The lack of support from pretty much everyone and the future of Windows Phone

Nataku4ca

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Errr....how do I use the tellme feature?

there is a lot to tellme, i think u are pointing to the one we were discussing so i'll stick to that (tell me if thats not the case)

basically go to settings->speech
and check off "Enable speech recognition over the network" and "Use Speech when the phone is locked"
then on the bottom you will see a drop down for "Read aloud incoming text messages"

i chose bluetooth only so it doesn't say every text i get when im just strolling around.... (i only use bluetooth in my car)

btw, the steps are from WP7, it might be a little different for WP8, and also only English text messages will be read, other language will still initiate the process but you won't hear the actual text

i think the language part is changing though, at least from a presentation regarding dictation a few month back, Microsoft is working on something really interesting, just not sure when it would actually happen
 

tomatoes11

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The killer feature for me in Windows Phone is Tellme over Bluetooth. You can have an entire text message conversation without ever picking up your phone or looking at it. This is great while driving, if you have a BT stereo or headset. It's one of the reasons I take my Lumia when I travel.

Nothing else even comes close. iPhone requires you to hold the home button to initialize Siri to read your messages and again to respond. The closest app on Android that duplicates this is Vlingo and, while it will automatically read the incoming messages, you still have to unlock the phone and tap the screen to respond.

Tellme over bluetooth is something Microsoft should make a much bigger deal about, in my opinion. Voice-to-text is definitely inferior to the other two platforms, but the automatic prompting that allows you to have an entire text message conversation using your voice is unbeatable.

Not sure how tell me works, yet to try it, but the GS2 and GS3 you don't have to touch the phone. I never use it though.
 

sjhippie

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I've been very happy with WP8 after being an iphone user for 4yrs. Are there some apps I would like to see.. yeah. But I've found suitable work arounds. There are some things I'ld like to see tweaked. Remember... when iOS came out it did't have notifications etc. It took some time. Yeah their app market is better. I don't care, I find suitable workarounds that are just fine. Anyone seen the new iOS Flickr app? Everyone is touting it as "BEAUTIFUL" INSPIRING" I saw it and went...meh...my WP Flickr app looks AWESOME. In all honesty, my phone has caught so many peoples attention it's unreal. They ask about the apps like YouTube, I show them MetroTube, and they love it. I show them Flickr and their jaw drops. Groups...they can't believe it's that easy to communicate to people. I wish I could get a commission. People, at least here in the San Jose area, that have seen and gotten to play with my 920 love it. And I know several actually will, in fact my bartender (yeah I go there alot) just bought a 920 after using mine. I think it will take time, but people do in fact really like WP. It's just not been advertised until V8 came out...or at least very little. That and it is so very different from anything most smartphone users have ever seen it will take them a bit to get into it. I love showing them what mine can...and can't do. And the one thing I constantly hear is..."so you can actually make it "your" phone..cool!" Anyways...my coffee fueled thoughts. Now time to beat them down with a beer.
 

c8m6p

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The killer feature for me in Windows Phone is Tellme over Bluetooth. You can have an entire text message conversation without ever picking up your phone or looking at it. This is great while driving, if you have a BT stereo or headset. It's one of the reasons I take my Lumia when I travel.

Nothing else even comes close. iPhone requires you to hold the home button to initialize Siri to read your messages and again to respond. The closest app on Android that duplicates this is Vlingo and, while it will automatically read the incoming messages, you still have to unlock the phone and tap the screen to respond.

Tellme over bluetooth is something Microsoft should make a much bigger deal about, in my opinion. Voice-to-text is definitely inferior to the other two platforms, but the automatic prompting that allows you to have an entire text message conversation using your voice is unbeatable.

I agree that while in theory the service sounds great, in practice it's not that amazing. I have a BT stereo in my car and play music through the phone all the time. I'm very well versed in "using" the service you're describing.

1. Listening to a song, text message comes in, tell me says "Would you like me to read it or ignore"
2. Say "read it". Tell me reads it.
3. Tell me says "would you like to respond or are you done"
4. Say "respond". Tell me beeps to go ahead talking.

Here is where it gets sketch. The voice recognition on tellme is just not that good. Anything beyond "ok" "Be there soon" "Whats up" etc. has about a 80-90% chance of being wrong. I'm sorry but that is just the truth. I've used this in the car on a Samsung focus s (wp7) which i had for a year and several nokia 920's (kept getting it replaced) and on every single phone I used tellme was equally bad at reproducing what I was saying.

I've disabled that feature as it's annoying to keep interrupting with my music with text messages that I know I can't even respond to correctly by speech.

I am not really sold on voice as a useful tech. This car situation is probably the only place I would ever talk to my phone. People who use Siri look and sound dumb, and usually have to repeat their question 5 times. Google is a little bit better from what I've seen but most of the time opening your browser and doing a search for "what day is valentines day this year" will be a quicker process than repeating the question to your phone 3 times before it "gets it".

Until voice recognition is literally perfected I will probably never use it.
 

johninsj

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WP8, the platform you can buy hardware for, is a whopping 60 days old. Give it a little time. Cast your mind back to 2007, NO iOS SDK. For a year. Breath. It might take a few more months for some apps.
 

zipro

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I've been a WP8 user for a couple of weeks only. I didn't exactly switch - I also have an iPhone and a Nexus 4 but the Lumia 920 has been my daily driver ever since I got it.

Yes, I miss some of the google apps on it (google+, for example), but up until yesterday, I was fine with the app situation. I now have a business trip coming up and I need to decide which phone I'm taking along.

What I need in terms of software isn't much: I simply require a flight tracking software that keeps me alerted about gate changes and delays. On android and iOS I use flighttrack for that. I was happy to find the same app for WP as well. I purchased it only to find out that it hasn't been updated since 2011 and that it lacks all functionality except the absolute bare minimum. It's essentially been abandoned by the developer.

This is the first time that it really hit me: WP doesn't seem to be going anywhere. There was a short-lived boom phase 2 1/2 years ago and many apps available today were hastily pushed on the market back then because the developers thought Microsoft had something going for themselves. Then they realized that adoption was glacial and stopped developing for the platform. I'm willing to bet that if you deleted those apps from the Market that haven't been updated in over a year or so, you'd end up with less than 10000. I mean - how many apps have been updated to use the new features WP8 offers? 100? I'd say definitely not more than 1000. That's desolation for you folks.
 

ALpHa.Q.RoUgH

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Here is my take:

I started with the IPhone when it first came out and was hip to the whole jailbreaking thing it was fun after a while and then it got boring, with the constant changing of firmwares. Most of my favorite apps were all from Cydia and the IPhone was still growing as a platform. I lasted with them for about a year, then I moved to blackberry and it was great at first. The fast email, the quick way of BBMing people and having my battery last literally all day was amazing along with the Blackberry Desktop. However, the slow bad internet was a pain, and all the new models looked the same and didn't change much also the apps were expensive (Believe Documents to Go was $30 and BeeJive was $20). Now here I am with Windows Phone. WP7 was good initially at first there was some lacking stuff but WP8 has addressed some issues. Yes, WP8 is not getting as many apps as the other platforms but your comparing established well known platforms to a new growing OS that just changed their SDK. When the other OSes were new and growing as well, they experienced the same growing pains. You all expect Rome overnight and it won't happen. It will take time and it will be harder to breach a scene that's already saturated.

I love WP8 for it's freshness and live tiles compared to the static icons of iOS and Android and I'm used to Windows after using their computers for the last 18 years. The fact is this Windows Phone has to build for awhile before they get their house. Will I be around, maybe depends on if Blackberry 10 swoops me back away. But as of right now I like what Windows is doing, they seem to have a plan and they have a good company in Nokia backing them up along with Samsung & HTC. If the Surface Phone is true then the only way to go is up. People who complain didn't do enough research, I always think before I act not act before I think.
 

JMBasquiat

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What I need in terms of software isn't much: I simply require a flight tracking software that keeps me alerted about gate changes and delays. On android and iOS I use flighttrack for that. I was happy to find the same app for WP as well. I purchased it only to find out that it hasn't been updated since 2011 and that it lacks all functionality except the absolute bare minimum. It's essentially been abandoned by the developer.

Flightaware does the same thing, and it's free (updated last month).

FlightAware | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)
 

wjlim3

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The tell me feature didn't work on my car bluetooth (VW Jetta, 2012). Wondering if I did anything wrong?

It's definitely connected, and I activated speech recognition. My wife sent me a text message and there was only a vibration, no notification from my car whatsoever.
 

ceraf

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I tried out the voice recognition feature today. Somehow, the word "plastic" was interpreted as "hot sex".

Good thing I wasn't actually texting anyone =)
 

Alex Kj

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Coming from an iPhone I do miss few apps which are not available in any form on WP8... However, other aspects of WP8 and the phones themselves are pretty good, while the competition is either standing still or declining in quality over time (I am of course talking about Apple's recent products), so I will not be "giving up" on WP platform any time soon. I would, however, really like for MS to spend more $$$ on attracting most popular app developers to this platform (MS has plenty of $$$ to do that), as well as spend more time on further improving the OS itself (like adding in global display orientation lock, or proper notification center) in a shorter time period, this will attract more users which in turn will attract more independent app developers. MS succeeded in a gaming console market, they can do the same in a mobile market, they just need to be a little bit more "proactive" rather than waiting for app developers themselves to decide to provide WP versions of their apps...
 

JMBasquiat

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FlightAware is pretty much useless - I can't look for future flights, for example. The app only shows flights in the next 24 hours or so. Plus I keep on getting error messages. It's an early alpha at best.

You said that you needed it to alert you of changing gates and delays, so that's why I suggested it. Didn't realize you need it to alert you of changing gates for flights in the future.
 

zipro

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You said that you needed it to alert you of changing gates and delays, so that's why I suggested it. Didn't realize you need it to alert you of changing gates for flights in the future.

Well, I need to be able to enter my itinerary before I leave. An app that isn't able to look up a scheduled flight that leaves in 7 days isn't going to cut it.
Sent from my RM-821_eu_euro2_224 using Board Express
 

Acejax805

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This would all be a different story if M$ decided to offer better 1st party options, if Xbox music didn't update all podcasts a day late or if the OS has some ability to manage files and documents outside of office.

Anyone that types M$ = ability to be taken seriously lost

The moral of this story is simple. Stop expecting everything to be available day one, or even day 180. It took Android years to come out with a good market, even with Apple paving the way. The apps will come soon enough and all of those developers that have "ditched" the platform will come running back when WP8's market share increases. Patience everyone. The sky is not falling!
- Android Nexus user convert
 

spaulagain

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Anyone that types M$ = ability to be taken seriously lost

The moral of this story is simple. Stop expecting everything to be available day one, or even day 180. It took Android years to come out with a good market, even with Apple paving the way. The apps will come soon enough and all of those developers that have "ditched" the platform will come running back when WP8's market share increases. Patience everyone. The sky is not falling!
- Android Nexus user convert

This guy is a troll anyways. He's in other threads *****ing about MS as well. And you're right, anyone who types it M$ obviously has a complex with anything Microsoft as it is.
 

jwinch2

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Its the success or failure of Windows 8 and RT that are going to determine things in my view. If they catch on, developers will write for them and it would then be very easy for them to port to Windows Phone. If Windows 8 goes the way of Vista, then WP is in trouble.
 

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