Four (4) issues with Windows Phone 8


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OS: Windows Phone 8

Phone: Nokia Lumia 620

 

 

Issue 1 (poor design/options) - Inability to disable automated rotation (portrait vs. landscape) via accelerometer. This is a common complaint with WP8 from what I can tell.

 

Issue 2 (poor design/options) - Search button on the phone defaults to Bing, and this cannot be changed. It should be customizable (a different search engine for example, or even searching within the phone/microSD card's own memory).

 

 

The following two issues I have consistently experienced. I am not sure if it is a problem with my phone in particular, the model of the phone, or WP8 in general...

 

Issue 3 (software bug? problem with phone?) - When accessing files on a microSD card, the phone can hang for a few seconds to over a minute. The only way to solve this is to simply wait it out. Usually, the screen will blank out after a while, at which point the phone is once again useable.

 

Issue 4 (software bug? problem with phone?) - When setting a music file (MP3) on a microSD card to repeat/loop, any subsequent playback of the file after the first playthrough will have a small, audible "glitch" a few seconds into playback. I am not sure if this happens only with MP3s or specific microSD cards or methods of storage.

 

 

Anyone else experience these issues? I'm particularly curious about Issue 3 and Issue 4.

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Both issues 3 and 4 sound like a slow / bad SD card / SD card reader to me...

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Issue 1 is fixed in GDR2 or 3 (one of the two) I believe. I totally agree with Issue 2. I hope they change that behavior in GDR3 (out this year) or with WP 8.1 it would be awesome if they made the search button like in Windows 8.1 (universal search).

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- I never understood why the search isn't a contextual search, if you press the search search button while in a app it should give both bing and an app search if the app supports it. That would benefit apps like IMDB.

 

- The fact you don't have back and forward buttons in IE bugs me enormously, such a simple function, and it isn't there.

 

- All the built in media players have no draggable progress bar, so seeking is a pain, it shouldn't take more than a few days to implement that really.

 

- skype keeps notifying me of new messages by vibrating although I'm reading them on my laptop, very annoying

 

But all in all I'm happy with WP, just hope they speed up the development process a bit and listen to customer feedback

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Issue 1 is fixed in GDR2 or 3 (one of the two) I believe. I totally agree with Issue 2. I hope they change that behavior in GDR3 (out this year) or with WP 8.1 it would be awesome if they made the search button like in Windows 8.1 (universal search).

 

i wish the search function would operate like on windows 8 and be context sensative. so if i'm in my 'people' app it would let me search my contacts.. if i'm youtube it would let me search for videos... etc.

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Yeah the Microsoft (beta) Facebook app doesn't reset notifications when they are read on the desktop browser version of Facebook either, annoying :/

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i wish the search function would operate like on windows 8 and be context sensative. so if i'm in my 'people' app it would let me search my contacts.. if i'm youtube it would let me search for videos... etc.

yeah, they would just have to query the app for search capabilities, and if it has them show the results in the first pivot tab.

 

App - Web - Local - Media

 

That would have been perfect.

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Both issues 3 and 4 sound like a slow / bad SD card / SD card reader to me...

 

Really? O_o

 

I wonder if it's too late to get a replacement. I bought it over 2 months ago at a big box electronics retailer...

 

 

 

Issue 1 is fixed in GDR2 or 3 (one of the two) I believe. I totally agree with Issue 2. I hope they change that behavior in GDR3 (out this year) or with WP 8.1 it would be awesome if they made the search button like in Windows 8.1 (universal search).

 

OS revisions are rolled out by the provider, right? Or do you have to manually update it?

 

EDIT: nevermind, seems like you can do either.

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Really? O_o

 

I wonder if it's too late to get a replacement. I bought it over 2 months ago at a big box electronics retailer...

 

 

Depending on where you live, and indeed how you bought the product (distance vs in a store), electronics are covered by law against faults and poor quality workmanship for anything from 1 to 3 years. 

 

Only time I've ever heard unusual sound bytes from a file is when my SD card was minutes from death (it in fact refused to read entirely about an hour later), 

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I had a Samsung Focus and when I was looking around had lots of warnings about SD cards - if they're slow they can really impact on your experience. Depending how much effort it is, it may be worth trying a new SD card - look for some that have benchmarked high random read/write speeds.

 

The updates are filtered through the carrier (to test for stability etc). New WP8 devices (by default) will tell you when the updates are available. I believe Issue 1 was being fixed with GDR3 (but i could be wrong!).

 

To add my own gripe, I really don't like how you cant change the vibration notification of alerts (ie. my txt is 1 vibrate, emails 2, and whatsapp/skype 3 - i would rather swap skype/whasapp and email!)

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I just realized I forgot to list a 5th issue with my WP...

 

Issue 5 (software bug? problem with phone?) - Sometimes, the phone will lock up on its own when swiping (this happens a couple times a week, and I use my phone fairly frequently). It literally will "freeze" the display wherever it was at, and will not respond to any commands. The only way to fix it (iirc) is to hit the power key twice (once to turn the screen off, and again to turn it on again in a reset state).

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I had a Samsung Focus and when I was looking around had lots of warnings about SD cards - if they're slow they can really impact on your experience. Depending how much effort it is, it may be worth trying a new SD card - look for some that have benchmarked high random read/write speeds.

 

Here is the SD card I currently have:

 

http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/microsd/ultra-class10-for-android/?capacity=64GB

 

I'm going to try and get a replacement (without exchange - for my data's safety). Should I try the same model again? I thought SanDisk is one of the better brands...

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- I never understood why the search isn't a contextual search, if you press the search search button while in a app it should give both bing and an app search if the app supports it. That would benefit apps like IMDB.

 

- The fact you don't have back and forward buttons in IE bugs me enormously, such a simple function, and it isn't there.

 

- All the built in media players have no draggable progress bar, so seeking is a pain, it shouldn't take more than a few days to implement that really.

 

- skype keeps notifying me of new messages by vibrating although I'm reading them on my laptop, very annoying

 

But all in all I'm happy with WP, just hope they speed up the development process a bit and listen to customer feedback

The search was contextual in the initial version of Windows Phone but it confused 1 of the 4 people who bought it.

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The search was contextual in the initial version of Windows Phone but it confused 1 of the 4 people who bought it.

 

sigh

 

They should at least make it so that you can make it contextual vs. static, and if static, make it customizable as suggested in OP.

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I wish I could turn off that stupid search button, I hit it on accident all the damn time.  Like I'll be using the flashlight app and all of a sudden the light goes off and theres a crab on my screen.  COME ON!

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I wish I could turn off that stupid search button, I hit it on accident all the damn time.  Like I'll be using the flashlight app and all of a sudden the light goes off and theres a crab on my screen.  COME ON!

 

I lawled. So true.

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The search was contextual in the initial version of Windows Phone but it confused 1 of the 4 people who bought it.

yup. they had a great idea with the contexual search in the initial version, but it was confusing because it wasn't ALL contextual. sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. Instead of making it consistent by making it all contextual, they decided to just make it all static. Now there's random little search icons in different apps because of it. Stupid decision.

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I just realized I forgot to list a 5th issue with my WP...

 

Issue 5 (software bug? problem with phone?) - Sometimes, the phone will lock up on its own when swiping (this happens a couple times a week, and I use my phone fairly frequently). It literally will "freeze" the display wherever it was at, and will not respond to any commands. The only way to fix it (iirc) is to hit the power key twice (once to turn the screen off, and again to turn it on again in a reset state).

That issue is probably to do with the SD card as well. I am rocking a 520 atm, one of the lowest end WP8 you can get and it isn't frustratingly slow, it's smooth and I'm really impressed for what I paid for it! (?150 incl tax/delivery).

 

App switching/resuming is a little slow (like 2-3 secs), but that's down to the phone only having 512mb ram.

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@OP

What you saying about dedicated Bing Search button?
That is the single most best feature of the OS. I love it when I am typing something serious and an accidental tap brings a nice soothing picture of Nature landscape. Calms my nerves.

Actually I wish I could get device which just has Bing button and takes me to its wonderful search interface. The screen should be big though. I don't mind if it doesn't do an actual search.

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yup. they had a great idea with the contexual search in the initial version, but it was confusing because it wasn't ALL contextual. sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn't. Instead of making it consistent by making it all contextual, they decided to just make it all static. Now there's random little search icons in different apps because of it. Stupid decision.

 

App developer issue. App developers needs to implement the search, they didn't and then it defaulted to regular search...

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