Is windows phone worth it if you don't live in a country ms cares about?

[CGA111]

Fellow Swede here, I for one am pretty fed up with Ms ignorance for small languages. On top of what you mentioned there's also the lack of native speech recognition in our language. Heck, I had that on Android three years ago. As much as I like wp I'm pretty sure I'm going Android when my 920 starts failing.

 

[D M C]

Or... you know... OP could show support for the platform which would let Microsoft know that they should care about Sweden.

Horoscope 2025??????

 

[Anglerdk]

Siri is in Danish (and probably in Swedish), android have Danish talk back... WP doesn't even make me add a word in the Danish dictionary + terrible app support (like viaplay and other native languages / regional apps). No wonder the market share is 2%....

And Nokia was even also from Scandinavia.

 

[Peter Andersson]

Fellow Swede here, I for one am pretty fed up with Ms ignorance for small languages. On top of what you mentioned there's also the lack of native speech recognition in our language. Heck, I had that on Android three years ago. As much as I like wp I'm pretty sure I'm going Android when my 920 starts failing.

I also own a Lumia 920, and it has worked great for me but i just want Wordflow and Quiet hours and to be honest i don't understand why both aren't enabled every where... why on earth would "Quiet hours" require Cortana? (i don't see the connection, i can understand that it would get more functions when you have Cortana but the basics should be there all the time?).
And why isn't wordflow just enabled on all keyboards what more data than the dictionary and the keyboard layout do they need?

 

[gwinegarden]

Canada is only a little over 100 miles north of them and we don't get much consideration either.

 

[a5cent]

^ still much better than in many non-english speaking countries though.

I get why MS prioritizes large markets over small ones, and languages with hundreds of millions of speakers over languages with less than 10 million.

Still, MS waits far to long to get their services running everywhere, and ties far more services to the region setting than they should (optimally, it would control nothing but the store). It wouldn't be that bad if Apple and Google had the same problems, but they don't.

 

[neo158]

I also own a Lumia 920, and it has worked great for me but i just want Wordflow and Quiet hours and to be honest i don't understand why both aren't enabled every where... why on earth would "Quiet hours" require Cortana? (i don't see the connection, i can understand that it would get more functions when you have Cortana but the basics should be there all the time?).
And why isn't wordflow just enabled on all keyboards what more data than the dictionary and the keyboard layout do they need?

Would you really want Quiet Hours integrated everywhere in the OS, because that's what would have to happen if it didn't integrate with Cortana. Not only that but Cortana is required for the Inner Circle which is also required for Quiet Hours.

Basically Microsoft would need to strip most of the functionality out of Cortana to get it working independently, which would defeat the point of having Cortana in the first place.

 

[D M C]

Would you really want Quiet Hours integrated everywhere in the OS, because that's what would have to happen if it didn't integrate with Cortana. Not only that but Cortana is required for the Inner Circle which is also required for Quiet Hours.

Basically Microsoft would need to strip most of the functionality out of Cortana to get it working independently, which would defeat the point of having Cortana in the first place.

Then MS should work fast to make it available for all countries.

However
I think its been 12 months since Cortana launched and how many countries it's available????

The speed which MS is going with, I think it will take decades to do that.

 

[Senrir]

It'll take 5 years from the rate they are going yeh

 

[Petar Liovic]

No just that.. I cant evan buy surface in my country (Croatia)... . When i switch to us region all msn apps r much better. Im sick of that suport

 

[Lumiamike]

Hi i live in Sweden and currently own a Lumia 920, but its getting old and its soon time to change..
So my options are get a android phone or wait until Windows 10 and get a new flag ship phone then, but i don't know if i want to support Microsoft anymore when they can't be bothers to enable all features for Swedish customers..

I don't care about Cortana, but what i do care about is the swype like keyboard (i can't really see the problem with enabling it for all keyboard layouts???)
and the "Quiet hours" function would be nice..

So are there any workarounds to get those functions or should i just give up on MS? (Note i'm normally a MS ****** but i don't know if its wise to be one when they don't give a dam about smaller countries).

Windows phone is a US first and foremost phone with limited functionality outside of the US, other operating systems seem to be able to make there phones o/s complete for other countries, is wp worth using outside of the USA ? Probably not and its doubtful wp10 will be different to previous iteration's, if you want full and total apple is the best bet

 

[neo158]

Then MS should work fast to make it available for all countries.

However
I think its been 12 months since Cortana launched and how many countries it's available????

The speed which MS is going with, I think it will take decades to do that.

You do know that Cortana relies heavily on Bing, which means that if those back end services aren't in place then Cortana simply won't work and if they have a lot of work to do to implement those services then, yes it will take 12+ months to get Cortana working.

Why do you think the UK and China didn't get Cortana at the same time as the US?

 

[neo158]

Windows phone is a US first and foremost phone with limited functionality outside of the US, other operating systems seem to be able to make there phones o/s complete for other countries, is wp worth using outside of the USA ? Probably not and its doubtful wp10 will be different to previous iteration's, if you want full and total apple is the best bet

WP in the UK is as fully featured as the US version, nice generalisation there though. Do you think Microsoft will be bothered to support WP in countries with limited functionality if no one uses it?

 

[pericle]

You do know that Cortana relies heavily on Bing, which means that if those back end services aren't in place then Cortana simply won't work and if they have a lot of work to do to implement those services then, yes it will take 12+ months to get Cortana working.

Why do you think the UK and China didn't get Cortana at the same time as the US?

Then explain to us how Google has managed to make all Android features available in most countries but Microsoft still is unable to do it for Windows Phone.

Keep in mind that Microsoft has been selling it's software for decades in these countries, Google started much later. The fact that Microsoft still does not support these countries properly just shows that either they are horrendously slow, or they actually don't care about these countries, my guess it's the latter.

 

[Harrie-S]

Then MS should work fast to make it available for all countries.

However
I think its been 12 months since Cortana launched and how many countries it's available????

The speed which MS is going with, I think it will take decades to do that.

Local available in
US
Australia
Canada
India
China
UK
Germany
France
Spain
Italy

So in only 10 countries from the about 195 in the world.
About the half of the European's can use Cortana in their home-country but they only live in the "big" countries.

 

[D M C]

Local available in
US
Australia
Canada
India
China
UK
Germany
France
Spain
Italy

So in only 10 countries from the about 195 in the world.
About the half of the European's can use Cortana in their home-country but they only live in the "big" countries.

Thanks that was good info. I didn't know that.

Now the next question how much time Google now and Siri taken to available to those all countries?
And how much time MS will take to catch up with them?
I just want to know how MS fast is progressing compare to competitors.

 

[ajayden]

Thanks that was good info. I didn't know that.

Now the next question how much time Google now and Siri taken to available to those all countries?
And how much time MS will take to catch up with them?
I just want to know how MS fast is progressing compare to competitors.

I just think that there is no hard and fast rule that MS must catch up with the competition. As it is now, by changing the region, everyone in the world can use Cortana.

Also it is notable that the abilities of cortana is far more better than other digital assistants, keeping in mind the short time frame from its launch.

Seeing from a developers perspective, MS is in the right track, as they are developing all the capabilities using English as the main language and after developing all the planned capabilities it easier to deploy the same capabilities on different languages.

 

[Sin Ogaris]

But if you change your region then you can't buy anything. It is incredibly poor software design that you are forced to remove one feature to be able to utilise another.

 

[Harrie-S]

I also own a Lumia 920, and it has worked great for me but i just want Wordflow and Quiet hours and to be honest i don't understand why both aren't enabled every where... why on earth would "Quiet hours" require Cortana? (i don't see the connection, i can understand that it would get more functions when you have Cortana but the basics should be there all the time?).
And why isn't wordflow just enabled on all keyboards what more data than the dictionary and the keyboard layout do they need?

FYI word flow is more then a keyboard and a dictionary.
Microsoft's new Word Flow keyboard is the best smartphone text entry system | ZDNet
That said I totally understand that you want it.

 

[Harrie-S]

Thanks that was good info. I didn't know that.

Now the next question how much time Google now and Siri taken to available to those all countries?
And how much time MS will take to catch up with them?
I just want to know how MS fast is progressing compare to competitors.

No idea when or if Microsoft will catch up. And which country/language will be next or what criteria Microsoft uses.
Maybe some more Spanish speaking countries because Cortana already "understands" Spanish.
Or Portuguese(Portugal, Brazil) Russian, Vietnamese, Turkish, Thai, Polish because these languages are spoken in countries with a lot of people.
Or maybe it is Spanish in the US because they "only" need to introduce the language because the "rest" is already available.
Or Hindi or Bengali or Punjab or Telugu or Marathi or Tamil or Urdu in India?

Anyhow I guess if you are in the next "batch of Cortana countries" you probably agree with Microsoft criteria (I would).