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.'