Mango is great but one thing still annoys me!!

[worbyc]

All the new features in mango are great and the OS has matched both android and iPhone and in some ways it has surpassed them. But what annoys me is the lack of customization available to us.

I wish more themes were available to us (a colour wheel) and wouldn't it be nice to be able to change the background on the homescreen/apps so we didnt just have to have black or white.

Your thoughts please

 

[Pronk]

I'd say yes and no. I'd like a few more tile colours, and the ability to pick different colours for different tiles too, but I can also see why MS are sticking to their guns as the metro look is what makes WP7 stand out.

Whether more customisation creeps in to keep things fresh when metro is in a lot more places (Windows 8, xbox dashboard) will be interesting. That mock-up of semi-transparent tiles and wallpaper of choice that was knocking around a while back looked excellent.

 

[kyle5000]

not being able to change the color of individual tiles really bugs me. i have a lot of the default wp7 tiles (phone, ie, messaging, email) bunched together at the top and hate that they all look the same. also wish we could change the artist picture that shows up on the zune tile/lock screen. some of the artist pictures look terrible when pinned to the start screen or on the zune tile.

 

[worbyc]

Id just prefer it if we could have more background colours, except black and white

 

[astroXP]

I love Metro but sticking to plain and bothersome UI (black or white) is just "old school" IMO and it is a factor for some people not to choose WP7 because they're used to a glossy and shinny UI. I mean, sometimes I feel like I'm living in the DOS era again! Metro can be very customizable and yet retain its true nature - take a look a Beezz (Twitter app), that app is just beautiful!

 

[SmokeyBacon]

I am in complete agreement. I could even live with the black or white background if I could just at least change the tile colors so they aren't all the same. I have to say that it doesn't look Metro to me with them all the - it just looks lazy. It would be more attractive to many people if they could be different colors (even if they only allow the colors they have now if they could be different) and ti would make it faster to find things too. More colors would be great but at least the ability to use the existing ones and make tiles different colors of those.

 

[Jazmac]

I don't care about customization myself especially coming off android. I find it an unnecessary time waster and throw back to playing with toys. The fact is, I don't want a "desktop" experience on my phone. I want a smart phone experience with my phone.

I want information. I want answers. I want glanceable information. I want to drive the agenda in my day and not depend on my phone UNTIL I need answers and information and I want it fast and at a glance. This is what attracted me to Windows Phone.

Their focus is to push the information up front and leave the cutesy bs in the background. I expect we'll get more control in Tango but like I always said about WP7, get it as "right" as you can the first time. If its not ready, don't push it out. If I wanted that unfinished philosophy on my phone, I could have stuck with android. I hated even writing that last line. uggh.

 

[jasqid]

I do miss having the ability to setup notification sounds per contact. My Pre was awesome at this. Had a ringer and txt alert for the wife, different ones for my buddies, folks... etc. At least I knew whom it was from when it was across the desk or in my pocket by hearing it.

No I have the same alert for all txts and emails. WOuld like to change that up a bit.

James Harris made a great app for the Palm Catalog that tied in the Amazon Music catalog as ringtones and alerts. Would ove to see a dev make such an app for WP.

 

[cdook]

I had a BlackBerry for a while and I don't miss the customization. Many themes were ugly and broken in some way. The cool ones were just ripoffs of the iPhone or Android OS. In the end I found the best looking and fastest theme was the default one. I'm really happy having the choice of a color and having every part of the OS use that color. It's neat how uniformly feeling the OS is. With the BlackBerry, skins on the OS most things looked good, but you end up with bits that can't be skinned and use their default icons which ruins the unified feel.

 

[astroXP]

I want glanceable information. I want to drive the agenda in my day and not depend on my phone UNTIL I need answers and information and I want it fast and at a glance. This is what attracted me to Windows Phone.

Allowing customization to Windows Phone doesn't mean the Metro UI will go away (live tiles)

 

[worbyc]

The current look on windows phone is very fresh and attractive to look at, I enjoy the simplicity of it.

What it lacks is the ability to change the colour of individual tiles. It would make it even more attractive to look at and make tiles distinguishable. Sometimes on the homescreen it can just be a blur of a particular colour.

 

[dakranii]

I keep thinking about customization of the home screen, changing the tiles colors, adding a background picture, and it just reminds me of what MySpace turned into. People could customize their own pages with background pics, etc, and they were UGLY.

 

[astroXP]

I keep thinking about customization of the home screen, changing the tiles colors, adding a background picture, and it just reminds me of what MySpace turned into. People could customize their own pages with background pics, etc, and they were UGLY.

The only difference here is Myspace is a social network which anyone could take a look at and anyone could customize, and Windows Phone is .. well, a phone. I doubt you'd put ugly pictures on YOUR phone as backgrounds, would you? I'm sure you'd put YOUR pictures that YOU like, am I wrong?

The current look on windows phone is very fresh and attractive to look at, I enjoy the simplicity of it.

What it lacks is the ability to change the colour of individual tiles. It would make it even more attractive to look at and make tiles distinguishable. Sometimes on the homescreen it can just be a blur of a particular colour.

Then you're not really enjoying the simplicity of Windows Phone if it bothers you having a same color on the homescreen!

 

[Clow]

U check out android..its plenty ugly

Sent from my mwp6985 using Board Express

 

[cckgz4]

I'm not as bothered as I thought I would be. And as much of a ringtone user I am, I don't even care to use the features

 

[Judge_Daniel]

Every time I play around on my sister's Trophy, I get aggravated that a lot of her tiles are magenta, but then there are tiles like the XBox Live tile that just don't match at all. I'd like them all to either be the same color, or not even close. When I get my phone, I will probably end up not pinning any tiles that don't follow my theme choice.

 

[Sparxy19]

More theme colors would be great but i dont think we need to be able to change the color of individual tiles because i beleive that this would take away from the uniform and professional look that WP has acheived.

 

[jkercado]

I'd like the color wheel option. That would be sweet. Other than that, I love the black background concept. KISS method!

 

[bruceatk2]

Customization is a good thing and one aspect of customization that people forget about is that you don't have to do it. Everyone is different, but people like to quickly find what they need. For some people that requires making the tiles more distinctive. I know that I have found all the pictures of the same colored tiles a turn off from even being interested in Windows Phone. Since I got mine last week I have made the tiles look much better by putting the ones I'm interested at the top and they are mostly different colors.

I would like the option to change the background. I would like the option to change the tile color to help me distinguish between similar tiles. I would also like the option to make the tiles smaller so that I could fit 3 across and more on the screen at once. These kinds of things need to be options because not everyone wants the same thing.

The OP stated that Windows Phone has matched Android and IOS and that statement isn't true. There are many things that they can do that Windows Phone can't. The most amazing to me is that Windows Phone doesn't support standard Exchange Policies, so if your company requires certain common policies you can not use Windows Phone. My company is that way. Both IOS and Android support these Microsoft Exchange policies, while Windows Phone does not.

Calendar functionality is extremely limited on Windows Phone also.

All of the above are my biggest annoyances.

 

[jdd77]

I totally agree with you..most of the tile colors are hard to look at. C'mon, magneta? teal? lime? verizon red and um..red? bright orange? pink, and for God's sake purple?? What is this phone made for, little girls? What about neutral colors that are easy on the eyes? Like grey or black or white? Or what about being able to customize colors? That won't change anything about the phone or the metro UI. It would just be a little more user friendly..