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Windows Phone 8 Users Hit Some Snags
symbolset writes "As reported on The Verge, many people are experiencing freezing, rebooting and battery problems on their new Windows Phone 8 devices. This WP8Central thread shows many of the issues. Affected devices include Lumia 920 and HTC 8X." Every phone and every OS has its problems, and happy users probably aren't as vocal; it would be good to know how Windows Phone users who are also iOS and Android users compare them for reliability.
So no vocal complaints from me. Love the phone, wish the app ecosystem were a bit better, especially having been on iOS for many years. I suppose I still have my iPad 3 for that!
I have not faced a single, tiny issue with Windows Phone 8. I have not used it for the past 1 month. Actually I have not used it for the past 1 year or even more.
Possibly they will get better quick, I seem to remember my first aneroid device had some pretty odd behavior as well.....
...on Windows. Isn't that normal?
Why are people complaining?
They told them they where going to give them windows on a phone. They bought windows on a phone. Random reboots, completely unstable, uses up all resources including battery, the only solution is to wipe it out and start over, and even then you end up with a broken device. Sounds like they managed to port the whole windows experience, I don't get the complains. Maybe it's the lack of a blue screen of dead that's bothering them?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
My Samsung Character R640 running Symbian is working absolutely flawlessly and is getting battery life of approx 2 weeks. Thanks for asking about Symbian in that summary.
Had it for a bit under a week, so far no glitches and I'm really loving it!
They're getting all the Microsoft shills to post in defense of this knowing they're the only ones that would claim to own a Windows 8 phone.
All you needed was this keyboard
hilarious
Gee, I've had two friends in the last week also report their iphone 5s locking up and freezing. Guess this is âoenewsâ as well. And oh, here's an Apple forum with ooo a whole 25 replies on it about the iphone 5 freezing.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4396519?start=0&tstart=0
So how bout some real comparisons here instead of cherrypicking? How bout a satisfaction survey of 920 owners? Maybe some real journalistic work perhaps? How bout numerically compare the satisfaction of 920 owners to the rest of the field? Too defensible? Too much work?
http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Lumia-920-Windows-Phone/product-reviews/B00A2V7FCS/ref=sr_1_2_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
Btw, one SKU of the Lumia is currently #3 across all carriers on Amazon and moving up every day despite limited production. Whereâ(TM)s the story on that?
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phones-Accessories-Service-Plans/zgbs/wireless/2407747011/ref=zg_bs_nav_cps_1_cps
..and it lasts longer on a charge than my Galaxy Nexus ever did. I've had one reboot. I used to get freezes and reboots on occasion with the Gnex too. Overall it's been fine. More responsive and reliable than the last 2 Androids I've had.
On the other hand, my iPad had 49 Calendar items for every single Contact's birthday until I deleted every all accounts from Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars and started again late last week, so even the Great Apple(tm) isn't immune to issues.
I had a Motorola Milestone (international version of the original Droid) for a while, now running a Lumia 800. The Milestone would die at least once a day, and the battery would last maybe 10 hours if I left it completely alone. Even though the Milestone was a flagship Android phone at one point, I could write a giant TL;DR post about the problems I had with that phone.
My Lumia gets over 30 hours of battery on a single charge and has yet to crash or even do anything unexpected in the 6 months I've owned it. The difference in the quality of the phones is so night and day I can't imagine that a WP8 phone would be any worse than an Android.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Oh agreed, just for my usage (phone functions, maps, and messaging) my iphone 3GS worked fine. If I had the iphone 5 maps would be buggy right out the gate (alongside data usage apparently). There's a reason my current phone is a droid and not an iphone (a few actually). The only other bother is despite being a droid, since it only has MTP linux compatibility for syncing is pretty pathetic.
Why is this news? Was this not expected?
Oh wait .. I missed "some" ..
Good job guys!
--whacky
does that count?
as much as you are an AC and we hardly trust you. I owned several iPhone (now i5) and never experienced a crash - not even once.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Hello,
It would be interesting to know the scope of the problem(s), and how to exercise the(se) bug(s).
I have had a Nokia Lumia 920 for just under a week now (replacing my year old Nokia Lumia 900) and have not noted any performance or battery-life related issues with it. Admittedly, I have not done that much with it yet, as I am still reloading applications onto it (an area which is keen for improvement), but I have to say it has worked consistently without problem.
I wonder if the problems are due to a specific application or manufacturer-applied configuration.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
I stopped worrying about battery life when I finally made the mental leap from "it's a phone with lots of features" to "it's cool little computer that also makes phone calls."
Considering all that I use it for, sixteen to twenty hours on a charge is pretty damned good for a computer that fits in my pocket.
FWIW - Nexus S Android GB, ICS, JB: No really crashes or serious problems. CM9 on the same phone - lots of wierdness.
Three Squirrels
Fuck that! Take your beatings like iPhone and Android. Jeezo, Microsoft (and your shills) you're a frick'n baby.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
try an iphone... you will feel better about your ice cream sandwich :)
N900 - solid (and heavy as) a rock.
Pity Nokia went into self destruct afterwards.
Sigh.
The guts of a phone is ridicously complex. I worked for Symbian for ten years and we threw incredible amounts of resources and effort into testing and we still didn't catch all bugs.
Nobody wants to release a device with aggravating bugs. Be it Apple, Nokia or Samsung, they all really do want the best customer experience. Only an idiot would think otherwise. However, they have to release at some point, otherwise the market window is gone on a model they've typically worked on for a year.
There is no conspiracy to screw over customers by giving them crap.
typo: "above" should be "themselves"
can't use ice-cream sandwich, it makes my teeth hurt.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
they left us with a December.
It sounds as if you can't expect much robustness from smartphones these days, can you?
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Isn't that a list of top built-in features of the Android OS?
No I would say the best features of Android, for me personally, is its incredibly first party Applications, maps; chrome being the ones I use most. I love the ability to customise my phone though the internet, both the play store, and my contacts. I love the widget layer, for both the live wallpapers and the widgets. I personally have a phone that includes joystick controls, so obviously a customisable OS by third party manufactures meant a lot to me ;).
Thanks to the joy of distance selling regulations, my wife has had her Lumia 920 returned. It, after a day, decided to freeze approximately 30 minutes after every power cycle. Not only that, the wireless charging doesn't work properly and the operating system is slightly clunky in places (moreso than windows phone 7.5 which tbh wasn't all that bad). It would be a good device if it wasn't for these issues. Oh and the music app is basically a large advertising platform. I've just dumped my Lumia 710 for a Nexus 4, which so far seems reasonable but not anything overly special. She has gone back to her Galaxy ace.
That's a feature to make sure you don't forget them.
N900 - solid (and heavy as) a rock.
God It really was heavy. I think it was as much the keyboard as anything else. What surprised me with the flagshit windows phones, is unlike the n900 which felt a million dollars. It included a radio, a remote control, hell I could play my tunes through the radio [It was like living in the future], hell I had 48gb in mine then, and was a computer not an electronics device, but it suffered from a shitty screen [needed a note solution], and not enough memory. It was weird updating it to a new phone that was in many ways inferior, but Nokia through its users under the bus for Meego, ironically in the context of this article Nokia windows users got thrown under the bus for Windows 8.
hhgfhghgfhgf
Try rebooting to see if you get your keyboard back. Then tell us which smartphone you're using.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only time I have had "issues" with my android devices is when I had the Amazon App store loaded on my phone(s). I am pretty selective about the software I install on my phones/tablets as I know what role apps can play in the stability of the environment. All was great at the beginning but a few updates down the road and the next thing I knew problems were happening. Apps force-closing and reboots. I went about removing different things then putting them back when no difference occurred. Finally, I got to the innocent Amazon App store and things got notably better... and worse.
Turns out, that when I removed the Amazon App store, none of my apps would work! At least not the apps which I had acquired through them. Then I was like "ah ha!" Amazon was doing something not just to my phone, but also to the apps on my phone. Factory reset and reinstall of my apps (not through Amazon) and things were better after that. My wife's got that phone now. Stable as stable can be... also, it runs a Team Whiskey ROM on it. (Did I mention I don't like to run stock carrier ROMs? It's not like you can trust them.)
My current phone is better still but I'm waiting for the next round of Nexus 4 phones. Funny. So many people couldn't get their phone and at the same time, eBay is flooded with that phone priced around $600 or more. Oh how I'd love to visit those jerks. These are the same people go go around flipping houses. I recall in the early days of the housing bubble burst. I was in Texas where the housing economy was largely not affected and the news was starving for some local tragedy stories. They finally found one... this guy was almost in tears... he was a house flipper and could flip his houses and was stuck with them. Dumbass. I hope he burns in hell.
You and I understand the subtle nuances of your post, the tradeoffs between this potential use and that other use, the tug and pull between the developer and the environment provider. You Microsoft ACs have grown quite good at sparring with me. But the end user doesn't have a micro givashit. He just wants to enjoy being empowered by the device to do stuff he couldn't do yesterday. And the stuff he cares about is first: to connect to his loved ones and his lesser loved ones. Second: to share his life with the aforementioned loved ones and any who might be interested. He could give a fuck less about APIs.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sigh.
The guts of a phone is ridicously complex. I worked for Symbian for ten years and we threw incredible amounts of resources and effort into testing and we still didn't catch all bugs.
Nobody wants to release a device with aggravating bugs. Be it Apple, Nokia or Samsung, they all really do want the best customer experience. Only an idiot would think otherwise. However, they have to release at some point, otherwise the market window is gone on a model they've typically worked on for a year.
There is no conspiracy to screw over customers by giving them crap.
I am not saying the manufactures are at fault, they do try to release a good product. Problem comes with providers like Bell that rely on contracts to subsidise phone sales for the manufactures. Sure Microsoft updated Windows Mobile to a reasonable state after launching a usable but flawed os. And they certainly released a better mobile os with 7 that updated to a very usable state quickly. Trouble is again companies like bell lock down the roms and refuse to push the necessary updates.
The few windows 7 phones that the jerks did contract out are all locked down and the last update that fixed several bluetooth issues and radio issues with certain chipsets is not going to be released on BELL! So they are at it again. Even the guys that sell the phones in the kiosks are apologising for the problems that Bell causes.
I have heard of similar issues with other providers here in Canada ...particularly Virgin Mobile and Rogers to be precise. SO I am walking with my feet and wallet this time and that includes everyone else that I am related to...my brother in law's son had huge ld and data charge issues with a so called smart phone that made data calls out of his pocket on Bell because of a software glitch that caused the phone to go online without notifying the user! Others that I have talked to have similar issues with software updates, fees and charges, and strange usage charges caused by software glitches. (especially on iPhones!)
In fact there is a whole new snake oil industry starting to spring up with companies unlocking phones for people who reach the end of contract here in Canada and in Great Britain. Locked phones are the problem and do not do justice to the people who write the code, or the manufactures.
My original contract phone with Bell was a Symbian oddly enough and again they did not push the Symbian update fixes for the contract LG Xenon that I originally signed up with. Again it is the provider software modifications and lockdown that was the problem with that cell phone. My next phone will be a simple Nokia Symbian flip phone on no contract that can do text and bluetooth and nothing else! Fortunately these are dirt cheap and still out there to be had...the other choice would be an off contract Blackberry with the same features. But paying 5-700 or even more for an iPhone 5 just for a non contract so called SMART PHONE that only eats holes in my wallet, is just plain stupid and not really all that useful.
Symbian was and is a great phone OS, I really like it. In fact from what I have seen Win8 obviously benefited by cloning some of the great parts of Symbian.
If I ever get a new phone I will make damn sure that the rom is not provider locked and until I find a provider that addresses updates adequately all I will buy is throw away cheapo junk phones...my SMART PHONE days are over until these clowns change their act.
Fortunately in Canada I can now force the provider to give up my number so I can continue to use it on any carrier I chose.
ONE step in the right direction for the industry at least. Hopefully regulators will step in and force the jerks at bell, rogers and the like to allow the unlocking of off contract phones as part of the original contract. This way the consumer can easily sell it or switch providers. It is the same problem as buying a computer and not having the ability to install any OS or OS update that I choose.
In short if Windows Phone 8 is again used as a lure to peddle product that will not update on contract and if it also costs more than a decent laptop or tablet off contract, then for anyone with a brain it is a total waste of money and time.
I've had nothing but good experiences with WP7.5 software, which leads me to believe that WP8 could be worth considering. That said, I'm waiting until/if RIM manages to get their BBX hardware out before using my next contract upgrade, as I'd strongly prefer a phone with a hardware QWERTY board. On two different WP devices (HTC Surround and Samsung Focus), the software performed faultlessly. That said, one of the primary concerns for many users (apps) is a non-starter for me, since the only apps I require are an RPN calculator and Facebook (a necessary evil). [All I really want is good call quality, decent battery life, email, calendaring, and a bit of light web browsing/photography). Frankly, WP7.5 was near, if not at the top of, my mobile OS experiences, which include: WebOS (Palm Pixi Plus, HP Veer), iOS (iPhone 4 and original), Android (1.x and 2.x on HTC Hero, Motorola i1, Samsung Captivate), Symbian S60 (Nokia E66, E90, 6650), Symbian UIQ (SE P800, M600i), Blackberry OS 6 (9800), WM 6.0 (iMate Ultimate 8150, Toshiba G910), etc., along with the WP7.5 devices. My other favorite was WebOS, but it was really too buggy. So...erm...I spend far too much time on phones. And Windows Phone is really pretty good (this coming from a former Apple evangelist (they lost me after Snow Leopard)/Linux user who tolerates, rather than enjoys Windows.
I've had a Windows Phone 7 phone, including the upgrade of the OS, it's required maybe that many restarts in the past 1.5 years - this is about the same over a given duration as my use of the iPhone4s while over seas, and as some of my friends with good Androids. A lot better than the two crap androids I've had.
Note: I'd actually recommend most people get a good Android phone over a Windows phone, but if you are going to criticize the phone, criticize it on it's flaws, it's got enough of them, don't try to invent shit.
You should mention *which* version of the phone you've had.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Developers care about APIs. Developers create apps. Users care about apps.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I want to see it succeed. Why? Because it will help drive innovation for iOS and Android. Heck, I'm even pulling for Blackberry. From an end user standpoint, the more we have to choose from the better. So sure, WP8 might stumble a bit out of the gate but it will get better. Even WebOS with it's swipe-to-close-the-app feature had something to add...a feature that Android adopted.
I've seen the WP8 phones but not had a chance to use one yet. Honestly, it didn't seem half bad. The app ecosystem is going to lag for a bit but I think that most of the essential apps are already there. Should be interesting.
but if you are going to criticize X, criticize it on it's flaws, it's got enough of them, don't try to invent shit.
Yes, probably off-topic, but I've found myself saying exactly that in pretty much every conversation I've had regarding religion, politics, and economic policy for the last five years. It's sad to see it's now infected technology.
Developers care about APIs. Developers create apps. Users care about apps.
you left out
"... Profit!"
Everything I've ever learned the hard way was based on a statistically invalid sample.
They are making their desktop OS more like a phone/tablet. And making their phone OS more like the desktop (cerca 1995, unfortunately).
-
Microsoft has a long, long history of releasing software that would be considered Beta by most other companies. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see this attitude continued with it's phones.
Outside of the Samsungs, they've all been exceptionally stable
Not so sure about the transform, but about 6-8mo in my GS2 starting having major stability issues. I had originally assumed it was from an update a little earlier, but I noticed that it would start to bog down, then spontaneously reboot shortly after, with a noticeable drop in battery charge after the reboot. After I replaced the battery on the phone, the stability issues mostly went away, and it's been good to go since.
Phones aren't about technology anymore. It's about fashion nowadays.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
This new Win 8 phone is the most sophisticated machine Ive seen as for phones. Wonderful smoothness for the Nokis 920. No mess ups so far. Great customizing ability, all works etc. Just need to get new Zune or iTune type of media management and sync client. They are working on a "WinTUNE" type of iTune thingy.
Most of those haven't really caused me any serious issues with my normal use, but, with what I have had the patience to read on your rather exhaustive list, I also cannot find fault in it either.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
There is an issue with syncing Google accounts WPCentral , which seems to be more an issue of Google changing their API rather than a bug as such with the phones.
From my own experience with an HTC 8X I had to reset the phone and reinstall apps (no biggy) I set Gmail to forward to Hotmail and copied over all the contacts and since then it has run flawlessly. Battery life with light use is up to three days
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
noob
Developers care about the potential market for their apps. With a half-billion installed base each, iOS and Android are serious contenders. If you look at the curves of adoption and the lead time for development, the choice is clear.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How did I know you would be here?
Help stamp out iliturcy.