Post below if you think you've noticed any issues or Windows Phone 8.1 isn't behaving as it should. This thread is for the discussion of any software issues. We will endeavour to keep this OP updated and relevant.
Below is an overview of some of the terminology you may come across:
[NOTE]Soft Reset: By pressing down the Volume Down + Power buttons for 10-15 seconds (or until the device vibrates) you can perform a soft reset on your device. This is a little bit like a factory reset for your phone's OS only you get to keep all of your personal data. Think of it like restarting your PC. This is the first thing you should try if your device is behaving oddly.
Hard Reset: By going to settings>about>reset your phone you can completely wipe your phone of your personal data (ideal if you're going to send in your phone for repair or sell it). Your phone will turn off and you'll see spinning gears for a while (up to an hour or so) and when it's done you will see the same screens you saw when you first turned on your phone out of the box. You'll have to sign in with your Microsoft account again and start over.
How to make your Lumia's battery last longer: See the thread over at the Nokia Discussion Forum here.
How to reset your device's camera: Go to settings>applications>photos+camera>reset.[/NOTE]
Remember to keep your posts as descriptive as possible so that we can try to keep this thread relevant.
It’s safe to say this thread has come a long way with excellent contributions from so many members. Our team here at WPCentral has gone through each and every post – yes literally each and every post (1,119 at the time of writing this) – and read it, analysed it and tried to reproduce reported bugs. We’ve worked to see if we could get you some solutions and then we compiled the list below.
What we did notice is that many “bugs” were fixable by performing a hard reset on our handsets and these bugs did not reappear. We strongly recommend that if you have some faults listed below, you hard reset your device. The reason you may not have required a hard reset when you last downloaded the developer preview for GDR 3 and might need one now is because with 8.1 Microsoft has fundamentally changed the OS in big ways. For example, baked-in features like Xbox Music, Facebook chat etc., have not been changed to standalone apps that will benefit from more frequent updates. Such big changes may lead to glitches on your device.
We also realised there were certain things we just could not fix with a hard reset but with careful observation we believe they will only be fixed if we get appropriate OEM (Nokia, HTC et al) firmware updates. These updates generally update drivers for screens, hardware, processors, battery etc. As you can appreciate, they are necessary to be updated and tweaked with such a big OS overhaul. But with developer previews these firmware updates are not bundled. They will come after phones start getting the OTA finalised release of WP8.1, which you should expect this summer. For these kinds of updates you can only play the waiting game because Microsoft expects you to have read T&C’s and declarations when you accept the developer preview program on your phone. The good news is you should only have to wait 2-3 months for these updates.
We still had more bugs to deal with and these aren’t fixable. They are at times reproducible, though. We need YOU, our community, to tell us if they are real. If we focus on these bugs in this thread and not create anymore threads, let’s see if you guys can recreate these bugs on your phone after you’ve performed a hard reset. If, after this point, they still persist we will be happy to dig around for you. Hopefully this list will serve as a guide list for everyone who may or may not have issues with this preview build of WP8.1.
[info]Bugs with suggested solutions:
Bug: Screen does not wake up after hitting power button.
Solution: With Wi-Fi off this doesn't happen on ICON // Remove Photostream app (if installed) // Soft reset your phone
Bug: Store icon buggy - updates vanish if not attended to.
Solution: Force update works.
Bug: No comma button in keyboard.
Solution: Settings > Keyboard > Advanced > Tick first box on top.
Bug: Alarms don't work.
Solution: Remove WP8 alarms, set new ones.
Bug: Apps stored on SD card are laggy.
Solution: Use class 6 or class 10 SD card.
Bug: I’ve done the first update but I can’t get the second update to get WP 8.1 on my phone.
Solution: If your update seems broken like here: http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...-preview-developers/windows-...ml#post2459225 try downloading a keyboard that says download x MB I chose Korean, it fixed my phone.
Bug: Cortana isn’t working in my region.
Solution: Change your region, language and keyboard settings to US.
Bug: There are no background tasks settings anymore.
Solution: These have moved to the Battery Saver app now.
Bug: I have changed my region settings but can’t download apps I know I’ve paid for.
Solution: Change your region back to the region you paid for an app. E.g. if you were normally set to UK when you bought your apps, change back to that and you’ll be able to download the app again.
Bug: There is no data quick action in the Action Centre.
Solution: This is not a bug. It’s a choice that Microsoft have made not to include this at this time.
Bug: HTML 5 YouTube player stays open when navigating to another page. This causes the phone to heat up.
Solution: Go to the tabs view (or multitasking screen) and make sure the HTML 5 player is closed when you are finished with it.
Bug: Sometimes I unlock the phone and the lock screen doesn’t really unlock the phone, any further interaction with the screen brings the lock screen back down.
Solution: Lock and unlock the screen again.
Bug: I can’t connect to pptp VPN Service.
Solution: This is not a bug. Only certain VPN technologies / types are supported currently.
Bug: Cannot setup or receive emails // Wi-Fi or data doesn’t appear to work.
Solution: Make sure you’re not in VPN mode.
Bug: Whenever I ask Cortana for my weather, the temperature is displayed in Fahrenheit. I ask her to change to Celsius but next time I ask it’s all displayed in Fahrenheit again.
Solution: You’ve changed the settings on your phone to say you’re in the US explicitly. In the US they use Fahrenheit by default. Wait until Cortana is available natively in your region and this will not be a problem.
Bug: When I back out of an app, and check the multitasking list the app is still open.
Solution: MS have changed the behaviour of the back button in WP 8.1. This is normal.
Bug: Going to Settings> Find My Phone will not launch, just refresh the settings list
Solution: This is a bug related to the time and date settings. Check your data and time settings – let us know if an alternative fix worked for you.
Bug: Your HTC phone keeps rebooting itself.
Solution: Turn Wi-Fi off. It seems a current bug involves secured Wi-Fi networks. Open network connections are fine.
Bug: You have headphones plugged in but can't hear notifications while listening to music.
Solution: Unplug headphones and turn your notification volume up, when you plug your headphones back in you will be able to hear notifications again.
Bug: IE11 doesn't load certain pages but everything else that requires internet, works fine!
Solution: Go to settings > access point > add new profile > copy everything from your existing profile but leave proxy and port "fields" empty > save and set as active profile.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring you to soft reset your phone to fix them:
Bug: Starting the camera, or taking a picture will result in a green screen or washed out picture.
Bug: Volume bar issues, missing or not working properly.
Bug: I have to enter my pin twice when I turn my phone on (If this doesn’t fix the issue, try a hard reset).
Bug: My live tiles aren’t updating.
Bug: The top few pixels of the start screen above the time show a section of my live tiles.
Bug: Start screen background on tiles (parallax image) displays incorrectly.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring you wait for app updates as they are not bugs but older version of apps causing issues:
Bug: Whatsapp photos are not stored in Whatsapp folder.
Bug: Facebook chat is buggy.
Bug: Facebook app tile doesn't push notifications.
Bug: Glance screen doesn't show notifications.
Bug: My mobile data is patchy.
Bug: Games hub no achievements.
Bug: Games hub crashes or continually tries to update.
Bug: Notifications don't clear in notification centre for app XYZ.
Bug: Notifications for XYZ third party apps aren’t shown.
Bug: Xbox music album art work is blurry and metadata issues
Bug: Various issues with new Podcasts app, crashing and only hearing audio from one channel as well as not being able to download a podcast.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring Firmware update or OEM system app update - nothing will fix them. Only OEMs can and will in 2-3 months:
Bug: Cortana frequently loses internet connectivity.
Bug: Mobile data isn't stable.
Bug: Increased battery drain.
Bug: Unresponsive power button.
Bug: Ativ S Camera flash lag and camera sometimes only a black screen.
Bug: Ativ S Windows key doesn't always respond.
Bug: Soft buttons stops vibrating Lumia 620.
Bug: No notification sound when listening music via headphones.
Bug: Wi-Fi with proxy doesn't connect.
Bug: Playing music via Bluetooth doesn't show play position, always 0:00.
Bug: Phone heats up.
Bug: Certain apps requiring mobile data won't work intermittently.
Bug: Colours look washed out on screen.
Bug: Operator settings like voicemail don't work.
Bug: Hard resetting can result in lost data settings.
Bug: HTC Phones can’t enable Cortana – not even a hard reset will allow access to regional settings to change these to US.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs we recommend you hard reset your phone with:
Hard reset is the only solution that will work.
Bug: Certain options in settings (e.g. battery saver) don't work.
Bug: OS lag.
Bug: Live tiles stop updating.
Bug: No sound on speaker phone during call.
Bug: Lock and unlock sound doesn't work.
Bug: Cant access the advanced settings in IE, it crashes.
Bug: Can't take screenshots - unable to take screenshot.
Bug: Can't install some apps since a few days now.
Bug: Cortana doesn't work on loudspeaker, need headphones.
Bug: Can't hear songs on loudspeaker, near headphones.
Bug: Unresponsive screen.
Bug: Calendar on lock screen doesn't update.
Bug: Already working apps from WP8 don't even open anymore.
Bug: Apps are force closing.
Bug: Search via Cortana doesn't work.
Bug: Tiles are blinking instead of flipping.
Bug: Microphone doesn’t work.
Bug: Calendar app not appearing.
Bug: Camera app hangs when taking a photo.
[/info]
[WARN]Bugs 8.1 has introduced and have no solution as of now. These we think are genuine more than others listed above:
Bug: Phone resets notification alert tone.
Bug: Xbox Hub doesn't load installed games.
Bug: Cannot delete images from favourite folder – photo hub.
Bug: Searching for music in the Bing app (non US) and tapping on what it found opens the Music app and then an empty black screen.
Bug: Accessing notification centre from lock screen - screen doesn't turn off automatically.
Bug: Changing battery saver status, turns location on automatically.
Bug: Contact photo resolution is very low.
Bug: Navigating through native videos, causes loud noise from speaker.
Bug: Icons on the live tile disappear and then appear after few seconds.
Bug: Playing HD videos show lag.
Bug: Problem syncing email accounts and contacts.
Bug: When phone is charging it doesn't show at times as "charging".
Bug: Rotation lock doesn't work at times.
Bug: Cortana doesn't call out my name audibly when I launch her.
Bug: Edited photos are not stored by date.
Bug: Desktop mode in IE11 doesn't always work.
Bug: Bing lock screen image *still* doesn't update daily.
Bug: Cannot access photos that were already on SD card before update.
Bug: Roaming triangle in status bar even if I am not roaming.
Bug: Battery % doesn't match with battery icon - a graphic glitch?
Bug: Any method of re-opening a toast for a text conversation you have had replicates that conversation window in the multitasking menu.
Bug: Moving any data from phone to SD Card will result in the data’s size on disk increasing.
Bug: Project my screen not working.
Bug: Phone shows the last time charged was within the hour all the time.
Bug: After doing a hard reset on the phone, cannot gain access to the camera or open a camera app.
[/WARN]
We'd also recommend you try to help with the bugs you're experiencing more, by installing this diagnostics app from Microsoft: http://www.windowscentral.com/help-make-windows-phone-better-official-diagnostics-app
Below is an overview of some of the terminology you may come across:
[NOTE]Soft Reset: By pressing down the Volume Down + Power buttons for 10-15 seconds (or until the device vibrates) you can perform a soft reset on your device. This is a little bit like a factory reset for your phone's OS only you get to keep all of your personal data. Think of it like restarting your PC. This is the first thing you should try if your device is behaving oddly.
Hard Reset: By going to settings>about>reset your phone you can completely wipe your phone of your personal data (ideal if you're going to send in your phone for repair or sell it). Your phone will turn off and you'll see spinning gears for a while (up to an hour or so) and when it's done you will see the same screens you saw when you first turned on your phone out of the box. You'll have to sign in with your Microsoft account again and start over.
How to make your Lumia's battery last longer: See the thread over at the Nokia Discussion Forum here.
How to reset your device's camera: Go to settings>applications>photos+camera>reset.[/NOTE]
Remember to keep your posts as descriptive as possible so that we can try to keep this thread relevant.
It’s safe to say this thread has come a long way with excellent contributions from so many members. Our team here at WPCentral has gone through each and every post – yes literally each and every post (1,119 at the time of writing this) – and read it, analysed it and tried to reproduce reported bugs. We’ve worked to see if we could get you some solutions and then we compiled the list below.
What we did notice is that many “bugs” were fixable by performing a hard reset on our handsets and these bugs did not reappear. We strongly recommend that if you have some faults listed below, you hard reset your device. The reason you may not have required a hard reset when you last downloaded the developer preview for GDR 3 and might need one now is because with 8.1 Microsoft has fundamentally changed the OS in big ways. For example, baked-in features like Xbox Music, Facebook chat etc., have not been changed to standalone apps that will benefit from more frequent updates. Such big changes may lead to glitches on your device.
We also realised there were certain things we just could not fix with a hard reset but with careful observation we believe they will only be fixed if we get appropriate OEM (Nokia, HTC et al) firmware updates. These updates generally update drivers for screens, hardware, processors, battery etc. As you can appreciate, they are necessary to be updated and tweaked with such a big OS overhaul. But with developer previews these firmware updates are not bundled. They will come after phones start getting the OTA finalised release of WP8.1, which you should expect this summer. For these kinds of updates you can only play the waiting game because Microsoft expects you to have read T&C’s and declarations when you accept the developer preview program on your phone. The good news is you should only have to wait 2-3 months for these updates.
We still had more bugs to deal with and these aren’t fixable. They are at times reproducible, though. We need YOU, our community, to tell us if they are real. If we focus on these bugs in this thread and not create anymore threads, let’s see if you guys can recreate these bugs on your phone after you’ve performed a hard reset. If, after this point, they still persist we will be happy to dig around for you. Hopefully this list will serve as a guide list for everyone who may or may not have issues with this preview build of WP8.1.
[info]Bugs with suggested solutions:
Bug: Screen does not wake up after hitting power button.
Solution: With Wi-Fi off this doesn't happen on ICON // Remove Photostream app (if installed) // Soft reset your phone
Bug: Store icon buggy - updates vanish if not attended to.
Solution: Force update works.
Bug: No comma button in keyboard.
Solution: Settings > Keyboard > Advanced > Tick first box on top.
Bug: Alarms don't work.
Solution: Remove WP8 alarms, set new ones.
Bug: Apps stored on SD card are laggy.
Solution: Use class 6 or class 10 SD card.
Bug: I’ve done the first update but I can’t get the second update to get WP 8.1 on my phone.
Solution: If your update seems broken like here: http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...-preview-developers/windows-...ml#post2459225 try downloading a keyboard that says download x MB I chose Korean, it fixed my phone.
Bug: Cortana isn’t working in my region.
Solution: Change your region, language and keyboard settings to US.
Bug: There are no background tasks settings anymore.
Solution: These have moved to the Battery Saver app now.
Bug: I have changed my region settings but can’t download apps I know I’ve paid for.
Solution: Change your region back to the region you paid for an app. E.g. if you were normally set to UK when you bought your apps, change back to that and you’ll be able to download the app again.
Bug: There is no data quick action in the Action Centre.
Solution: This is not a bug. It’s a choice that Microsoft have made not to include this at this time.
Bug: HTML 5 YouTube player stays open when navigating to another page. This causes the phone to heat up.
Solution: Go to the tabs view (or multitasking screen) and make sure the HTML 5 player is closed when you are finished with it.
Bug: Sometimes I unlock the phone and the lock screen doesn’t really unlock the phone, any further interaction with the screen brings the lock screen back down.
Solution: Lock and unlock the screen again.
Bug: I can’t connect to pptp VPN Service.
Solution: This is not a bug. Only certain VPN technologies / types are supported currently.
Bug: Cannot setup or receive emails // Wi-Fi or data doesn’t appear to work.
Solution: Make sure you’re not in VPN mode.
Bug: Whenever I ask Cortana for my weather, the temperature is displayed in Fahrenheit. I ask her to change to Celsius but next time I ask it’s all displayed in Fahrenheit again.
Solution: You’ve changed the settings on your phone to say you’re in the US explicitly. In the US they use Fahrenheit by default. Wait until Cortana is available natively in your region and this will not be a problem.
Bug: When I back out of an app, and check the multitasking list the app is still open.
Solution: MS have changed the behaviour of the back button in WP 8.1. This is normal.
Bug: Going to Settings> Find My Phone will not launch, just refresh the settings list
Solution: This is a bug related to the time and date settings. Check your data and time settings – let us know if an alternative fix worked for you.
Bug: Your HTC phone keeps rebooting itself.
Solution: Turn Wi-Fi off. It seems a current bug involves secured Wi-Fi networks. Open network connections are fine.
Bug: You have headphones plugged in but can't hear notifications while listening to music.
Solution: Unplug headphones and turn your notification volume up, when you plug your headphones back in you will be able to hear notifications again.
Bug: IE11 doesn't load certain pages but everything else that requires internet, works fine!
Solution: Go to settings > access point > add new profile > copy everything from your existing profile but leave proxy and port "fields" empty > save and set as active profile.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring you to soft reset your phone to fix them:
Bug: Starting the camera, or taking a picture will result in a green screen or washed out picture.
Bug: Volume bar issues, missing or not working properly.
Bug: I have to enter my pin twice when I turn my phone on (If this doesn’t fix the issue, try a hard reset).
Bug: My live tiles aren’t updating.
Bug: The top few pixels of the start screen above the time show a section of my live tiles.
Bug: Start screen background on tiles (parallax image) displays incorrectly.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring you wait for app updates as they are not bugs but older version of apps causing issues:
Bug: Whatsapp photos are not stored in Whatsapp folder.
Bug: Facebook chat is buggy.
Bug: Facebook app tile doesn't push notifications.
Bug: Glance screen doesn't show notifications.
Bug: My mobile data is patchy.
Bug: Games hub no achievements.
Bug: Games hub crashes or continually tries to update.
Bug: Notifications don't clear in notification centre for app XYZ.
Bug: Notifications for XYZ third party apps aren’t shown.
Bug: Xbox music album art work is blurry and metadata issues
Bug: Various issues with new Podcasts app, crashing and only hearing audio from one channel as well as not being able to download a podcast.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs requiring Firmware update or OEM system app update - nothing will fix them. Only OEMs can and will in 2-3 months:
Bug: Cortana frequently loses internet connectivity.
Bug: Mobile data isn't stable.
Bug: Increased battery drain.
Bug: Unresponsive power button.
Bug: Ativ S Camera flash lag and camera sometimes only a black screen.
Bug: Ativ S Windows key doesn't always respond.
Bug: Soft buttons stops vibrating Lumia 620.
Bug: No notification sound when listening music via headphones.
Bug: Wi-Fi with proxy doesn't connect.
Bug: Playing music via Bluetooth doesn't show play position, always 0:00.
Bug: Phone heats up.
Bug: Certain apps requiring mobile data won't work intermittently.
Bug: Colours look washed out on screen.
Bug: Operator settings like voicemail don't work.
Bug: Hard resetting can result in lost data settings.
Bug: HTC Phones can’t enable Cortana – not even a hard reset will allow access to regional settings to change these to US.
[/info]
[info]
Bugs we recommend you hard reset your phone with:
Hard reset is the only solution that will work.
Bug: Certain options in settings (e.g. battery saver) don't work.
Bug: OS lag.
Bug: Live tiles stop updating.
Bug: No sound on speaker phone during call.
Bug: Lock and unlock sound doesn't work.
Bug: Cant access the advanced settings in IE, it crashes.
Bug: Can't take screenshots - unable to take screenshot.
Bug: Can't install some apps since a few days now.
Bug: Cortana doesn't work on loudspeaker, need headphones.
Bug: Can't hear songs on loudspeaker, near headphones.
Bug: Unresponsive screen.
Bug: Calendar on lock screen doesn't update.
Bug: Already working apps from WP8 don't even open anymore.
Bug: Apps are force closing.
Bug: Search via Cortana doesn't work.
Bug: Tiles are blinking instead of flipping.
Bug: Microphone doesn’t work.
Bug: Calendar app not appearing.
Bug: Camera app hangs when taking a photo.
[/info]
[WARN]Bugs 8.1 has introduced and have no solution as of now. These we think are genuine more than others listed above:
Bug: Phone resets notification alert tone.
Bug: Xbox Hub doesn't load installed games.
Bug: Cannot delete images from favourite folder – photo hub.
Bug: Searching for music in the Bing app (non US) and tapping on what it found opens the Music app and then an empty black screen.
Bug: Accessing notification centre from lock screen - screen doesn't turn off automatically.
Bug: Changing battery saver status, turns location on automatically.
Bug: Contact photo resolution is very low.
Bug: Navigating through native videos, causes loud noise from speaker.
Bug: Icons on the live tile disappear and then appear after few seconds.
Bug: Playing HD videos show lag.
Bug: Problem syncing email accounts and contacts.
Bug: When phone is charging it doesn't show at times as "charging".
Bug: Rotation lock doesn't work at times.
Bug: Cortana doesn't call out my name audibly when I launch her.
Bug: Edited photos are not stored by date.
Bug: Desktop mode in IE11 doesn't always work.
Bug: Bing lock screen image *still* doesn't update daily.
Bug: Cannot access photos that were already on SD card before update.
Bug: Roaming triangle in status bar even if I am not roaming.
Bug: Battery % doesn't match with battery icon - a graphic glitch?
Bug: Any method of re-opening a toast for a text conversation you have had replicates that conversation window in the multitasking menu.
Bug: Moving any data from phone to SD Card will result in the data’s size on disk increasing.
Bug: Project my screen not working.
Bug: Phone shows the last time charged was within the hour all the time.
Bug: After doing a hard reset on the phone, cannot gain access to the camera or open a camera app.
[/WARN]
We'd also recommend you try to help with the bugs you're experiencing more, by installing this diagnostics app from Microsoft: http://www.windowscentral.com/help-make-windows-phone-better-official-diagnostics-app
Last edited:
reset camera won't fix it
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