Caltrops - Lively: Google Creates Something Terrible

by Rafiki 09/15/2013, 8:02pm PDT

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:

Microsoft phone

If you need apps for anything, don't bother. If you've gotten apps on iOS or Android that you like and would really like them to be on Windows Phone, don't bother. They either don't exist, are lacking major features, or are straight-up broken. American Airlines has an app that gives you an electronic boarding pass, but if you're still in the terminal when your flight is technically supposed to leave, it deletes your boarding pass. There's no offline mode. Why would you ever want a copy, right? It's been this way for over 6 months, and that seems to be about normal as far as Windows Phone support.

I'm planning to go back to an iPhone after having the Lumia 920. The Lumia hardware itself is great. The HD screen is gorgeous. Windows Phone as an OS is actually pretty snappy and responsive, but there's problems. The organization of many things is nonsensical. Live tiles turned out to be a huge letdown. The iPhone annoyed me because if I wanted to check a lot of different things I had to switch between 10 different apps. I was hoping live tiles would allow me to see a lot of information at a glance from my home screen. A lot of apps don't bother using live tiles beyond displaying an icon, some just update with a picture, and for apps that do display information the tiles are generally too small for them to display much of anything worthwhile. So I still have to switch between 10 different things. Then there's other little minor annoyances that just slowly grate on me, like signal strength auto-hiding on the home screen. Get ready to tap the tip-top of you screen with your finger nail if a call drops or you can't connect and you want to know what your reception's like.

Cell phone games are mostly shit, and WP is no exception. There's an XBOX section in the app store, so, hey, Xbox arcade on your phone, right? There's Geodefense, a good port of Super Monkey Ball, and not much else I'd spend money on.

On the other hand, Nokia's GPS/maps software is the best on any platform by a mile. It's like owning a Garmin. 3D map, turn-by-turn voice navigation, a customizable speed limit monitor that, in every place I've used it, is dead accurate. It's also free to WP users. If all you need is a phone for calls, texting, and a great GPS, then WP is a good phone. Oh, and you can just use the fucking phone like a USB drive. No extra software, no encrypted bullshit. Just go ahead and dump your MP3 files on the phone from Explorer, the music player automatically catalogs them from the id3 tags. If your tags are shit, you'll find out real quick. Did they ever fix this in later iOS versions?