questions

[danaplz]

Hi all. I am a college student considering going with WP8 and I did my research, but I still have 3 main questions/factors holding me back from going the WP8 route. I'm sold on most of what WP8 offers, don't care about the lack of apps as long as I can do what I want to do, and REALLY don't care about the gaming experience. Hopefully y'all will be able to address some of these points; thanks in advance for the replies.

1) How would I interface with my FB Group threads? I while I am not a big FB user, I interact with my school groups on FB very often (mostly reading posts, sometimes making posts). This is very important to me, as all school-related discussion with my fellow students takes place on FB groups. Basic viewing access is mandatory, a good interface would just be nice.

2) How would I share pictures (videos too, but mostly pictures) with my close friends who all use iPhones and the like? No Facebook or other social media network will do, neither will email or some cloud-storage solution. I guess I'm looking for some sort of IM solution. (I am assuming the proprietary messaging service won't allow me to directly send a picture to my friend's iPhone, though I would be pleased to be wrong about this.) And, of course, how would my iPhone-wielding friends share their pictures/videos with me?

3) How is the .PDF experience? I'm referring not only to the UI of a particular app, nor the viewing experience (which would be understandably limited, due to a phone's relatively small screen size), but also the accessibility of .pdf files. Mainly: can I open/read .pdf files without hassle either inside a browser, and/or download a .pdf straight from a website or email? Can I upload/download to and from SkyDrive? Cloud storage is not that important, but would be nice. I do not care about editing capabilities, only the reading/accessibility experience. At school .pdf's are all-important: my textbooks are all .pdf files, online notes come in the form of pdfs, and so on.

 

[narv]

Hey there danaplz, and im glad you're interested in the WP8 platform as we can use all the converts we can get

Let me see if i can answer this as best as possible...

1.) There is a facebook app for windows, albeit made by Microsoft. You can use this just like a facebook app for the iphone or an android device. If any of them have windows devices you can use the Rooms feature but chances are that's not going to be the case. You can also setup a group of people you are friends with on facebook and call it "school project group" or whatever, and you will get all their group information at once. The phone supports (well the lumia, i don't know about the 8X as i heard it doesn't but that may be false) group texts. While facebook chat is integrated to the messaging app (can be disbaled on the lumia again idk about the 8X), i haven't seen any of my group chats pop up on there while my individual facebook chats have. I don't know what platform you are coming from so I cannot compare directly but coming from the iphone 4s myself it's about the same except more integration on a friend-by-friend rather than group setting with facebook which i like.

2.) you can still send videos and pictures via text. or skype.. some of the chat programs have apps, though i've never used any so i don't know if they support media.. You can always upload to skydrive and share things publically from there and send them a link to view it, though you said you prefer to stay away from cloud. you say proprietary messaging service but i don't understand. Windows doesn't have anything like iMessage and it's all straight texts (facebook chat aside). I may be mistaken in how I understand you though and if so i apologize. I send pictures via text to people with iphones all the time. If you are coming from the iphone though, please keep in mind you will have to unlink your phone number from your apple ID as your friend's iphones will still try to send you an imessage and say it's delivered even though it's not.. I had to figure that out the hard way but after about 10 minutes of searching these forums and google, i was able to fix the issue. Just something to keep in mind.

3.) I havent read any PDFs on my phone yet so for this I emailed myself one. Wasn't able to open it and said I needed an app for it (i didn't try one from online so that may have support but default doesn't seem to have a view for the extension). I downloaded the free PDF reader which apparently has a 2 star rating. I was able to open the PDF app from my email with the PDF and i was able to see it with no problems. I was able to read the PDF, go through the pages, add a bookmark, search, and rotate the PDF file. It does keep a library of PDF files that it downloaded to read and i do not seem to be able to delete them. Hopefully that is a feature that will come soon though i am not anywhere near my 32 GB space limit (have 27 GB left).


Hope that helps!! Let me know if there is anything else I can help with
Hope to see you on a new windows phone and enjoying the ride like everyone else! hehe

 

[Slai]

2) How would I share pictures (videos too, but mostly pictures) with my close friends who all use iPhones and the like? No Facebook or other social media network will do, neither will email or some cloud-storage solution. I guess I'm looking for some sort of IM solution. (I am assuming the proprietary messaging service won't allow me to directly send a picture to my friend's iPhone, though I would be pleased to be wrong about this.) And, of course, how would my iPhone-wielding friends share their pictures/videos with me?

e...mail...?

 

[snaqvi91]

1. Just so you know people say the Facebook app on wp8 sucks.

2. Whatsapp should be coming out soon which I think will solve your problem completely? There is also kik messenger in the mean time.

If people still use windows live messenger, it is very well integrated with wp8.

3. The PDF app seems to be quite crappy according to reviews on the store but hopefully it will get better over time. In the mean time you could get Nokia Reader if you get a Lumia and that handles PDF files much better.

To be honest if you want to be comfortable using your device without any compromises, an iPhone would still be better for you for the time being.

I think I will go for wp8 because of the low price, interface, etc and because my university is moving its email and all that to outlook or something like that. I am personally still in limbo as to whether k should go wp8 or not. I'll wait for whatsapp to come out and then decide or for the yellow 920 to come out here and then decide or by that time if blackberry 10 is out decide then.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[WPenvy]

Hi all. I am a college student considering going with WP8 and I did my research, but I still have 3 main questions/factors holding me back from going the WP8 route. I'm sold on most of what WP8 offers, don't care about the lack of apps as long as I can do what I want to do, and REALLY don't care about the gaming experience. Hopefully y'all will be able to address some of these points; thanks in advance for the replies.

1) How would I interface with my FB Group threads? I while I am not a big FB user, I interact with my school groups on FB very often (mostly reading posts, sometimes making posts). This is very important to me, as all school-related discussion with my fellow students takes place on FB groups. Basic viewing access is mandatory, a good interface would just be nice.

2) How would I share pictures (videos too, but mostly pictures) with my close friends who all use iPhones and the like? No Facebook or other social media network will do, neither will email or some cloud-storage solution. I guess I'm looking for some sort of IM solution. (I am assuming the proprietary messaging service won't allow me to directly send a picture to my friend's iPhone, though I would be pleased to be wrong about this.) And, of course, how would my iPhone-wielding friends share their pictures/videos with me?

3) How is the .PDF experience? I'm referring not only to the UI of a particular app, nor the viewing experience (which would be understandably limited, due to a phone's relatively small screen size), but also the accessibility of .pdf files. Mainly: can I open/read .pdf files without hassle either inside a browser, and/or download a .pdf straight from a website or email? Can I upload/download to and from SkyDrive? Cloud storage is not that important, but would be nice. I do not care about editing capabilities, only the reading/accessibility experience. At school .pdf's are all-important: my textbooks are all .pdf files, online notes come in the form of pdfs, and so on.

Hey how's it going? I got my first Windows Phone as a student and immediately saw all the potential it had and helping me organise my day to day activities as my university uses Microsoft solutions for most of it's needs.

To answer:

1) I'm a member of multiple groups on my Facebook profile, most public, but others are closed. Through the FB app, i can access the Wall, Members list, and our photo albums, but that's it. Using IE10 though, i can access everything including files that we've uploaded to be viewable to all members (including office files and PDFs). The mobile website version of groups on FB is more than sufficient for me and what you've described.

2) Pictures and video can be shared by texting through MMS just like any other modern smartphone. You can attatch multiple images to a single text without issue etc. Obviously with videos on MMS there's a filesize limitation that's there because of the way Carrier's implement it on their network and how its compressed to not be a data hog. There's also the "Rooms" feature that i haven't yet actually used myself, but you can use it as a closed group to share pics, videos, calendars, and chat. Here's a link to the info/FAQ page: Use Rooms and Groups | Windows Phone How-to (United States)

3) The PDF experience is great. As far as WP8 goes, there's the app from MSFT to handle opening and viewing the files (It's much faster and smoother than what Adobe offered for WP7). PDF files can be opened from email, cloud storage, and websites. As soon as you open it, the phone saves a local copy that you can open again from the app. If you open the same file later it opens on the same page you left. PDFs can't be uploaded (in my use) with either the PDF reader app, the office hub, or skydrive app. Through the office hub and skydrive app you can open your PDF files store on your skydrive and shared skydrive folders. Basically, if you see a PDF online, emailed a PDF file, or texted, or IM'd a link for a PDF you can open and view it.

Hope this helps. The image in the text message thread is from someone with an iPhone btw...

 

[snaqvi91]

That's a great reply wpenvy. It answered some question I had too. Do you use kik messenger?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[WPenvy]

That's a great reply wpenvy. It answered some question I had too. Do you use kik messenger?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

No, i use Whatsapp to message friends in Spain and England. Haven't used it much though since going from WP7 to WP8. I'm a huge music listener and i hate how it creates a fake music stream to keep a channel open to the whatsapp servers to wait for incoming IMs. I'm pretty much waiting for their update that's coming. Hopefully it's faster and uses the new API in WP8 that Skype uses to push IMs to our phones in the background.

 

[snaqvi91]

No, i use Whatsapp to message friends in Spain and England. Haven't used it much though since going from WP7 to WP8. I'm a huge music listener and i hate how it creates a fake music stream to keep a channel open to the whatsapp servers to wait for incoming IMs. I'm pretty much waiting for their update that's coming. Hopefully it's faster and uses the new API in WP8 that Skype uses to push IMs to our phones in the background.

I'm guessing you got whatsapp before it got pulled? Since you mention the audio thing, does this mean that if you want to play some music, then whatsapp won't update your messages?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

 

[WPenvy]

I'm guessing you got whatsapp before it got pulled? Since you mention the audio thing, does this mean that if you want to play some music, then whatsapp won't update your messages?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Yeah i got it like at the end of November, i guess that's right before they took it away.

(Just tried this to make sure i'm right). If i'm listening to music and i pause for some reason, open the app and back out of it, i'm confronted with a blank music stream in the media dropdown bar and also in the xbox music hub. If i click the paused "now playing" cube in the music hub, it takes me to Whatsapp which force closes itself and returns to the music hub. If i really like the songs coming up on shuffle, well, i just lost that song order.

Idk about not getting the messages, but i can't listen to my music -_-

 

[danaplz]

Good stuff, thanks for the replies all.