What I DON?T Like About Mango

[cookiemonster21x]

First off, I just want to say that I LOVE WP7 and upon recently getting my hands on Mango Build 7712 as a Dev, it brings some great features that make the platform all the more compelling. With that said, there are some issues (mostly design-related) I?ve witnessed with Mango that I feel take the OS a step back. The following post outlines my personal opinions regarding some things I do not like with Mango/would like to see changed back/would like to see in future updates (Tango?). I?ll try to keep things organized and go through it Hub-by-Hub?

People Hub
? addition of drawer at the bottom of the hub seems entirely unnecessary: the pre-mango version with the ?add? and ?search? buttons atop the all section was fine & looked far better. throughout the rest of the hub those buttons (obviously) are unnecessary and as such there is a minimized drawer that just contains settings (which is completely unnecessary to have shown within the hub) this just wastes space & looks bad..
? still no ?mobile 2? phone number type option when saving a contact: this is honestly ridiculous and seemed a no-brainer add-in for mango and I?m shocked it was not included (especially given both outlook & windows live mail have options to add a mobile 2 to contacts?)
? LinkedIn contacts photos: I don?t know if this is a phone issue or a LinkedIn issue, but upon linking my account all my (LinkedIn-having) contacts images? show up with a small LinkedIn logo in the corner of their pictures; this applies to their images in all lists, on their actual contact card, and even on the people hub live tile. I just personally think this looks bad and would prefer it not to be shown (not really that big a deal, just something that kind of bugs me)

Office Hub
? no real complaints here, office hub looks great and addition of SkyDrive is wonderful.
? only additional feature I?d like to see is the option to color-code OneNote notes (as exists with OneNote on Office/PC) or at least to have notes pinned to start to match the phone?s accent colour (when they were orange I didn?t really mind, but the strong purple colour really clashes on my start screen and sort of bugs me?)

Games Hub
? I really do like the updated games hub, it looks waaay better and the integration of my avatar is an awesome touch (..always impresses people when I show them it)
? only major complaint here is, again, the drawer at the bottom of the hub: It takes up space, looks bad, is completely unnecessary, and worse of all I often find myself sliding it open when sliding through my list of games?
? another small issue is with rating games (and all apps in general): I like the updated ratings page and I feel it will help with people accidently leaving 0-Star ratings despite positive reviews (which I?ve seen a lot of), however I do not like that it does not show other people?s ratings on the page.. often, to shorten ratings, people (myself included) reference previous comments (its kind of hard to do now) & it was just nice to see your rating aside all the others. also (and probably more importantly), with the new set-up I feel there is less feedback/confirmation that a rating was posted as upon clicking ?submit? it immediately closes the page (pre-Mango it showed your review atop others and allowed for editing if need-be). also, upon returning to the page my rating is never displayed. this is particularly frustrating when wanting to update a rating following an app/game update?
? one final thing that sort of bugs me is the ?get more games? link below the Xbox Live titles in the collection list: it is far too large and seems unnecessary as people likely know where to get games from? with that said, I can?t blame them for including it, however what would be nice is if it went away if a user had a certain number of xbox live titles installed (I personally have 10 that I?ve paid for and enjoy, and I don?t need this reminder every time I scroll down to my ?other? games to ?get more??)

Music + Videos Hub
? the biggest issue I have with music playback is the SHUFFLE!!! this is an issue I?ve had pre-mango. I HATE that the shuffle button actually shuffles the order of the songs listed in an album/playlist. I like always playing my music (mainly playlists) with shuffle on & use the song list to find specific tracks within. In Windows Media Player/Zune/iTunes/(I believe) all other main music playback platforms, shuffle does not actually shuffle the list you have selected, it just causes playback to jump around, so when viewing the list one always knows where their music is (PLEASE CHANGE THIS with Mango final build)?
? during music playback, changing a to the next/previous slide via sliding the AlbumArt to the right/left is lags a lot?
? also, Mango fixed the issue during playback where the list would only show track names (without artists below), but I feel it went a bit too far.. currently when selecting a track to play it shows the title in large followed by the artist (,) album below it. I feel the album being shown here is completely unnecessary and confusing, especially with long track/album titles & singles?
? again (common theme here) my next biggest complaint is the addition of the drawer at the bottom: other than on the main ?zune? page where there is a ?play all music? button, the drawer is always minimized and unnecessary/just wastes space/just looks bad.. this button could simple be placed as a play button as in the pre-Mango builds or to the top/right of the menu (as with the add & search buttons of the people hub pre-Mango)
? regarding the ?history? & ?new? menus I do like the vertical lists much more than before! However, regarding the history list I have some issues with repeat items showing up (for example when I play a single song from an album It goes to the history list, then later when I play the whole album that separately gets added as well; I have no way to differentiate them when clicking a history item as they both look exactly the same/show the album cover). my recommendation would be ?history? be reserved for only albums, artists, & playlists to avoid confusion (and prevent duplicates). I also do not like how YouTube/other videos not in my collection also stay on the history (this often this overruns my list quite quickly & makes it useless for browsing my own music/videos)
? just a small design issue, under the apps section (formerly marquee) I liked how it was shown before just listing the app names rather than showing the logo (just personal preference, feel it looks better/more uniform)

Pictures Hub
? still no dragging/dropping or folder creation of photos within the phone??? this does not seem like it would necessarily be hard to implement? I would love the option to create different folders on the phone and select/copy/move photos to said photos (as in after spending a day taking photo?s at an event, I?d like to make a folder named for that event and be able to copy multiple images at once from my camera roll and move to that folder? | or move some of the mounting images in my ?saved pictures? folder to my custom-made wallpapers folder?)
? again, the drawer is unnecessary here and looks really bad: I liked the sort of ?hidden? command for changing the background as it was pre-Mango and such an option could be added into the pictures settings (which could/should be separated from the camera settings)
? also, I don?t know if anyone else has had this problem but with build 7112 there seems to be a bug with my ?people? tab within the pictures hub. upon opening/sliding to it all I see is a ?choose contact? link; when I click the link I randomly get just four contacts (one under each letter: F, I, P, and S).. I have no idea why this is so & in each case clicking the contact yields nothing???

Marketplace
? once again, the ever-present drawer makes its way to the marketplace for no reason: the simple ?search? button could be nicely placed to the top/right of the main menu page (or better yet next to each category)
? also, I hate the combined search button (though I do like the drop-down suggestions): depending on the section of the marketplace one is in, the search button should search just that (i.e. if in the apps marketplace search only apps | music, search only music?)
? also, I like the separated-out games marketplace, but I feel this should be taken further. games & apps should entirely be separated out into two distinct sections (and searching within one or the other should just yield searches for that category alone).. what is the purpose of a top app?s list when 99% of them shown are Xbox Live titles? it would be much more useful to have the two completely segregated
? also, within the apps marketplace the ?new? section does not show images next to the apps for some reason (though it does for ?top?). (same applies to the Xbox live section in same marketplace) it just looks inconsistent..

Internet Explorer
? ADD THE TABS BUTTON BACK to the main bar from the drawer!!!: that?s my only real complaint here.. everything else looks great, but this is incredibly annoying (I?d even say replace the refresh button with it instead, but I?ll leave it to the smart people at MSFT to figure how to best do this as it seems a common complaint?)

Search
? Love all the enhancements to Bing only thing I?d like to see added is a long-press of the search button that immediately launches Bing Music. This would improve speed substantially and make it a true plus over Shazam (especially given the smaller selection of music it recognizes)

Other
? multitasking quick close of apps: would be great if there were a little x-button atop each card allowing one to quickly kill an app without opening it up and backing out (better yet a slide up/down & away to close the app, though that may be infringing a bit on webos too much..?)
? multitasking, multiple music/videos hub pages: when listening to music and backing out via the start button, I find that when I look through the multitasking menu I see the music + videos hub appear twice (once with the last page of the hub selection I was at and again for the currently playing track. this should be removed)
? longer ?long-press? back button for multitasking: I often find myself holding the back button a little too long when just backing out of a page and I guess the phone sort of moves in & out of the multitasking view really quickly and I just get my page refreshed with my accent colour showing up around the edges

? have an option to toggle on/off the letter jump list for the main app list: (it really should be a preference and up to the user, I find they look kind of weird and even if I had more apps do not want to see them included, it just makes scrolling down take way longer)
? some sort of drawer (or maybe a more creative implementation) to quickly switch on/off connectivity features (bluetooth, wifi, etc?)

I?m sure there?s more, but that list is long enough as it is. Again, just want to stress that I really do like Mango/WP7, just though that after only hearing positive reviews for so long, I?d lay out my case for some improvements to keep making it better? I Would love to hear what others think/agree/disagree with, but that?s all for now from me?

Also, for all you Dev's registered to AppHub, I've also posted this on the forums there (link below) in the hopes MSFT see's some of it, please comment there too with your feedback:

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/88983.aspx

 

[hardrock1a]

Give feed back directly to MS...

https://windowsphone7community.uservoice.com/forums/84435-feature-feedback/filters/top

 

[gerrymad]

If I understand correctly, you don't like the drawer?

 

[pbankey]

My only gripe is the lack of volume controls. Separate media/ringer volume would be much appreciated.

 

[EMH]

If I understand correctly, you don't like the drawer?

I don't either. They are mostly unnecessary, and I would rather have an extended background/scrolling area rather than having, for example, "play all" in Zune.

 

[tiny]

A quick observation on a recurring complaint: That drawer is just to keep the UI consistent, so that every part of the phone works the same way.

 

[starblade876]

A few other quick notes:
The fast app switcher or "cards" aren't multitasking. Having cards open doesn't necessarily mean the apps are running, which is why there isn't a need to "kill" them. Apps only multitask through background services. If you don't want an app to multitask, you go to settings (I think that's where it is) and disable the background service for it.

Multiple window instances is iffy. I can see where it'd be useful, like if someone wanted to switch between 2 documents. In truth, maybe you just need to get used to using it. If you constantly go back to the music+videos hub, long press the back button and use the instance that's already there, instead of going to the home screen and then clicking the tile/app again.

As for "longer long press," learn to tap?

 

[jackpro41]

i really hope that i able to access to the storage without by passing through ZUNE.
this could really appreciate by me is MANGO allow this function

besides that, most of the apps are required to pay.
really hope that apps comes free. this could really boost up the use & sale of WM

 

[TheWeeBear]

besides that, most of the apps are required to pay.
really hope that apps comes free. this could really boost up the use & sale of WM

51% of apps are free, that's rather a lot from nearly 30,000. WM ? I take it you mean WP.

 

[incendy]

The only thing I am constantly wishing for is the facebook like button to be available on individual photos in albums.

I love Mango. I had some major holdups with Wp7 especially in regards to third party scrolling and load times but they really did an amazing job fixing everything I had issue with.

Can't wait to see it on the second generation of hardware!

 

[Rico]

The only thing I don't like about the drawer is that it ducks out of the way of content at times. Having two drawer heights... maybe it's forward-thinking but I just hate the inconsistency of it. I also worry about how easy it'll be to tap it on a screen smaller than 4", but then again I guess if you buy a device with that screen size you're comfortable with the on-screen elements being a certain size.

IE is a step back for me. I live in the browser, so I'm one of those schizo types that bounces from one tab to another often. They could've put the refresh/stop button in the address bar, and kept the tabs button. I think they removed the button because they found most people weren't using it. This omission makes browsing a two-handed affair now as it's inconvenient to move my thumb from the menu button to "tabs" and then to select the tab I want. I also hate the omission of the forward and find on page options. I didn't use them that often, but I was glad they were there. I also kinda miss the favorites button, again, because I jump between sites often. On the plus side, I love the address bar at the bottom, and the way they hid the status bar. I'm amazed at what a difference these changes have made; it puts the web front and center while still allowing quick access to, well, the address bar, stop/refresh button, and that menu where everything I need is. :/

As someone said on Twitter, being able to pin certain sections of the settings menu, like the Airplane mode screen, would be useful.

I've really got to get used to the keyboard. I'm hitting the period a lot more now. Overall it seem more responsive, almost too responsive. Same could be said about the OS in general. It's smoother, but pivoting especially seems like trying to catch a greased pig. I'll adjust in time.

I wonder why they didn't use the same new style of panorama in the Pictures Hub. And does anyone know what the globe/web icon is for in the apps list jump list?

 

[Coffee]

First off, the drawer was a necessary step, and if you have it on one integrated app, it needs to be in all, for consistency and user expectation. It was very high on the 'asked for' list from users, so it was implemented. I find it useful and not at all instrusive. New WP7 users will love having a consistent place to check for options, rather than the 'hidden' menu that some of us liked. Sorry, but developers aren't users. Hidden features are features that many users can't find.

I love that you don't like the drawer, but you want it on the main screen for utilities? Just throw the Settings tile on the main screen. As a developer, I'm surprised you don't already have it there. My preferred implementation would be pressable display buttons in the notification bar at the top - one for BT, one for Wireless, just press for on/off.

Long press of Search to bing up Bing Music? that's very specific to you.

I agree with the 'x' close button on the multi-task screen. I've found the time on the long-press button to be pretty optimal. I do sometimes get a Back Button when I want a multi-task tab display, but that's not a huge deal.

I don't scroll the program list anymore, I use the jump menu. Even with only about 25 apps I'd want the jump menu. I think options are great, but I'd much prefer it to default the jump menu, rather than default none.

Contacts: There is one mobile, two home and two work phone numbers available for a single contact. I guess 2 mobile numbers would also be nice, but 5 numbers seems plenty.

Games: I don't mind the 'get more games' link on the games hub, saves me from going back to Marketplace/games when I'm already in games.

Music: your audio/video 'history' is just that: a history of what you've seen or listened to. You want it to only list what's in your collection; that's not a 'history', it's a subset of your history. Again, a very personalized view.
The logo display on the apps (Slacker, iHeartRadio, etc) is an absolute necessity for quick viewing - users see and understand logos far more quickly than text.

Pictures: on my 7712 build, using the 'choose contact' link in pictures hub takes me to the 'A' of my contact list. Exactly what I'd expect.



There are a lot of issues here that are very personalized and while I get that, you know that all of those issues have to be measured against the average user. Options are also important, but if you give a user 10,000 options, they get confused.

Thanks for the list, I enjoyed going through it and checking out the issues. I love WP7 and have my own list of issues, most of them just preference.

 

[justinsims241]

its extremly ugly, it cuts away precious space. Why cant they just make it an option to turn draw on or off. and they can just implement the one little button on the screen in one of the panoramas.

 

[Rico]

its extremly ugly, it cuts away precious space. Why cant they just make it an option to turn draw on or off. and they can just implement the one little button on the screen in one of the panoramas.

The drawer ducks out of the way on some pivots, which I'm not crazy about.

Frankly, I miss the big ol' play button that shuffled all the tracks and played them and the two-step search button. But they probably figured that people would never use the play button and that the two-step search button would confuse and reduce Bing usage, all of which I'm sure is largely true.

 

[xpxp2002]

Internet Explorer
• ADD THE TABS BUTTON BACK to the main bar from the drawer!!!: that’s my only real complaint here.. everything else looks great, but this is incredibly annoying (I’d even say replace the refresh button with it instead, but I’ll leave it to the smart people at MSFT to figure how to best do this as it seems a common complaint…)

To second Rico, IE is a huge step backwards in Mango, at least for the UI. This is probably my biggest complaint about Mango, as I always load up tabs full of pages, then jump between them as they load. The menu item doesn't even tell you how many tabs you have open anymore. I wish it at least had a format like "tabs (2)" to tell you. But ideally, they should move the Tabs button back to the main app bar. Then, the removal of Forward and Find on Page from Internet Explorer just made it worse. I wish I could have Mango, but keep the old browser. I don't even care as much about the new rendering engine, I'd still rather have the old UI and deal with the landscape mode having no app bar.

I used Find on Page quite a few times, and I think it is a nice little convenience feature that I will surely miss. However, the omission (and actual deliberate removal) of Forward seems almost too unbelievable to be true. I can't believe that not only would they remove working, usable features from an OS that doesn't quite have a mainstream following yet, but that they would remove features so vital to the browser like a Forward option! It's not as though Windows Phone is an Apple product where Steve can just us we're better off without it and the masses will blindly accept it as being true. This is a product that needs every feature, every advantage over its competition right now. They actually wrote the code and put the feature into the shipping product, and now they're taking it away from us. While not as big of a deal as removing third-party OS support from the PS3, I still think that it makes absolutely no sense. It is a downright shot-in-the-foot to Windows Phone to take away features from a product that is already battling enough unfair criticism. Why create more (arguably legitimate) reasons for anyone to complain?

 

[Grubish360]

I just wish that when you are in the music + videos hub, that when you press marketplace, it takes you to the music marketplace. Currently it takes you to the main marketplace.

 

[riot9]

My main complaint with Mango is actually the 5 app limit on fast app switching. It's useful if I'm going to hop out and do one thing then come back, but if I get distracted at all it's pretty much useless.

Five apps is just not enough, unless they change it so native apps don't count toward the five and just count 3rd party ones, I think I need at least 10 to comfortably rely on it.

Or instead of a hard limit, it should just keep all there and close the oldest as memory is needed.

 

[Rico]

@xpxp2002
While I hate the loss of functionality, I also find myself loving the fact that they're challenging my perceptions of how a smartphone should work. The limitations don't feel arbitrary, it feels like Microsoft has really done some research and feels that these are things that can be cut and most people won't miss them. Maybe it's not always the best choice for everyone or even me, but I have a feel for why they make these choices. Forward and find in page likely weren't getting used and were just cluttering up the menu, especially in landscape. I love that the design team is sticking to their guns with the principles of Metro. "Furious reduction" of elements and even functions takes serious balls. I really hope the mainstream gets that, either consciously or intrinsically.

In any case, they're creating a market for third party browsers, though they probably won't ever allow a third party browser be default. I find myself using Surfcube more with task switching, but something keeps me coming back to IE. I think it's the simplicity of it and the way the UI just flows. Working with tabs is a two-handed affair now and that sucks, but after using it intensely I like it a bit more than I first did despite the changes.

The app switching for me just works for the most of the time. It's a bit weird with IE but knowing that I have no more than five apps open allows me to mentally manage what's going in that queue. It's not like there's sometimes five and sometimes six and then when I start to expect six it's only five again. The behavior is always the same so I know what to expect. That's something that's key in Windows Phone -- consistency. I also like the way your last-used app is always on the right of the stack, again, consistency. I don't have to scrub both left and right through a bunch of apps I used at some point during the day. What I recently used is right within reach. Once we get Mango-aware apps, we'll really get to see how the system will work. Part of me wants more apps in the switcher, like seven, but I don't feel like I really need it.

 

[TryllZ]

Currently I'm on the verge of switching onto WPM bandwagon but this is going to halt me, I have heard about universal volume controls, I mean what the **** is M$ doing, on 1 side they are trying to go global with WPM and on the other hand they are creating these type of features that people don't expect, even my current samsung phone has seperate volume controls for media, alarms and phone volume...OMG...seems M$ will lose another consumer..which it shouldn't had...

 

[geoken]

-The app switching in the newest beta seems worse than it did in the first beta. In the first beta it would snap to card. In the second beta there is no snapping and very little friction. Usually I'll slide to the app I want to activate, tap it, then have nothing happen because the card was still in motion and all my tap did is make it stop moving (so I then have to go back and give it another tap).

-The volume of the voice commands in Maps is really low. If you're using your phone to play music through your car's audio system (ie. via aux cable or Bluetooth) the voice commands will be about half the volume of your music. When I'm playing my music at what I consider I comfortable level, the voice commands are almost in-audible. On the flipside, if I crank my stereo high enough to hear the voice commands my music will be blasting.

-With them trying to make the OS more accessible, they need to start adding customization to the options drawer. This problem is most notable in the email app. The folders button was removed and replaced with a button to show the checkboxes. Of course, most of us power users know and use the other method to access the checkboxes (tapping the left edge of any message). I understand that this feature may be hidden and it makes sense to make it more user visible, but at the same time advanced users are being penalized by having options buried.

-The OS needs to support chaptered mp4 files. The podcast experience on WP7 is way worse than iOS because of this.

-The OS needs to wrap text in some situations. I realize that the cut off text is part of the OSes aesthetic and I don't mind how it looks, but there are situations were necessary info is cut off. An example is the music hub. Trying to find a specific podcast by the title is usually useless because the relevant part of the title is cut off. You frequently get a podcast title that looks like this;
Awesome DJ podcasts: Epi#sode 238 w/ DJ bbbb
Where everything after the hash tag (in other words all the info that's relevant) is cut off.