone. Just like fragmentation is one of the only things to complain about with android. Reviewers will continue to harp on these hot topics as long as possible. Even when wp7 gets 400,000 apps and more, they will still have less than iOS so it will still be a valid complaint for the reviewers.

 

[jfa1]

hmm are you sure just 1 min difference? cuz the people tile is even flipping in the lock mode.

Anyway, just think it's a bit distracting and it would good if we can turn it off somehow.

I believe what he is saying is not that its a minute (measure of time) but that it is minute or very small at least thats how I interpreted it.