Windows Phone 8 Woes

Anyone who is addicted to Android phones will find it very difficult to get adjusted to claustrophobic environment of Windows Phone platform. I went from Android phones to Nokia Lumia 720 sporting the latest Windows Phone 8 operating system on it. Nokia Lumia 720 is a thin and light weight phone. Glossy and Matte options were available in several colors. All had premium feel and comfortable grip. I went for matte black finish. Curved-screen design reminiscent of the Nokia N9 provides a convenient touch screen experience. The screen has high brightness and black levels are pretty solid with good contrast. Battery life is pretty impressive. Phone lasted nearly two days of continuous use. Compared to Android phone its power consumption was very frugal. If you are solely looking for a stable phone with least bells and whistles and very good battery life, Lumia 720 is the phone to choose.

The camera has a variety of interesting features such as Smart Shoot. The quality is quite good for a smartphone camera in its class. F1.9 aperture which brought quite useful in low light conditions. Quality of video recording is quite impressive with good color accuracy and detail are pretty. There are exclusive features such as Nokia HERE. This maps application more resilient when compared to Bing Maps that can be found on other smartphones windows phone brand. The offline map which came along with Nokia Here was a great boon for navigation.

What really bothered me in the phone was sheer lack of customizability. It was built for extremely security conscious point of view. There was restriction for every application not to get global file access. Not having a file manager was biggest drawback. For example I can record video or audio from app like Whatsapp and share with others. But I cannot use video which is already there on my phone and share it. If you need file transfer, it needs to be routed via Skydrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage platform. The woes were endless. I have been a very early Windows Mobile adapter. Windows Phoine is

Here is what The Pfeiffer Report’s Smartphone User Experience Shootout compared iOS 7, iOS 6, Android, BlackBerry 10, and Windows Phone 8 said it’s concluding remarks on Windows Phone 8.

Is not very competitive in terms of overall user experience…Microsoft deserves credit for designing a highly original mobile operating system that does not imitate the market leaders and boldly goes its own way. That would be great — if the OS actually delivered all the user experience aspects that users around the world have come to expect. The truth is that under the slick veneer of swiveling tiles is an operating system that is challenging to use. One can feel trapped in the rigid user interface that leaves no room for customization, and user interface in general is not conceived to deal efficiently with the dozens and dozens of apps smartphone users want. Add to that the lack of some core user interface features and you get an idea of Microsoft’s challenges to make Windows Phone truly competitive.

Let me list 40 plus issues I found in Windows Phone 8 platform. They will be found in every Windows Phone 8 found in the market.

• Call duration not showing in Call record.
• Call recording not possible. It’s restricted.
• Can’t save numbers directly to contacts from call record.
• Charging phone while it’s switched off is not possible. It automatically get on while connect to charger.
• Day by day increasing other storage. No way to clean it.
• Duplication of files in image, video and other hubs.
• Image preview quality is poor with default viewer.
• In video and audio hub, there is no way to categorize your files. In video hub there is no way to even sort the files. Everything mixed up.
• No auto alignment for text while zooming in documents and web pages. Really annoying while reading web pages.
• No background downloading support (except app store).
• No CUT option in text editing. Only COPY option.
• No Equalizer for music player.
• No file manager. You can’t see files without an appropriate app. You can’t move, rename the files. You can’t delete files that are not supported. Can’t move files between SD card and phone memory. Simply you always need a computer for every single file operation. Or need to use Skydrive
• No flash plugin support. So you can’t see any flash videos or web content that requires flash support. OK, we can blame Adobe for this. Windows Phone came late for the party.
• No looping option in to do list. No proper notification. No way to set alerts for different day intervals.
• No multiple delete option except audio and image files.
• No multiple file sending for files except images.
• No notification center. Always results in delayed notifications.
• No privacy features. Only way to protect your personal data is screen lock password.
• No rotation lock. Really Annoying while in bed.
• No seek bar for music player.
• No separate volume controls for music and ring tones. Can’t set custom ring tone for message.
• No task killing, one hanging application leads to entire phone hang and restart. (Thankfully I did not face any)
• No USB tethering. So you can’t use it with your desktop computer.
• No free video players for playing popular video formats like .mkv, .avi, .flv etc.
• No way to close internet explorer immediately.
• No way to see file properties.
• No zooming while video recording in progress and no pause option for video recording.
• Page refreshing in browsers and other applications when switching to foreground. All your typed content vanishes when it refreshes.
• Poor JavaScript and HTML 5 support in internet Explorer. Webpages not displaying correctly. And can’t upload images or any files.
• Receiving video files via Bluetooth it goes to saved images folder instead of video hub.
• SMS delivery reports comes into a separate thread.
• To close apps you need first bring the app into foreground.
• Unable set custom applications for opening files.
• Vibration alerts are not really helpful. It vibrates only once when getting a call.
• Video and audio downloading is natively restricted.
• Windows phone does not support WiFi Direct feature. Only way to file sending is slow Bluetooth.
• You can’t save received audio and video files with any social networking apps.
• You can’t send Pre-recorded audio and video files via any social networking apps like WhatsApp, WeChat etc.
• You can’t share videos via Bluetooth except your personal videos taken with this phone.
• You can’t upload video, audio, document files to any sites. And unable to upload image files to most of the websites. And can’t attach with email.

As you probably guessed by now, my little experience was a failure. I’m back to my Android device and don’t plan to give Windows Phone 8 another try.