Re: @Don Jefe

Ah, then I should have specified that they are "utter crap" in the sense that the number of things you can do in them (without jailbreaking or rooting) is getting lower or stagnating. So while I agree that S40 is far above the level of suck (I might even like it the most of the OSes today), I also have to point out that when I compare WP8 to WM5/6, there is a massive step backwards in every aspect except maybe UI. When I compare Android to Maemo or Harmattan, there is stagnation. The only thing that has advanced (beside hardware) is marketing and "app" stores. There is still incredible room for making all of the three OSes incomparably more advance than what they are now without any hardware improvement. I personally don't need higher resolution display or lighter materials... ~300 ppi is more than enough and I like to have my device to have some weight, but of curse, that's personal preference. What I really could use is IR.

FM tuner (and transmitter) is in 6(4) years old phones I use, as is IR... I try not to think about it.

@Don Jefe

Originally I wanted to write a list of thing I would like, but then I realized that what you said can also be done on Symbian S40. Do you consider those features to be 'smart'? I love these arguments. "YOU CAN TALK TO A PERSON WHO IS 1000KM AWAY, HOW DARE YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS MAGIC".

So yeah, I would like them to do something that Belle, Harmattan or Windows Mobile couldn't do (hardware features aside, naturally, because hardware has advanced unlike OSes). Cloud storage is probably the only thing, which would be good if it wasn't often shoved down user's throat.

Re: Dear MS...

Hah, "apps" everywhere. Extremely irritating on WP8.

@ Matchstick

I don't know who are you replying to with the syncing, so I can't really comment on that....

Are you saying that the "app" store checks for updates at some predetermined time and doesn't bother to find out whether it's actually online or not? Hard to believe :D

@ Hooksie

Yes, I've come from completely different OS, which coincidentally bears the name Windows. What are the odds, right?

I'm afraid that without pointing out specific "nonsense" I have no way of defending my own arguments. However, I can assure you that most (if not all) options have been there in a mobile OS. In fact, I believe that all "smart" OSes I've ever come to contact with (except for iOS) are more flexible (and therefore have only few or none of the mentioned issues) than WP8/7... Symbian S60 / Belle, Windows Mobile 5/6, Android, Meego/Maemo... So yeah, please tell me which of the points are either nonsense or even never seen on any of the mentioned OSes.

Downloading - not a huge problem for you, enough of a problem for me to carry an actually smart phone or a laptop with me.

It probably needs years of work and maybe then it will be at least on a "usable" level. But I seriously doubt this kind of work. MS has clearly chosen the iOS way of totally closing things and making it pretty, "app" centric, social centric, sharing centric, who-knows-what-other-crap centric. I wanted something I could work with, personalize it to hell and know what the heck is going on with the phone. This bloody thing doesn't even bother to disclose when it's connected to the internet or how much it downloaded and no, using 3rd party "apps" for elementary things like that is a horrible, horrible solution. All tips I've seen so far were rather useless (knew the things before or they were irrelevant)

But yeah, I'm waiting for 8.1 and after I read the release notes, install it, then I will decide whether to sell the phone to someone more tolerating or give the phone one more chance (till 8.2 that is).

I'd want to remove games for the same reason I removed N-Gage from N95 - I don't play games. I might want to play them, but I certainly don't want to use some "XBox" thing that probably sends who knows what who knows where and doesn't have any other purpose. I can't check that, because the phone doesn't show internet connection...then I mentioned calculator, not calendar (which is actually useful as long as it keeps all its entries on the phone and doesn't send them to some cloud or wherever) and that's simply because the calculator is too basic for my tastes, no need for it to take up space in application list. Speaking of which, that thing needs search. Same with settings, which seem to have completely random sorting.

Hmm, too long again :(

@The Original Steve

Thanks for a rather constructive comment :) .

As for the cellular data, it may have been fixed, I have to check that out (somehow). But when I'm connected to a WiFi on N95, it doesn't download a byte from cellular data source. It doesn't even connect (something WP8 doesn't bother to show). I added a question mark to this point in my list :D .

Have your friends check people.live.com whether they have their contacts listed there. I bet they do.

Accessing via USB (to the shared storage anyway) is the basic of basic, but I'm used to manage my files on phone, send them to other phones (without having to go online and use 3rd party) and delete stuff that needs to be deleted.

I don't know what "sideload" means, but considering this word turned up with modern "smart"phones, it doesn't mean "I download an installer package with my phone and open it in the phone" like I can do on N95.

The thing with outlooks is synchronizing local contacts and local calendar. Some people use that.

Is there a counter that doesn't require me to give them any information? I'll check that, but I doubt it. And that still isn't exactly ideal, this is, again, a pretty basic feature.

But calculator or that XCrap "apps" aren't really system apps, no? ^^ . But that's really the smallest issue, unless the programs run in background, which I'm unable to check.

Try downloading anything the phone doesn't work with. "We can't download this file, because Windows Phone doesn't support this file type.". Stupid, stupid.

Yep, turns out you can. See, I wouldn't expect the option to send over BT to disappear entirely when I turn it off and I just realized that the OS isn't as clever as S60. Oh well, my bad, that's one list entry to go.

I still hope the OS will evolve to be more power user friendly...

Re: Only Apple?

I see, thanks for the clarification. In that case it makes me wonder why is most countries so careless about this issue. And the media. The way I see it, paranoia is better than lethargy.

Re: Not out of beta yet...

-Creating of an average playlist takes at least 60 seconds on a PC. I know that, because I tried this whole playlist thing to see what's so good about it. Turns out it's just that the song can be in more playlists at the same time. Not that useful for me ^^ . I see you share this philosophy with Microsoft then. "We don't care if you're used to do something differently, we will force you to do it the way we want no matter how inefficient it is". Yeah...

-For the last time, you cannot disable cloud "backup" of contacts unless "Email" means "contacts", which would be even more stupid.

-About the search button, I don't think they will actually change that...

-Battery life is average from my point of view (2-3 days here), but I guess I'm used to phones that don't report user's activity back to their masters. (yes, it's an assumption, but until this piece of crap OS starts showing when it's connected and how much data it transfered, I can't trust it. They're onto me, right?)

-"Major apps" are not what I'm interested in. Or workarounds using "apps". Not only am I interested in sending my data to yet another place, but all of these things should be on OS level. Remember Symbian S60? It has most of it.

-Yeah, well, I've never claimed I was the majority :P . And frankly, I couldn't care less about the majority. Hell, the majority uses Facebook.

-The notification thingy would be good, but again, it would need to be optional so I could get rid of it.

Well, we'll see how will MS deal with the whole thing in the next update. They can do three things: extend the functionalities (and by that I don't mean further social integration, I mean real functions), close the OS even more or don't change anything except few design changes. That's ascending probability, the way I see it, heh.

Re: Not out of beta yet and the long list...

Nope, what (presumably) you did was answer with a bunch of lies, half-lies, irrelevant points and generally you are being overly apologetic over WP8.

What's even worse, you do it again. Exactly how is saving of "app" list, settings, text messages and photos relevant to contacts? It is not, try again. Or don't.

Re: Not out of beta yet and the long list...

Heh, they would be deal-breakers if I didn't buy the phone in a hurry. Bad, bad decision.

NFC transfer is nice, but rather useless when the target doesn't have it.

Music isn't sorted by "artist", but by "album artist" tags. And how exactly does any of this help me when I want to listen to the music I have in "oldies" folder? Various artists and genres and I'll be damned if I have to create playlists for 1500-ish songs because of the OS's incompetence.

Yep, I didn't know. I keep repeating that I expected WP8 to be at least as good as WM5.

Maybe that cellular data idiocy is gone, it's kind of difficult to check that when there is no data counter.

No, you can't disable cloud backup. You can, however, change the server to localhost or whatever. Not what I'd call a solution. Also this has to be done before any contacts are present on the phone.

Not a big deal for you, reason to learn some anger management techniques for me. That goes for everything except uninstalling some of the bloatware.

As for the AC, does it really think its post is worthy of a proper reply? Didn't think so.

Re: As predictable as night following day

You sound like an MS bloke. "(...)they don't understand it or have massive holes in their understanding" reminds me of Ballmer's "they don't get it".

And I guess this whole phenomenon is a sign of a great, functional and efficient product, which is, of course, misunderstood. Right?

Re: @ Kurt 4

So yes, the phone (as in the hardware) is great. I agree completely. In fact, that's one of the reason why I got it. The OS, however, drags it down to underground levels for me.

(also I find the camera of 920 to be a little overrated. Nexus 4 (I think) shoots a lot sharper)

Re: "[WP8] is well liked by its users."

"Share some of your 'long list'"

If you wish.

Uses cellular data when on WiFi,

Limited settings (can't even control the annoying search button),

No application data access management (or any way of closing some of them),

Trying to force me to use clouds which is (for me) unacceptable (there is a workaround for this),

Cannot install anything outside of the store,

No file explorer (with sending files over BT) or access to the system and application files,

No direct Outlook sync,

No music player that can sort by folders,

Only global volume control (plus on phone),

Lack of any kind of patch notes,

Can't see the amount of transfered data for the last 30 days,

Can't uninstall things like "games" or "calculator"

Can't download whatever I want,

Can't send photo over BT.

--

That is my "long list". More things are being added every now and then.

@ Kurt 4

Might I ask exactly how is 920 amazing? Aside from being pretty.

Re: What is the point

Google merely promotes themselves. Do you know what companies like Apple or EA do? They buy their potential competition or sue them. Nobody cares about that. I dislike Google, their privacy intrusions and their increasingly shitty services, but I'm with them on this one.

Re

You do know that WP8 doesn't use Zune? That sort of casts a rather large shadow over the credibility of the rest of your post.

Yep, I didn't look into it as I know how bad it was. However, that also means to took another option away, no matter how bad. I apologize for jumping into conclusions.

Outlook is a client. Sync both Outlook and your phone with your email server. Job done. You can then easily edit contacts, etc....

So exactly how do I synchronize contacts and calendar over IMAP? Not that I wanted to do that, I have no intentions of providing access to my contact list to any online service if I can avoid it.

OS that can't even do everything Symbian did 10 years ago

Yep, my thoughts exactly.

Re: Almost perfect

@Grail

I have already made so many posts stating what's wrong with WP8 that continuing this crusade would most likely permanently mark me as "the Microsoft hater". As for productivity, how do you explain that Microsoft's own operating system is unable to directly synchronize with one of the most used Microsoft's own software, that being Outlook? Why is it that I can't read/send messages, edit calendar entries, contacts, etc? I know my S60 phone can do all of that even though I have to install PC Suite. (no, don't even get me started on Zune, that's got to be the most useless program I've ever seen)

Re: Part of a larger play

You think? This could backfire rather violently as Microsoft is just as bad or even worse than Google when it comes to privacy, but nobody seems to notice or care.

Re: Android permissions design

@I ain't Spartacus: As far as I know, the only thing WP8 "apps" ask about is use of locations. Everything else I have tried (and I've just tried installing Facebook "app" just for the sake of it) is merely information basis. Information, that's hardly satisfying. And even after I download the "app", there is no way to change the permissions as far as I know.

As far as iOS goes, I was really guessing. It was a question after all.

Re: Android permissions design

Look on the bright side - at least you can actually set the permissions. Can you do that in iOS? Oh yes, and you can't do that in WP8 either.

Re: Google does the same thing

It never ceases to surprise me how out of the trio Apple / Google / Microsoft, the least evil actually tends to be Google.

See, these are the things I personally don't care about or that are irrelevant. Yes, it's pretty and fluent, I'll give it that and I've been saying so ever since. It's frozen on me twice so far, don't know how Android or iOS fare and I don't care. I was comparing it mainly to Symbian and Windows Mobile. Social network integration and contactlist / calendar siphoning to cloud is completely unacceptable for me, not awesome. Maps are Nokia's work, of course they're good in it, they've been doing maps for cellphones for a while. Not relevant. Same with the hardware points. I actually bought the phone mainly because of the hardware hoping WP8 would be not-terrible. Oh well.

Why, I'm sorry, as a WP8 user (and even using it on the designated flagship with number 920) I have to say that it's the worst OS I've ever used, and I've used Windows Mobile 5/6, Symbian S40/S60, Maemo and Meego. Then I wanted to try out the modern "smart"phone idea - except I wanted to avoid tightly closed system like Apple and I don't trust Google (whose phones are mostly cheap trash anyway). But of course you already know that WP8 is very much like iOS, possibly even worse.

The improvements you speak of are slowly getting the OS on the level of Symbian 10 years ago. Is being better than a 10 years old OS too much to expect from an OS that I'm actually paying? Is it too much to expect that it would be better than Windows Mobile 5? That's 8 years ago. By Microsoft. I'm using Pocket LOOX N560 till this day and I still love the OS.

The improvements you speak of are so minor and so slow that the OS will maybe, just maybe, be on an "OK" level ( as far as I'm concerned anyway) by the end of 2018. But it's more likely that it will further close in and try to steal my private data more persistently.

I'm sorry if this looks like an anti-MS crusade, but that's how I feel after using Lumia 920 for two months.

Re: Its true.

Both Nokias N9 (Meego) and N900 (Maemo) have .... solid communities, if nothing else.

Re: Bah, Microsoft...

Yes, one annoying click to get to desktop that lacks Start menu. Oh how great. I wouldn't touch W8 with a 3 meter pole if it didn't have Classic Shell installed on it. As for the nagging about Live part, if I remember correctly, there is some "very persuasive" text on the log-in screen. I think there was more, but that may have changed...

What? Are you kidding me? If you use "express" kind of settings on a WP8 phone, it makes the user participate in all kinds of "anonymous feedback and data collection", send some data about WiFi networks, share location, send all contacts (if you log-in, there is no way to opt-out) and god knows what else. So yes, it doesn't harvest anything without my permission, but then, if I don't give the permission, the phone becomes near to useless, because I can't download any "apps" and the OS itself is most likely a worse piece of crap than iOS. I caught myself thinking 'I wish this had -at least- Symbian'. And it's secure because nobody cares for OS that has 5% market share.

You must work for MS, there is no other way you could defend the company this much. They did nothing good in the past two or three years.