People keep saying it's a device issue. So I decided that my over 2 year old 920 has seen enough action, so I put it to sleep today. The phone had been unusable as a phone for the last few weeks because the mic went dead.
I picked up a cheep 630 (the Cyan version). Anyway, the Xbox Music app actually worked flawlessly. The 920 still has random noises. If your device is under warranty, I recommend you just swap it out. If you're like me and due for a new phone, just go get one. It feels so good being able to listen to music without the jarring noise sample in between every song.
Just in case you're wondering about the 630, overall it's an ok device. I'll eventually replace it with whatever win10 flagship phone, but for now it's a decent phone. I'm keeping the 920 in my pocket just for the camera because the 630 camera is bottom shelf trash. I'm sure in daylight it's ok, but the 920 is way better. It's also worth a note that I checked the settings in the (actual) phone area and it had an option to turn on visual voicemail (I'm on cricket temporarily). Anyway, I turned it on and got an error saying it can't be done. But then all of a sudden a new tap opened up and voicemail synced. Not sure if that was suppose to happen or not. Just got the thing today.
Listening to XBM as I type, it's working great!
This sounds like a practical response, but it does bring up a few problems.
Let's say, for example, I decide to trade my Lumia 925 for an 830, because I've had my eye on it and it's a very nice handset. Granted, technically, it's a bit of a downgrade (the 830's performance is apparently comparable to a 920, which the 925 edges out). Also, of course, I'm going to have to swallow the cash loss (my 925 doesn't have any non-update related problems--the physical hardware is fine--and I've kept it in excellent condition, but even then, I'm not going to be able to get it for the price of a new 830).
"Well, looks like a bug from 8.1 just cost me $100 (or more). Live and learn, I suppose." So I have an 830, it doesn't have the cracking sound (presumably, how hard would it be to sell a phone with the advertised feature "Cracking after every song?"), and at least I'm happy in that regard. It's a little slower than my older handset, but whatever, at least it has 8.1 natively installed on it.
So, what happens when a future update...say, 8.2, or more likely, a something like 8.1.2 and other later upgrades to 8.1 breaks the AP/digitizer/whatever? After all, this problem
only exists because of 8.1--it's entirely the doing of the development team (and to be fair, they're human, so they make mistakes). This was an extremely unusual bug to appear, one that the WP team wasn't expecting as far as I can tell, and hasn't corrected in about a half year. It's entirely possible that it could come back again if there's another set of updates to playback (say, to improve Xbox Music performance further). Am I going to be out another $100 to $200 fixing
their mistake? Is this going to happen in the next big revision, Windows Phone 10?
The thing is, this isn't a world-ending bug--it's annoying as hell, but you can avoid it from streaming music (except those people who have that issue, they have it worse) to using BT earbuds (I suspect this works too). At the same time, it should be a bug that Microsoft just
fixes instead of hoping they'll move more handsets when people get tired of waiting.
If you had to replace your handset for reasons of condition/overuse, that's a normal thing. People take their new iPhones and crack the screens within weeks of buying them, much less years. If you're careful with your phone, however, it's much less reasonable. If Nokia (or more accurate, Microsoft) told me tomorrow, "Okay, we know you've had this bug (and a few others) for a few weeks now. Send us your very good condition unlocked handset, we'll replace it with a newer but less powerful and equally-unlocked 830 for your trouble," I would probably take them up on the offer (once I figured out it was compatible with my network anyway). Microsoft's not going to do that, because it's kind of ridiculous--just like it'd be ridiculous for me to drop $200 on a new handset to fix a problem they created.
Otherwise, it's a practical solution. I long suspected phones with 8.1 natively installed wouldn't have the bug (even the Windows Phone team as of late couldn't be that nearsighted). So that leaves the only other option I know of, which is to sit around and wait until Microsoft fixes it. If they don't, well, I like the Lumia line a lot, but I'm not married to it. There are plenty of Android options (even if I'm not in love with Samsung's iPhone-esque design choices) to go with too. I can always get another phone.
I have a first-gen Surface Pro 1, which, when updated to 8.1, loses the ability to use Intel Display Drivers--that means you can't set the aspect ratio manually. Microsoft doesn't have an answer to that either.
But otherwise it's a great ultrabook (especially since it's ~3 years old now), and the aspect ratio problem isn't that surprising (a lot of tablet-form PCs have the issue). I'm not going to spend the $700 to replace it with a Surface Pro 3 (assuming I got a good price for it), especially since I suspect those have the same issues.
[/first world problems]
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