New to WP8, my experience so far...

[rusty212]

Hello everybody, I've just got my Nokia 920 this week, it's a nice phone, too big and heavy!? man up! i can barely tell any difference in weight from my original HTC Desire. Anyway, I've been looking forward to getting this phone as i use a lot of Microsoft products and i thought all my devices would come together as one and life would be easier! Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case.

Contacts.
I imported all my contacts from my other sim card using the Nokia app. It transferred everything across, but can i find anything? nope. All my Facebook and Hotmail contacts are there, some have numbers others don't. I suspect the ones with numbers are ones which have their phone numbers on Facebook. So where are my sim contacts!? who know's, I certainly don't, still don't.

Xbox Smartglass
I was looking forward to this, so it was one of the first things i tried when i first got the phone. Signed in, had a bit of a play controlling the dashboard on my xbox, cool. Later that day when i was using the Xbox, i thought i would switch Smartglass on and see what happens when i play games. Nothing, i've not been able to sign in since. all it says is "can't sign in". uninstalled, re installed, switch phone off switch phone on, uninstall re install, check profiles match, check i'm on the same wifi. Still the same since Tuesday. Limited support, I can't fix it.

Xbox Music
Having been a fan of Spotify for years and i read about Xbox music last year and thought it sounded great, stream music like Spotify, but i can get it on my phone, Xbox and laptop. So i cancelled my Spotify subscription and started the 30 free trial of Xbox Music
I opened Xbox music on the phone, but i can't seem to play anything so i download Zune (as i'm still on windows 7) downloaded some albums, plug my phone in, it can't find the device. So I download the WP8 app and sync the songs i'd downloaded through Zune, seems to work fine. I open music on the phone, ready to have a listen... "We are unable to confirm the media usage rights for this content" and i get this same error is i go into Xbox Music on my phone and try to play something. so i can't play the songs. I give up, cancel the auto renew and restart my Spotify subscription and wait for their app.

I'm not one to bash products for no reason, I wanted this to all work flawlessly, but the stuff i was most looking forward to, doesn't seem to work or is just too confusing for a casual phone user. I guess I got my hopes up too early, but I'll stick with it and hopefully issues will be resolved, or if anyone on here can help that would be great! :smile:

 

[DontHate707]

damn srry for your rough experience so far, id help but unfortunately i dont have wp8 im stuck on 7.8.
im sure others can give some advice this is a really good forum and if they cant help i hope MS can fix these issues so you can enjoy your phone,

 

[stmav]

Hello Rusty and welcome. You might check the filters in the settings in people to see if that might be why you aren't seeing the sim contact. I've only messed with smart glass to shoot video over to the xbox from my phone and surface, can't be of much help to you there. But as stated above, there are a lot of wp people that use xbox that hopefully will be able to help you. Also there are xbox and xbox music forums that might have answers or you can post questions there.

 

[rusty212]

Thanks for the reply, I love the phone, and on the whole i like how the OS works (i was frustrated when i wrote the original post, the contacts problem was the straw!)
it's just these bits, but it's the bits that i thought would make getting a windows phone worth it.

I can sort the contacts issue out now, i have been going through, unlinking the facebook/hotmail profiles so i just have one for each contact then adding each persons number to the hotmail profile and linking the hm/fb profiles back together. It's working but it's going to take me a while!

e2a: I've just seen your reply stmav, thanks for that, i'll have a look now. I'll check out the specific forums tonight as well. Thanks guys.

 

[Paul May]

The good thing about the contacts once you are done if you have a hotmail account they will all save there and if you switch to another WP they will download all ready the second you add you live/hotmail account. This is one of the features I love the most. As well as syncing my calendar. It is a pain in the butt to set up but it should be worth it in the long run. Unfortunately I cannot help with Xbox music or Spotify but I really enjoyed Nokia Music if u would like to give that a try. I know you can download whole mixes to your device to use offline which is cool.

 

[lipper2000]

I have a 920 and have no problems with either the smartglass app or xbox music.

I think the xbox music part might work seamlessly with me because I already had a Zune pass and I just registered my device with the same live account when I started the 920 for the first time...do you have the same account for your xbox music and the 920?

 

[bashbaliga]

Are there any previous posts on this forum telling newbies what to do once they get hold of a windowsphone ?, cant find any of those.

 

[Simon Gregory]

Zune isn't currently compatible with WP8. There is a link I posted recently in the xbox music forum showing how you can protest to MS on uservoice to reverse that brainless decision!
You'll also see in there other people with the media rights issues. It's a known issue many people are complaining about and hoping will be fixed, but there may be some things for u to try in the forum. Generally though, XBMusic is a complete mess at the moment, and is in urgent need of a huge update (you just need to check out the link I also posted to the master list of bugs to see how bad!)

 

[stmav]

Are there any previous posts on this forum telling newbies what to do once they get hold of a windowsphone ?, cant find any of those.

There's a stickied thread called WP8 Newbie Tips at the top of this forum.

 

[husslord]

I may as well add my 2 cents, so far I am torn between this and HTC One X+
A course I am more familiar with Android and iOS, so maybe that is where some of my frustration kicks in. No its not the apps, well "words with friends." I heard there was an update today, so I will try it when I get home. That and flixster, but why does it not show my movie collection I am sure its coming I am just impatient at times. My biggest biggest biggest issue is third party music players! I simply want a playlist, I have tried a few work arounds to make one, but huge pain! Plus my music is so scattered on the phone, I need to find a way to clean it up. I would enjoy artwork, but again not a deal breaker. BTW any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!! Has anyone heard if amazon mp3 will be coming to w8?
Now I must say after going back to android for a few days that even on the htc the screen isn't as nice, and the texting wow! At first I despised the stock lumia keyboard, now I LOVE IT!!! So simple and fast!! I am leaning to keep the the Lumia 920 right now, but we will shall see in a week or so when my return option is no longer valid.

 

[rusty212]

Well spotify has just been released for wp8 so i've downloaded that to sort my music problem. two down, it's been a productive afternoon!

It's just the smartglass, i can't think what to do, i've tried everything i've found so far, it just doesn't seem to work. I'll keep googling!

 

[rusty212]

The good thing about the contacts once you are done if you have a hotmail account they will all save there and if you switch to another WP they will download all ready the second you add you live/hotmail account. This is one of the features I love the most. As well as syncing my calendar. It is a pain in the butt to set up but it should be worth it in the long run. Unfortunately I cannot help with Xbox music or Spotify but I really enjoyed Nokia Music if u would like to give that a try. I know you can download whole mixes to your device to use offline which is cool.

Good point, I can see how it would be useful. I'm having a bit of a clearout of old contacts, duplicates and old numbers while i'm sorting it out, so it's probably a good thing, in a round about way.

 

[spyderzWPC]

Rusty to make managing your contacts easier, I would actually go through outlook.com (Hotmail.com) Any changes you make there will then be displayed on your phone. I just find that easier.

 

[rusty212]

Rusty to make managing your contacts easier, I would actually go through outlook.com (Hotmail.com) Any changes you make there will then be displayed on your phone. I just find that easier.

Thanks for that! yeah that's quite a lot easier.
It's a shame it can't delete some contacts (i'm guessing facebook) that would be handy

 

[stmav]

Rusty to make managing your contacts easier, I would actually go through outlook.com (Hotmail.com) Any changes you make there will then be displayed on your phone. I just find that easier.

Ditto to this, that's what I did. Got everything the way I wanted it on hotmail.com then let it sync to phone. Then just filtered out facebook. They're still there, I just don't see them, which is what I want.

 

[rusty212]

I managed to sort out smartglass. My date was set to January on the phone, so i can take the blame for that one! I would have thought an error message would have popped up though saying why it couldn't connect.

My contacts issue is worse than i thought though. The sim contacts from my old phone have disappeared from my old sim after i used the transfer tool, but as i can't find them in the 920 they are essentially lost unless they are stored on the phone somewhere.and i just can't see them.

I have had a look at the filters and disabled hotmail and facebook (the only 2 synced accounts) hoping that the sim contacts would be left over, but it just says "import sim contacts" in my contacts menu so i'm guessing they're not there.

 

[bashbaliga]

Have you sorted out the issue ? Even my contacts dont show up, import option seems to be dimmed.