4 Things Windows Phone should steal from other OSes

[Ebuka Allison]

Windows Phone 8.1 is an update that is massively polarizing. On the one hand, it has brought some much needed change into the OS and has dragged it well into maturity, on the other hand, it has removed some much loved features like the Media hub, Pictures panorama etc. In other words, there's no denying that Microsoft needs a new no holds barred update which improves the OS without removing much. On that note, here are four things that I think Microsoft could do well to add from competing OSes in Windows Phone 10;
•The BlackBerry Hub(BB10) - For an OS which has had hubs for a long time, one would think that Microsoft would follow up on it's initial concept. Unfortunately , it was BlackBerry who took this to the next logical step. The hub in BB 10 is where all your notifications and messages live. That is, Whatsapp, Viber, Skype, BBM etc. all have their inboxes linked to the hub. Microsoft can implement this by expanding the messaging hub to include all messaging apps like the games hub of before and allowing messaging apps much deeper integration into the OS, like Skype does currently.

•A Notification Centre that's not so basic (Android and iOS)

- Windows Phone's notification centre is admittedly basic. It simply gathers toast notifications sent by apps and does not provide expandable previews or anything more than the fragments of the toast you've already seen if you were looking at your phone. For example, a text toast may read "James says : Hi, let's go down to the..." While this may be acceptable if this was the first notification centre ever, it is not. Microsoft has had several implementations to crib from (Sense, Touchwiz, HTC) and admittedly ran out of time when WP8 shipped. If they didn't have at least the basics down when they ran out of time, what where they doing. To improve the current notification centre they could add interactivity and actionability(if PP and Pierce can make up lapability...) to the items in the Action Centre and make it as useful as the old Me Tile's interactive notifications.
•Perfect Smoothness (iOS) : I don't know how iOS does it and I don't want to know. We, the users, don't need to sweat the small stuff. Microsoft should speed up the OS so it works without lag on the lowest spec device they have (Snapdragon 200, 720p). No more resuming screens, no blank tiles, nothing. A perfectly smooth UI that stays out of your way without driving you nuts.
•Good music experience (Windows Phone 7/iOS) - Nothing else needs to be said, even the most blatant Microsoft ****** should realise there is a problem when reading the latest reviews. Music | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

 

[dicks-webos]

To add: The text entry system of BlackBerry (space bar correction, per word automatic language detection)

 

[brunoadduarte]

- Swipe UI from MeeGo, thus ending the need for system buttons for switching or closing apps (Swipe from the top edge to close apps, swipe from edge to the side to switch apps or to go to the homescreen). Dedicated screen for notifications, dedicated screen for minimized apps (which all were capable of running in the background). Anyone who owned an N9 knows what I'm talking about and that pairing Metro with it would be a match made in heaven.

- Swipe up for system toggles and music controls from iOS

- 4x3 keyboards with T9 from Android.

 

[Bobvfr]

•Good music experience (Windows Phone 7/iOS) - Nothing else needs to be said, even the most blatant Microsoft ****** should realise there is a problem when reading the latest reviews. Music | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

I admit I have never reviewed Xbox Music, I also admit you get a lot of vocal people slagging it off, a lot of this is in my opinion down to three things, firstly is doesn't look like older style systems, secondly not understanding how Xbox Music works and thirdly not understanding the very important button on a PC that you should not click unless you really do know what you are doing and that is "Automatically match my local music to the cloud".

All I can go on is my experience, I have a 1520 WP, a Surface Pro, a laptop, desktop and an Xbox One and I have an Xbox Music pass. have a music collection of 2800 songs, about 1800 of those are local MP3's ripped from CD's and the rest are courtesy of my music pass.

I can download an album to say my laptop, the album is automatically downloaded to my other devices (The Xbox One is a streaming system only, although local music can be played via USB and the Media App, and I do have to choose to download the album on my phone so one extra click).

I have had no problems it just works, and it works just as well on my wife's 520, Surface 2 and laptop, so much so I am getting her a music pass for her birthday next week. All my collection both local and music pass is available on all my devices, I can play it when I want I don't need to be online.

I am not saying people haven't had issues, but I for one think it is a great service/software/system, although I admit I did have to take an hour or so to understand it.

Maybe I should take the time to review it.



Bob

 

[salmanahmad]

About your iOS smoothness point, I would just like to say that it is unlikely Windows Phone will ever be as fast.

The thing about iPhones is that so few of them are released every single year, they come with amazing SOCs that absolutely blows away most of the competition, while on a spec sheet the iPhone 5S and 6 seem like a low end or mid range device, it's SOC is possibly the fastest out there.

I'll elaborate why, I'm not sure what goes into making the Apple A7 and A8 chips, and whatever they label as "Cyclone architecture" but they've made some substantial gains over the past two-three years. Take for example an Apple A8 chip, it runs at 1.3 GHz and can consistently keep running at that frequency for longer because of the 20nm architecture (less heat output = less throttling).

Thirdly there comes optimisation, developers according to many statistics make the most money developing iOS apps, this gives them the incentive to go the extra mile to optimise their app for the latest iPhone, also since there are so few iPhones optimisation is comparatively easier than other platforms.

Lastly Apple itself takes performance seriously, their most recent addition is the new Metal API. From my understanding( I can be wrong) it's a departure from the standard OpenGL, and it's tailor made for iPhones basically what it does is:

? Enable higher quality games to be made

? Enable higher FPS in games at the same or higher resolution.

Apple goes the extra mile for performance, and it's highly unlikely that Android or Windows Phone will come close.

Btw another interesting fact is that for most tasks lesser more powerful cores are needed, like the Apple A7 and A8. The quad cores that everyone throws around actually serve zero benefit in the daily lives of people and are more important for tasks such as 3D rendering(no one does that on his/her phone).

In the future Windows Phone will rely on Snapdragon 615, 808 and 810 processors which are eight cores. I find that more of a marketing gimmick.

Whereas the future looks brighter for Android and iOS, as for Android powerful dual core chips are making a return and iOS is still dual core.

But I agree with your other points, I especially agree with the notification centre point. I love how the expandable notifications work on Android:



Hope to see something similar on WP someday.

 

[Lumia Lumia]

To the OP-the snapdragon 200 was never made for 720p. Even Daniel Rubino mentioned it in his first hands on of the Blu phone. The Snapdragon 200 was built for 480p and it runs smooth on the Lumia 530, which I tested recently at Nokia priority. By the way ios does lag, and heavily too. Have you used an iPhone 4s with ios8? It lags like anything. Even the 5s lags after a few months usage. I can safely very that If ios ran on a low specced device or would lag more than Android. Apple never makes low end devices,so this point of yours is kinda moot.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

To the OP-the snapdragon 200 was never made for 720p. Even Daniel Rubino mentioned it in his first hands on of the Blu phone. The Snapdragon 200 was built for 480p and it runs smooth on the Lumia 530, which I tested recently at Nokia priority. By the way ios does lag, and heavily too. Have you used an iPhone 4s with ios8? It lags like anything. Even the 5s lags after a few months usage. I can safely very that If ios ran on a low specced device or would lag more than Android. Apple never makes low end devices,so this point of yours is kinda moot.

That's why I singled that out. If Microsoft's gonna let people do that,then they had better make sure kt works right