My personal take 8.1 (Not for the fanboys)

[DaT Franchise]

Alright lets see here its a mixed bag of good bad and absolutely awful. Phone 1520, AT&T, north Florida.

Good.
Notification center, and thank you MS for the option to disable text banner, now it wont show a text message on the top of my phone and wake it up!!!!! Excellent TY.
Start screen background, absolutely love it.
Data sense, battery sense and WiFi sense, thank you thank you!!!
Separate volume controls!!!
Apps to SD!!!
Battery life, undetermined yet but so far looks good
Very smooth and fast

Bad
Really wtf did you do to the beautiful picture hub??!?!?! Looks like a** and totally crap to find pictures
Xbox music,are you on a mission to see just how crappy you can make an app?? But I must thank you for making the fm radio separate now I can unpin that crap called Xbox music. And you think people are gonna pay 10 bucks a month for it. Thank god for Nokia mix!!!!
Cortana over hype underperforming. (I have done a hard reset and checked all settings many a time yet she still cant call me by name, interact, tell me my location, where I work, witty yes she will respond with her response we have all heard. She's good at searching tho.
Scanner how hard would it be to have a little eyeball next to the hamburger and let Cortana handle it??
Still no decent Facebook after 18 months and its worse now
Copy and paste is still abysmal at best
The peoples app/tile is useless now

I know its a preview and I know what alpha bata and RC is, but if this is the direction MS is going, they wont survive in the cell phone market, sorry but taking away/screwing up nice useful features and apps is not how you crawl outta 3rd place.

The poor people on low end phones ugh I feel for you, yes I know WP can run off a lot less HP but I'm sorry an s4 and 560mb of ram can only do so much. Could I but windows 8.1 on a 15 year old HP sure, would it boot maybe would it run probably about as good as a fat man wading through a pool of pudding, he will eventually chew through it but who got time to wait that long.

I love my 1520 dont get me wrong but damn an epic update jacked up by a bunch of 2 step backwards apps.
I feel we treaded in some halfway decent things to get a few new features and it didn't have to be that way. I'm learning fast that Microsoft is a 2 steps forward one step back company.

 

[grizzlyaddams]

I agree completely regarding the photo and music hubs. They were my primary use for my phone and they have utterly decimated their functionality. I absolutely detest the ugly low res artist photos they automatically download for the music hub, I do not want to use this phone any more.

 

[KrisJoeEll]

The photos hub was a big loss.. I hope they bring it back.

 

[MikeSo]

The integration of music, pictures and social apps was a big selling point of WP, and it was one of the reasons I really liked it. Too bad that this part is being dismantled by Microsoft now, but I'm going to guess that it was simply too complicated to keep up with third party innovation, from Facebook and others, even from within Microsoft cloud divisions such as those dealing with OneDrive, that in order to keep pace with cell phone competitors they simply had to try and decouple these things from the OS. I am hoping that they find a way to get back to better integration again, even if these apps are now separate from the OS. I just think they didn't have time to wait longer.

 

[DaT Franchise]

The music player is a big letdown, I was waiting for the update to see if it got better because I really like the phone/xbox/tablet/Pc ecosystem, one click and everything is on all my devices. And what is with needing to be on WiFi to upload just about anything??? Make it an option for us big data ballers!!

 

[Saksham Sharma]

Hey, the photos hub is going to be revamped by nokia in the upcoming OTA cyan update. And most probably, the official Facebook app ties into the peoples hub and you can then use it just like you used to do. Some people have reported this, and daniel also wrote this. So try it, not on the fb beta though. As Daniel had written, any social app can now tie into the people hub, so its much better than before.
But i do agree the new music is...ahem...

 

[Saksham Sharma]

The photos hub was a big loss.. I hope they bring it back.

it isgoing to get some radical changes (not exactly as before, but i think albums are coming back) with the nokia cyan update in 2-3 months.

 

[Saksham Sharma]

The photos hub was a big loss.. I hope they bring it back.

it isgoing to get some radical changes (not exactly as before, but i think albums are coming back) with the nokia cyan update in 2-3 months.

 

[Reebs Reebs]

I agree with most (except Cortana, off to a great start IMO), and hate the Music App the most. Really!? To all who think the Music App sucks... I started a thread yesterday to vote on the User Voice for an App like Google Music. Check it out and vote if it makes sense to you.

http://forums.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-8-1/274615-streaming-music-onedrive.html

 

[prasath1234]

No way no lagging for me intact it is very slow in opening music app only.am using 820 but 3g locking issues solved though I have greenish tinge in photos that's because of Nokia.ms thank you so much.between I did not hardreset before or after installing Windows phone 8.1 but phone heats very much now.

Sent from my C2305 using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[KrisJoeEll]

Use this Feature Suggestion page to bring back Photos Hub
Do not change Photos Hub style in Windows Phone 8.1 – Feature Suggestions for Windows Phone

 

[david90531]

I for one really don't mind the new photo app, it's simple and shows you the most important info. right away.

 

[AzmoD3uS]

Cortana has always been touted as being in Beta on initial release, so if it's "underperforming", that was already an expectation to begin with.

Totally agree with the music hub. I miss the image on the live tile when you play the song. It doesn't load as long for me, though. I turned off the option to include streamed music in the collection since i have my collection loaded locally on the phone anyway, and i have nothing to stream online.

I also let the app sit there until it finished loading the songs (based on the information that appears above when you have the app open the first time). Granted, it still shows "loading" for a half a second at least, but now it doesn't take ages to load the info.

The photo hub, i'd say i'll miss how it used to be, but not hugely. I don't spend a long time in the app anyway, and i still have the live tile doing a slideshow of my favorite photos.

facebook app is better than before, has its downsides, but after associating it with the phone, it worked well enough for me.

The People tile still works the way it does if you have the facebook app connect with the phone (if you're on the beta, download the non-beta one and once done, uninstall the beta, then run the one you downloaded, it will prompt you to connect with the phone. Once that happens, it will sync facebook on the phone, and your people hub will work as it did).

What i miss though is simultaneous status post using the Me tile. you can't post to say, twitter and fb at the same time anymore. Maybe if we send them feedback they'll put that back in.

 

[Xpider_MX]

Maybe people must understand that this release is for developers, not for final user. Some apps have missing functions.

If you are a developer you upgrade to 8.1 for app testing.

 

[StevoPhilo]

You're practically looking at a Beta and Dev Preview. Why fuss here? Tell it to microsoft and post that you prefer the older version. I honestly don't think it's a HUGE deal, but I don't find it appealing compared to what we had before. I know the full version will be better.

 

[DaT Franchise]

I know what it is but why brake something that wasn't broken before, why further ruen a app that people have been talking about for years going down hill with every update, why remove something that you know works? I understand its in bata Xbox music isn't! I understand Cortana is bata, it works for some not all, I expressed my view and why its not working for me. Track record on Xbox music is well documented and by the next update if Microsoft keeps the trend it will be a totally useless alpha build and not the "bata" junk it is now or the "RC" it was before.
Love me good hate me even better

 

[StevoPhilo]

I know what it is but why brake something that wasn't broken before, why further ruen a app that people have been talking about for years going down hill with every update, why remove something that you know works? I understand its in bata Xbox music isn't! I understand Cortana is bata, it works for some not all, I expressed my view and why its not working for me. Track record on Xbox music is well documented and by the next update if Microsoft keeps the trend it will be a totally useless alpha build and not the "bata" junk it is now or the "RC" it was before.
Love me good hate me even better

That same saying was said about Windows 8 and guess what, if it wasn't for Windows 8 we wouldn't have unified apps or any of this.

Things change for fresh breath of air. All of it is in beta. It's only a preview, and it isn't designed to be a final build. Feedback it to Microsoft, and let them know why it sucks.

I don't understand why people download the developers preview and expect the full 8.1 user experience when they download it. It even prompts you that you can't go back.

 

[DaT Franchise]

Wow you really dont understand what I'm say do you. Zune worked, people loved it MS changed it and people didn't like it but lived with it, MS changed it again and even more people didn't like it and started going elsewhere, MS changed it again and its absolutely now. Feedback??? People have been screaming to bring it back to what Zune was or something close for over a year but no lets just see how F-ed we make an app.

No **** the preview isn't the final product, trust me I've been flashing bata this alpha that with fingers crossed it wont be a paper weight sense the OG days. I cant began to tell you how many hours I've had tetherd to a computer bring my phone back to life helping someone test and cook a new rom. If it was a 90% chance a preview would brick my phone id still load it up. Now lets go and look through all of the threads about the preview for developers 90% of people say its pretty much what you will see out of an official version - Nokias stuff they add to it, well now here we are 2 days into 8.1 and all those same people are now saying "oh its bata its not what the final release will be there will be a lot of changes"

Point is and what I said was dont screw up an app even more than it already is. Dont take something that the majority use and get rid of it or make it 4 steps to get too when it used to take one step.

MS needs to spend more time listening to there customers and fix there apps vs building producing a better version of the same app for there competitors.

As far as Cortana I'm over it, she is no personal assistant, sorry but my butler wouldn't come to me and say "sir its time to take the trash out" no I tell him and he does. She can open an app but cant turn my ringer off??

So sorry voicing my opinion upset the fanboys. I'll call you a wambulance. Oh and remember please don't hate me but please hate me more.

 

[DaT Franchise]

But let?s not mince words: the music experience on Windows Phone 8.1 is subpar, and it has become worse since 8.0. In fact, it sits with a pathetic 2.5 stars (out of 5) on the Store, which is awful for a Microsoft app. Oh no its not its "beta"
^^^

 

[unstoppablekem]

I'm a Microsoft ******, but I agree with most of the cons you stated.