Initial thoughts on Windows Phone 8.1?

[vikrant6]

Awesome, Loving it!!!

 

[m3kk]

Awesome, Loving it!!!

I agree with this post

 

[katlo]

I hate the new photo gallery and music app - they should return the old ones.
I miss the agenda view from the calendar.
They should separate reminders and quiet hours from Cortana.
They should upgrade emojis even more.
And video streaming/playing has a bug, there's a sound when I skip/forward.

 

[raptr569]

I can't specify exactly what I feel, for some parts I'm impressed and excited and for others disappointed and frustrated by a lack of completion. I think the major functionality changes for me have left me feeling divided on some of the choices.

General use
What I like - My God the UI is snappy and fast and I mean more so than it was before. The transitions have been improved to create an even more slick environment. This even seems to have introduced gapless play back on Spotify, which is pretty great. Even the boot time is faster.
What I don't like - I can only assume this is due to a lack of spit and polish by some HTC firmware but my 8X battery is worse than ever since updating, and it wasn't all that before hand.

Notification centre
What I like - Although the live tiles are great for a quick peak the additional context to alerts in the notifications is fantastic. The quick actions are a fantastic addition and allow me to remove a bunch of apps I used for similar functions.
What I don't like - There are a number of quick actions missing e.g flash light, data and only have 4 is not enough, this should be set to 5 regardless of screen size. Also the kind of quick actions only version is tricky to pull out and in my opinion ultimately pointless because it's frustrating to get to.

Me tile/people
What I like - Microsoft finally admitted the Facebook integration was not up to snuff and tied it into a separate app so we now get pictures.
What I don't like - Where's Twitter? I assume we need a new Twitter app for the integration. Commenting on statuses now takes a lot longer as you now have to wait for the app to boot.

VPN
What I like - VPN functionality
What I don't - No PPTP, no L2TP/IPSec. So for me the function is useless.

Live tiles
What I like - I love the new live tiles with a photo, it's a shame there aren't more tiles that support it. Microsoft have also finally removed that random bit of unused space at the top of screen which has always annoyed me.
What I don't like - What's happened tot he Games live tile with my Avatar? I miss that guy.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

The Music app is getting an update/overhaul. How do I know?
1 The WP8 Xbox Music and Xbox Videos app had a classic UI. The Videos app and (basically everything) got an update but the music app.
2 secondly, look at the Xbox Music app as seen here;
Windows Phone 8.1 and Cortana | Windows Phone (United States)
It resembles the current video and games app but not the Music app.

Finally, Joe Belfiore said so on twitter, along with Facebook, Skype and Twitter getting updates for 8.1. I think that should have been the first one though.

 

[Saksham Sharma]

The Music app is getting an update/overhaul. How do I know?
1 The WP8 Xbox Music and Xbox Videos app had a classic UI. The Videos app and (basically everything) got an update but the music app.
2 secondly, look at the Xbox Music app as seen here;
Windows Phone 8.1 and Cortana | Windows Phone (United States)
It resembles the current video and games app but not the Music app.

Finally, Joe Belfiore said so on twitter, along with Facebook, Skype and Twitter getting updates for 8.1. I think that should have been the first one though.

it better get updated with all the basic stuff, especially cache of song lists and data (to prevent the myriad 'loading...' in place of artist names etc), and with bigger playback buttons, and faster resuming, live tiles showing artist images, editable artist images (let it be via mpatool as before) and new and recent songs areas. Wow that's a huge step backward from ms !

 

[Ebuka Allison]

it better get updated with all the basic stuff, especially cache of song lists and data (to prevent the myriad 'loading...' in place of artist names etc), and with bigger playback buttons, and faster resuming, live tiles showing artist images, editable artist images (let it be via mpatool as before) and new and recent songs areas. Wow that's a huge step backward from ms !

If it doesn't....I'll throw something.

 

[Kins69]

So far I am quite happy with the update, although running on my "old" 920 that never had great battery life.

I love the "Quiet Hours" feature, which I think was really missing before. Isn't there though an easier way to access it? No pinning on home screen for example?

 

[lexus232]

I love new features, but now sometimes screen feels kind of clogged with icons and signs. Also I like animations from WP8 much more compared to 8.1, they just felt more elegant and stylish. So in the end my complaints boil down to the changes in UI, I think it could have been implemented in a better way, for a start they just could have left old animations.
Oh almost forgot! OS doesn't seems as snappy now as is it used to be on my Lumia 925. I see stutters quite often. Hope it's going to be fixed in the final 8.1 update from Nokia.

 

[lajuane]

I just add the quiet hours icon to the action center for quick access. Is it possible to have quiet hours on and still have the alarms work? Haven't seen that option yet. Maybe I missed it.

 

[cuwe]

My contacts is a mess ! And I can't enter is my email and account setting !

 

[nemesm]

Overall, I love the update, it definitely feels more mature. The new swype keyboard is jaw-droppingly fantastic, IE's gained funcionality is good, notification centre is awesome.

A couple of problems, big and small I hope will be ironed out:
- Windows Phones are still behind when it comes to playing music, which is strange. The new Xbox Music app STILL doesn't read metadata correctly, when I try to browse the artists, a couple of them are there, most are under unkown artist. I downloaded a simple third party music player and everything's fine there. I don't get it.
- I'm a fan of the new calendar app, looks sleek and polished, but why, oh why have it display only one line of agenda when you pin it to the home screen? Defeats the whole purpose of having it there for quick access.
- It's not really ideal that Cortana needs location turned on to work. It's a major issue noew, that everyone is experiencing battery drain.
- Oh, and the battery drain. I can definitely feel it, but it took me a while to realise a lot of apps started running in the background automatically and I needed to kill them, so I don't know how it's going to be later.

Would you recommend a hard reset now after the install process? I remember when I first got the phone and updated it a couple of times, I was experiencing all kinds of strange bugs but a hard reset put everything in its place so maybe I should go for it.

 

[Kins69]

I just add the quiet hours icon to the action center for quick access. Is it possible to have quiet hours on and still have the alarms work? Haven't seen that option yet. Maybe I missed it.

Oh right, quick access, I didn't notice it was possible!

My alarms went all OK this morning while my phone was in quiet hours mode

 

[colinkiama]

I love the file picker. I used it to upload my picture using the wpcentral website.

 

[dov1978]

So many important features added that you take for granted on IOS or Android. Action Centre, Quiet Hours, Customisable tones and notifications for EVERY app, automatic download of full email with pictures, 3rd row off apps, Cortana. All huge things for me and has stopped me going back to iPhone again for now. I actually love my 1020 but the biggest drawback for me still is apps. Sure most of the biggies are there but even then Facebook etc isn't a patch on IOS or Android versions. If they brought these in line with the big 2 then it would be perfect IMO.

 

[denispage]

Overall it's an awesome update.
Photo hub and music app are terrible!
Lag every time. I hope they fix those 'apps' quickly.

 

[jlanzac]

Is there any way to remove games from the app list?

 

[redbackground]

Nope. It's a terrible decision I hope gets overturned.

 

[hlm818]

It's almost as good as I expected it to be but some of the changes and design decisions made in 8.1 are seriously bugging me and actually detracting from all the positives.

Games now show in the app list
Who thought this was a good idea? This is so dumb and backwards thinking I can't believe this would be intentional.

System tray icons don't auto-hide
Should be an option. Again we're going backwards.

New Photo Hub
Big visual downgrade here. No easy access to 3rd party editing apps.

Music hub
No comment.

Removed Facebook and Twitter functions in Me and People hubs
It's just never good to remove features.


Then there's things that were removed/screwed with for no good reason:

No more carousel effect when pinching out in gallery
A great feature that made browsing through the gallery smooth and easy. Gone.

Everything else seems great and promising (Action Center, Cortana, keyboard shape writing, background tile customization, new Store features, apps on the sd card, new options in settings). It's the stuff that was changed or removed that has me feeling disheartened and disappointed. Hopefully most of these issues will get fixed/polished in time but right now I'm missing a lot of the nice little touches and the overall WP feeling that I liked in 8.0.

Absolutely hate the Facebook deintegration. Want to comment on something on your feed for Facebook? Have to open the app. Why even show the [+]? Want to comment on something that you posted in your Me Hub? Have to open the App. Want to post an update to Facebook? Have to open the app. Want to upload a picture to Facebook? Have to open the app. Everything that was streamlined requires an extra step in regards to Facebook. I understood the changes coming to the messenger to match the changes to other platforms, but this is pushing it. Also no longer able to post updates to all accounts at once or Share pictures to other apps (6tag for instance, you have to open the app to do that). Some nice tweaks here and there but some pointless changes.

I agree with all of this. I dislike how the photos are organized now. I WANT albums. I don't like to look at a bunch of jumbled mess (ie, the recent photos listed by date, ALL podcasts in my subscribed podcast instead of just downloaded ones. Yes I know I can view just those, but it doesn't default to that or remember my choice to do that, and all of my games listed in my app list now too.) I also cannot understand why Facebook was not left integrated. Why would they take it out of my messenger hub? That was the best feature. And what in the heck is the point of the Me tile now that FB notifications don't pop up there or a quick view of my newsfeed. Now, just like iOS I have to go into an app to do anything (Facebook). so very annoying

 

[ahmad1020soc]

Facebook integration removed from WP8.1?