Why I keep going back to my HTC One X while I'm using my Nokia Lumia 920

nashid_ashraf

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First, let me give some background on the devices and OSs that I've been using the past 2.5 years. I'm from Bangladesh and I work with mostly web stuff.


I've been an Android user from early 2011. My first device was HTC Desire and I used that for around 1.5 years. Sometime during that, I got an HTC Titan which ran WP 7.5 Mango. I switched to the HTC One X last May which has been my go-to device over the past year. I also own an iPad 3 as my primary tablet.


The day I saw the Nokia press conference announcing the Nokia Lumia 920, I decided that I need to get my hands on one, The features seemed great and the device itself looked brilliant. I fell in love with the grey one and managed to get my hands on it after managing the bring one over from Thailand 3 months ago.


I was looking forward to WP8 and the awesome camera that came along with the 920. Some of the features that I've had from this is superb. The email experience is the best out there bar none. The camera is also the absolute best out there. The 'People' hub makes my life much easier compared to what I have to go through with my Android phone.


Sadly, I've had to go back to my HTC on a lot of occasions for features that were lacking.As a power user, I can live alone on my One X but I can't do that on my Lumia 920.


I'm listing the issues that I've had with the overall experience over the past few months. These will cover issues with the phone, apps from the marketplace and WP8 itself.


Here goes -

Apps -


Facebook -


This is probably THE MOST IMPORTANT app for any mobile platform that's out there. It's a sad fact that the app for WP is WOEFUL. The UI is clunky and significantly slower compared to Android or iOS. Posting to groups and pages is also significantly more painful. It's almost a breeze for the other platforms. The Facebook Beta app has improved the overall experience considerably but issues still remain. The Facebook integration baked into the system makes up for the shortcomings somewhat. Notifications for groups, pages, user accounts work seamlessly through the 'Me' tile.


The key issue is messages and that's prevalent in the beta app as well. There is nigh non-existent support for message notifications if you're not online. The integration with the system messaging app also wonky. I only appear online on chat for a few people in Facebook. If they send me a message, I sometimes get a regular message in the messaging hub. But for other people who send me a message, I don't get any notification whatsoever, not in the live tile or the messaging app. The web app can show me messages but as there are no notifications for the web app, it kinda defeats the purpose.


Twitter -


I've tried a lot of Twitter clients on WP and most of them work quite well. I've tried Twitter (official), Mehdoh, Rowi, Peregrine, Gleek, Cowlick etc. Rowi is crap. It didn't even let me see my Twitter lists. Waste of $1.5. All the other ones are quite nice.


Curiously enough, all of them have the same shortcoming that a power user is almost sure to face. I use 4 accounts on my phone. Two personal and two for work. Whenever I get a mention or a retweet to any of these accounts, I get a toast notification saying, "XX has retweeted you" or "XX has mentioned you". The live tiles also get updated with the same message. None of the apps say which 'you' are they referring to. And whenever I click the live tile, it takes me to the home screen of whichever account was last active. In other platforms, the app switches the account to whichever one received the notification and shows me the relevant tweet. The notification (on other platforms) also show me straight away which account it's referring to. But none of the WP apps do that. Bummer for power users such as myself.


Skype -

This is a weird one. Skype is owned by Microsoft itself but the service isn't up to the mark. For example, whenever I get a message on Skype, the WP app is the last one to show me that. The live tile on my phone (or my Win 8 PC, for that matter) is the last one to be updated. I can see the updates on my iPad as well as my One X. I've personally seen missed call notifications on my iPad that skipped my Lumia altogether. I find this very weird, indeed.


Kindle -


I prefer the Kindle app for reading books on all my devices because of a simple reason - sync. Whenever I'm reading a book on that, I don't have to remember page numbers or start converting one page reference to another. I usually read books on my iPad. Whenever I'm commuting or something, I can readily switch to my One X and continue where I left off on my iPad. It's brilliant.


Sadly, the WP8 app doesn't even support personal documents. That's a shame as most of my stuff are personal documents.So, in my Lumia 920, I have to use other book readers and convert one page number to another causing a major inconvenience. Personal documents are supported by Kindle (obviously), iOS and Android devices. I talked to Amazon and the customer care said their developers will work on this but could give me no time frame.


IE -


It's quite a nice browser and quite fast as well. The UI is a bit outdated as bookmarks can't be launched easily. There's an extra tap that I need to go through. UC Broswer is quite nice as it has a speed dial option and bookmarked pages can be launched very easily.


The main lacking for me would be the absence of cloud sync. With such a robust could storage utility such as Skydrive, it's baffling why Microsoft wouldn't support this. Chrome has been doing it successfully for the past year and even Safari does it now between OSX and iOS. Not being able to see the tabs I had open on my phone in my PC isn't good enough anymore. I don't need to see the tabs in another browser, being able to see them in IE on my PC would be good enough.


News Readers -

I've tried quite a few ones and none of them are as good as Pulse. This is focusing too much on a single app but Pulse is just that good. The absence of Pulse in WP8 is quite baffling as they used to have an app for WP7.


I've tried most of them i.e. Fuse, Weave, Collector. Fuse doesn't let me choose custom feeds. It throws me whatever it has listed under each category. Weave let's me configure custom categories (which feeds I want to have under Tech, Fun etc.) but it doesn't provide me any nested navigation. For example, whenever I open the 'Tech' tab on my Weave app, it shows all the stories from all the feeds. I can't see the 'Engadget' stories separately but I can do that in Pulse. Collector is the same, no nested navigation.


The Pulse web app is barely adequate as pressing the back button once while inside a story causes me to go to the Pulse homepage and almost making the nested navigation invalid.


Kik Messenger -


This was by far my favourite messenger app on my One X. But sadly, I was forced to move to Whatsapp as Kik notifications are very bad for WP8. The live tile for Kik doesn't update frequently and there is no lockscreen notification. Not having lockscreen notifications (as there isn't any centralized notification panel) makes the 'instant' in 'instant messenger' a moot point.


System Issues -


Games -



It's a complaint against WP is general. But the fact that I can only play one Temple Run on my Lumia 920 (April 2013) whereas I can play four ones on my One X or my iPhone is a fact that can't be overlooked. Microsoft needs to pay and/or push developers to start working on games. I have bought a Lumia 920 despite very few popular games being available, millions wouldn't.


Nokia Lenses -


These are very nifty features that make the already brilliant camera on my 920 even better. The problem is that sharing/viewing these outputs is a bit difficult. I captured a image by Photosynth but showing that to someone else requires me to open in in Photosynth. I can't do that from the pictures hub. It's the same for Cinemagraph. Cinemagraph is even worse. I can make animated images but I can't export them as gif files. It's cool indeed but not being able to show it to someone who's on some other device kinda defeats the purpose.


SMS Scheduler -


A feature that I use regularly on my One X. It's very good for sending birthday texts, farewell texts and such. The ones for Android work seamlessly. There are a couple of ones available for WP8 but they basically give me a reminder to send the text, the apps don't actually send the text.


Traffic counter -


This is baffling. Why wouldn't my phone be able to show me how much data traffic I've used over a specified period of time? Why do I have to dial a number that my mobile operator has set up to see my monthly data traffic? Why can't I have any idea how much data I've used through wi-fi over the past week? It's 2013, for ****'s sake.


No MKV palyback -


MKV has become a standard video format these days. No OS supports it natively, true. But not having a third party app for seamless MKV playback is definitely a shortcoming. People sometimes argue that MP4 is a better format compared to MKV. These people are just trying to change the subject.


SMS as email label -


This is a feature suggestion. I have this on Android (all my messages are saved to a label in my Gmail thorugh a third party app) but not in iOS. Microsoft backs up my messages in Skydrive and restores them whenever I need to. That's fine and dandy. But things can be improved much further. As I'm already using a live ID for my email and cloud storage, should it be that difficult for Microsoft to take my SMS data and write them to my outlook.com email account as a separate label? If that can be done, it's going to be the first time as neither Android nor iOS do it natively.


Making Hyper-Local way too local -


This is something that needs to be sorted immediately. Microsoft is making things too local. It's as if no one ever goes out of their own country for ANYTHING. I opened an outlook.com account based in Bangladesh (my original one in based in the US) to be able to use my local credit card for buying apps and services. A significant number of apps aren't available in the Bangladesh store but are so in the US store. That's bullcrap. It's like saying, "Tough luck, dude. You are living in the wrong country. Move to the US to experience how awesome your phone can be."


It's even worse for maps. I know that HERE Maps has developed quite a robust database for Bangladesh. Nokia Bangladesh is promoting that like crazy. I've personally seen that in Nokia stores here in Dhaka. But as my phone was bought from Thailand, I can't see that. I can't even download the offline maps. Bangladesh isn't even on the list of countries in Asia whose maps can be downloaded for offline usage.


I can't really change my locale back to Bangladesh to avail of this functionality as some apps that I use regularly aren't available in the Bangladesh app store. I might like local, but not THIS local.


FM Radio -


I personally don't have a problem with this but it's an issue for other people. I had personally convinced two people to buy Lumia 620s as they were looking for something cheap that would cater to regular needs. None of these people are overly concerned with hardware and apps. For these people, the Lumia 620 should be the perfect device, right? Wrong. When they heard that the phone didn't have a FM Radio, they said, "Sorry, not happening." I know that the phones have FM Radio receiver chips but for some bizarre, alien reason, they have been left inactivated.


Nokia seems to be pushing these handsets in a grand way in Asian countries. General users in Asian countries can't afford to listen to radio using TuneIn or similar apps. Even a standard def radio station broadcasts at 64 kbps. That amounts to roughly 30MB of data per hour. So, even if I listen to radio only for an hour on my phone through my data connection (say when I'm going home from the office), that would burn through my 1 GB monthly data allowance like a hot knofe through butter. I can't possibly imagine why someone would have FM radio receivers on a phone and leave them deactivated.


Making alert tones editable -


Personally, this makes me wonder what the developers were smoking. In my Lumia 920, I can change my phone ringtone and alarm tones as I like. I can create custom tones and use them as I please. But I can't assign custom tones for messages, emails, reminders.

That's. Just. Stupid.



That was all I had. I haven't lost hope yet. Some upcoming updates are promising to rectify some major issues. But quite frankly, we've seen too many promises and too little delivery from Microsoft regarding WP in recent times. I haven't gotten rid of the Lumia and I plan to sticking to it at least till next year. These days I switch between the two phones quite regularly as my primary phone. It'd be great to see the day when I wouldn't have to go back to any other platform.


That's the day I can actually 'Switch to Lumia'.

Nashid
 

Mr Manson

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Hopefully you don't really expect people to read THIS ONE BIG post. you got to wrap your points up.

Anyways, it seems you have a lot to complain about Lumia 920. I doubt anything would change this attitude of yours.

Oh and one thing: facebook is definitely not "the most important app" as you stated. It is just one app after all. I know A LOT of people not even bothering looking it up in the store.
 

gsquared

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I certainly didn't read that. I agree with Mickey, if you have that much to complain about WP is obviously not for you. It seems like you are stressing over this. Do what makes you happy. Life is too short to be stressing over such trival matters.
 

WizeGuyDezignz

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I stopped reading after Facebook and Twitter being your two most important apps. Sounds like you are a trendy social person. Stick with the trendy OS which is android. Sounds like it's a better fit for you.
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johninsj

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The current facebook beta gives you an identical to iOS/Android GUI on WP8. You should really love it.

Beyond that - hey, use whatever works for you. We don't fight here, we just switch, remember?
 

nashid_ashraf

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Thanks everyone. I DID make that very long.

Don't get me wrong, I like the 920. My feeling is that a power user can't live on a Lumia alone. That's the point I tried to prove here but yeah I should've made it shorter, a lot shorter.
 

WizeGuyDezignz

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Thanks everyone. I DID make that very long.

Don't get me wrong, I like the 920. My feeling is that a power user can't live on a Lumia alone. That's the point I tried to prove here but yeah I should've made it shorter, a lot shorter.

Define a power user.
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peacefulberry

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Ok, so I couldn't read the entire original post...sorry...but I just want to say that if Windows Phone did every exact thing in the exact manner that Android did, then it would just be another Android copycat platform. There is a market for those that want a refreshing intuitive interface known for both simplicity and functionality. There are those that will never be able to use Windows Phone, just as those that will never use Android. The differences have to be key enough to maintain a consistent user base. Ppl who want a full Android experience are going to have to stay with Android. Ppl who don't...well they come here. :)
 

metalchick719

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Eh... I used an iPhone 4 for a year and a half before switching to WP8 - first with the Lumia 810 and more recently with the Lumia 920. I do still use my iPhone 4 as an iPod touch, but it's really not that big of a deal. When I'm out, it's just me and my Lumia, while my iPhone stays home. I can't speak about the new Facebook beta app, but I avoided installing any Facebook app on my 810 and 920. If it's that big a deal to you, why not just access the site via IE? That's what I do, but the People Hub and Me tiles are good enough for me 99% of the time. Twitter I have but never seem to use it anymore. Anyway, I'm just thrilled with WP8 and don't plan on looking back, regardless of the so-called lack of apps. If it bothers you that much, I would stick with Android, but it's more about quality over quantity, IMO - which is why I pick WP8.
 

nashid_ashraf

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Ok, so I couldn't read the entire original post...sorry...but I just want to say that if Windows Phone did every exact thing in the exact manner that Android did, then it would just be another Android copycat platform. There is a market for those that want a refreshing intuitive interface known for both simplicity and functionality. There are those that will never be able to use Windows Phone, just as those that will never use Android. The differences have to be key enough to maintain a consistent user base. Ppl who want a full Android experience are going to have to stay with Android. Ppl who don't...well they come here. :)

Very true. It's a very simplistic outlook strikingly different from Android or iOS. The mail and people hubs are simply unparalleled. But I'm losing some key functionalities that I can have on my Android such as scheduling sms, syncing personal documents on the Kindle app, being able to see the tabs that I had open on my PC etc. That's why I need to go back from time to time.


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nashid_ashraf

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Eh... I used an iPhone 4 for a year and a half before switching to WP8 - first with the Lumia 810 and more recently with the Lumia 920. I do still use my iPhone 4 as an iPod touch, but it's really not that big of a deal. When I'm out, it's just me and my Lumia, while my iPhone stays home. I can't speak about the new Facebook beta app, but I avoided installing any Facebook app on my 810 and 920. If it's that big a deal to you, why not just access the site via IE? That's what I do, but the People Hub and Me tiles are good enough for me 99% of the time. Twitter I have but never seem to use it anymore. Anyway, I'm just thrilled with WP8 and don't plan on looking back, regardless of the so-called lack of apps. If it bothers you that much, I would stick with Android, but it's more about quality over quantity, IMO - which is why I pick WP8.

Facebook is fine through the 'Me' tile. I get notifications and everything. My main beef is with the messages part. My chat settings in Facebook allow a very few number of people to see me online. I get notifications of messages from only those people. I don't get notifications of any other messages from anyone else. No toasts, live tiles also don't update.

Two apps that I really miss are Pocket and Pulse.

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nashid_ashraf

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Define a power user.
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For me, that would be someone who has to manage multiple accounts under the same service such as Twitter. Keeping abreast of news as they come along under categories is also very important. With WP8 apps, I can have multiple sources grouped as 'tech', 'fun' and such. But I can't see a specific feed from that. For example, I can easily scroll through the 'Engadget' feed in any news reader app. What I can't do is scroll through the feed when it's under the group 'tech'. All tech stories from all sources are shown at the same time. It's the case with Fuse, Weave, Nextgen, Collector etc.


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RyanR47

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Guys if you don't have the patience to go though the post, don't bother with reply. Each day the forum is getting filled with clowns. The OP gave a very honest review of WP from his perspective and he gave a nice and thorough explanation in ways the platform under-performs in some areas, unlike many WP haters out there. At least have the courtesy to reply to his post in an equal manner.

To nashid_ashraf,Bhai ami toh aki shomosshai asi. :)
 
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peacefulberry

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Guys if you don't have the patience to go though the post, don't bother with reply. Each day the forum is getting filled with clowns. The OP gave a very honest review of WP from his perspective and he gave a nice and thorough explanation in ways the platform under-performs in some areas, unlike many WP haters out there. At least have the courtesy to reply to his post in an equal manner.

To nashid_ashraf,Bhai ami toh aki shomosshai asi. :)

Although I believe my comment was fair and unbiased, I have to say that the OP's post was extremely lengthy to say the least. In fact I have never read an opening post so long. If the OP could summarize the points in a shorter fashion, more ppl can read it in its entirety and comment more effectively. I, and some others (can't speak for everyone) also have wish lists for Microsoft to improve upon the platform. No harm done in wanting more features or functionality...we just didn't want to read a novel to get us there. :) But, other than that no harm done.

However, will you please enlighten us with a translation of your last point...
 

nashid_ashraf

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Guys if you don't have the patience to go though the post, don't bother with reply. Each day the forum is getting filled with clowns. The OP gave a very honest review of WP from his perspective and he gave a nice and thorough explanation in ways the platform under-performs in some areas, unlike many WP haters out there. At least have the courtesy to reply to his post in an equal manner.

To nashid_ashraf,Bhai ami toh aki shomosshai asi. :)

Thanks, man. Much appreciated. :)

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nashid_ashraf

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Although I believe my comment was fair and unbiased, I have to say that the OP's post was extremely lengthy to say the least. In fact I have never read an opening post so long. If the OP could summarize the points in a shorter fashion, more ppl can read it in its entirety and comment more effectively. I, and some others (can't speak for everyone) also have wish lists for Microsoft to improve upon the platform. No harm done in wanting more features or functionality...we just didn't want to read a novel to get us there. :) But, other than that no harm done.

However, will you please enlighten us with a translation of your last point...

The last line was written in Bangla. It means, "Dude, I'm facing similar problems." :D


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Slai

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Ppl who want a full Android experience are going to have to stay with Android. Ppl who don't...well they come here. :)

Or mostly they just use half the android experience and that works very well too. Or get an iPhone. Very few actually decide "i don't need a pocket computer, I'll get a WP". They just get an android or ios phone, and are happy with it.
 

fatclue_98

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I have to agree with RyanR47, if you don't read the entire post you could miss something. The OP's post may have been lengthy by someone's standards but it left little room for the typical "what do you mean" reply. It sounds like his gripes aren't with the devices or the OS, but rather with some of the apps. Sure, Android and iOS may have some more polished apps but they've been around since '07 so they've had time to polish. My gripes with WP are more of a connectivity nature (abysmal BT profiles, wi-fi sleep, etc.) but that may come later. Lighten up people, it's just a phone.
 

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