Will Windows Phone continue to avoid to make a File Manager?

[Lumio]

Not everyone has unlimited data and access to WiFi. This is the reason why people want some way to access files on their phone. .

Very well said. Wifi/unlimited data on third world countries is still a myth.

 

[N_LaRUE]

Very well said. Wifi/unlimited data on third world countries is still a myth.

Not just third world countries. There are many countries where unlimited data doesn't exist or very expensive and then there a places were you have major blackspots so even if you have a good data plan it's useless.

 

[vish2801]

Is it really all that bad? If your friend put his documents on SkyDrive then he can access it from his phone, make changes on the go, and access it on any computer. I find the SkyDrive integration very useful.

I live in a country which doesn't provide unlimited 3G data connection and so most people use 2G connection even 2G isn't unlimited at reasonable price and you know how 2G sux. Most of users don't have wi-fi connection and again we don't have any unlimited bb connection with good speed,too. Many users don't even own pc in their home. So my friend, skydrive isn't even an option for users in my country.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[vish2801]

Whenever I see people here become crazy about some stupid streaming app, I always wonder what's so much fun in streaming music or a movie or TV show from Netflix lol. Xbox music isn't even available in many countries, and without it, music+video app is very much dead, it's shame that MS can't make an offline music and video player properly. No equalizer, no folder, and making playlist is kinda pain in arse. At least release audio & video api for 3rd party devs, and make a decent limited file explorer so we can sort our personal files properly. No proper media player, no proper email client, no proper file attachment system, no proper file management system, no proper apps or games and also not much customization. Give me 1 freaking reason why should I buy it over android ?? Security reason is a joke, honestly, I never faced any virus in my nexus 4, nor my friend who uses local company's android device.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[andraeseus]

Is it really all that bad? If your friend put his documents on SkyDrive then he can access it from his phone, make changes on the go, and access it on any computer. I find the SkyDrive integration very useful.

Sky drive costs MONEY! you already paid money for a phone with 32 GB of storage. Why pay more? sky drive is a great supplement tool for data management. It is not the solution. Why the **** do you put 32 GB of storage on a device and not let users actually use it? these phones are too expensive for that. Plus you need data connection for sky drive. I commute 1 1/2 hrs to work in the morning some times under ground. There is no data connection. How much work could I have gotten done for my company if I had access to my files during that time?

 

[tfotouh]

I totally agree that here should be a file manager, that avoids any security issues.

 

[Catholic Tech Geek]

Whenever I see people here become crazy about some stupid streaming app, I always wonder what's so much fun in streaming music or a movie or TV show from Netflix lol. Xbox music isn't even available in many countries, and without it, music+video app is very much dead, it's shame that MS can't make an offline music and video player properly. No equalizer, no folder, and making playlist is kinda pain in arse. At least release audio & video api for 3rd party devs, and make a decent limited file explorer so we can sort our personal files properly. No proper media player, no proper email client, no proper file attachment system, no proper file management system, no proper apps or games and also not much customization. Give me 1 freaking reason why should I buy it over android ?? Security reason is a joke, honestly, I never faced any virus in my nexus 4, nor my friend who uses local company's android device.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

I will admit that currently aren't the best when it comes to working with the audio and video apis. However, I'm doing what I can to make a decent media player for Windows Phone despite the restrictions and limitations on the api that are present. Right now, for my media player app, I am working on a bug fix for the current iteration. Once I push that out, I will start working on a new version putting in some new features which are not present in the current version of my media player.

The biggest problem right now from an api standard that I'm having is that the MediaPlayer class's play() function only accepts an instance of either Song or SongCollection and there is no way for a dev to create a SongCollection instance and populate it (it's "fixed"/read-only). Ok, add to that the fact that the hook I have into the MediaPlayer class for my app (kind-of) dies whenever the app is tombstoned and I have to recreate it when the app is restored.

 

[vish2801]

I will admit that currently aren't the best when it comes to working with the audio and video apis. However, I'm doing what I can to make a decent media player for Windows Phone despite the restrictions and limitations on the api that are present. Right now, for my media player app, I am working on a bug fix for the current iteration. Once I push that out, I will start working on a new version putting in some new features which are not present in the current version of my media player.

The biggest problem right now from an api standard that I'm having is that the MediaPlayer class's play() function only accepts an instance of either Song or SongCollection and there is no way for a dev to create a SongCollection instance and populate it (it's "fixed"/read-only). Ok, add to that the fact that the hook I have into the MediaPlayer class for my app (kind-of) dies whenever the app is tombstoned and I have to recreate it when the app is restored.

Wow, we all be supporting you. I guess in WP Blue , MS would update media APIs and you devs can create awesome media players....

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[osvaldo 1]

ok, i registered and came across the web just looking for a file manager, a TRUE file manager, ill make some point to clear out my position

i am not a ****** of android, in fact, i hated before i picked up WP8

so, if you want to grow the market share, you MUST to you what people WANT, not what MS want, if you continue with your pride, as is, your death sentence is signed in the market, sorry for been so rude with you all fanboys of MS, but my choice of WP was of my pleasure with my old N8, so nokia brought me to you, your 3% is not for your so goooood SO, is the nokia users that not want lo left the brand, but this 3% will drop drastically when the voice will spread, open your eyes, you and your line of concept and believe of android is boring and useless is futile

and you had made a heater of android in some kind of heater of WP, i spend a LOT of money in a phone and is a useless because of lack of WP functionality

your statistics and 3.000 of security engineers is not enough for give a decent functionality at the moment, the worse part is, would not change!!!, better said, would not learn form what people WANT!!!!

and last, i dont care if you delete this post, but keep in mind THIS is the way of thiniking of 90% of the smartphones THINKS!!!!, I know now why they choose android over WP, period

 

[tungha]

ok, i registered and came across the web just looking for a file manager, a TRUE file manager, ill make some point to clear out my position

i am not a ****** of android, in fact, i hated before i picked up WP8

so, if you want to grow the market share, you MUST to you what people WANT, not what MS want, if you continue with your pride, as is, your death sentence is signed in the market, sorry for been so rude with you all fanboys of MS, but my choice of WP was of my pleasure with my old N8, so nokia brought me to you, your 3% is not for your so goooood SO, is the nokia users that not want lo left the brand, but this 3% will drop drastically when the voice will spread, open your eyes, you and your line of concept and believe of android is boring and useless is futile

and you had made a heater of android in some kind of heater of WP, i spend a LOT of money in a phone and is a useless because of lack of WP functionality

your statistics and 3.000 of security engineers is not enough for give a decent functionality at the moment, the worse part is, would not change!!!, better said, would not learn form what people WANT!!!!

and last, i dont care if you delete this post, but keep in mind THIS is the way of thiniking of 90% of the smartphones THINKS!!!!, I know now why they choose android over WP, period

i'm just wondering if MS is listening or not, or just we're here, trying to let them know with no hope

 

[anon(123856)]

Not just third world countries. There are many countries where unlimited data doesn't exist or very expensive and then there a places were you have major blackspots so even if you have a good data plan it's useless.

There are plenty of places here in the US where you won't get a decent cell signal either. I'm lucky to see one or two bars of Verizon LTE where I live and work. SkyDrive works pretty well but is no substitute for a file manager. As I've said before, I'll be happy if I can just access my own stuff, I can do without any sort of system access.

 

[Marc from Brussels]

The question is not if YOU need a file manager. The fact is that people, who are using their smartphone more than just as a basic camera or a simple phone, need it. I would like to organize my files like I do on my computer, i.e. creating for each subject one directory with pictures, videos, Word and Excel documents, PDF's, .... I would like to organize these files by theme and not by file type.

Suppose I would like to put together data on my family. I have pictures, videos, voice recordings, written speeches, maybe an excel expense report. How do I store all this in WP8 ? I need to create an album named "Family" for the pictures, I can't create a split in Videos, so I put my family's videos with all the other movies I have on my phone. In documents, I can't neither create a split, so I put the speeches, and other spreatsheets together. Very convenient, isn't it ???

One could argue : but put all this on Skydrive ! Yes, this is possible even if not so convient than with a real file manager. But I do not want to expose all these private data on a public cloud. I want them to remain locally on my phone. Despite Microsoft privacy statement, I do not trust cloud storages. The possibility to have these personal data leaked on the internet is real.

So please, don't judge the need for a file manager. Just give it to people who want to use it according to their specific needs.

Thank you !
Marc

 

[kaybee327]

Maybe we should ask " Is a smartphone really that smart"

With regard to a file explorer it would certainly make life easier to copy files folders to where YOU wish them to be.

But there again if you got 100 phone users in the same room I'll bet there are 100 ways they use their phone. Everyone is different so if someone needs a file explorer then why not. The biggest problem seems to me to be our Lord and Master (Microsoft of course) who seem to think they know what we want and 1 year later decide yes we should have included that feature - so who knows what or when it will happen

 

[csjjjjjjjjjjj]

Projects are organized by files and folders, even before digital files and folders existed, not a hodgepodge of disjoint apps with isolated copies of files.

SkyDrive comes close to solving the problem, but the cloud is not always available or practical.

Why not allow SkyDrive to see a local 'Downloads' and 'SD Card' folder??? Apps would communicate through the SkyDrive API to get read/write access. (Which is secure, I assume, otherwise hackers are reading your sensitive files and trojan files are lurking in your cloud) Won't solve the issue completely, but would make a heck of a lot us much happier and less likely to jump ship.

 

[Dheeraj Sukumaran]

those people who doesent use a file manager, may be they dont need it.... this is because they are only using phone for normal and usual purpose like watching videos, photos, net and like that. but for more advanced users who will use and understand the phone down to its core really require a file manager..... which includes using the phone like a pen drive... which can store any information whatever file type it maybe in the organized section for example.... o if we download a .rar file from our email or net, there is no possible way to share it from the phone..... even with an application, the only thing you can do is view or delete and unsupported formats cannot be even seen or deleted. it just takes up space which goes into the 'other' section of the storage, and kinda get lost in there..... you might say 'just use a pen drive for that purpose'..... but there are people who want most out of their phone and would like to use it completely in their convenience.... which currently i think android provides. I'm a nokia lumia 520 user and seriously i was annoyed with this lack of file manager that prevents apps like whatsapp to save and upload audio and video from the storage..... IT IS A DRAWBACK for an advanced user. but i love the features of the OS and surely i'll stick on to it. and wait for an update which provides file manager......

 

[berty6294]

For the love of god this thread needs to die. File manager will create security issues and will dramatically slow down the phones performance. If you want to open a .rar file on your phone and then share to your computer, why don't you just open your email on your computer to begin with?

 

[jhoff80]

File manager will create security issues and will dramatically slow down the phones performance. If you want to open a .rar file on your phone and then share to your computer, why don't you just open your email on your computer to begin with?

Wrong on both counts, assuming a proper implementation. And to be honest I have no idea where you're assuming the phone would slow down because of an app either.

Maybe for you it's ridiculous to want to open a rar on your phone, but what about a PDF? You still can't attach a PDF downloaded from the internet or downloaded from an email attachment to a new email.

What Microsoft really needs is to just update the Skydrive app to how Windows 8.1 does it, so that you can browse the cloud or browse locally from the same application... and then have the standard file picker connect to that application.

I mean, for another example, it's great that I have the option to upload an EPUB to the cloud to open it in an app on my phone, but it's ridiculous that I can't store that file locally on the phone and open it as well.

 

[berty6294]

Please prove me wrong. I'm quite curious.

 

[jhoff80]

It's just ridiculous. A file manager isn't going to be continuously resident in memory to slow down the performance. Like any other app, it would only be open when explicitly opened by the user or called by a file picker API. If you're going to say that is going to slow down your phone, well then you shouldn't install any applications at all because they have the same effect.

And a security risk? Again, not if done properly. Applications can still be sandboxed even with a file manager included. Not all applications should have permission to even touch the file structure, and none of them should have administrator privileges to touch system files and folders (hint, this is how Windows 8 does it too). For all I care, do it the same way that webOS did and Android does by default-only give me access to a USB drive 'partition'... aka the spare storage that isn't taken up by system files and apps.

The point is that the OS is currently limiting what you can do with files to a fault. Skydrive (and worse, each developer having to manually implement that into their app, instead of a common file picker API that gives Skydrive support, like in Windows 8) simply does not make up for major missing functionality.

 

[ChMar]

Maybe for you it's ridiculous to want to open a rar on your phone, but what about a PDF? You still can't attach a PDF downloaded from the internet or downloaded from an email attachment to a new email.

But of course you can ))). I see this every time and I can't understand what is so hard for people to understand. You have hubs. Pictures and videos are in 1 hub. Wan't to share them via email (meaning attach it) go to that hub and share your image/video.
For audio content you have music hub. Want to attach to email go there and share via email.
So you solved problems for audio and video content. Rest of files are considered to be documents. So for your pdf go to office hub that manages your documents and share your damn pdf (share it by email meaning you send it as email attachment).

So stop using false informations like you cant attach an pdf to an email to try justify your personal need for a file browser because the current 3 hubs way of storing all types of files allows everyone to share their downloaded and captured files. For any other type of file that is there the app should either support file extension in office hub or allow directly from the app the option of sharing.