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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.
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.
I've had a Windows Phone (7 and then 7.5) and I think I can count the total number of reboots during that time on one hand. It's extremely stable, more so than any other smartphone or even feature phone I've ever owned. I'm excited to get a Windows Phone 8 (probably the 920) but it's a huge rewrite so I would expect a few quirks here and there at first.
Not since last decade.
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
Please don't confuse a bump in a major version number with a "huge rewrite". It's marketing for "we added more features," no "we've rewritten this for the seventh time."
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 still had GDI-related vulnerabilities in WMF/EMF handling left over from the Windows 3.0 days... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms08-021
Windows Phone 7 was based on the WinCE kernel, Windows Phone 8 is based on the WinNT kernel. if that's not a "huge rewrite", I don't know what is.
I've got an LG Optimus 7, running Win phone 7 Mango - it reboots daily, especially while in the "messages" (ie, SMS) app.
Then again I've read that's common on the LG Optimus specifically.
I'm using the standard apps, plus Exchange mail integration only.
When it's not rebooting, as a basic phone + email reader, it's not bad. My old Nokia "dumb" phone also worked fine as a basic phone with twice the standby time.
I don't think I'll "upgrade" to Windows 8 phone, though
he tripped over the hole where the start menu used to be
To be fair, not many use it on the desktop.
it is hard to understand why after all the years of abuse from the Linux/Apple crowd the Microsoft fans would continue to come in and spend most of their time defending their fanboyness to people who wouldn't use windows if it came with a blowjob from Selma Hayek.
Tempting.
It's less a rewrite and more a port. I imagine they could run Windows Phone on x86, they run Windows 8 on ARM (Windows RT) after all.
The funny thing is that vulnerabilities affecting Windows 8 may also affect Windows RT and Windows Phone 8. And if it's one they can trace back like the WMF/EMF bug the GP cited...
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
But if they wait until it's perfect, then they lose even more mindshare to two very competitive rivals: The domestic US smartphone market is running out of fresh non-preferential users, while the existing user base seems to have binary polarization between Android and iOS in ways that earlier competition between Symbian/Palm/Nokia/Blackberry never produced.
It's a tough market to get into, just now, and the longer they wait the tougher it gets...
So I think that in order to succeed, MSFT has to balance timeliness (as above) vs. hardware (wait too long, and your hardware turns stale), vs. software perfection.
In other words, were MSFT to be perfect at any one of these at the detriment of the other, it would be a far stronger nail in the coffin than a balance of the three.
And to be very clear: Their competitor's products (iOS and Android) are also far from perfect.
The question then, as I see it, is this: Did they balance it correctly to capture enough marketshare to sustain further development?
I personally hope not, given the extraordinary oppressiveness and money-grabbing nature of the walled garden that is Windows 8 on non-x86 platforms (the nature of which was apparently tried-and-tested with the Xbox 360), but I guess we'll see.
Kid-proof tablet..
Seven doesn't really crash at all. Same for SP3 crashes very rarely if ever. Hence "last decade".
I know I took it to a habit to hibernate my windows machine about four years ago because it doesn't really crash anymore. No need to reboot for any other reason then windows update requiring system restart to apply some updates.
Looks like you confuse some things here... from Wikipedia: Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows.[6] It is not to be confused with Windows Embedded Standard which is an NT-based componentized version of desktop Microsoft Windows.
Trolling is a art!
The way microsoft is doing things, maybe 2013 will be the year of linux on the desktop..
Well we already know 2013 is not going to be Windows on the Phone
Windows has detected an incoming call and must restart for the changes to take effect. Windows will restart in 1 minute.
Windows has detected that you've moved to a new location and must restart for the changes to take effect. Windows will restart in 1 minute.
as much as i hate to admit (must... bag.... microshaft....) i use windows 7 at work and most problems are to do with applications that run on it, not the os itself.
viruses are still a major problem though (and virus scanners for that matter)
Um, can't you see a pattern here: somebody fresh on Slashdot starts posting and quickly exposes opinions that are insufficiently anti-Microsoft. He gets barked at by a few zealots who point out his high UID as something that makes him deficient (I mean six digits, must be a total bandwagon jumper), then he gets modded down regardless of the validity of his comment. The person shrugs and leaves it to the neckbeards.
If that's what the majority of people here actually wants, fine. But then the motto should be "News for Linux neckbeards. Other stuff doesn't matter."
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
2012 is already the year of Linux on the desktop. And the desktop is in your pocket. Android/Linux moved more devices last quarter than Windows devices by a ratio of 3:2. Christmas is coming and by then it will be a clean sweep. By the final reports in February we will know that 2012 was the year that Linux came into its own.
If some want to cry "Waah! That's not fair! Mobile is not PC." Well suck it up sunshine. If you are a developer this is all that matters: these are the people who will buy your apps. If you make devices this is all that matters: these are the devices that move units. If you sell devices at retail this is all that matters: this is the stuff that doesn't grow dust on the shelf. People buy the devices with Android on over the devices with Windows on by a ratio of 3:2, and the first thing they do after they turn it on is buy apps and content. The only entity in all the world who cares to split this linguistic hair is Microsoft because they want to maintain the illusion that they are still king of this particular hill. But they are not. They don't own the word "PC" either, or it would be PC(R). There were PCs before Microsoft tried to take ownership of this word, and there will be PCs after we have forgotten their long sordid story. These devices are personal, and they compute. They are personal computers. Heck, some of them are more powerful than an early Cray supercomputer - in your pocket.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I haven't had a Windows Phone since 6.1(which was meh) but I do enjoy running Windows 8 on my desktop and have enjoyed almost every Windows version since Windows 95b except for ME(yes, even Vista). Is my UID low enough to be taken at face value?
I'm kind of curious how you got Microsoft Office to boot.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
1998 called, they want their Windows complaints back, oddly enough when that stuff was true of Windows OSX still had the problem of apps locking up the whole system, damn that beachball!
Hey, OS X has improved tremendously of late. Now it doesn't need apps to lock the system up - the OS can do it all by itself.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm definitely not an MS fanboy, but my opinion on Linux usability changed a bit over the past couple of years as well. I work (as I disclosed in some posts earlier) for Nokia and might be biased for that reason, and therefore also feel targeted by your claims. Still, I'm running Linux on my desktop and laptop at home, I didn't recommend WP7(.5) as an alternative for Android or iPhone for Power-Users (even though I might have recommended the UI), because I stick to my own opinion and I don't want to burn my reputation, here or elsewhere, out of wrong sense of loyalty to my employer. But I also couldn't recommend Android or iPhone, because my enthusiasm for Open Source is driven by my enthusiasm for people to own their own data and devices.
Windows Phone 8 is the first system I do recommend usability- and feature-wise as an alternative to Android or iOS. Since I was able to use a Lumia 820 for test purpose for some time, I can also claim that the stability is OK (Since I test versions under development, my experience might not match the consumer experience, but should be expected to be rather more unstable. Still, while it was not perfect yet I admit, it is quite good. I have some friends using Android and saw more reboots on their devices).
From a privacy point of view I still think, MeeGo would have been better because an Open Source System can be reviewed to check which data is transmitted to whom, but the WP8 concepts are still an improvement compared to Android or iPhone. And while Android might be theoretically open source, this argument is moot for a locked phone with pre-compiled version and closed source drivers in kernel space.
Since in WP8 each contact is associated to an account, the different accounts are never merged. That's the reason WP is afaik the first mobile phone system capable to properly manage multiple active sync accounts. If I want contacts to be only on my phone, I just configure a fake account with invalid server name and associate contacts with this account => they will not be synchronized. Very simple, very straight-forward, but a hack; however, the new API should allow to implement a local phonebook which will be fully integrated in peoples hub without synchronizing it to any server. I'd expect such an app to be available soon, also I'm not particularly waiting for it. The better solution is to configure my own ActiveSync-Server. In my case it is Zarafa on Fedora17 and can be reached via dynamic dns name; if you can't have your computer online 24/7, setting it up at home and attaching it to a WLAN router is also a viable option.
Even though I do love the technical side of the N9 and was quite sad that the system was abandoned in favour of WP, I do understand the reasoning behind, and I also understand the decision to go for WP rather than Android, even though WP7 was not competitive enough and WP8 still a year away: It would have been quite difficult to establish Nokia Maps on Android in spite of the better map data and better feature sets, because Google is quite protective of their own services. (http://thisismynext.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung/)
Trolling is a art!
Android will just freeze and be a laggy piece of shit. No warnings though, just a kernel pani-
ERROR_SUCCESS !