Windows Phone 8.1 review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
Stop and think about that question from a non-tech perspective. My mom (or yours) likely has no idea that there's a difference between "Windows Phone 8.1" and the "Nokia Lumia Icon with Windows Phone 8.1 installed". Now contrast that with Apple or even the Android world - they don't have such silly branding problems. No Apple user says "IOS 8? Is that the new iPhone?"
Branding is important and to brand the OS with the word "Phone" in it implies, to non-tech/news people, that it is a phone (which it isn't - it's just the OS). My mom doesn't want a "phone with Windows 8.1 on it" but she might want a "Windows phone". She doesn't want a "phone with IOS 8 on it" but she would like an iPhone.
But lots of users say things like "Galaxy S5? Is that the new Droid?" (Which is annoying, but doesn't seem to be hurting Android sales.)
> Branding is important and to brand the OS with the word "Phone" in it implies, to non-tech/news people, that it is a phone (which it isn't - it's just the OS).
This distinction would matter more if people bought the phone and the OS separately, but they don't. To the average user the phone and the OS are mashed together into a single indistinguishable thing. You get a new OS when you get a new phone, and you upgrade the OS by buying a new phone.
In that sense the "8.1" label is just a way to distinguish new phones from old ones. If your mom goes to a store and asks for a "Windows phone" they'll have no trouble understanding what she means; it's just a possibility she'll get one that isn't the Latest and Greatest.
I have a hard time with that. The question itself implies that there are lots of users who know what "Droid" is but don't know what a Samsung Galaxy is - which I, frankly, find difficult to accept. I would think it's 100:1 the opposite way - most users know what a Samsung Galaxy is but few users (relative to user base) know what Android/KitKat/ICS/etc are. So I can't really see your point here.
This distinction would matter more if people bought the phone and the OS separately, but they don't. To the average user the phone and the OS are mashed together into a single indistinguishable thing.
Absolutely - that was sort of what I was saying (yours is much clearer though). Microsoft trying to make the OS version something that people care about is just short-term thinking. People care about a specific version in only a few situations that I've seen: (a) when there's a big marketing campaign around that version, (b) as a reaction against negative press around a specific version, or (c) because they want to upgrade from a very poor experience in their current OS. Those are all short-term (and expensive) customer acquisition methods. Apple's use of "IOS" - the name, the branding, release timing, backwards compat, etc - is so perfect for Microsoft that I guess I don't understand why they don't just copy it.
I think you're misunderstanding me -- I wasn't referring to Android, but to "Droid," the type of Android phone by Motorola sold in the US by Verizon. Verizon mounted an absolutely massive advertising campaign a few years back to promote the early "Droid"-branded phones. It lodged the idea in a lot of brains that "Droid" == Android, in the same way that "iPhone" == iOS. So you (or at least, I) still frequently hear non-technical people talk about all sorts of Android devices as "Droids."
I bet your mom will be even more confused if you tell her about KitKat. However I agree with branding issues, if you don't follow an ecosystem, recognizing a new version is very hard. The only exception would be Apple's iOS versions which is a straight numerical increment. When I using Android, I din't get it at first that versions were based off candy names in alphabetical order or that Ubuntu's releases are marked by Year.Day (14.04). Heck even Nokia's smartphone numbering system confuses me.
The one big thing that is still missing for me is Google Hangouts support, but this is obviously not something that Microsoft could easily add. And it is definitely not enough to sway me to iOS/Android.
I learned this the hard way with my iPhone 3G. By the time I upgraded it to iOS 4, the phone literally wouldn't work anymore. It would ring, I would touch the answer button repeatedly and nothing would happen. By the time the slow-as-molasses phone responded to the answer button, it would go to voicemail.
It happened to a lesser degree with my iPhone 4 and I didn't have my 4s long enough to experience it. Basically I think Apple just assumes people are going to upgrade their Apple phone every 18 months, which is a stretch considering major US carriers have clamped down on subsidized 18 month upgrades.
I currently sport the 520 (the cheapest of them all, and obviously lowest in terms of specs), and upgraded to 8.1 two days ago, incredible that every update doesn't slow things down, everything is snappy
I switched to an iPhone. Kind of boring. But it's pretty easy to find accessories for it.
The mail client on Win8Phone was much nicer than anything I've found on the iPhone. If there's one thing that Microsoft PMs understand, it's productivity via email :-)
1. You can't attach anything other than a photo unless you're forwarding an existing attachment. There's no easy way to attach saved documents from Downloads or Office. You have to go to Office, find the doc and click share.
2. You can't do inline edits on forwarded or replied emails - the keyboard disappears when you try to change an existing part of the message. This is so frustrating for business as I can't clean up anything when forwarding.
3. Search tends to be particularly bad at finding things - I can go to Gmail search and get it instantly, but it'll be omitted from results on the Windows phone.
Win phone 8 mail is definitely simplistic and sleek - but not for a second would I call it productive.
What Microsoft can do with a good mobile OS is to stay in the game until the next big thing (as Apple stayed in the game with Mac until the iPod and the iPhone became a big hit).
And again: I think WP is a great OS.
But iPhone had seemingly won initially, and Android ate up ground from it even back when Android was complete shit. I think there's less lock-in for average users than there was with PCs, so it seems like what is required to gain market share is to give bigger cuts of the sales to the carriers who are selling the phones.
How long has it been since you went into an AT&T store and they tried to sell you an iPhone? They push Androids like it's crack they need to get rid of before the cops catch them. Because they make more money there.
Android gained its market share by being free. That's a strategy that only works once. Yes, Windows Phone is now free, but Android's market share lead (and corresponding advantage in network effects) is nigh insurmountable at this point.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Android : smartphones :: Windows : PCs. In both markets, Apple pursued a "high-end" integrated hardware/software strategy with a focus on premium devices and premium user experience. This opened up space for a secondary player to offer an inferior good - one that consumers could choose if they wanted similar capabilities and were willing to accept a certain level of degradation in fit and finish. The problem is that there's only room for one such player. In the PC space, that player is Windows. In the smartphone space, that player is Android. Windows Phone is like the BeOS of smartphone operating systems. It does a lot of interesting things, and it's better than Android in many ways, but network effects among software developers ensure that it'll never catch on. It's sad, but such is the market.
The key here like you say are software developers. I think Microsoft is aware of this and their purchase of Xamarin is them taking steps to solve this problem. In the future you could see Microsoft showing developers how they could build their applications for all major smartphone OSs with their tools, allowing them to eat up ground in the app space.
[1] Contrast this to PC vs Mac, where even switching from an old PC to a new PC can be a daunting task, and the risk of data-loss is high.
I've taken to partitioning my computer to OS and user data partitions, so when I upgrade or migrate I can preserve the user data partition easily.
Windows on desktops had a lot of network effects that Android has no equivalent of.
Microsoft Office on Windows tied people in with proprietary document formats that pushed Windows for business use. In the smartphone world the main apps are cloud based and social (Facebook) and picture / video based, not document and complex data format based. Moving without losing anything you care about is much easier.
There's no Smartphone equivalent of "a Windows domain" - something that brought Windows into an entire office, once it had got into part of an office.
I suspect in the early days, people copied a lot of Windows software and that had a network effect because people had friends with programs and games. That effect has been closed off a bit by online activation and a lot by App stores and jailed environments. So if such an effect did help cement windows desktop adoption, it wouldn't help Android.
And what is there to support your claim that there's "only room for one such player" (second fiddle to iPhone)?
28.5% growth last holiday season is not stagnating.
For the desktop? it's always "next year"
I haven't seen the mysterious warm and die thing happen in a really long time (since GDR2 certainly).
The carrier is clueless about how to deal with firmware issues other than doing lots of up-front testing before releasing updates (and it's really unclear how effective that testing actually is). If you're in warranty they'll offer to replace the phone (gee, thanks) but of course they are powerless to truly fix anything.
So my experience with a showstopper bug was (a) over a year to a non-fix, (b) utterly useless support from the carrier, and (c) no indication that MS even knew about the issue, other than rumors from my friends in the WinPhone division that the next patch would fix it (and it never worked).
Is there a way to get support from MS on this? I have to admit that I never checked. (The issue is moot for me, but shortening the feedback loop would help WinPhone quality a lot).
I started with a blackberry, then moved to iPhone 4S. Bought a MacBook Air, Mac Mini, iPad and now I am using a Nexus 4 for my main phone. My main workstation is Windows 8.1. Note that I rooted both the iPhone 4S and Nexus.
At this point, the camera is not enough of a reason to switch over. I'm over the app love I used to have with the iPhone ("wow, all the cool apps!!") so the lack of apps doesn't mean much. I'm just platformed out. The thought of switching to yet another platform and going through all the hassle isn't worth it anymore.
http://i.imgur.com/BphXWFN.jpg
The chunk of glass on the front is pretty important too.
I don't know why, but I've overheard reps at Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Verizon answer people's Windows Phone questions with "You don't want that, it's crap".
Phone sales people are incentivized by management to minimize returns, because returns consume lots of time and money.
If you are a sales person, you know Windows Phones have higher return rates (because there will be some app missing or some other feature hole in WP). Selling it is risky.
An iPhone or a Samsung sells itself. And more importantly, it doesn't return itself nearly as often.
I like Windows Phone, but if I worked in phone sales I'd push people towards iPhones and Androids as well.
[1] I work with these bastards and they'd sell their parents to make a dollar.
Common controls are all accessible.
On-screen keyboard is shitty: every key must be activated before use. So typing is probably very slow.
In system tray area it could read every icon (level of network signal, battery, clocks...), but I could not find a way to open Action Centre.
Application switcher is bad, I could not find a way to use it properly. Button for closing apps works, but it's announced as generic button without text.
Accessible standard apps: Alarms, Data Sense, Internet explorer, Maps, Messaging, People hub, Phone dialer, Photo hub, Store.
Inaccessible standard apps: Battery Saver, Calculator, Calendar, Office, OneNote, SkyDrive, Skype, Storage Sense.
Standard apps where many buttons are unnamed, but blind usage is probably possible: Camera, FM Radio, Games hub, Xbox Music.
Emulator contains old versions of everything, so real phone could be different.
From a development point of view, devs still need to add accessibility labels to their apps and use the other accessibility APIs available. I have no idea how easy or hard that is on Windows Phone. iOS is easy enough that a dev would have to be borderline negligent not to type a few descriptive labels while they're doing the UI. Android, not too bad but not as much infrastructure as iOS (I'll admit to being a much weaker Android than iOS dev, so maybe I've missed something) for gestures and the like.
Point being, even if the WinPhone accessibility APIs are fully fleshed out, 3rd party apps still need to support it, and I haven't seen a big push from Microsoft to do so. Contrast to iOS where devs get the accessibility spiel at WWDC, and Apple seems to push it elsewhere. Android, meh, seems kind of tacked on IMO, though I guess it works well enough (fully-sighted user here, so I'm not the most qualified to say, and I'd be interested to know how the Nexus 7 works out for you).
Sometime in the next week I should get a chance to play with a friend's phone that I'm sure he'll have upgraded to 8.1. Again, I'm fully-sighted but have been the "accessibility guy" across several companies (including an accessibility lead at MSFT), so I at least know what to look for. I'll ping you if I have anything to report.
For all my complaints about Eclipse, you're right, it seems to be much better for accessibility than Android Studio. Too bad sometime down the road Google is going to switch to Android Studio (granted, Android Studio is worlds better in a lot of other respects). Though at the rate they're going, it should be a while. :-)
This update make windows phone, faster, looking way more modern. All main app have been refactored. + Vpn + Notification center + Calendar + Battery + Cortona...
I don't see anything that was not improved. Anyone can troll windows for windows 8 on desktop, I first. But the phone version is really great now
1. If someone sends me a document or a file or something and I need to do something with it and send it back, it's hopeless. There isn't enough of a filesystem to do that sort of stuff with it. The whole WP isolated storage thing is painful and really ruins it for me. Not only that if someone sends me a media file or I download an mp3 for example I can only see it within scope of the app that received it and never can I add it to my music library without connecting it to a PC. I can't even play it without blocking the entire phone UI.
2. I really don't want to have to sign in at all and/or activate my phone as a developer device to deploy any apps or even a simple one shot custom app I've written for my own use. Occasionally, historically with WM6.5 and predecessors I've built the odd diagnostic tool that sits on the device. I can do the same in HTML on a web server somewhere but that relies on a network connection to be there, which even though I live in London isn't always the case. In fact it's pretty terrible in the suburbs. On basic GPRS WP is heading towards useless.
3. Android USB OTG is awesome. I can move stuff between USB sticks, plug keyboards in and all sorts. This has got me out of the crap a few times already and I've only had an Android handset for about a month now. The cable that enabled all this cost me (including delivery) £0.73.
4. Nokia made awesome hardware. Not joking it was the best stuff out there. Since the Lumia 820 though, it's turned to crap. I have repaired a number of handsets and they aren't designed with durability in mind any more and the parts are quite difficult to get hold of unless you're Nokia authorised service. Fortunately they still use standard screws (Torx TX4/5) but when you get inside, it's problematic.
I did a bit of research between iOS/WP/Android before buying my first smartphone and the openness and large choice of phones with Android is what ultimately made the decision for me. The ability to root and have full control, install (and develop - eventually, that is...) apps without needing the approval of anyone but yourself, custom ROMs, etc. I probably won't ever exercise all that control, but it's nice to know that I can if I want to in the future.
Had WP allowed more freedom, closer to that of desktop Windows, I might've chosen otherwise, since my main PC runs Windows and there's a lot less constraints on what I can do there.
In the locked down stakes I think it goes:
Android < WP < iOS
The openness of Android is what sold it for me as well though. I'm not sure Windows will remain open indefinitely. The current crop of "modern" or "universal" apps are a step towards a vaulted subsection of the operating system. That will be no banana for me then.
1. Glued together with proprietary screws and requires heat gun to get inside.
2. Screwed + taped together with Torx screws and requires no heat gun to get inside. Parts are heavily integrated.
3. Screwed together with any screws and requires no heat gun to get inside or any tape. Parts are loosely integrated and easy to replace.
iOS devices are all (1) and some Macs are now as well.
Nokia was a (3) but have moved to a (2) recently which is a step backwards in the war against throwing these things away every 5 minutes due to minor problems. I think that is my problem.
The size of the device is not affected by the above. Some of the smallest devices I've seen are perfectly servicable. It's all down to if they want it serviced or not.
Ultimately parts used to be really easy to get for everything. I'm even seeing shortages on iPhone 5S parts now.
I also have a slight impression that 3 tends to come with higher reliability and quality in general? Maybe not for mobile phones and other things where fashion sometimes rules highly over function or is at least very important (like in, ugh those ugly screwholes on your phone), but definitely for tools, audio/video gear etc. E.g. my first rotary hammer was pretty much unmaintainable and died soon. The second, higher end one came with a complete parts list + schematics of every single bit in there + easy to get and complete service manual. Didn't need it yet though. And the same story goes for all kinds of devices ranging for walkmans to oscilloscopes I owned.
My (now backup) scope is a Telequipment D83. It was manufactured in 1976 in London in the UK. It is fully discrete (no integrated circuits), has a full service manual that comes with it, has not had a single part replaced in its lifetime and has never missed a calibration. After 38 years the tube is less bright but that's about it. One of these:
http://2dehandsgoederen.nl/images/telequipment_scope/IMG_210...
That engineering discipline and intended life could go a long way to solving a lot of the world's problems.
Things need to slow down.
I have yet to dig into my 1020 seeing as it is still under warranty.
1020 service manual if you are interested: http://devdb.ru/data/file/file5245f74f499056.03810084.pdf
I did a 1020 repair (replace damaged casing). It wasn't terribly easy. Took a couple of hours.
The destruction of the hubs is certainly painful. There are many people who're currently struggling with battery drain issues, that's probably going to be fixed though. There's no agenda view in the calendar.
The prospect of paying for something I used to get for free is kind of infuriating though.
To start with, calling WP7 "Windows" was a travesty. Microsoft thereby only reached the starting line of this race with WP8, in Ocetober 2012. Very late compared to rivals, and rough.
"Modern" or "Market" apps can't do what legacy apps can do. It's hard for those two different types of apps to communicate. Even if apps are compiled to MSIL, legacy apps can't run on ARM devices.
That only scratches the surface of how complex and needlessly restrictive the app development landscape is for something that is all called "Windows" and that has a large amount of code and technology in common.
Microsoft makes developers bear the highest burden in figuring out "What is an optimal development approach for all these things called Windows?" and provides the lowest number of potential customers.
On top of that uncertainty is uncertainty about devices: Does Microsoft want OEMs, or are they going to build their own devices? Are the devices they have built so far established a good track record? Are their OEMs enthusiastic or are they wary and looking for an exit strategy? The question all these other questions lead up to is "Does Windows Phone have a future?"
Good stuff in 8.1:
- The new calendar user interface, as Anand points out in his review, is more polished than it was in 8. This was needed since the Calendar in 8 was a bit amateurish in its appearance. If you looked really close, you could see that it used pseudo-Latin words on the days in the month view to indicate you had appointments on those days. But the words weren't the appointment names!
- Six columns of live tiles (3 of medium size) makes the home screen information-dense. I have headlines, updates, the latest movie news, calendar items, weather, TSLA's price ($192?? Maybe time to buy more?), e-mails, and a bunch of other nonsense flipping around and dancing. It's a bit chaotic but overall I like this a whole lot more than what I remember from when I used Android and before that, iOS.
- The signal strength, wifi, and battery life indicators are now always on the home screen. You no longer need to tap the top of the screen to see these. I liked the minimalism they were aiming for by making these slip away after a moment in 8. But I can see why they decided to bring them back as permanent fixtures. Luckily, they still hide in apps, giving maximal screen real-estate to productivity.
- Finally, an official podcast application that accepts URLs. In 8, I wasn't able to subscribe to a podcast via URL, so if the podcast I wanted wasn't in Microsoft's library, a third-party app was needed.
- Accessories such as Data Sense, which gives a breakdown of data utilization, and Storage Sense, which shows how storage space is used. These types of accessory are old news for Android and iOS, but were oddly lacking on WP. I had been using a horrible proprietary AT&T app to monitor data usage previously.
- The notifications ("Action Center") user interface is nice. Very Android-ish.
- Cortana is a cute addition. Finally having a voice assistant app confirms the suspicion I had when Siri arrived on iOS: I don't really have much of a use case for this. I suppose the next time I need directions somewhere, this will be nice. The sparkle of more promise is in Cortana's potential to interface with applications. If, for example, Cortana can use GroupMe (my messaging application of choice) to send messages in addition to SMS, I could find myself using that more frequently. But I don't use a lot of SMS, so Cortana's messaging feature is of limited value to me.
Bad stuff:
- I've had the Calendar application and the music player each crash once. And in both cases, it was a device-reboot style crash. This is a developer build, so I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that the final version will not crash like this.
- Cortana isn't quite living up to its potential. I've not actually used Siri, so I am not saying it's worse than Siri. But I want to see more applications support Cortana, and more smoothly than is done by the few that do integrate today ("Flixster, show latest movies"). For example, I'd like Cortana to just know that I use GroupMe to message my wife and SMS to message someone else. As another example, Twitter doesn't seem to be integrated into Cortana much yet. I think the only integration is Cortana pushing tweets out. Incoming just arrive to the Twitter app and notifications.
For example, my Chase Mobile app uses Cortana. By activating her and saying "Chase Mobile ATM", Cortana will launch the app and search for nearby ATMs. I imagine that the GroupMe developers can extend it in the same way: "GroupMe Send 'your message here'".
I would say that's a cop-out. If it's a headline feature, it's not a beta. It should work correctly (ignoring 3rd party apps having to update to integrate).
This applies to Apple as well. When they first announced Siri, they called it beta but it was the headline feature in all their ads.
If you add a weird little feature, I'm OK with the beta label. But you don't get a free pass on half-implemented or buggy software. You can't have it be a focus and say "but it's not ready".
(This isn't about Cortana, I haven't used it and can't comment on how complete it is. This is a general rant.)
Random tidbit: among the Greeked text in the old calendar is the phrase "Hello from Seattle." It's a phrase that also occurs in several places on WP, including EXIF data in photos. It also occurs in various other MS products, if you know where to look :)
Unfortunately, MS has a policy against many easter eggs, like the flight sim in Excel, since the Trustworthy Computing Initiative: Undocumented behaviour is untested behaviour, and untested behaviour may lead to security and other issues. Easter eggs in MS products now are limited to such harmless ones.
I definitely can relate to this. I only have three real use cases for Siri these days - setting an alarm, starting a timer and setting a reminder for myself. All three work pretty well with Siri.
I just don't use it for much else. I don't use Siri's dictation features because Siri only shines at dictation when you know exactly what you're going to say, word for word - for "casual dictation", it falls apart really quickly. I can't think of anything else that my first reaction is "let's ask Siri".
Cortana feels like a really expensive "me too" feature.
Other very useful Siri phrases - "Find a {cuisine} restaurant near my house" to setup takeout on my commute home - or "call my {relation}".
Proper nouns esp. restaurant names (e.g. "Sent sovi") are still pretty tough to get understood no matter what voice engine I use.
My #1 major gripe is that it is a phone second. I could write games for it in C# with XNA, but I couldn't set a custom notification sound. It's dumb priorities like that which made me abandon it.
I would recommend going down to your cellular provider's shop and trying out one. Nokia phones would be a be my choice of recommendation. If you just want to run with something, you could even try Nokia Lumia 520/521, its only ~$50 full price and no contract {1]. Atleast it will make a great backup phone for its specs.
[1]http://www.walmart.com/ip/AT-T-GoPhone-Nokia-Lumia-520-Pre-p...
My wife also switched after playing around with my phone. She doesn't want to switch either.
So what's it worth? Nothing. Just 4 people with different personal preferences. ;)
Wireless payments, perhaps.
It is a fantastic experience for a designer compared to what you get using only visual studio
PS: Apple and Google don't care about developer's experience as much as Microsoft does, they just care about customer's experience.
It's probably because Android's format was originally designed for simple keypad-operated mobile layouts, and then was painfully extended for touchscreen applications.