these features are so damn needed.
Lack of Notification Center : I remember during Mango release, I was
constantly on twitter chatting with MS
devs and asking them for a
notification center and they gave the
standard reply that you will still get if
you ask the Redmond folks ?Live tile IS the notification center ? you get all the
updates and information /
notification on your homescreen?. Fair
enough but am I supposed to sit
blankly at the screen every second of
the day or wait 30 minutes for a tile to be updated or better yet wait for a
push notification to come and decide
to pick between a sip of coffee or
clicking on the notification before it
goes to a never to be discovered black
hole? The answer is simple: Get us a notification center immediately. This
is 2013 and the supposed no.3 mobile
ecosystem doesn?t have a notification
center boggles me and there are
reports suggesting that Microsoft is
working on one so hopefully we?ll see it soon. What is intriguing to me is how
Microsoft will bring notification
center into the UX. Right now, w/o the
notification center ? just like wp7 ? I
am not paying for push notification
applications and my WhatsApp and Facebook application becomes useless
when I get a lot of notifications so it?s
kinda pointless to have at this
moment. What about apps not pinned
on screen? What about notifications
for those apps? Yeah, no two thoughts on need of Notification Center
hopefully. Me Tile: Me Tile was probably last updated when Windows 95 was
released. Not really but I don?t even
understand why there?s this amazing
utility is sitting on my homescreen
that I use all the time isn?t being
updated to it?s full potential. I am a heavy twitter user and there?s no auto
?Reply to all? for tweets (this should
be by default btw and would be done in
matter of minutes but who cares,
right?) which means I have to go to a
twitter client and do it. This destroys the purpose of the Me tile twitter
integration mechanism. Another thing
that I would love is auto complete and
of course, a favorite button on the
application which is probably the least
time consuming task and if you think it doesn?t matter ? then let me tell you,
it?s the small things that matter and
this statement will become even more
important when Google and Apple
release their new OS this year. There?s
no escape but to make both large level and small level changes. Second
problem with Me tile is the lack of
friend tagging during check in. So
basic but not implemented. I have to
open the Facebook app for it which is
great but then again ? half baked and mostly useless. I know Me tile is for
glancing at notifications but it should
do more than just that. It has
incredible potential, it?s fast and I
would love to see MS upgrade it in next
version. The upgrade:- So I upgraded from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8
last week and the upgrade was pretty
good as expected but there was one
critical problem : my installed apps.
Just like every other OS all your app
purchases and installed apps are linked to your account so when you switch
devices you can fetch your
applications and use on your new
device ? as simple as that. Windows
Phone does that too but with a little
twist that made me give up using this feature. WP8 doesn?t allow you (still)
to download and install all the
applications at once so instead you
have to go to every single one of them
and click on the download button on
the website. Extremely frustrating and I didn?t bother with it after some time.
This needs to be fixed. The elusive search button: Okay, this is where my fellow rabid MS and WP
fanboys are going to rip me apart but
let me be honest about it. Bing sucks.
It?s decent for media queries but it?s
just bad when compared to Google
results. Microsoft should offer a choice to bind search key to a search
engine of user?s choice. I know it?s a
bad Bing business decision but I am
confident it will be a great decision
from consumer point of view and
consequently for WP. Search button could be a bit more useful, it?s a big
darn button on your phone, right? I
know some of you have been asking
for it since ages but a lot of people
apparently like Bing so giving users an
option shouldn?t be a bad thing. Search button can also be used for universal search (long press search button for universal search?) which is another
BIG feature missing from Windows
Phone 8. Lack of volume profiles: Lack of independent tone selection for stuff
like calls, messages and Bluetooth
headsets and lack of volume/sound
profiles just boggles my mind. I
remember using them in good old
Symbian phones but I don?t understand what?s stopping Microsoft from doing
it. The fact that we don?t have custom
tone options for contacts is just
infuriating. This reminds me of one
thing that annoys me everyday ? I have
vibrate ON in settings along with a ringtone most of the time, now when I
am in a class or at a meeting ? I need to
make it silent and WP8 offers a silent
mode but it still has vibration and now
you need to switch vibrate off and
switch it ON again when you need it. Minor annoyance I know but
sometimes you need a bit of peace of
mind. The pseudo Windows 8 - Windows
Phone 8 relationship: When WP8 was coming out, we were excited about all
the amazing possibilities of
synchronization among the two
platforms. Now that both platforms
are out and available for months ? I
think W8 has done an incredible job at gestures and WP8 has done nothing to
improve WP7 gestures. I love the app
closing gesture on W8 and would love
to see it on WP8 but most importantly,
what I?d like Microsoft to do is to
implement the app switching gesture on Windows 8 to WP8 (left to right
swipe from edge to switch between
apps) ? this is very cool and incredible
easy to do (Ubuntu OS even has it!). A
Charms bar would be a hard to do WP8
considering screen size but app switching and closing gesture would
make the experience consistent and it
would be refreshing for the
consumers. What?s also funny is that
there?s no sync between IE10 desktop
and IE10 mobile ? not even a ?open in IE10 mobile? option in IE10. This is
incredibly useful but Microsoft isn?t
too bothered with it. There are so many
possibilities of sync with W8 ? control
music and movie apps natively and lots
more ? but I don?t see MS doing anything about it. A broken promise,
IMO. Lack of WinJS on WP8 SDK
bothers me way more than I can explain
it to you. Rotation lock ? Why, Microsoft. WHY. How long do we have to wait for this?
What?s stopping Microsoft from
adding rotation lock to Windows
Phone? They did succumb to pressure
of screenshot but not rotation lock
which is something that users expect to be there when they pick up a
smartphone. Ridiculous to expect all
developers to implement rotation lock
on their app. Fix Multi tasking: A simple suggestion: Don?t make developers write extra line
of code for fast app resume, just
bundle the code when the dev compiles
it. Every single wp8 app should have it.
Makes the OS feel inconsistent. Store ? WP8 store is great but right now I don?t know which apps are WP7
and Wp8 apps unless I open them.
There should be a dedicated WP8 only
marketplace category and that should
NOT be hard to add for Microsoft. It
will make the experience for new users a lot better. Always visible status bar ? This annoys me because this isn?t something
Microsoft is responsible for
completely, majority of the developers
choose to remove it and you have to
get out of the app to check date, time
and battery. So instead of giving options to developers ? just remove
the option and make it visible at all
times. Better ? make it visible and tap
to hide instead of tap to show. Don?t
see how current way of showing it
works for anyone. Gapless Audio playback ? I don?t think I need to explain this. Just do it,
Microsoft. FM radio ? I live in a third world country and we are definitely NOT in
the kind of place where everyone can
afford to stream their music online
for a monthly fees with their 3G
networks on all the time. No. I do not
know what prompted Microsoft to FM radio but whatever did is absolutely
the worst possible idea. What do you
listen to in case of emergency? Xbox
music? Make features available to wider
audience ? There?s something called Xbox Music on my Windows Phone ?
fancy, right? Wrong. Xbox Music
doesn?t work in India and many other
countries and it?s been 3 months since
launch and there?s no launch in site.
Same thing happened with the Bing audio detection feature in
Windows Phone 7. Xbox Music is
extremely important, especially for
HTC and Samsung users who not only
are excluded from Nokia Music access
but they also do not have services like Spotify on Windows Phone 8. Making a call is still time consuming : Just make ?RapDialer? the default
application experience on Windows
Phone 8. I know MS hasn?t prioritized a
lot of things so just buy the company /
dev team who made it and make it
default. Not asking too much now, am I? Fix the calendar: Not exactly sure what changes Microsoft has made to WP8
calendar coming from WP7 but I don?t
see any. There?s still no weekly view!
One thing I do not understand is why I
cannot see more than one event/
appointment on the wide tile. It?s a wide tile now, show us more
information! Settings page: If somebody can explain to me the logic behind the ordering of
the items in settings page, a free WP
goodie for you. I am serious. Make it
alphabetical or rearrange it
dynamically based on usage pattern.
Right now, important stuff are at bottom and everything is mixed up. Lose the password on Kids Corner: I love the concept of Kids Corner
(corrected!) but I hate the name. I?d
love a Guest Corner instead ? A Kids
Corner without a password. The
password defeats the purpose of a
separate homescreen. Homescreen sync/backup: Creating a perfect homescreen is an art, isn?t it? I
am spending a lot of time tweaking my
homescreen on both wp8 and w8 and
would appreciate a homescreen
synchronization between multiple
devices or backup of your homscreen so you can switch between different
layouts immediately. Select All ? There?s no way to select all messages ( I stand corrected, thank you noroom ? pretty crazy how I didn?t see this one ? was expecting select all
on the app bar icon) and emails and
delete them at once and this is
something that is so basic it?s hard
to comprehend why it?s still not there.
It?s there for music and they just need to do a tiny bit of work to add it to
application bar, simple ? right? It?s
already there for music so don?t see
why it isn?t in email and messages. Revamp Podcast support in Windows
Phone 8: Bundle ?PODCASTS!? app with all Windows Phone 8 devices or
make a similar app. That is how you
make Podcasting work. IE10: IE10 is amazing. I use it a lot on desktop and loving the performance
on Windows Phone 8 so far. However,
the UI isn?t good enough. There?s no
forward button on IE10 and no speed
dial like feature which every single
browser has it now and even Opera Mini had it for years now. This reminds
me of a simple request : Open
marketplace to more browsers
Microsoft - help Opera develop Mini
for Windows Phone 8. Allow apps and attachments to be
installed on SD Card: My friend bought a HTC 8S recently and he is genuinely
frustrated. Games + apps + map
data and less than 3GB of usable space
? you are in for trouble and I can see
Nokia doing a 4GB phone soon and it
would suck to see 510 issue (it didn?t even have SD card support to
make matters worse) happening all
over again. A better Zune alternative : I am using the Windows Phone App Preview 3
right now to sync playlists and yes I
know it?s a preview build but it?s
extremely basic. Had issues syncing
playlists multiple times but it went
through in the end. If you want to just transfer stuff ? just use the good old
file system method ? this app
experience is not good enough.
Another issue which puzzled me was
the lack of Xbox Music playlist sync
ability. I have been told Xbox music playlists are synced to cloud and they
automatically appear in the app on
your phone (it didn?t work for me but it
did for many) but it still streams your
stuff via whatever connection you are
on ? it doesn?t download em all at once immediately which is puzzling but not
surprising, if you went through the
whole upgrade process from wp7 to
wp8. VPN: Businesses need VPN. You cannot call it an enterprise smartphone
without VPN support. Remember Xbox Live?: When Windows Phone came out, I was personally very
excited about the potential future of
XBL on WP and future iterations. When
WP8 came out, I was even more
excited. Now the devices have power
and potential via the software for some cross platform action ? where
are the games taking advantage of it?
Why isn?t MS flooding marketplace
with XBL games? I remember seeing
more XBL games during mango launch
than I remember post WP8 launch. MS needs to realize Xbox is BIG and they
cannot just take a break and stop
releasing games. Now if Quad Core
WP8 devices rumored this year, I am
sincerely hoping for cross platform
action. ..and that?s about it.
Lack of Notification Center : I remember during Mango release, I was
constantly on twitter chatting with MS
devs and asking them for a
notification center and they gave the
standard reply that you will still get if
you ask the Redmond folks ?Live tile IS the notification center ? you get all the
updates and information /
notification on your homescreen?. Fair
enough but am I supposed to sit
blankly at the screen every second of
the day or wait 30 minutes for a tile to be updated or better yet wait for a
push notification to come and decide
to pick between a sip of coffee or
clicking on the notification before it
goes to a never to be discovered black
hole? The answer is simple: Get us a notification center immediately. This
is 2013 and the supposed no.3 mobile
ecosystem doesn?t have a notification
center boggles me and there are
reports suggesting that Microsoft is
working on one so hopefully we?ll see it soon. What is intriguing to me is how
Microsoft will bring notification
center into the UX. Right now, w/o the
notification center ? just like wp7 ? I
am not paying for push notification
applications and my WhatsApp and Facebook application becomes useless
when I get a lot of notifications so it?s
kinda pointless to have at this
moment. What about apps not pinned
on screen? What about notifications
for those apps? Yeah, no two thoughts on need of Notification Center
hopefully. Me Tile: Me Tile was probably last updated when Windows 95 was
released. Not really but I don?t even
understand why there?s this amazing
utility is sitting on my homescreen
that I use all the time isn?t being
updated to it?s full potential. I am a heavy twitter user and there?s no auto
?Reply to all? for tweets (this should
be by default btw and would be done in
matter of minutes but who cares,
right?) which means I have to go to a
twitter client and do it. This destroys the purpose of the Me tile twitter
integration mechanism. Another thing
that I would love is auto complete and
of course, a favorite button on the
application which is probably the least
time consuming task and if you think it doesn?t matter ? then let me tell you,
it?s the small things that matter and
this statement will become even more
important when Google and Apple
release their new OS this year. There?s
no escape but to make both large level and small level changes. Second
problem with Me tile is the lack of
friend tagging during check in. So
basic but not implemented. I have to
open the Facebook app for it which is
great but then again ? half baked and mostly useless. I know Me tile is for
glancing at notifications but it should
do more than just that. It has
incredible potential, it?s fast and I
would love to see MS upgrade it in next
version. The upgrade:- So I upgraded from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8
last week and the upgrade was pretty
good as expected but there was one
critical problem : my installed apps.
Just like every other OS all your app
purchases and installed apps are linked to your account so when you switch
devices you can fetch your
applications and use on your new
device ? as simple as that. Windows
Phone does that too but with a little
twist that made me give up using this feature. WP8 doesn?t allow you (still)
to download and install all the
applications at once so instead you
have to go to every single one of them
and click on the download button on
the website. Extremely frustrating and I didn?t bother with it after some time.
This needs to be fixed. The elusive search button: Okay, this is where my fellow rabid MS and WP
fanboys are going to rip me apart but
let me be honest about it. Bing sucks.
It?s decent for media queries but it?s
just bad when compared to Google
results. Microsoft should offer a choice to bind search key to a search
engine of user?s choice. I know it?s a
bad Bing business decision but I am
confident it will be a great decision
from consumer point of view and
consequently for WP. Search button could be a bit more useful, it?s a big
darn button on your phone, right? I
know some of you have been asking
for it since ages but a lot of people
apparently like Bing so giving users an
option shouldn?t be a bad thing. Search button can also be used for universal search (long press search button for universal search?) which is another
BIG feature missing from Windows
Phone 8. Lack of volume profiles: Lack of independent tone selection for stuff
like calls, messages and Bluetooth
headsets and lack of volume/sound
profiles just boggles my mind. I
remember using them in good old
Symbian phones but I don?t understand what?s stopping Microsoft from doing
it. The fact that we don?t have custom
tone options for contacts is just
infuriating. This reminds me of one
thing that annoys me everyday ? I have
vibrate ON in settings along with a ringtone most of the time, now when I
am in a class or at a meeting ? I need to
make it silent and WP8 offers a silent
mode but it still has vibration and now
you need to switch vibrate off and
switch it ON again when you need it. Minor annoyance I know but
sometimes you need a bit of peace of
mind. The pseudo Windows 8 - Windows
Phone 8 relationship: When WP8 was coming out, we were excited about all
the amazing possibilities of
synchronization among the two
platforms. Now that both platforms
are out and available for months ? I
think W8 has done an incredible job at gestures and WP8 has done nothing to
improve WP7 gestures. I love the app
closing gesture on W8 and would love
to see it on WP8 but most importantly,
what I?d like Microsoft to do is to
implement the app switching gesture on Windows 8 to WP8 (left to right
swipe from edge to switch between
apps) ? this is very cool and incredible
easy to do (Ubuntu OS even has it!). A
Charms bar would be a hard to do WP8
considering screen size but app switching and closing gesture would
make the experience consistent and it
would be refreshing for the
consumers. What?s also funny is that
there?s no sync between IE10 desktop
and IE10 mobile ? not even a ?open in IE10 mobile? option in IE10. This is
incredibly useful but Microsoft isn?t
too bothered with it. There are so many
possibilities of sync with W8 ? control
music and movie apps natively and lots
more ? but I don?t see MS doing anything about it. A broken promise,
IMO. Lack of WinJS on WP8 SDK
bothers me way more than I can explain
it to you. Rotation lock ? Why, Microsoft. WHY. How long do we have to wait for this?
What?s stopping Microsoft from
adding rotation lock to Windows
Phone? They did succumb to pressure
of screenshot but not rotation lock
which is something that users expect to be there when they pick up a
smartphone. Ridiculous to expect all
developers to implement rotation lock
on their app. Fix Multi tasking: A simple suggestion: Don?t make developers write extra line
of code for fast app resume, just
bundle the code when the dev compiles
it. Every single wp8 app should have it.
Makes the OS feel inconsistent. Store ? WP8 store is great but right now I don?t know which apps are WP7
and Wp8 apps unless I open them.
There should be a dedicated WP8 only
marketplace category and that should
NOT be hard to add for Microsoft. It
will make the experience for new users a lot better. Always visible status bar ? This annoys me because this isn?t something
Microsoft is responsible for
completely, majority of the developers
choose to remove it and you have to
get out of the app to check date, time
and battery. So instead of giving options to developers ? just remove
the option and make it visible at all
times. Better ? make it visible and tap
to hide instead of tap to show. Don?t
see how current way of showing it
works for anyone. Gapless Audio playback ? I don?t think I need to explain this. Just do it,
Microsoft. FM radio ? I live in a third world country and we are definitely NOT in
the kind of place where everyone can
afford to stream their music online
for a monthly fees with their 3G
networks on all the time. No. I do not
know what prompted Microsoft to FM radio but whatever did is absolutely
the worst possible idea. What do you
listen to in case of emergency? Xbox
music? Make features available to wider
audience ? There?s something called Xbox Music on my Windows Phone ?
fancy, right? Wrong. Xbox Music
doesn?t work in India and many other
countries and it?s been 3 months since
launch and there?s no launch in site.
Same thing happened with the Bing audio detection feature in
Windows Phone 7. Xbox Music is
extremely important, especially for
HTC and Samsung users who not only
are excluded from Nokia Music access
but they also do not have services like Spotify on Windows Phone 8. Making a call is still time consuming : Just make ?RapDialer? the default
application experience on Windows
Phone 8. I know MS hasn?t prioritized a
lot of things so just buy the company /
dev team who made it and make it
default. Not asking too much now, am I? Fix the calendar: Not exactly sure what changes Microsoft has made to WP8
calendar coming from WP7 but I don?t
see any. There?s still no weekly view!
One thing I do not understand is why I
cannot see more than one event/
appointment on the wide tile. It?s a wide tile now, show us more
information! Settings page: If somebody can explain to me the logic behind the ordering of
the items in settings page, a free WP
goodie for you. I am serious. Make it
alphabetical or rearrange it
dynamically based on usage pattern.
Right now, important stuff are at bottom and everything is mixed up. Lose the password on Kids Corner: I love the concept of Kids Corner
(corrected!) but I hate the name. I?d
love a Guest Corner instead ? A Kids
Corner without a password. The
password defeats the purpose of a
separate homescreen. Homescreen sync/backup: Creating a perfect homescreen is an art, isn?t it? I
am spending a lot of time tweaking my
homescreen on both wp8 and w8 and
would appreciate a homescreen
synchronization between multiple
devices or backup of your homscreen so you can switch between different
layouts immediately. Select All ? There?s no way to select all messages ( I stand corrected, thank you noroom ? pretty crazy how I didn?t see this one ? was expecting select all
on the app bar icon) and emails and
delete them at once and this is
something that is so basic it?s hard
to comprehend why it?s still not there.
It?s there for music and they just need to do a tiny bit of work to add it to
application bar, simple ? right? It?s
already there for music so don?t see
why it isn?t in email and messages. Revamp Podcast support in Windows
Phone 8: Bundle ?PODCASTS!? app with all Windows Phone 8 devices or
make a similar app. That is how you
make Podcasting work. IE10: IE10 is amazing. I use it a lot on desktop and loving the performance
on Windows Phone 8 so far. However,
the UI isn?t good enough. There?s no
forward button on IE10 and no speed
dial like feature which every single
browser has it now and even Opera Mini had it for years now. This reminds
me of a simple request : Open
marketplace to more browsers
Microsoft - help Opera develop Mini
for Windows Phone 8. Allow apps and attachments to be
installed on SD Card: My friend bought a HTC 8S recently and he is genuinely
frustrated. Games + apps + map
data and less than 3GB of usable space
? you are in for trouble and I can see
Nokia doing a 4GB phone soon and it
would suck to see 510 issue (it didn?t even have SD card support to
make matters worse) happening all
over again. A better Zune alternative : I am using the Windows Phone App Preview 3
right now to sync playlists and yes I
know it?s a preview build but it?s
extremely basic. Had issues syncing
playlists multiple times but it went
through in the end. If you want to just transfer stuff ? just use the good old
file system method ? this app
experience is not good enough.
Another issue which puzzled me was
the lack of Xbox Music playlist sync
ability. I have been told Xbox music playlists are synced to cloud and they
automatically appear in the app on
your phone (it didn?t work for me but it
did for many) but it still streams your
stuff via whatever connection you are
on ? it doesn?t download em all at once immediately which is puzzling but not
surprising, if you went through the
whole upgrade process from wp7 to
wp8. VPN: Businesses need VPN. You cannot call it an enterprise smartphone
without VPN support. Remember Xbox Live?: When Windows Phone came out, I was personally very
excited about the potential future of
XBL on WP and future iterations. When
WP8 came out, I was even more
excited. Now the devices have power
and potential via the software for some cross platform action ? where
are the games taking advantage of it?
Why isn?t MS flooding marketplace
with XBL games? I remember seeing
more XBL games during mango launch
than I remember post WP8 launch. MS needs to realize Xbox is BIG and they
cannot just take a break and stop
releasing games. Now if Quad Core
WP8 devices rumored this year, I am
sincerely hoping for cross platform
action. ..and that?s about it.
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