Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What's Your Beef With Windows Phone?
First time accepted submitter occasional_dabbler writes "Reviews by 'commentators' such as this one predict certain doom for both Nokia and Microsoft on the basis of the OS being a failure, yet whenever the Lumia handsets are reviewed in the mainstream press they are often highly praised. Windows phone is an immature OS, certainly, but it does pretty much everything you need in a smartphone, is getting better with each update and it is beautiful. I have a Lumia 800, and now I'm used to how it and the WP OS works I find it a painful process to go back to an Android or iPhone for some obscure app not yet supported on WP. WP gave me the same feeling I got when I bought my first iBook, fired up OS X 10.1 and realized I had just been shifted up a decade. So why so serious? What do Slashdotters who have really tried WP think of it?"
We can't keep waiting for 'the next version' of windows phone to fix the problems with the OS. It needs the multitasking fixed on major apps, it needs the scrolling bugs fixed. It needs a lot of minor things fixed that have been problems for years now.
People like a phone OS for what it can do, not what the next update promises to bring. Then there is the issue of Apollo even being able to run on current hardware.
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How about the fact that getting a Windows phone to work with an exchange server is slightly more painful than shooting yourself in the dick?
A small business that is using a self signed certificate might as well cross all windows phones off of their purchasing options forever. And don't tell me, "Oh they should just get a real certificate." because YOU don't get to make that call and neither do I. The client does and they say no.
iPhone? No Problem. Android? No Problem. Windows Phone? Export certificate from site, email it to yahoo or gmail account FROM a yahoo or gmail account because outlook/exchange refuses to allow you to mail a cert, then import it, reboot the phone, and HOPE that it works. I just got finished dealing with one that didn't work. We renewed the cert, and now the thing is just shitboxed. Can't get it to accept the new cert at all.
How the fuck hard is it to add a "Accept this certificate anyways?" option...
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Not my list, but here's 121 reasons why you don't want Windows Phone 7.5
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
There are several aspects of WP7 that I want to like, and on the surface should provide a better experience than other phone, but none of these things live up to their promise. The hubs are a good example.
From a user interaction point of view, I think the hubs are a really cool idea, and a better way to organize data. But the concept falls flat because there is no way for third parties to create hub "plugins" for other data sources, so you are limited into the ones that come with the system. Because, of this you end up accessing some people/music/pictures/etc through the hubs, and some through individual apps, which really isn't any more convenient than just doing it all through individual apps.
Or it could be from Microsoft and this is Slashdot AND there is rational dislike for it.
Lack of apps.
Difficulty of porting apps from other phones
Horrible networking APIs
Not open
From a company with a history of screwing people
Prefer a simple feature phone.
"Windows phone is an immature OS"
Any of these are valid reasons to not like the phone. They might not be good enough reasons for YOU, but they are for a lot of people. But I guess you got an opportunity to hate slashdotters?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Here's some irrational hate for you based on my use of a Lumia 800 Nokia gave me for free.
1) i cannot write software for it without a license to develop, because the phone is locked down
2) once i write something for it, it cannot share that code with my friends even if they also had a windows phone, because the phone is locked down
3) the phone cannot work as a usb drive, it is locked down and can only sync data via closed protocols or closed applications
4) the battery drains very quickly, this is just a problem for this model
5) there is no decent browser on the phone, it has internet explorer that does not handle many of the basic things a browser should do like implement createElementNS()
6) i cannot write c++ code for this phone, this phone need C#, or javascript or maybe some other CIL based programming language
7) this phone is product of a company with a very bad track record which uses the profits of its other monopolies to bully itself into this market
8) because windows phones are so locked down, like apple devices are, they are the bringing about the end of digital freedoms for consumers
9) the phone is riddles with licence agreement and dialogs that want you to give away all your data. for example, the first time you run Internet Explorer on Windows Phone, it will ask you: "Do you want to share you browser history with Microsoft so we can [...]? {YES) (CANCEL)." The use of 'CANCEL" implies that IE wont start, thus bullying people into clicking YES.
As a Free Software and more generally digital freedoms advocate, many of the problems I have with windows phone, I also have with iOS, which is shiny and has a nice UI but also a horrible lock in model and many features that cannot be modified.
I have been using a Nokia E75, a N900 and an N950 as phones and they are all pretty nice, but not perfect, but neither are any of the closed alternatives. For any future phone I might buy, I will go with openness primarily. That means the phone should be able to run an open version of Android, Mer, maybe Tizen or the Mozilla phone operating system.
Is there anything positive about Windows Phone? Not really. It is not that much different or better than the alternatives. It has a home screen, you can put widgets on it, it has an app store. Nothing revolutionary there.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
During the period from 1936 to 1950, National City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California, Phillips Petroleum, Mack Trucks, and the Federal Engineering Corporation—bought over 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities including Baltimore, Newark, Los Angeles, New York City, Oakland and San Diego and converted them into bus operation. ...
GM and other companies were subsequently convicted in 1949 of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products via a complex network of linked holding companies including National City Lines and Pacific City Lines. They were also indicted, but acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies.
, but every UI study I've seen shows it's faster to operate than one-per-window
Then the UI studies are, frankly absoloute crap. If you've ever tried to use a mac pro with dual 30" cinema displays, you realise that it is an awfully long way from one corner of the screen to the manu bar on the other corner of the other screen.
It was a great design on a mac classic, where the screen was small. It's a reasonable design on even a mid sized screen. On a large multimonitor setup, it sucks.
SJW n. One who posts facts.