Lumia Cyan / Windows Phone 8.1.x first impressions.

[Richard Wessels]

So far, I have been pretty happy with the Cyan / WP 8.1 update. However, there are a couple niggles that are still there. I do not know where I would bring this up, but one of the most troublesome things has to do with the icons on the mail accounts. They do the same thing that Good for Enterprise does. Instead of remaining and showing the total number of unread messages, the number is instead related to the number of messages that have come in since the last time you opened the mail app. This is less helpful then having the number of unread messages displayed. Has anyone else noticed this.. Is there a hidden setting I am missing here that would correct for this?

As far as my upgrade went, I was actually pretty surprised at how smoothly it all went. The only issue I had was that one of my mail accounts (the one I have setup for my companies mail system) lost it's proper icon. I just had to remove the account and then re-add it to fix the icon issue.

I have also noticed that some apps do not yet recognize or populate the new notification center in WP 8.1. An example might be the BBM beta app. I suspect that as more apps are updated for WP 8.1 compatibility, that this will be addressed. Props to the WPC app dev(s) for making sure their app was WP 8.1.x ready.

I am sure I will find much to love and some things to scratch my head over, but so far a pretty positive experience.

 

[bulls96]

Did you have the 8.1 preview prior to this?

Sent from my Surface Pro 3 using Tapatalk

 

[Richard Wessels]

No, I did not.. When I got my 1520 I knew that WP 8.1 was soon to follow, so I did not get involved with the WP 8.1 preview / BETA.

 

[Geddeeee]

So far, I have been pretty happy with the Cyan / WP 8.1 update. However, there are a couple niggles that are still there. I do not know where I would bring this up, but one of the most troublesome things has to do with the icons on the mail accounts. They do the same thing that Good for Enterprise does. Instead of remaining and showing the total number of unread messages, the number is instead related to the number of messages that have come in since the last time you opened the mail app. This is less helpful then having the number of unread messages displayed. Has anyone else noticed this.. Is there a hidden setting I am missing here that would correct for this?

As far as my upgrade went, I was actually pretty surprised at how smoothly it all went. The only issue I had was that one of my mail accounts (the one I have setup for my companies mail system) lost it's proper icon. I just had to remove the account and then re-add it to fix the icon issue.

I have also noticed that some apps do not yet recognize or populate the new notification center in WP 8.1. An example might be the BBM beta app. I suspect that as more apps are updated for WP 8.1 compatibility, that this will be addressed. Props to the WPC app dev(s) for making sure their app was WP 8.1.x ready.

I am sure I will find much to love and some things to scratch my head over, but so far a pretty positive experience.

To make Action Centre 'populate' correctly, you have to turn on toast notifications inside the app itself. AC will recognise this and add the app to it's list of known apps so it can notify you in future. You can then turn off toast (banner) for each app inside AC settings for that app.

Hope that helps....

 

[Richard Wessels]

Many thanks.. I do wish that there was a central panel for toast notifications / action center that would show what apps are currently configured to post to it.

EDIT - Nevermind.. I found it.. stupid me, I overlooked it in the settings.

 

[Richard Wessels]

OK, I did find another couple things.. They are both related to security. How do I setup my device to use a stronger password? How do I setup my device so that it is erased when the password is entered incorrectly 10 times? How do I enable / use BitLocker on the device and SD card?

 

[Richard Wessels]

OK, While I am still excited about Windows Phone 8.1, I must admit that my enthusiasm has now been tempered by the reality. While WP 8.1 has made great strides in correcting for major issues in the OS and added great new features (Cortana). There are some things that seem to have been missed. The afore mentioned issue with the tiles not showing the actual number of unread messages in pinned mail accounts (this seems to have been an issue since the release of WP8 and even before) seems like a terrible mistake and should have been addressed long ago.

Then there is device and user data security. Lets start with passwords. Unless you can tie your Windows Phone 8 device to a server that can send EAS policies, you are limited to a simple numeric pin code option that does not even have the ability to wipe the device if the code is entered incorrectly after X number of attempts.. This has been a standard feature of iOS for a very long time. Then there is device level encryption. iOS encrypts the data on an iOS device from the beginning, Windows Phone does allow for full device encryption, but it can only be activated if you can connect your device to a server that can send EAS policies to the device to enable this feature. This seems like a glaring security hole and not one I would have expected from MSFT, since they have been raked over the coals about security in every version of Windows since Windows 95.

Long story short here. These are and should be mandatory security settings. At the very least they should be available to the end user even if they are not connecting their device to an EAS capable server. I just wish I could get this to someone at MSFT who could speak to these concerns.