First post here @ WPCentral, used to post on CB. Hello, everyone. :smile:
Mostly everyone I know or read about keep their mobile platforms based on empathy, habits or plain passion, the latter being the cause of flame wars on discussion forums & lists since dial-up modems were made available. I'm more of an agnostic on that matter, seeing the OS more like a means than like the product itself. I have migrated from Symbian to WM6.5 to BBOS 4~6 to Android to iOS and now have migrated to WP8, with a Lumia 920. My friends that jumped in bought a cheaper handset first, for trying the beast out, but since WP8 has all my key apps available, what the heck. But...
...well, there's always a but, right? This one, actually, is the reason of the lines above. I find no passion on the OS itself, so what I came to discuss means no harm to anyone's passion nor fuel to anyone's aversion. I've been a forum mod in BR for the past decade and know pretty darn well how people might respond. So, like the dentist that distracted the patient so he can pull out the tooth without the drama: WP8 gives me the uneasy sensation of using a BETA OS. And not the Google kind of Beta.
Now, let me break that out in topics. See, the system shows good promise, or I would not spend some 900usd (yep, stop complaining about steep smartphones, North America, we got the gold. I mean, the carriers did.) on that thing. And while hardware-wise the Lumia 920 has good old Nokia written all over it, and that includes the ability to boldly talk where no iPhone has talked before, there are some things that do look like a downgrade. Like the lack of screen rotation lock.
And when I say downgrade, I'm not talking about competition comparison, but rather WM6.5. WP8 seems to have kept some UI DNA left, particularly on the window and back key behavor (I'm talking about WM6.5 for smartphones here, the kind that ran on MPx220), and I found that great because it helps flattening the learning curve. But why keep this and leave orientation lock out, for instance, is beyond reasonable comprehension.
Now, interface quirks are annoying but even if we rant a little, it's actually ok to wait a little for them to be ironed out. There's the serious matter, though. For instance, try and restore a backup after a hard reset. I went through this twice on the last week. First, believing my battery was defective, I switched handsets at the store. Turns out that the warm spot on the back of the phone was actually the Qualcomm PM IC heating up, the 1308 update being the one to blame. Which led me to the second attempt to restore, as 1314 is out for a while but hasn't reached OTA, and NSU didn't give me the option to preserve user files. The problem with data restore on WP8 is that it requires internet connection but won't give you access to a wireless network until after setup is done and won't restore data after setup is done. The chicken and the egg all over again. Yes, there indeed is the cellular data connection. But that only seems to apply if you have inserted a SIM from the same original operator the your handset. Now... there's where I got mad. My 920 is unbranded. It has no original carrier whatsoever. So, that means no restoring-the-backup for you, pal, and I've seen that on my mind with the crazy Ballmer face laughing histerically at me. Not funny. After 4h of teeth-grinding attempts, I accidentally found out that WP8 won't really wipe itself completely if you restore factory settings on the About menu. I did that and 5min after the boot, my signal bar showed an H on its side.
Then, there's the strangeness on what they call backup. Basically, which apps you had installed and the screen color scheme, along with emails and SMS. That alone was worth restoring, but having to reorder tiles, transfering back my old ringtone and setting it, that was some PITA. Also, why won't they just restore your pictures? Instead, they create an album and link it to your skydrive backup. Now, come on, that is just lazy. We are among techies here, TI guys are a-dime-a-dozen among us. Just tell me, is that something you would call backup and restore? Tie the user down to a desktop software if you must, Microsoft, but if you tell "backup", you better mean "backup". This is critical. This and the network unavailability on setup, something I've seen it's documented for more than six months, and we've seen to updates, that I know of, since then.
Other things include the crappy Store app. Please, Microsoft, don't give a job like this to an intern. WebUI for the store is ridiculously better, even if I never got the push install feature working. The app need a complete revamp, including things like the purchase history. Come on, every single mobile platform to the date has that feature. It really doesn't seems like its absence is patent-related. It seems more like patent lazyness.
Notifications. It really bugs me that an app is being verborrhagic with tickers and I can't turn that off. Well, yes, I have read that Microsoft has put this on the hands of the developers, but some of them make me feel like this was unwise and control must return to user's hands. Like "giving a child a 220v live wire" unwise.
The list is really longer than this, and it goes all the way from calling colors themes to the GMail app that won't archive, but, in all honesty, I think WP8 has a good path to walk and grow. It's really up to MS changing its postures and stop acting like a stubborn giant. If anyone of you have watched Cringely's documentaries on the origin of what we use today, you might remember that from ethernet to the mouse, many of these things were created at Xerox's PARC and corporate stupidity prevented Xerox from being the richest company today. Microsoft gives me the frank impression of a company that, when a problem is outed, they spend months arguing between departments to decide who's to blame and THEN they talk solution. That and some reminiscence of the time when we actually needed them more than they needed us.
Mostly everyone I know or read about keep their mobile platforms based on empathy, habits or plain passion, the latter being the cause of flame wars on discussion forums & lists since dial-up modems were made available. I'm more of an agnostic on that matter, seeing the OS more like a means than like the product itself. I have migrated from Symbian to WM6.5 to BBOS 4~6 to Android to iOS and now have migrated to WP8, with a Lumia 920. My friends that jumped in bought a cheaper handset first, for trying the beast out, but since WP8 has all my key apps available, what the heck. But...
...well, there's always a but, right? This one, actually, is the reason of the lines above. I find no passion on the OS itself, so what I came to discuss means no harm to anyone's passion nor fuel to anyone's aversion. I've been a forum mod in BR for the past decade and know pretty darn well how people might respond. So, like the dentist that distracted the patient so he can pull out the tooth without the drama: WP8 gives me the uneasy sensation of using a BETA OS. And not the Google kind of Beta.
Now, let me break that out in topics. See, the system shows good promise, or I would not spend some 900usd (yep, stop complaining about steep smartphones, North America, we got the gold. I mean, the carriers did.) on that thing. And while hardware-wise the Lumia 920 has good old Nokia written all over it, and that includes the ability to boldly talk where no iPhone has talked before, there are some things that do look like a downgrade. Like the lack of screen rotation lock.
And when I say downgrade, I'm not talking about competition comparison, but rather WM6.5. WP8 seems to have kept some UI DNA left, particularly on the window and back key behavor (I'm talking about WM6.5 for smartphones here, the kind that ran on MPx220), and I found that great because it helps flattening the learning curve. But why keep this and leave orientation lock out, for instance, is beyond reasonable comprehension.
Now, interface quirks are annoying but even if we rant a little, it's actually ok to wait a little for them to be ironed out. There's the serious matter, though. For instance, try and restore a backup after a hard reset. I went through this twice on the last week. First, believing my battery was defective, I switched handsets at the store. Turns out that the warm spot on the back of the phone was actually the Qualcomm PM IC heating up, the 1308 update being the one to blame. Which led me to the second attempt to restore, as 1314 is out for a while but hasn't reached OTA, and NSU didn't give me the option to preserve user files. The problem with data restore on WP8 is that it requires internet connection but won't give you access to a wireless network until after setup is done and won't restore data after setup is done. The chicken and the egg all over again. Yes, there indeed is the cellular data connection. But that only seems to apply if you have inserted a SIM from the same original operator the your handset. Now... there's where I got mad. My 920 is unbranded. It has no original carrier whatsoever. So, that means no restoring-the-backup for you, pal, and I've seen that on my mind with the crazy Ballmer face laughing histerically at me. Not funny. After 4h of teeth-grinding attempts, I accidentally found out that WP8 won't really wipe itself completely if you restore factory settings on the About menu. I did that and 5min after the boot, my signal bar showed an H on its side.
Then, there's the strangeness on what they call backup. Basically, which apps you had installed and the screen color scheme, along with emails and SMS. That alone was worth restoring, but having to reorder tiles, transfering back my old ringtone and setting it, that was some PITA. Also, why won't they just restore your pictures? Instead, they create an album and link it to your skydrive backup. Now, come on, that is just lazy. We are among techies here, TI guys are a-dime-a-dozen among us. Just tell me, is that something you would call backup and restore? Tie the user down to a desktop software if you must, Microsoft, but if you tell "backup", you better mean "backup". This is critical. This and the network unavailability on setup, something I've seen it's documented for more than six months, and we've seen to updates, that I know of, since then.
Other things include the crappy Store app. Please, Microsoft, don't give a job like this to an intern. WebUI for the store is ridiculously better, even if I never got the push install feature working. The app need a complete revamp, including things like the purchase history. Come on, every single mobile platform to the date has that feature. It really doesn't seems like its absence is patent-related. It seems more like patent lazyness.
Notifications. It really bugs me that an app is being verborrhagic with tickers and I can't turn that off. Well, yes, I have read that Microsoft has put this on the hands of the developers, but some of them make me feel like this was unwise and control must return to user's hands. Like "giving a child a 220v live wire" unwise.
The list is really longer than this, and it goes all the way from calling colors themes to the GMail app that won't archive, but, in all honesty, I think WP8 has a good path to walk and grow. It's really up to MS changing its postures and stop acting like a stubborn giant. If anyone of you have watched Cringely's documentaries on the origin of what we use today, you might remember that from ethernet to the mouse, many of these things were created at Xerox's PARC and corporate stupidity prevented Xerox from being the richest company today. Microsoft gives me the frank impression of a company that, when a problem is outed, they spend months arguing between departments to decide who's to blame and THEN they talk solution. That and some reminiscence of the time when we actually needed them more than they needed us.
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