Your turn - 8 things that Microsoft needs to fix in Windows Phone 8 right now.

[tebugg]

i'll take a stab, these are what i wish were on the platform right now to be competitive with ios and android......

1.) notification center
2.) 3rd party music and video player. like poweramp and mx player pro from android.
3.) better pdf reader and organizer
4.) official instagram app or instagram to allow a 3rd party app to use its API's to post pics.
5.) official facebook app and facebook messenger
6.) ability to download any attachments with IE, just give me a warning that i'm about to do it so that if anything bad happens after that it was on me and not MS.
7.) more xbox games with achievements and synchronous launches like skulls of shogun did.
8.) VPN connections and better WIFI connection management.
9.) ability to close apps from the app manager to get rid of repeatedly hitting the back button.
10.) seperate volume controls for ringtones, notification, music and video, headphones, speaker
11.) disable the search button when camera is on
12.) make it so developer tools automaticly have toast notifications and live tiles enabled so every app natively uses the function.


that's all i can think of now. i'll edit if i come up with more. some of these i think will be addressed and come to WP8.

 

[poken1151]

So, I'm pretty sure I will repeat much from the article and stuff other users have said. However below are my 8 main things I'd like to seem MS fix/add asap. Though numbered, no particular order.

1) Audio Profiles and seperate audio volumes for: 1) System Sounds. 2) Game/Media Sounds. 3) Call sounds. In this call volumes are already segmented out, however I shouldn't have to turn down a game and then close out only to forget "oh, now my phone's on complete silent". It's annoying and (for me) has/can lead to missed calls and messages.

2) A notification center, Unified. The idea of the live tiles are great. If you line up EVERY app that notifies you of things and put em on the start screen you can almost achieve what MS set out for. But sadly, you can't and thus won't. For the apps that come with WP8, it works. If my notification life centered around only mail, and texts it'd be great. But there needs to be a way for me to hope between notifications. Touch one and I'm in the app dealing with whatever.

3) More XBOX-Live enabled games. MS has a HUGE gate available for the fact that every MS account automatically nets you an xbox live setup. The games need to reflect this more. They need to invest, either by way of courting more devs, or investing in port-a-thons themselves. Look, it's obvious most devs don't want to do the work for "fear the OS will die" Thus enabling this ugly cycle. So port it all, tell em you'll foot the bill if they help with QC and do something, anything.

4) Leading from above as a separate point; more gaming engines. I know for a fact the capabilities of this handsets with their lite OS. They can do a lot, court them, court them like you've never courted before MS.

5) Heavier Skype integration. Look, it's obvious. IOS has their iMessage and Face-time thing. Google has gTalk with video etc. And BB has BBM and now with video chat. These services are all core to their respective OS's. To this end, you OWN Skype. Merge with it like a parasite and integrate it and a subsequent BBM competitor in the system. You are MS. I strongly believe this is within you're means.

6) Better MS-Office functionality. I understand this was a big selling point for everyone. But honestly? I thought it'd save my life but it's actually a little worse than some experiences on android in certain ways. The formating is attrocious for me and I've seen no option to adjust or change this to reflect the actual doc. I'm hoping I've missed the proper way to use this so I hope someone kindly corrects me (also, I can't make new notebooks in OneNote? Why not??).

7) Folders/Better App Organization options. As he article points out, WP is great if all you have are a few apps. After a while, the jump list isn't enough much-less the start screen. One needs a seamless way to group on the home screen By the way, this is a direct cousin to our notification issue. See, if an app notifies us and it's not pinned, when we get to our phone we have no Idea what app it was. Much-less to scroll through all we have pinned to hope whichever app it was is there.

8) Many may still disagree with this, but a better way for apps to share content. I don't know how to delve into this one, but it just doesn't work as well as described most times. I know this can't come as isolated storage is core to the OS. But seriously? Uggh. And that said, an 8b; better default doc support. I expect from a MS type device PDF's etc are handled better than they were out of the box. Now the PDF app is updated, but just as a word of caution....

 

[Mikko Mallikas]

Great points 1-8. I would add:

9. App specific location services enable/disable.
10. WPA2 - Enterprice wifi support

 

[fardream]

Every point here is a good point. My 2 cents: reorganize settings: the list is so long

 

[Mikko Mallikas]

Mobile World Congress 2013 | The world's premier mobile industry event

@WMC Windows Phone 8.1 OS update to be shown! Lets hope they have more then 8 new features! ��
I hope they bring back all the features they had already in WM6.5 that would be my 12 I mean 8 things like to see. ��

I hope MS will also improve the roll out times of the updates. Portico update is still unavailable for my 920 and I'm afraid 8.1 will take some half a year to roll out. That is just unacceptable.

 

[conanheath]

I don't know about anybody else but I just want some progress out of MS on WP8 front. Right now I would take updates with problems just so I don't feel like this is going to be another WP7. It's been four months and MS has fixed WiFi issue. At this rate some time around 2015 our 8 issues may have some sort of resolution. Or at least whichever 8 issues MS deems important. MS has until May when my upgrade is due to make some progress or I'm out. First go around with WP and I like the start and see the potential, but there are better options out there and if MS doesn't get moving they will never catch up.

 

[LazySunday]

I'd expected MS would have taken care of these with the launch of WP 8... or else what was point of OS refresh. The only thing they pulled off is to port NT kernel with 7.5 features... MS is light years late to the part. Adding to the above 8 points, I'd love to have smart dialing option... Please Please I need it badly.... Look at the number of app for alternative dialers and number of downloads. Doesn't it tell something to MS?

 

[red grenadine]

Gapless playback

 

[ryker002]

1. As stated several times before: Notification Center.

2. Maybe not a background image, but under messaging, put the contact picture of the person you are texting in the background.

3. Xbox Music seamless sync to Zune plus Bring back Zune Social.

4. Official Apps: Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

5. Bluetooth settings (Device Name, etc.)

6. FTP and File Manager

7. Stop charging developers to put an app in the market.

8. Function Mobile view on IE. It doesn't always work.

9. More functional Calendar, better sync with Gmail calendar.

10. Folders, more like the games app. Tile for several tiles.
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 920 using Board Express

 

[cuzincurly]

Fm radio
Fm radio
Fm radio
Fm radio
Better music integration
Notification center
Better people hub
Instagram

 

[xWisp]

1) Notifications center. I mean, I know its coming but asap please.
2) Toasts for the messaging center to be smarter. Sometimes when you get like 10 lines of a chat from someone at once it keeps displaying notifications up the top even when you have opened the messaging app. It would be nice to see the os be a bit smarter.
3) The ability to "swipe away" or "swipe up" to get rid of the volume/now playing bar would be great
4) Separate volume levels for music/the rest of the phone sounds/headphone and speaker levels
5) Gapless music playing
6) "Swipe down" or add an x to close background apps while in the card view (holding the back button)
7) Custom SMS/MSG tones per contact (I used this all the time before its great to know how urgent the message is before you run to the phone)
8) Fix Facebook integration. Better like management in the people hub with facebook and more reliable delivery of facebook messages from the messaging app. currently like management though a pretty shallow thing to care about is still socially relevant and its implementation is kind of spotty leaving you to have to pop out to the really slow facebook app to manage further. Also being able to see "seen at" messages from the facebook side is really important.

And just a note to Nokia, please get your Nokia transit app updated to work properly in Perth WA. I used to rely on google maps heavily for that and seeing as thats not coming any time soon getting it sorted asap would be amazing.

Oh yeah, also rotation lock button in the volume menu or somewhere convenient. Get on it MS, really important.
And lastly Better playlist management/creation within the music app. Having to make one in itunes and then sync it over is not ideal. :/

 

[Tiwo]

I'm still baffled at the amount of people that want Instragram.. I really....really don't understand what's this important about Instagram..geez..

What I like to see is:
1) Better agenda

Uh..that's about it

2)
EDIT: ah yes, Facebook...for all my friends..bwuhahaha

 

[barne19801]

I would like a nice little door to exit ie, something to go with windows logo

 

[Grampz01]

Notification Center, Instagram. And that's about it

 

[etphoto]

Number one biggest feature for me is the ability to disable the stupid search button. I can't tell u the number of times I have been taken out of some app because I apparently touch that area of my phone. I swear its so sensitive I can just look at it and Bing comes up. Lol.

 

[MSFTisMIA]

I like the improved office features too. Maybe the ability to print documents via NFC? Smart dialing from the dialpad would be nice too. Again, small stuff they can add eventually but stuff I hope that they get around to.

Oh, and perhaps any diagonal swipe to kill an app instead of that dreaded "x".

 

[fernandogonzalez]

1) a better Facebook app
2) better SkyDrive integration (pictures in the picture hub and music in the music app)
3) better Skype app
4) global search

 

[hairlet]

1. Gapless playback. Surely that's not a hard thing to implement?! It's incredible that this isn't a standard feature nowadays. I transferred from iOS to W8P expecting gapless playback to be standard across all phones. Amazed that I was wrong about that.

2. My phone often starts playing music through the speaker when I unplug the headphones. Why?! That bug needs sorting (although I think I read somewhere that they had fixed that in the latest update which I am yet to recieve). Speaking of which...

3. Speed up their updates rollout. I'm on Vodafone UK and I'm STILL waiting for the Portico update. Why?!

4. Although not a bug, I would LOVE it if they could implement support for Airplay. I listen to alot of music and I loved playing music to my hifi from my phone over WiFi via Airplay. My Windows laptop can support Airplay by either using iTunes or Airfoil. I'm not sure if there's some licensing reason why they couldn't do this, but I hope they can. Or maybe some clever app developer could develop a music player that supports it. AND gapless playback?!?

 

[Twitter@Firas_MD]

Notification center ( good idea is to be a part of ME tile, u see the number of notifications,and swipe left to see them).
More effort to provide quality apps, its not acceptable that we are still running the major apps In 7.x format.
More customization options for ringtones and sound profile, and we need to control media and system volume level separately.

And lastly the ability to close apps from the multitask view.

 

[BCH]

1. Calendar search from within the calendar (yeah, I know there is an app for it, but it should be built in and work like the email search)
2. Expanded email attachments, in particular PDF files. Ideally, this would permit attachment of a PDF from within the email app; less ideally, allow the Reader app (or any PDF app) to "share" PDF's via email.
3. Full pinch to zoom in calendar and improve the day view to allow for 15 minute increments; I have a lot of lengthy appointments and overlapping appointments.
4. Decrease font in the Xbox Music and/or permit wrapping so you can see the name of the album and/or track in its entirety. The annoying truncation of album names and tracks has been around since the Zune HD, and it is really, really frustrating.
5. Universal search (search contacts, appointments, files, and apps)
6. Smaller font/higher information density on pop-up reminders and alerts
7. Landscape view of start screen, which comes in handy when using the phone in cradle as a GPS unit.