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Windows Phone 8.1 |OT| Update 1
- Thread starter brotkasten
- Start date
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
I mean with that price, I am really not expecting anything special. But I saw some samples, looks good enough.
Is this brand new? and beside smaller screen and 8MP camera, everything else is same as XL right?
Sounds like a Lumia 950 or 950XL /s
You can get a decent Android phone for less than $200. The Blue Life One X that's been mentioned or the Moto G are both good options.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
I contacted the seller, lets see. If it is brand new, I will just buy it. And save myself 150$ lol
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
6tag hasn't worked well on w10, so I use it to upload photos but I use IG Beta to browse.
Can't believe it's still Beta. lol
Astral/H3X
Member
So, I'm thinking of calling in the warranty on my Band 1, since it's peeling apart, trying to get a refund, and then put that towards a Band 2. Anyone think this'll work? It's within the 1 year period.
Poindexter
Member
I think you'd have better luck asking for an exchange and saying you want to put it towards the band 2.
Astral/H3X
Member
I might word it that way. IIRC I got it right off the MS website so I should have some luck there.
TheBryanJZX90
Member
Lol I bought that phone new for $30 US with no catch.
juliushandle
Member
Get an exchange then sell it. I don't see them giving you a credit for a Band 2 unless they're out of refurbs to give you.
juliushandle
Member
First Win Mobile 10 impressions:
Settings app is beautiful. A crash here and there but not bad. App is almost identical to the Desktop PC Settings. Tidy, organized and powerful.
Can finally download offline maps and do other shit. YAY!
Alarms app extra features are nice. Worldclock, Timer and Stopwatch are cool.
Skype integrated in Messaging is some powerful shit. Can call and text my friend via Skype all in the built in Messaging app finally.
OneDrive feels more integrated. Cool.
Whoever in charge of the Store app should be fired ASAP. This is the first thing any new or old user would go to and guess what? It's horrible. Slow, laggy, crashy, messy piece of shit. Just plain WTF!?
Speaking of the Store, why is Here Maps not here?
These are my first impressions after a whole day of backing up, updating twice and resetting my Lumia 640.
Settings app is beautiful. A crash here and there but not bad. App is almost identical to the Desktop PC Settings. Tidy, organized and powerful.
Can finally download offline maps and do other shit. YAY!
Alarms app extra features are nice. Worldclock, Timer and Stopwatch are cool.
Skype integrated in Messaging is some powerful shit. Can call and text my friend via Skype all in the built in Messaging app finally.
OneDrive feels more integrated. Cool.
Whoever in charge of the Store app should be fired ASAP. This is the first thing any new or old user would go to and guess what? It's horrible. Slow, laggy, crashy, messy piece of shit. Just plain WTF!?
Speaking of the Store, why is Here Maps not here?
These are my first impressions after a whole day of backing up, updating twice and resetting my Lumia 640.
LukasTaves
Member
Wut? How? For me skype only let me call skype contacts, or is that what you mean?
"Replaced" in my case. There are some map data in my country, specially for public transportation that the Here Maps suite not only had, but excelled even google maps and the new maps app just lack completely.
brotkasten
Member
Why do you guys need a working app store? It's not like there are any...
I'll see myself out.
I'll see myself out.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
The app store runs fine after a few updates. I like the layout too.
juliushandle
Member
So a Googler gifted me a Nexus 5x and I've been using it all day. Outside of the app selection, I really miss my Lumia 1520. Hopefully it meshes together better as I get more accustomed to the flow of things. Right now I could easily see going back though, and maybe keeping this as a Wi-Fi only device for apps that don't exist on WP.
Weird, was under the impression that Here was still the data source for the new Map application.
Weird, was under the impression that Here was still the data source for the new Map application.
Steelyuhas
Member
How do you track a walk/run through MS Health without a Band? I thought you could?
maximum360
Member
I think a lot of the Lumia 640x on Amazon or Ebay or AT&T variants so you won't have support for all Tmobile bands. My wife let my son play around with her phone and he spilled water on it. The phone is mostly function except for the sim slot which makes the phone essentially useless. I've been looking around for a tmobile option and can't find it anywhere. I should have listened to my instincts and bought a second one as a back up. The doesn't require another major so I'm considering getting her the Win Blu LTE which is currently unlocked and being sold by MS store for $99.
This was an expensive year for tech. I bought a 950 XL for myself and previously a 640 for the wife. I also got her a Surface 3 with keyboard. Now I have to get her a new phone. two nights ago my mother in law moved a chair next to my 60 inch Sony LED TV [MSRP $4300 5 years ago] and accidentally bumped it into the tv. There's now a rather large gash on the screen. So after much consideration I just ordered this from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T48CVWY/?tag=neogaf0e-20
This was an expensive year for tech. I bought a 950 XL for myself and previously a 640 for the wife. I also got her a Surface 3 with keyboard. Now I have to get her a new phone. two nights ago my mother in law moved a chair next to my 60 inch Sony LED TV [MSRP $4300 5 years ago] and accidentally bumped it into the tv. There's now a rather large gash on the screen. So after much consideration I just ordered this from amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00T48CVWY/?tag=neogaf0e-20
maximum360
Member
juliushandle
Member
That was the rumor when MS announced killing off their old Fitness and Health app but no, it wasn't true. I was left with my 830 that had a pedometer but no more pedometer app.
Oh, BTW, my Android experience already revealed it's first bug. I'm using the Nova launcher and the dock is stacking icons on top of icons. I have my locked to prevent icons from being moved and stacked but this still happens.
Poodlestrike
Banned
No logo in Edge. Just an e logo.
Poodlestrike
Banned
megarockexe
Member
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Some notes after spending a year on Android and buying a L950:
-The base experience is still the best for me. Texting, quick browsing, phone calls, emails still comprise the bulk of my usage during working hours, and it's still best on Windows Phone
-One of those base areas that USED to be better on Windows Phone and now imo is not is camera+photos. Part of this is that the photos app is still garbage on Win10 mobile. It just takes too long to load and is not visually appealing. The other part is that competitors have just gotten flat better at this. LG and Samsung offer excellent photo viewing apps. The actual camera apps are both excellent for LG and Samsung. Apple's camera app is still the worst among the flagships. The camera experience on other flagships is also better in terms of the processing times to view your shot. This has to get better. I know it will get better, because it is unacceptable to have to wait so long to see how your photo came out. The first 4K video I took was screwed up. Taking pictures and recording video is not something you want to leave up to chance. It simply has to work. Every time. I changed the default video setting to save on internal rather than SD, let's see if that improves the 4k video experience.
-Another one of those base areas that USED to be better on Windows phone was the "Out of the Box" experience. But because Win10 mobile shipped in such a rough state, it takes some time to really have the phone working well. I'm glad the firmware upgrade made things much more stable (previously, you'd have to do a lot of rebooting). A lot of the annoyances I've had early on were eventually fixed once I got some app software updates, but I can imagine a lot of people being turned off by slow, buggy software and not waiting for updates.
-Speaking of updates, I LOVE the fact that just about every single part of this software is upgradeable through the Store, including the store itself. And because everything is so new, the updates actually fix and improve things. Unfortunately, on Android, you're just as likely to get a new battery drain bug with the latest Google services update as you are to get a new feature. I couldn't stand it, always feeling like an update would break something on my phone. To be fair to Google, it's hard to test the latest Gmail update against every phone and OEM skin to see where it would cause trouble, but I guess that's one benefit of MS scaling back to just a few phones each phone gets optimized better. Another promising sign is just how much updates are available from MS. They are iterating at a pace that gives me confidence that they care about the platform. The phone is much better today than last week because of updates, and way way better than when it launched. 3rd party app updates, however, remain scarce.
-The ability to get rid of crapware is HUGE. Apple has slowly started to add a bunch of crapware that you can't remove. Google has always had that problem. It's such a headache for Android because you have duplication between OEM and Google apps, and you can't delete either one from your phone, just "disable" it, so it sits in your phone memory forever. Even if you have a Nexus phone, you can't delete crap like the google bootleg office apps. Just stupid.
-I'll just come out and say it: this is not the best camera on a smartphone. The Galaxy S6/Note5 still has the best camera imo. I'll go ahead and place the LG G4 camera slightly ahead of the 950 camera as well. I think that I can get better shots on my 950 in optimal conditions, but MOST times, the G4 will give me the best shot on automatic. The G4 also gives me truer colors in tricky conditions due to its additional color spectrum sensor, it really nails the colors of every scene. This one is so close it could go either way, because I've already taken shots on my 950 that I simply never took on my G4 which I owned for much longer, but I took a few more duds on the 950 as opposed to the G4. So 3rd best smartphone camera. That's nothing to sneeze at. Better than the new iPhone's cameras, but those of us with Lumias in the past have known this was ALWAYS true of Lumia flagships. I also feel like the G4 and S6 have better screens, but this is a non-factor because they are all so good.
-I work for a public education district. We are a Microsoft shop. I live in Outlook. As good as the outlook apps are on Android and iOS, the integration just isn't there yet. For example, syncing contacts on Android is a damn mess unless you live in Google apps (I don't). Adding calendar events in the Android app was also buggy in my experience, sometimes it wouldn't show up on the desktop app after I added it on phone. Can't have that. The tight integration with Outlook mail, calendar, and contacts on Windows Phone is still the best experience
-Hello Beta: Look at the camera and it improves recognition where it works almost 100% of the time for me. I also went through several rounds using the "improve recognition" feature. But, because my security is set so that it only asks for my PIN every 15 minutes, I can bypass Hello most of the time anyway. I did not know this, and maybe some of you using a 950/XL don't realize this, but if you have a similar setting where it doesn't ask for your pin every time, all you have to do is swipe up, even if the Hello camera is looking for you, and you'll get to your home screen. Because fingerprint scanners have gotten so good, Hello is not as fast or convenient as those methods. But it's not bad, just different. People think it's pretty cool when I show it to them, and it works well enough that I've kept it on. The G4 doesn't have biometric login and the S6 one wasn't reliable enough for me, so I like it. I don't think holding a phone up to my face once every 15 minutes (and even then only if I haven't used it at all in the meantime) is weird, ymmv.
-The look and design of the OS is still the best. I know this is subjective, but if you're in this thread, you probably agree. Nothing else comes close to how clean and nice you can get your home screen to look. In Win10, you do have to personalize it a bit more to get the elegance that was easier to achieve in 8.1, but having a background picture match your colors and your navigation bar allows for some real nice coordination and sleekness. And no other OS provides me the joy of watching my home screen come alive with moving pictures, notifications etc. I've even come around to the transparent tiles. This extends to the sounds of the OS. Again, silly to many people, but the ringtones, notification sounds, keyboard sounds etc. on Windows Phone is just SO GOOD.
-Continuum is a legit cool feature. I don't have the wired dock, so I figured I wouldn't be able to use it, but it connects perfectly with my TV wirelessly, so I was able to play around with the features. Makes big screen IE, photos, and videos effortless. I have a Surface 3 for work, which limits the usefulness of it for productivity purposes, but I'll probably pick up a wired dock when its on sale. As more apps become universal apps, the amount of things I can do with Continuum in my living room tv should grow. Speaking of UWP apps, I don't see any performance improvements compared to the traditional WP apps. They don't seem to open more quickly or perform more smoothly. We'll see if that changes.
-This is still not the phone for the young, socially plugged in person. That's a huge problem. Facebook, IG, Snapchat, and whatever the latest hot social media app is will either not be here or will function worse speed and feature-wise. For me, I use social media sparingly enough that's it not an issue, but that's a huge demographic that MS simply can not compete for with the current app environment.
-Ditto for games
-Finally, the issue of day-to-day use. My elderly mom owns a 950, she uses it every day to watch youtube videos, make calls, and surf Spanish-language news sites. I know some reviews have made it seem like the OS is so half-baked that it's not adequate for the average user, but with the updates to the OS and the various apps, that's not true. As a power user, I've run into much more bugs as I push the OS. So, for example, apps crashing on occasion, a reboot, the home screen taking an extra beat to show up, etc. Some of those errors you've seen in youtube reviews, and they are real. In my experience, the updates to software (such as the store, settings, photos app etc.) and the big update two weeks ago have stabilized the OS. I look forward to more updates, because there are still issues, but you can absolutely use this phone as your daily driver. It's important to note that I had issues with Android, a much more mature platform, with reboots, crashes, battery drain etc., so I don't think this is unique to Windows Phone, but of course MS is in a position where they don't have as much wiggle room because of their position in the market, I understand that.
-The base experience is still the best for me. Texting, quick browsing, phone calls, emails still comprise the bulk of my usage during working hours, and it's still best on Windows Phone
-One of those base areas that USED to be better on Windows Phone and now imo is not is camera+photos. Part of this is that the photos app is still garbage on Win10 mobile. It just takes too long to load and is not visually appealing. The other part is that competitors have just gotten flat better at this. LG and Samsung offer excellent photo viewing apps. The actual camera apps are both excellent for LG and Samsung. Apple's camera app is still the worst among the flagships. The camera experience on other flagships is also better in terms of the processing times to view your shot. This has to get better. I know it will get better, because it is unacceptable to have to wait so long to see how your photo came out. The first 4K video I took was screwed up. Taking pictures and recording video is not something you want to leave up to chance. It simply has to work. Every time. I changed the default video setting to save on internal rather than SD, let's see if that improves the 4k video experience.
-Another one of those base areas that USED to be better on Windows phone was the "Out of the Box" experience. But because Win10 mobile shipped in such a rough state, it takes some time to really have the phone working well. I'm glad the firmware upgrade made things much more stable (previously, you'd have to do a lot of rebooting). A lot of the annoyances I've had early on were eventually fixed once I got some app software updates, but I can imagine a lot of people being turned off by slow, buggy software and not waiting for updates.
-Speaking of updates, I LOVE the fact that just about every single part of this software is upgradeable through the Store, including the store itself. And because everything is so new, the updates actually fix and improve things. Unfortunately, on Android, you're just as likely to get a new battery drain bug with the latest Google services update as you are to get a new feature. I couldn't stand it, always feeling like an update would break something on my phone. To be fair to Google, it's hard to test the latest Gmail update against every phone and OEM skin to see where it would cause trouble, but I guess that's one benefit of MS scaling back to just a few phones each phone gets optimized better. Another promising sign is just how much updates are available from MS. They are iterating at a pace that gives me confidence that they care about the platform. The phone is much better today than last week because of updates, and way way better than when it launched. 3rd party app updates, however, remain scarce.
-The ability to get rid of crapware is HUGE. Apple has slowly started to add a bunch of crapware that you can't remove. Google has always had that problem. It's such a headache for Android because you have duplication between OEM and Google apps, and you can't delete either one from your phone, just "disable" it, so it sits in your phone memory forever. Even if you have a Nexus phone, you can't delete crap like the google bootleg office apps. Just stupid.
-I'll just come out and say it: this is not the best camera on a smartphone. The Galaxy S6/Note5 still has the best camera imo. I'll go ahead and place the LG G4 camera slightly ahead of the 950 camera as well. I think that I can get better shots on my 950 in optimal conditions, but MOST times, the G4 will give me the best shot on automatic. The G4 also gives me truer colors in tricky conditions due to its additional color spectrum sensor, it really nails the colors of every scene. This one is so close it could go either way, because I've already taken shots on my 950 that I simply never took on my G4 which I owned for much longer, but I took a few more duds on the 950 as opposed to the G4. So 3rd best smartphone camera. That's nothing to sneeze at. Better than the new iPhone's cameras, but those of us with Lumias in the past have known this was ALWAYS true of Lumia flagships. I also feel like the G4 and S6 have better screens, but this is a non-factor because they are all so good.
-I work for a public education district. We are a Microsoft shop. I live in Outlook. As good as the outlook apps are on Android and iOS, the integration just isn't there yet. For example, syncing contacts on Android is a damn mess unless you live in Google apps (I don't). Adding calendar events in the Android app was also buggy in my experience, sometimes it wouldn't show up on the desktop app after I added it on phone. Can't have that. The tight integration with Outlook mail, calendar, and contacts on Windows Phone is still the best experience
-Hello Beta: Look at the camera and it improves recognition where it works almost 100% of the time for me. I also went through several rounds using the "improve recognition" feature. But, because my security is set so that it only asks for my PIN every 15 minutes, I can bypass Hello most of the time anyway. I did not know this, and maybe some of you using a 950/XL don't realize this, but if you have a similar setting where it doesn't ask for your pin every time, all you have to do is swipe up, even if the Hello camera is looking for you, and you'll get to your home screen. Because fingerprint scanners have gotten so good, Hello is not as fast or convenient as those methods. But it's not bad, just different. People think it's pretty cool when I show it to them, and it works well enough that I've kept it on. The G4 doesn't have biometric login and the S6 one wasn't reliable enough for me, so I like it. I don't think holding a phone up to my face once every 15 minutes (and even then only if I haven't used it at all in the meantime) is weird, ymmv.
-The look and design of the OS is still the best. I know this is subjective, but if you're in this thread, you probably agree. Nothing else comes close to how clean and nice you can get your home screen to look. In Win10, you do have to personalize it a bit more to get the elegance that was easier to achieve in 8.1, but having a background picture match your colors and your navigation bar allows for some real nice coordination and sleekness. And no other OS provides me the joy of watching my home screen come alive with moving pictures, notifications etc. I've even come around to the transparent tiles. This extends to the sounds of the OS. Again, silly to many people, but the ringtones, notification sounds, keyboard sounds etc. on Windows Phone is just SO GOOD.
-Continuum is a legit cool feature. I don't have the wired dock, so I figured I wouldn't be able to use it, but it connects perfectly with my TV wirelessly, so I was able to play around with the features. Makes big screen IE, photos, and videos effortless. I have a Surface 3 for work, which limits the usefulness of it for productivity purposes, but I'll probably pick up a wired dock when its on sale. As more apps become universal apps, the amount of things I can do with Continuum in my living room tv should grow. Speaking of UWP apps, I don't see any performance improvements compared to the traditional WP apps. They don't seem to open more quickly or perform more smoothly. We'll see if that changes.
-This is still not the phone for the young, socially plugged in person. That's a huge problem. Facebook, IG, Snapchat, and whatever the latest hot social media app is will either not be here or will function worse speed and feature-wise. For me, I use social media sparingly enough that's it not an issue, but that's a huge demographic that MS simply can not compete for with the current app environment.
-Ditto for games
-Finally, the issue of day-to-day use. My elderly mom owns a 950, she uses it every day to watch youtube videos, make calls, and surf Spanish-language news sites. I know some reviews have made it seem like the OS is so half-baked that it's not adequate for the average user, but with the updates to the OS and the various apps, that's not true. As a power user, I've run into much more bugs as I push the OS. So, for example, apps crashing on occasion, a reboot, the home screen taking an extra beat to show up, etc. Some of those errors you've seen in youtube reviews, and they are real. In my experience, the updates to software (such as the store, settings, photos app etc.) and the big update two weeks ago have stabilized the OS. I look forward to more updates, because there are still issues, but you can absolutely use this phone as your daily driver. It's important to note that I had issues with Android, a much more mature platform, with reboots, crashes, battery drain etc., so I don't think this is unique to Windows Phone, but of course MS is in a position where they don't have as much wiggle room because of their position in the market, I understand that.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
So I bought the BLU Win HD LTE, really good phone for the price. Will always keep this as my spare phone.
btw if anyone interested, I listed to Windows Weekly episode 445 yesterday and they had Microsoft Marketing Chief. He talked about all MS products. He was genuinely good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8na8DEsZo
Very good listen, if anyone interested.
edit,
he talks about WP briefly from 36:26
btw if anyone interested, I listed to Windows Weekly episode 445 yesterday and they had Microsoft Marketing Chief. He talked about all MS products. He was genuinely good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8na8DEsZo
Very good listen, if anyone interested.
edit,
he talks about WP briefly from 36:26
brotkasten
Member
Guys, I'd love to come back. Stock Android is great and my Nexus 5 still works, but it's been a year and a half now and it feels like a time for change. But seriously, the 950 series just isn't right.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
The price is too high, everything else you'd love. I don't even want to guess what the price in US dollars is in your neck of the woods.
juliushandle
Member
I turned on my 830 briefly today after using Android for almost 2 weeks and damn I missed WP and wanna come back home. Glance screen is superior on WP and I actually like the one step pull down for both notifications and quick settings. On Android it's a 2 pull down deal but it does give you a pull up for Google Now or Cortana.
950 needs a price drop, proper Glance, and a way to cast media to my Xbox besides TubeCast. Like casting from Edge browser to Xbox.
950 needs a price drop, proper Glance, and a way to cast media to my Xbox besides TubeCast. Like casting from Edge browser to Xbox.
You could try using the wireless display stuff. That just mirrors your screen, but it works reasonably well for me.
juliushandle
Member
I don't have a TV that has that.
Xbox has an app called wireless display preview that will open up when you start it on phone. I am assuming you are talking about Xbone. My tv doesn't do it natively either.
LostMyNarbles
Member
That's because Windows Phone 10 is a disaster and the Windows Phone OS is (Arguably) in the worst state it's ever been in. We're dealing with a bug-riddled OS that is still in a beta period when it should have been in launch by now and some bugs are crippling to say the least. The app situation is still terrible and despite the tools Microsoft have offered developers it feels like things still aren't getting better. That also holds true for app updates since many developers still aren't bothering with updating their current WP apps. Right now the current tune is that things are going to change once more developers use those tools and port apps from iOS, but I personally =feel like this is the continued mantra of "Just way the apps are coming eventually".
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Some good points mixed in with some drama, but can you get specific on this one?
LostMyNarbles
Member
The issues with updating/downloading apps on the store that the last update caused was pretty damning, those kind of issues simply shouldn't be present in any device at this point let alone the flagships that encountered it. Pocket Now did a good job covering the bugs and just how unfinished the OS still feels in their 950 XL review.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
The update did not prevent apps from downloading/updating, there is a cache bug when a bunch of apps needed to update at the same time that is being worked on, but updates do go through, it just takes a longer unless you manually pause some downloads. Not crippling, just annoying. There are bugs for sure, and I don't own an XL, but none that I would call crippling or close to crippling.
juliushandle
Member
OMG old WP7 games like Orbital and Dodonpachi Maximum now work with W10!!!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/dodonpachi-maximum/9wzdncrcwm3d
My mind is blown, these were my favorite games.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/dodonpachi-maximum/9wzdncrcwm3d
My mind is blown, these were my favorite games.
Day 2 with win10:
I like that apps are actually resuming from where I left off like next gen reader. With wp8.1, it always reloads to the top. Was soooo annoying.
Edge on the other hand...constant reloading on every tab. Sigh.
As for everything else, things are working just as intended including the store.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
@brot I'd suggest getting a cheap 640 or an old phone and flash win10 on it. 950 is expensive for beta testing MS 4th reboot.
I like that apps are actually resuming from where I left off like next gen reader. With wp8.1, it always reloads to the top. Was soooo annoying.
Edge on the other hand...constant reloading on every tab. Sigh.
As for everything else, things are working just as intended including the store.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
@brot I'd suggest getting a cheap 640 or an old phone and flash win10 on it. 950 is expensive for beta testing MS 4th reboot.
Try pulling down with two fingers
juliushandle
Member
downloaded Google Fit, fuk it pisses me off that MS killed their Fitness & Health app for their Health app which seems to only work if you have a Band. WP currently have zero apps to track steps and activity unless you own a Band.