Windows Phone 8.1
Got the developer preview of Windows Phone 8.1 installed on my ATIV S today. And as most would likely expect, I have plenty of thoughts on that experience so far. This will probably be a fairly disorganized post as I have no real agenda here.
First, I guess I need to start at the notification center. It is simple, elegant and as I feared a complete waste of people arguing about it not being there. The single greatest function of it for me has absolutely nothing to do with notifications. I like the quick access to certain settings. But even then I'm left frustrated... I can turn WiFi on and off, but not my mobile data connection. I live in Canada and my monthly usage allowance is just 500MB. I noticed a long time ago that when I have both connections on, some times the phone would disconnect from the WiFi and then apps would start consuming my data plan. Aggravating as all hell. So, now I manually turn my connection off and WiFi on when WiFi is available and the opposite everywhere else.
As far as notifications go. Who cares? I know a lot of people claim to. But I just don't get it. It's not just a central notification hub. The downside of course is that means generalized notifications. Ok at everything, good at nothing. How is that better from counters on the lock screen and live tiles? At least the live tiles could be modified to present the notification data in a visually context appropriate fashion.
And, to top it all off, now if I accidentally swipe down from the top in an app, I'm just as annoyed as I was when they added it on iOS on my iPad.
All that said, it isn't terrible by any means. I just find the feature, and by extension all of the whining over its absence just utterly infantile and idiotic. I swear, no one ever actually pays attention to how they use a device.
Cortana. I live in Canada. So I can't try it unless I change my region settings. Not a huge deal, but as with a notification center; I don't really feel like my life is missing a digital assistant. Ergo, no matter how trivial activating it is, I have no intention of going out of my way to use it. The general impression I get from other sites is that it borrows a lot from Siri and a lot from Google Now. In both cases, while no one seems this critical, it seems like Siri is slightly better at doing the Siri-like stuff and Google Now is better at doing the Google Now like stuff, but the general feel is that overall this combination is better (I presume that is because most people if they want such a feature at all, wants things both competitors do). It does add one piece all its own. And it is probably a tremendous feature for the few that will take the time to use it. And that is the editable notebook. Basically, you can add/edit/remove things that Cortana has learned about you.
Will I use Cortana when it becomes available here? Probably. Daily? Unlikely. I find that any new feature must be markedly better than what it replaces at least most of the ways that matter. Talking to my phone in public... or heck, even in private just makes me feel too much like a wanker. And, most times I will probably communicate with it via the keyboard (another nice addition by the way).
The swipe-based keyboard is awesome. I went from a Blackberry (no touch screen) straight to a WP7 device in the smart phone world. So I never used Swype. Thus, I cannot compare it to literally anything similar. Compared to typing manually, it certainly kicks ass. Works far better than I could have expected. The one downside people have brought up, is that it is basically just autocorrect on steroids. So, swear words and probably some slang short forms of words still need to be typed manually. Frankly, I don't typically swear in my texts or emails. Not an elitist thing, just a fact. I only email when it is a work emergency (even with this, I'm still a much faster writer with an actual keyboard), and not having swear in there is fine for that purpose, and I don't tend to use that language with the group of people I text. So, mileage may vary. I'm also not sure how that compares with the competition.
Start screen changes are nice. But largely irrelevant. The 3rd row of tiles is nice but not necessary. The background image is nice but not necessary. I think the approach to the background image is interesting. I get the argument that a background behind the tiles is not super useful because there isn't much empty space. This is a clever way of working that in. A lot of people seem to care about customizability and personalization, so I think that while I'm largely underwhelmed here that this might be the biggest change that will appeal to many.
Lock screen themes sound like a really cool to extend both the personalization and potentially the functionality of the platform. But doesn't seem like any such apps exist today. Seems like a gap that MS didn't publish at least one built-in alternative theme. Sure, it isn't actually officially released yet, and there is time to fix that. But this sort of thing can really help motivate developers to get on board. Sometimes they need an example to give a nudge in the right direction. And since there are screenshots of such apps in the press material, it seems like they did in fact already mock some up. Otherwise, again, this is more of an aesthetic thing to me.
Battery Saver. This is a huge one for me. Prior to upgrading, over the last 2 weeks I went from a phone that would go without a charge for 2-3 days to one that would die in 8-10 hours. No clue what the offending app is. Typically, I just delete everything I downloaded over the last X days and watch the battery life come back. Now I actually have a tool to observe what is eating my battery. And then I can make an informed decision as to whether or not the offending app justifies the loss of battery life. I have actually already used it. The second highest offender so far today was the Facebook app. Since I only have it on there for manual checks for updates, I disabled the ability to run it in the background. Probably a more technical app than most people will care for. But for me, this is the sort of thing I love.
Calendar changes are MUCH welcomed. Even though I rarely open the calendar app thanks to the Live Tile, I always kind of dreaded the few times when I needed to. The layout was only moderately useful. It was also hideous and slow. If it weren't for the aforementioned fact that I rarely use the calendar on my phone I probably would have paid for a replacement app long ago. The new app is both more productive and more visually appealing. And it rivals, based on the screenshots, many of the paid apps I had considered replacing it with along the way. For those who don't use the calendar app much this will probably sound pathetic. Those who do however will understand me completely.
There are a myriad of other changes and additions. But for me they aren't worth talking about.
This does a lot for the feature parity argument against iOS and Android. So, even if I don't care for many of the changes, they definitely can't hurt the platform. Hopefully this will bring in more of both consumers and developers to the platform. Though, frankly, the biggest downside is probably the inability to jailbreak or side-load illegal apps. Windows Phone remains the most secure. You'd think that would attract developers. Apparently they love having their hard work stolen simply because people love stealing it.
First, I guess I need to start at the notification center. It is simple, elegant and as I feared a complete waste of people arguing about it not being there. The single greatest function of it for me has absolutely nothing to do with notifications. I like the quick access to certain settings. But even then I'm left frustrated... I can turn WiFi on and off, but not my mobile data connection. I live in Canada and my monthly usage allowance is just 500MB. I noticed a long time ago that when I have both connections on, some times the phone would disconnect from the WiFi and then apps would start consuming my data plan. Aggravating as all hell. So, now I manually turn my connection off and WiFi on when WiFi is available and the opposite everywhere else.
As far as notifications go. Who cares? I know a lot of people claim to. But I just don't get it. It's not just a central notification hub. The downside of course is that means generalized notifications. Ok at everything, good at nothing. How is that better from counters on the lock screen and live tiles? At least the live tiles could be modified to present the notification data in a visually context appropriate fashion.
And, to top it all off, now if I accidentally swipe down from the top in an app, I'm just as annoyed as I was when they added it on iOS on my iPad.
All that said, it isn't terrible by any means. I just find the feature, and by extension all of the whining over its absence just utterly infantile and idiotic. I swear, no one ever actually pays attention to how they use a device.
Cortana. I live in Canada. So I can't try it unless I change my region settings. Not a huge deal, but as with a notification center; I don't really feel like my life is missing a digital assistant. Ergo, no matter how trivial activating it is, I have no intention of going out of my way to use it. The general impression I get from other sites is that it borrows a lot from Siri and a lot from Google Now. In both cases, while no one seems this critical, it seems like Siri is slightly better at doing the Siri-like stuff and Google Now is better at doing the Google Now like stuff, but the general feel is that overall this combination is better (I presume that is because most people if they want such a feature at all, wants things both competitors do). It does add one piece all its own. And it is probably a tremendous feature for the few that will take the time to use it. And that is the editable notebook. Basically, you can add/edit/remove things that Cortana has learned about you.
Will I use Cortana when it becomes available here? Probably. Daily? Unlikely. I find that any new feature must be markedly better than what it replaces at least most of the ways that matter. Talking to my phone in public... or heck, even in private just makes me feel too much like a wanker. And, most times I will probably communicate with it via the keyboard (another nice addition by the way).
The swipe-based keyboard is awesome. I went from a Blackberry (no touch screen) straight to a WP7 device in the smart phone world. So I never used Swype. Thus, I cannot compare it to literally anything similar. Compared to typing manually, it certainly kicks ass. Works far better than I could have expected. The one downside people have brought up, is that it is basically just autocorrect on steroids. So, swear words and probably some slang short forms of words still need to be typed manually. Frankly, I don't typically swear in my texts or emails. Not an elitist thing, just a fact. I only email when it is a work emergency (even with this, I'm still a much faster writer with an actual keyboard), and not having swear in there is fine for that purpose, and I don't tend to use that language with the group of people I text. So, mileage may vary. I'm also not sure how that compares with the competition.
Start screen changes are nice. But largely irrelevant. The 3rd row of tiles is nice but not necessary. The background image is nice but not necessary. I think the approach to the background image is interesting. I get the argument that a background behind the tiles is not super useful because there isn't much empty space. This is a clever way of working that in. A lot of people seem to care about customizability and personalization, so I think that while I'm largely underwhelmed here that this might be the biggest change that will appeal to many.
Lock screen themes sound like a really cool to extend both the personalization and potentially the functionality of the platform. But doesn't seem like any such apps exist today. Seems like a gap that MS didn't publish at least one built-in alternative theme. Sure, it isn't actually officially released yet, and there is time to fix that. But this sort of thing can really help motivate developers to get on board. Sometimes they need an example to give a nudge in the right direction. And since there are screenshots of such apps in the press material, it seems like they did in fact already mock some up. Otherwise, again, this is more of an aesthetic thing to me.
Battery Saver. This is a huge one for me. Prior to upgrading, over the last 2 weeks I went from a phone that would go without a charge for 2-3 days to one that would die in 8-10 hours. No clue what the offending app is. Typically, I just delete everything I downloaded over the last X days and watch the battery life come back. Now I actually have a tool to observe what is eating my battery. And then I can make an informed decision as to whether or not the offending app justifies the loss of battery life. I have actually already used it. The second highest offender so far today was the Facebook app. Since I only have it on there for manual checks for updates, I disabled the ability to run it in the background. Probably a more technical app than most people will care for. But for me, this is the sort of thing I love.
Calendar changes are MUCH welcomed. Even though I rarely open the calendar app thanks to the Live Tile, I always kind of dreaded the few times when I needed to. The layout was only moderately useful. It was also hideous and slow. If it weren't for the aforementioned fact that I rarely use the calendar on my phone I probably would have paid for a replacement app long ago. The new app is both more productive and more visually appealing. And it rivals, based on the screenshots, many of the paid apps I had considered replacing it with along the way. For those who don't use the calendar app much this will probably sound pathetic. Those who do however will understand me completely.
There are a myriad of other changes and additions. But for me they aren't worth talking about.
This does a lot for the feature parity argument against iOS and Android. So, even if I don't care for many of the changes, they definitely can't hurt the platform. Hopefully this will bring in more of both consumers and developers to the platform. Though, frankly, the biggest downside is probably the inability to jailbreak or side-load illegal apps. Windows Phone remains the most secure. You'd think that would attract developers. Apparently they love having their hard work stolen simply because people love stealing it.
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