Windows Phone 8.1 or 8.5 suggestions

[DroBoy]

Notification center is a must and will hopefully be in the next update. There is nothing like having your phone buzz and not know what for. Espically for apps like Whatsapp unless you pin it your **** out of luck in knowing someone messaged you.

 

[AZBrowncoat]

This might be more of an Outlook.com thing but why no field for Gamertag...if MS is going to push deep integration between it's various properties (Xbox, Skype) there should be fields in the "People Hub" for those.

 

[lordofthereef]

I have some pretty simple requests. I'll only list those not already mentioned

1. Customizable text tones for contacts.

2. Do not disturb mode (time setting where phone won't buzz or sound when you get alerts, but the alerts still come through)

3. Ability to turn off sound AND buzzer. Also, turn on sound only with no buzzer.

4. Music and video streaming via USB out (this may require hardware I know)

5. Better tabs. They are horrible. And limited to six? Why? The page is forced to reload anyway.

6. Better multitasking. Again, I SM seeing maybe 6-8 apps. And those generally reload too as they get quickly kicked from memory. While you are st it, make killing an app more intuitive than backing out of it. You know the little "x" you use to kill an IE tab? Why that dame UI element wasn't used for multitasker baffles me.

 

[retyler]

there's an app for that.

rofl!!!

 

[terraslate]

giggle

I haven't read an article that made me feel so sick in a long time. drop the giggles please, it's proper making me cringe.

 

[Slai]

I think notifications could be its own page in "Me", wich simply shows unhandled toasts.

Then make it so a short drag towards the right on the homescreen (as if to swipe to a screen on the left of the homescreen) should pop a vertical bar out, which is slightly wider than a Small tile in width that lets you toggle wifi/nfc/bt/GPS/etc, whatever you can toggle in settings, can be put there.
Would work like some touchbrowsers do, Firefox in particular with its bookmarks bar etc. Would also be consistent with WP8 touch user experience.

Seems appropriate.

Alternatively just let us pin Settings-toggles directly to the homescreen as Small/Medium tiles. Less cool, but very effective.

 

[wp8_Sweden]

Instagram.

 

[Hiiiiiiiii]

Feature Suggestions: Hot (19265 ideas)

 

[MacDaMachine]

Forward button on IE

 

[JJohnson1701]

I have a slew of Windows Phone 8.5 suggestions. A few that I would really like to see first:

-microSD card required on all handsets going forward, regardless of unibody construction or not. Imagine a Lumia 920 with a 64GB microSD card. More space than on the iPhone.
-use Zune to sync media including playlists, even wirelessly. X-Box Music, X-Box Video, and the Windows 8 sync tool are ridiculous and poorly written programs whereas Zune was a marvel at synchronization. Just add Windows Media Player's auto-playlists and you're done.
-make playlist creation easier. It's virtually impossible to create a new playlist from a single song, then go forward. I have to try to stop all music, then find a song, otherwise my playlist has dozens of songs I don't want on it. There's no easy way to move up or down a song in the playlist either, or remove from a playlist. It's a very lackluster experience.
-make the Music+Video tile and app look and act like in Windows Phone 7. The tile's now an ugly green headphone icon, whereas it was artist artwork. The background took the artist pictures from your last played artist; now it goes to a dull gray when you pause your music. It's just ugly.
-add a media pivot to contact cards so you can see the songs, albums, artists, playlists, tv shows, and movies your friends are watching/listening to. Allow us to share songs/albums/artists/playlists/tv shows/movies to friends, linking them to the x-box marketplace to purchase or stream. Allow sharing of songs/albums/artists/playlists/tv shows/movies to Facebook/Twitter just like Zune HD's Facebook app did with the 'zune' button. It displayed album art, title, artist, and song, and linked to the Zune Marketplace. X-Box Music's sharing just looks ugly. Allow us in this new pivot to like and comment on each entry, and suggest artists to friends.
-put the play button back next to Music. It's not obvious down at the bottom what that button should be playing.
-A lock-screen notification center, similar to iPhone's. Currently on iPhone you can swipe on "Johnny commented on your picture" to unlock, and it takes you to that exact picture within the Facebook app. Windows Phone can't do that. Ours takes more steps than it should. If you see a FB notification, I would suggest instead of swipe up to unlock, swipe down to see the Facebook pivot, and then on the specific notification, swipe up (or down, whichever is easier) to go to that specific notification. Ditto Twitter, IMs, texts, etc. Anything that has notifications would have a pivot for you to see the notices.
-add the smart dialer feature back to the phone; change 'history' to pivots for incoming, outgoing, and missed calls, and show the call duration for each.
-fix the search button so that long press goes to Bing, but simply pressing search searches the app you have up. In Mail, I should be able to press search and search my e-mails. That is expected behavior, but it doesn't happen. In Messaging, I press search and I expect to search my text messages, but that doesn't happen.
-fix Skype for video calling. On the iPhone, Facetime between two iPhones just works. Skype should just work. My girlfriend and I tried skyping between a Windows Phone and an iPhone, using T-Mobile and Verizon, and it took 20 minutes of continual hang-ups on the part of Skype before we could get it to work. That's utterly ridiculous. It should be tested in all sorts of network conditions so that a Windows Phone of any kind can skype any other phone with Skype and have it 'just work.'

 

[Anuj Kumar]

No need for 'Notification Center' because it will eliminate the purpose of live tile

i would like to suggest a feature that: like 'Zune Music+Videos', 'Pictures' and many apps have a dark tinted background ,App list and metro background should come up with it too unlike current Dark and Light theme only. And for Accent colors there should be a custom palette. it will be cool if they will introduce custom fonts too. What you say ?

 

[PincheKeith]

The swipe from the left should be a slim line of toggle controls. That would be tight.

 

[ryan.kruger]

The swipe from the left should be a slim line of toggle controls. That would be tight.

notification and controls center is a must.

 

[wigwam12]

It would be nice though if we had a way of closing the apps, like you can with tabs in IE and on iPhones. It's such a pain having to constantly press the back button until it finally closes, and especially if the app/game crashes!

sorry could you please explain this for me as I am one such noob who doesn't understand why battery sometimes goes haywire.
After (say) using internet I just press the home screen. So the app is still running? I assumed there was a built-in task killer or something
I should press the back key all the way to the home screen to end it??

 

[WavingReds]

Make the small tiles flip too!

 

[Blkacesvf41]

sorry could you please explain this for me as I am one such noob who doesn't understand why battery sometimes goes haywire.
After (say) using internet I just press the home screen. So the app is still running? I assumed there was a built-in task killer or something
I should press the back key all the way to the home screen to end it??

Worry not. When pressing home key, you're tomb stoning the apps. They do not use any resources this way. Depending on the app, when you get to have about 6 or 7 of them open the "oldest" one closes out. Try it. Press and hold back so you can see what apps are tomb stoned. This also helps you to switch apps quickly.

 

[Blkacesvf41]

I'm not a gamer and don't have a Xbox 360 and I don't know if MS already does this, but wouldn't be nice if you could start a game on your Xbox 360 stop , take a break and then continue same game on your WP8 phone?

 

[ChMar]

Completely agree. If an app that uses GPS is running in the background, it sucks the life out of the battery very quickly. Im disappointed how MS handled this function. As you said, you should not have to go back to the App, and press back a number of times to close it. That is just poor execution on MS's part and they should be embarrassed to have left it that way.

People who dont visit forums and completely new to WP are not going to have a clue on what is killing their battery so quickly.

Task manager here is not a solution. All background functionality is running in a separate way as the main program. So force closing it will either not help at all or make the app crash and causing lots of havoc. The SDK clearly states that apps using gps must allow starting and stopping it in the app so if you stop the gps monitoring then you won't be drained anymore. And closing any other kind of app(beside music streaming and gps) is not hopping at all with the battery.

 

[GReeN SCoRPioN 8K]

I'm not a gamer and don't have a Xbox 360 and I don't know if MS already does this, but wouldn't be nice if you could start a game on your Xbox 360 stop , take a break and then continue same game on your WP8 phone?

As far as i kno the Only Game which works like that till now is Skulls of the Shogun. Hopefully there are more to come!

 

[wigwam12]

Worry not. When pressing home key, you're tomb stoning the apps. They do not use any resources this way. Depending on the app, when you get to have about 6 or 7 of them open the "oldest" one closes out. Try it. Press and hold back so you can see what apps are tomb stoned. This also helps you to switch apps quickly.

Many thanks