Love/hate wp7

D

dice144

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Joined
Oct 30, 2011
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So I got sick of my Samsung Captivate and accidentally broke it in nerd rage back in Dec. I ended up extended my ATT contract and getting HTC Titan. Windows phone 7 was a breath of fresh air after trying many custom roms on the Samsung Captivate and it still always sucking. (horrid battery life even with extended battery, random slow downs etc)

But now I am so sick of the random things that windows phone cannot do. WiFi disconnects and does not remember my works portal access. (stupid webpage agreement with network PW) App selection is beyond bad. Sometimes I just want to randomly try a new app. Pandora support sucks! Not enough control over system alarms/ring tones.

The tiles I loved at first but now feel so limiting. I believe this is mainly due to the low res of the phone and scrolling down for a month sucks.

Maybe I just to picky. I disliked how locked down iOS was when I had the iphone 3GS. I loved Android being able to just copy files over and go but hated the randomly lockouts/slowdowns. And now hate the locked down part of Wp7.

Not sure if I should try Android again or just give up on current gen OSes/hardware and keep my HTC Titan.
 
I feel your pain. The Samsung captivate pissed me off to no end also. It is the reason why I will not buy Samsung again. I don't care if they have superior specs/hardware, the user experience was shit. No LED flash for the camera seemed like a huge oversight. The blatantly broken GPS. It was laggy/buggy as hell. A little better with a custom ROM, but only a bit. What really ticked me off was that it took Samsung/AT&T over a year to deliver Froyo after they originally promised it. This is what originally pushed me to use a custom ROM.

I've been with HTC ever since and I've been much happier. Just got an HTC One X and I can't say anything bad about it. Everything works. I go outside and will have a lock on 10-13 GPS satellites within a second, the screen is big and beautiful. I have not encountered any lag or choppiness yet.

If you wanted to return to Android, I would say the One X would be your best choice. However if you can hold out a few months, WP8 will be released. It's a little way off, but it will bring a slew of much needed updates and features, and I believe it's what will really kick off WP.
 
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Lol saw the OPs thread on Anandtech as well. I'd say you should try the One X and S III when it comes out for ATT because we're talking about a 2 generation leap from your captivate. Also custom roms :p
 
Your issue with android was the phone, rather than android itself, I'd say give it another go with another phone
 
Well I want to give Android another shot but it is also pretty slow on my Asus transformer...
 
I had the Captivate too. That phone sucked. There's just no other way to say it. However, I can tell you that the Galaxy Nexus I have is the first phone in a long time that I didn't immediately think about replacing. If you are on ATT the battery life is LOOOONG and everything is snappy. GPS works and works well. I would seriously tell you to get that phone. I think Google is selling it for 400 which is a far cry from the 700 i paid for mine. It was completely worth it too. I would take Android any day of the week over the others and I've tried them all.
 
The problem wasn't the phone, it was Android. I've owned three Android devices (Nook Color, EEE Pad Transformer, Galaxy SII). The user experience has been somewhere between awful and excruciating for all three devices. Android is a great OS in theory, but the implementation simply isn't there. Definitely looking at switching to WP after I'm done with my Galaxy.
 
W.Feather said:
Your issue with android was the phone, rather than android itself, I'd say give it another go with another phone
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It's both... Android 2.x was not good. My Captivate was the one that pissed me off the most, but i own an Inspire 4G too, and I've used loads of other phones. It's just not good. ICS has brought huge improvements though.

fishrule said:
The problem wasn't the phone, it was Android. I've owned three Android devices (Nook Color, EEE Pad Transformer, Galaxy SII). The user experience has been somewhere between awful and excruciating for all three devices. Android is a great OS in theory, but the implementation simply isn't there. Definitely looking at switching to WP after I'm done with my Galaxy.
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ICS has brought about an infinitely better user experience. Smoothness of iPhone with the flexibility of Android.
 
I love my Nokia Lumia 710 was a great step up from my Samsung galaxy S 4G it is faster and more fluid and stable than any of the android phones in my house the above mentioned SGS4G and a LG Mytouch 4G . I will not go back to android had 3 phones with android and all had different versions and then maybe just maybe 1 got a upgrade all three are on gingerbread now and that upgrade was a nightmare.
 
dice144 said:
...The tiles I loved at first but now feel so limiting. I believe this is mainly due to the low res of the phone and scrolling down for a month sucks...
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If you are doing that much scrolling maybe there are too many apps pinned to the main screen. From the app screen if you have a lot of apps you can just hit a letter and when it brings up the alphabet hit the letter of the app you want, minimal scrolling required. It was one of the reason I prefer it to Android. To me it is much more efficient to navigate. You can also use the voice commands to launch apps (START *APPNAME*). The WiFi issues are likely phone specific, I have never had a problem with my Lumia 900.

I am finding there are a lot of shortcuts in the OS you can to stumble upon while searching the internet. I just found out today that if you double tap the back button it will close an app rather than leaving it running in the background. I have yet to just find a good tutorial to most effectively use Windows Phone. But that was the same thing with Android. I really doubt I have used either of them as efficiently as they could be. :(
 
I will never get used to the wasted space on the right side on the main screen. That stupid arrow is useful for the 1st 5 min of owning the phone, after that the same purpose can be served with a swipe.
 
MrCrispy said:
I will never get used to the wasted space on the right side on the main screen. That stupid arrow is useful for the 1st 5 min of owning the phone, after that the same purpose can be served with a swipe.
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Agreed.

What I meant by the scrolling is for the phone for having a 4.7" screen had it been a higher resolution I could have more tiles/apps on the first screen without going to the menu to the right or needing to scroll down. I just now have enough apps installed to have the letter options (it does not come up until you have enough apps installed!)
 
dice144 said:
Agreed.

What I meant by the scrolling is for the phone for having a 4.7" screen had it been a higher resolution I could have more tiles/apps on the first screen without going to the menu to the right or needing to scroll down. I just now have enough apps installed to have the letter options (it does not come up until you have enough apps installed!)
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Yes but smaller icons mean having to hold the phone closer, look harder, etc. It's meant to be a very easy to glance and touch the interface, not requiring wasted seconds for precision. I love it for that. Here's another tip, when you go to tap the arrow to move to the right for the app list screen, tap the arrow twice. I know it sounds odd because at first tap the arrow shifts off-screen with the home screen, but tap the same spot twice and it will take you directly to the letter jump list. Just another shortcut, it's basically because you are tapping a blank spot that isn't a line populated with an app name. Also if you have a lot of people pinned to your home screen, consider creating/pinning a group instead. Family, friends, coworkers, etc. Then you'll only see those peoples social updates within that miniature people hub, you can get to them quicker than scrolling through all of people but not take up all the tile space on your home screen, etc. There are honestly a ton of useful things all over the place that aren't well documented.

I have a 7" android tablet that I carry around in my back pocket, but I still believe WP7 to be a better phone/communication device by far. So I get the best of both worlds, just a thought.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
If you are doing that much scrolling maybe there are too many apps pinned to the main screen. From the app screen if you have a lot of apps you can just hit a letter and when it brings up the alphabet hit the letter of the app you want, minimal scrolling required. It was one of the reason I prefer it to Android. To me it is much more efficient to navigate. You can also use the voice commands to launch apps (START *APPNAME*). The WiFi issues are likely phone specific, I have never had a problem with my Lumia 900.

I am finding there are a lot of shortcuts in the OS you can to stumble upon while searching the internet. I just found out today that if you double tap the back button it will close an app rather than leaving it running in the background. I have yet to just find a good tutorial to most effectively use Windows Phone. But that was the same thing with Android. I really doubt I have used either of them as efficiently as they could be. :(
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Technically using the back arrow and backing out of what you are in closes everything. It's not just a double-tap as far as I know, you just back fully out of however many "cards" that app is using. If you want to leave it open, just hit the windows button. If you want to be sure something is closed and not taking up your multitasking swipe list, then yes back out of it fully. Some might call that clunky, but personally I love the ability to have multiple e-mails or text messages to various people open simultaneously in separate cards. Several times I have been in the middle of composing an e-mail but have had to look at other e-mails for info without having to save the e-mail as a draft first and then re-open it.
 
OldPueblo said:
Technically using the back arrow and backing out of what you are in closes everything. It's not just a double-tap as far as I know, you just back fully out of however many "cards" that app is using. If you want to leave it open, just hit the windows button....
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From what I am seeing backing out of an app produces no different results than hitting the Windows button. I agree that it is handy to have multiple things running like 2 or 3 threads of text messages, as long long as you are actively using them. Things like the CNN app use a lot of battery. So when I am done with that a double tap of the back button seems to eliminate any trace of it running. If I am mistaken and anyone has a link for any detailed walkthroughs on Windows Phone 7.5 I would love to take a look at them.
 
dice144 said:
What I meant by the scrolling is for the phone for having a 4.7" screen had it been a higher resolution I could have more tiles/apps on the first screen without going to the menu to the right or needing to scroll down. I just now have enough apps installed to have the letter options (it does not come up until you have enough apps installed!)
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True, and I figured you had enough apps. I purposely added apps until I got to that point on the day I got my phone. Higher res phones will be coming in a few months, and I will likely be upgrading.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
From what I am seeing backing out of an app produces no different results than hitting the Windows button. I agree that it is handy to have multiple things running like 2 or 3 threads of text messages, as long long as you are actively using them. Things like the CNN app use a lot of battery. So when I am done with that a double tap of the back button seems to eliminate any trace of it running. If I am mistaken and anyone has a link for any detailed walkthroughs on Windows Phone 7.5 I would love to take a look at them.
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Basically the CNN app itself isn't consuming any battery in the background just by being "open". It has to be on the screen or have a background agent running. Every app that leaves your screen gets frozen or "dehydrated", and has no affect on your processor/battery life, though it will maintain a chunk of RAM I believe. If an app has a background agent though, that's a seperate thing and in many cases will run all the time. The two are not the same though, go to settings/swipe to applications/background tasks. That's the stuff that truly runs in the background.
 
are the live tiles of any actual use? i played with a friend's 900 for a few minutes and it seems like a novelty feature that's just for show to me.
they're way to small to actually be useful IMO.
 
blahblahyoutoo said:
are the live tiles of any actual use? i played with a friend's 900 for a few minutes and it seems like a novelty feature that's just for show to me.
they're way to small to actually be useful IMO.
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It depends on the app really. They're designed to let you know whether or not it's worth launching an app because new content is available instead of having to launch each of your apps to check. They're similar to Android widgets really except you don't have this massive mess of widgets all cluttered across seven screens and draining your battery. It's kind of in-between iOS and Android, it provides live information but sticks with a nice neat aesthetic. My wife's tile flips over when she's posted new facebook content, and I can see the first several lines of it. That either makes me want to hit it and read more or know if it's an update I don't care about and can skip. Stock apps will show a stock price, weather shows the weather, I have an Xbox live game pinned and it flips to show me what level I'm on, etc. It just depends how it's coded and what you want to pin.
 
I feel your pain, im currently using a windows 7 phone and the lack of apps and general interface REALLY frustrates me. It has a really clean and slick user experience but i cant stand how locked down it is. There is no menu button, and when you have the three little dots in the bottom right corner it gives you a menu with almost no options/settings.

Also windows 7 is slower then my previous android phone HTC aria. It "appears" faster with its neat animation but in my testing the android phone opened email faster, open browser faster, loaded pages faster -- it just didnt look as elegant. Ill take function over form any day, and thats why im going back to android soon.

No wifi tether, shit for apps, stupid bing search, I like the tile interface, but i miss android sooo much.
 
Heres a good question that real WP7 users have, what are all these missing apps that everyone seems so hurt about? I can't find anything on Android that I don't have an equivalent app in WP7. And hell theres 50,000 or something apps, with plenty of unique ones. I don't have a shortage of apps at all...and no connection issues on my 900....
 
XeroHouR said:
Heres a good question that real WP7 users have, what are all these missing apps that everyone seems so hurt about? I can't find anything on Android that I don't have an equivalent app in WP7. And hell theres 50,000 or something apps, with plenty of unique ones. I don't have a shortage of apps at all...and no connection issues on my 900....
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Same here not missing anything i have every app i wanted or need on my Lumia 710
 
HBO Go, flash support (I know not an app). Cheaper prices for games. More free apps would be nice. More browser options and or better browsers.

But for me HBO Go is the #1 thing I am missing. When I went to WP7 this winter did not care about HBO Go and did not realize it was free for me. Now with how good the selection is and how crappy Netflix is slowly getting HBO Go is the way to go for me.
 
dice144 said:
HBO Go, flash support (I know not an app). Cheaper prices for games. More free apps would be nice. More browser options and or better browsers.

But for me HBO Go is the #1 thing I am missing. When I went to WP7 this winter did not care about HBO Go and did not realize it was free for me. Now with how good the selection is and how crappy Netflix is slowly getting HBO Go is the way to go for me.
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I have never understood the need or want to watch tv or movies on a tiny ass screen.
 
dice144 said:
We are allowed to watch videos while working. Tech job :cool:
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Must be a nice place the places I worked for had strict policy against that stuff. I once had to fire a guy; he liked to watch just about everything while working if you know what I mean.
 
I've been using a titan on straight talk for four months now after using android and ios -- I would never even think of moving for wp7 at this point. The titan is a great phone and wp7 does everything I need it to do. I see where you're coming from about the locked down annoyance (and sidloading is a POA), but I really haven't had an urge to install non-supported apps. Also, Bing is notably inferior to Google search. Zune support, on the other hand is the cat's tits.

My main concern is that MSFT will not support wp7 in the long run and the hardware selection is getting worse and worse. A couple months from now, I'll. Likely get the itch to upgrade, but I've. Heard of absolutely nothing coming out that's interesting.
 
harmattan said:
My main concern is that MSFT will not support wp7 in the long run and the hardware selection is getting worse and worse. A couple months from now, I'll. Likely get the itch to upgrade, but I've. Heard of absolutely nothing coming out that's interesting.
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I think there's a bit of a lull in hardware right now because manufacturers are gearing up for Windows Phone 8 due at the end of the year. I think Windows Phone will really take off once Windows 8 and WP8 launch, hopefully with some new phones out there on more carriers (VERIZON!!!).
 
MrCrispy said:
I will never get used to the wasted space on the right side on the main screen. That stupid arrow is useful for the 1st 5 min of owning the phone, after that the same purpose can be served with a swipe.
Click to expand...

Looks like MS listened to me :) Apollo does away with the stupid arrow and you swipe right for the app list. Just like I said!
 
MrCrispy said:
Looks like MS listened to me :) Apollo does away with the stupid arrow and you swipe right for the app list. Just like I said!
Click to expand...

That spacing does actually help people with smaller hands use the phone with their thumbs but with the new tile especially, yeah not a good use of space.

Looks like they did do a decent job of supporting current phones. Biggest loss for current owners is native apps, not probably a huge deal outside of games.
 
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