Sell me W10M! What does it do better than WP8.1?

[wgs84]

A couple of things I've noticed (I'm using 10586.107 on a 640):
-Edge renders websites better than 8.1's IE. For example, on SFGate, the "latest news" links always gets cut off in IE. On Edge, the text doesn't get cut off.
-You can download maps to the SD card in 10. 8.1 doesn't let you do that.
-You have the new note and flashlight action buttons in the action center. This is a huge deal for me personally.
-Ability to scale the "Size of text, apps, and items on the display". I like to set it to 175% so that I can see more stuff on the screen at once.
-Ability to "show more tiles" on the start screen.
-The core apps are more featured (calculator comes with conversions, alarm comes with timers and world clock, etc.)
-You can edit Excel documents in the Excel app. Huge for me. In 8.1, I can only open the .xlsx docs as read-only.

Also, note that if you flashed the Tmo rom onto the unlocked ATT version of the 640, you will lose wifi calling.
Edit: Scratch that. You won't lose wifi calling. I don't know if it's because I reset my phone or because I updated to .122 (probably the former), but I have wifi calling once again.

There's bound to be more, but those are just the ones that I remember right off the bat.

 

[OrangeBerry02]

Everything, except Battery Life consumption.

Well, my 650 has been on the go for 12 hours now and it has been quite a busy day with about 40 emails, 5 of which I replied to on the phone, 6 or 7 received texts and about 12 phone conversations, 2 of which went on for at least half-an-hour. The phone has bluetooth switched on for the car and has been in the car a couple of time (quite short journeys). I use the phone to keep my business mileage log and timesheet. And it's still going strong with about 48% of charge left.

I am reasonably pleased, particularly bearing in mind this is a new phone and battery performance might improve over the next week.

 

[OrangeBerry02]

A couple of things I've noticed (I'm using 10586.107 on a 640):
-Edge renders websites better than 8.1's IE. For example, on SFGate, the "latest news" links always gets cut off in IE. On Edge, the text doesn't get cut off.
-You can download maps to the SD card in 10. 8.1 doesn't let you do that.
-You have the new note and flashlight action buttons in the action center. This is a huge deal for me personally.
-Ability to scale the "Size of text, apps, and items on the display". I like to set it to 175% so that I can see more stuff on the screen at once.
-Ability to "show more tiles" on the start screen.
-The core apps are more featured (calculator comes with conversions, alarm comes with timers and world clock, etc.)
-You can edit Excel documents in the Excel app. Huge for me. In 8.1, I can only open the .xlsx docs as read-only.

Also, note that if you flashed the Tmo rom onto the unlocked ATT version of the 640, you will lose wifi calling.

There's bound to be more, but those are just the ones that I remember right off the bat.

I agree with what you say ... though I am sure I was able to store maps on my SD card under 8.1 - or am I imagining it?!

 

[wgs84]

I'm pretty sure it wasn't officially supported. It might've been for an old version of WP maybe. I remember needing to download this Lumia storage check app (which you can't download from the store anymore btw) to get offline maps onto the SD card in 8.1, but otherwise the maps went into the internal storage. W10m gives you the option to save the offline maps onto an SD card without needing to do any tricks.

 

[ML10]

The ONLY reason for me to use W10M on my 640 is the universal support for voice-to-text in every app. Just couldn't live with having to type in whatsapp in WP8.1.

Did you hard reset when you installed? I want to update my 640 but without a hard reset...

 

[theefman]

A couple of things I've noticed (I'm using 10586.107 on a 640):

-Edge renders websites better than 8.1's IE. For example, on SFGate, the "latest news" links always gets cut off in IE. On Edge, the text doesn't get cut off.

-You can download maps to the SD card in 10. 8.1 doesn't let you do that.

-You have the new note and flashlight action buttons in the action center. This is a huge deal for me personally.

-Ability to scale the "Size of text, apps, and items on the display". I like to set it to 175% so that I can see more stuff on the screen at once.

-Ability to "show more tiles" on the start screen.

-The core apps are more featured (calculator comes with conversions, alarm comes with timers and world clock, etc.)

-You can edit Excel documents in the Excel app. Huge for me. In 8.1, I can only open the .xlsx docs as read-only.



Also, note that if you flashed the Tmo rom onto the unlocked ATT version of the 640, you will lose wifi calling.



There's bound to be more, but those are just the ones that I remember right off the bat.

Thing with all these "better" features is that very few if any are due to any inherent deficiency in WP 8.1, its just Microsoft's incompetence and laziness in actually making WP better.

But honestly its true to form for them, they tend not to fix issues in a current OS but rather defer to the next version and then everyone calls it better and bash the previous version.

Case in point, why did it take Nokia to release their Storage Check beta to allow storing maps on SD cards even though users had begged for it on Microsoft uservoice sites for such a long time and been ignored? That's not a failing of the OS but the company supposedly developing it. That's the whole crux of WP 8.1 vs W10M, one OS was ignored while the other is the golden child and getting all the attention.....

 

[Rubidad]

I do not run 10 on my lumia, but I do notice some common changes on my Windows 10 laptop. I, for one, do not care for the round images in Contacts, as I really enjoyed the flipping, and re-sizing of the tiles that are now used on my 8.1 Lumia 640. It seems an unnecessary change made for the sake of change.....or am I missing something with the circles???

 

[PChem]

Did you hard reset when you installed? I want to update my 640 but without a hard reset...

I did a hard reset. However, I don't think it was necessary, but I didn't have anything installed on it yet. You could always try without the reset.

 

[Matt Dargis]

10 still has great battery life on my 640xl. That's about the only thing I can say w10m does as good as 8.1. Wait, having maps and navigation in one spot is nice on w10m and w10m does look nicer than 8.1.

Thats honestly all I can thing of as I am going through my phone as I type.

 

[mariusmuntean]

Well, Win10 has many things improved, but if those things would work it would be ok. If the OS would not be in this despicable state

 

[ma678]

@wgs84, you will still have wifi calling after you update nvi on your At&t 640 with tmo ROM.

 

[Jeddic]

Other than overall design and usability, which I think has been improved in 10 from 8.1, the biggest positive change I can think of is multitasking. In the past apps had to load again when you switched between them, which meant "Resuming" or "Loading" screens. Now, for me at least, they pop right up and I'm going. This of course means a trade-off in battery life, especially if you leave several apps in the background.

 

[ScubaDog]

Contrary to those who like to grasp on to the "it's still in its early stages" excuse, the fact is MY complaints about W10M stem from the very DESIGN of it. It is nothing like WP8.1, by DESIGN. Some of the issues are subtle, some are dramatic. My wife and I STUPIDLY bought the LUMIA 950. I went back to my 1020. The camera on the 1020 is STILL the best one, with the exception of speed. I will choose quality over speed any day. I'm also a fan of judicious use of "white space", which Microsoft completely threw out the window in W10M. Example: The Start Screen now has all the tiles crammed together, where they had a nicer-to-look-at spacing on WP8.1. Pivots almost completely gone in W10M, as is the nicer look OF the pivot--Microsoft has really turned it into more of an Android clone. I hate the stupid hamburger menus. There was absolutely no reason they had to go that route with the design. Cortana doesn't work NEARLY as well on W10M as it does on WP8.1. Live tiles are much harder to read, no matter what you change your font and other settings to. The People life tile is especially horrible. There's no Me tile anymore, which was my central place for following the most important people to me AND my way to connect to social networks -- I tend to post to all my social networks simultaneously, which is easy w/the Me tile. Now that's gone. The Store looks and works MUCH better in WP8.1 than W10M. Bing Vision is GONE in W10M--I use this a LOT. I just generally despise the design of Universal apps altogether, compared to the unique and beautiful design of real Metro apps in WP8.1. Also, you cannot delete a number of Microsoft's apps. For example, I MUCH prefer HERE Maps and Drive+ compared to the horrible Microsoft Maps app. You can't uninstall their Maps app and you can't make HERE the default. And then there's Continuum. Most useless feature ever. First, Continuum only gives you the WinRT experience. And WHO has a spare monitor, keyboard and mouse just sitting around NOT connected to a computer already? I have a tablet -- an SP3 -- which is much more capable than the 950 and I need no extra accessories to use it. And even WP8.1 supports DLNA, so on the rare occasions I need to send pictures, etc. to a TV I can do that effortlessly. Oh, and the iris scanner on the 950 is a horrible joke. They should have gone with the fingerprint scanner instead. I gave up trying to get any sort of consistent--and quick--response from the stupid thing and turned it off. Also, I like having the Glance background on my 1020. You can't do that with the 950. I loved Zune. I tolerated Microsoft Music. I can't stand Groove. Basically, they are going backward with Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile. And don't get me started on Xbox One.

 

[ScubaDog]

I have the 950 and I see "resuming" and "loading" a LOT. More than I do on my 1020.

 

[jbestman]

I still get resuming and loading screens on my 950XL running WM10. So, I would not count that in the positive column since it is still an issue.
However, I do like that some core features have been baked in. You can now record calls at the push of a button.

 

[adurbe]

what was the battery life you were getting on 8.1 and what do you get on 10? Do you have battery burndown logs to show the difference?

 

[mariusmuntean]

I have the 950 and I see "resuming" and "loading" a LOT. More than I do on my 1020.

They need a reason for when they will kill the mobile platform, so, they push a horrible new OS, new devices with dozens of problems just for the users to drive off the platform. with no users left, there's no reason to keep a platform. I feel your pain in your wallet. I did the same mistake too, buying into MS's new 950, but managed to sell it while the price was still high. Lucky for me I managed to find another fool, like I was, to buy it.

 

[Sagar Limaye]

They need a reason for when they will kill the mobile platform, so, they push a horrible new OS, new devices with dozens of problems just for the users to drive off the platform. with no users left, there's no reason to keep a platform. I feel your pain in your wallet. I did the same mistake too, buying into MS's new 950, but managed to sell it while the price was still high. Lucky for me I managed to find another fool, like I was, to buy it.

Hmmmm...

 

[muvig]

Gestures not working, they have disabled or left out a lot of features that are on 8.1
And on Android there is this application which you can clearly select which application to use data or WiFi or both

 

[JohnStrk]

"What does it do better than WP8.1?"

Not a whole lot at this point. Lol. For me I really like the new Action Center, actionable notifications, and being able to add the flashlight in my Quick Actions. Most of the settings pages are better but still need improvement after a year of development! And Cortana worked much better for me in 8.1. I cannot stand using Cortana without a dark theme, and most features are buggy. Local location weather and news stories are always nowhere near my actual location or even timezone. And Cortana rarely shows me anything going on near me even though I have everything setup in Notebook. And basic MS core apps like Outlook & Calendar should be perfect by now but they are not. The Photos app could also use some major improvements.

W10M is running stable for me the past few months on my L830 but that's only because I did a fresh install of W10M. Hard reset on 8.1, then updated to W10M, another hard reset, then started fresh no restore backup. I've been able to update to the past few cumulative builds without an additional hard reset. Battery life on my L830 has been around the same as it was before on 8.1. But my 830 battery is now a year old so it could be better if it was brand new.