The maps application on Mango now comes with voice search and turn-by-turn navigation. Let's call this gizmo Bing Navigation for now. Bing Navigation is just like Google navigation on Android, at least it tries to be. Yet fails.
The reason for me calling Microsoft's take on navigation in Mango a failure is the ridiculously limited number of options to enter a navigation target. Mango offers voice search, but only in the maps, not the navigation part of the app. The voice search button is available when you are searching for a map location but not for entering a trip destination. This baffles me since exactly in those situations where you decidedly do not want to type, e.g. navigating while driving, you have to. Plus, Mango does not offer favorites, recently found locations or contact addresses as destination options. This makes keyboard input the one and only way of entering a trip target in Bing Navigation. Talk about a bare-bones navigation system without wit or intelligence and Mango delivers. Granted, you can use the variety of search options in maps view and then switch to the navigation view but this is not the way usability works.
Dienstag, 13. September 2011
Dienstag, 30. August 2011
Share your videos? Not through Skydrive.
Anybody tell me why Microsoft does not allow to share videos on Skydrive. After all this hype about Windows Phone enabling HD videography, at least in the 720p flavor, you should be able to upload video material to Skydrive. The only viable built-in way to get video off the phone and onto the internet is to connect the device to your PC, transfer it and upload the clips frome there. Seems oddly old fashioned in the proclaimed post PC era.
Update: This has been solved with Mango, where an option to upload video to Skydrive is available. Thank heavens.
Update: This has been solved with Mango, where an option to upload video to Skydrive is available. Thank heavens.
No way of moving forward
Even on Mango, the Internet Explorer lacks a forward button. You can go back to the previous web site using the back softbutton but there is no way to forward your way through the browsing history. Agreed, the forward button is rarely used but when you need it, its absence usually means retyping the URL or committing a whole lot of searching again.
Mango
This morning I installed the leaked RTM build of Mango on my Omnia 7 and played around with it for some time. Verdict: solid, scarcely outstanding, and a tad disappointing in places.
What Mango essentially accomplishes is to retrofit most of the features that were reported missing when Windows Phone 7 came to market in 2010. Mango now sports multitasking, a unified inbox, threaded mail view, turn-by-turn navigation, permanent changes of camera settings, IE9 with a functional landscape mode, Bing voice search, improved Office, and many more enhancements, most of which center around social network integration.
Alas, it fails to address many of the minor shortcomings I described in this blog. Let me name a few examples. Mango still does not feature speed dialing, it lacks folders or groups virtually everywhere except the Me hub, the keyboard keeps disregarding special characters like umlauts, the browser still takes no notice of Flash, and the mobile nomads will continue to miss native thethering.
Mango thus leaves me puzzled. Windows Phone surprisingly turns up a lot like Apple's iOS when it comes to maturity. You will easily spot feature omissions in Windows Phone, some minor, some glaring, but the features it does offer are implemented with such care, thoughtfulness and virtuosity that you would hardly believe it to be just the second iteration. After handling a Windows Phone powered device for even a short while, you will clearly see the territory where it shines and outshines its competitors. However, Microsofts's fledgling mobile OS leaves a good lot to be desired. Android feels more powerful, more versatile, more customizable than Windows Phone.
Windows Phone is quality, Android is quantity. And Android offers such an abundance of the latter that it comes out on top. For me. For now.
What Mango essentially accomplishes is to retrofit most of the features that were reported missing when Windows Phone 7 came to market in 2010. Mango now sports multitasking, a unified inbox, threaded mail view, turn-by-turn navigation, permanent changes of camera settings, IE9 with a functional landscape mode, Bing voice search, improved Office, and many more enhancements, most of which center around social network integration.
Alas, it fails to address many of the minor shortcomings I described in this blog. Let me name a few examples. Mango still does not feature speed dialing, it lacks folders or groups virtually everywhere except the Me hub, the keyboard keeps disregarding special characters like umlauts, the browser still takes no notice of Flash, and the mobile nomads will continue to miss native thethering.
Mango thus leaves me puzzled. Windows Phone surprisingly turns up a lot like Apple's iOS when it comes to maturity. You will easily spot feature omissions in Windows Phone, some minor, some glaring, but the features it does offer are implemented with such care, thoughtfulness and virtuosity that you would hardly believe it to be just the second iteration. After handling a Windows Phone powered device for even a short while, you will clearly see the territory where it shines and outshines its competitors. However, Microsofts's fledgling mobile OS leaves a good lot to be desired. Android feels more powerful, more versatile, more customizable than Windows Phone.
Windows Phone is quality, Android is quantity. And Android offers such an abundance of the latter that it comes out on top. For me. For now.
Switched
I did it. Before me lies a brand new Samsung Galaxy S2 Android powered smartphone. The Omnia 7 will stick around for a few more weeks until Mango is available and got its chance to prove whether Windows Phone can hold up against its competitors.
The two things I can already say: Android is more feature rich and offers a greater level of choice between apps, even system applications such as keyboard or mail, for literally all purposes conceivable. On the downside, Android feels incoherent and difficult to operate for the uninitiated, it is buggier, and it looks frolicky, if not to say muddled in places, thus providing much less of a streamlined user experience than Windows Phone. I love Android but picture my mother to founder on Android while readily mastering Windows Phone.
For the time being, Android offers a better trade-off between the good and the ugly for my intents and purposes, yet I can still picture me coming back to the interface grandeur of Windows Phone.
The two things I can already say: Android is more feature rich and offers a greater level of choice between apps, even system applications such as keyboard or mail, for literally all purposes conceivable. On the downside, Android feels incoherent and difficult to operate for the uninitiated, it is buggier, and it looks frolicky, if not to say muddled in places, thus providing much less of a streamlined user experience than Windows Phone. I love Android but picture my mother to founder on Android while readily mastering Windows Phone.
For the time being, Android offers a better trade-off between the good and the ugly for my intents and purposes, yet I can still picture me coming back to the interface grandeur of Windows Phone.
Samstag, 23. Juli 2011
The Call Log
How many different people do you call or get called by each day? Two? Ten? Tons? Either way, as long as you are among those who do not wonder why there is a phone in smartphone, you'll find the call log on Windows Phone a constant bother. This ironically owes to the log being just what the name suggests, a sequential list of entries. All telephone events are added to an ever growing queue of incoming calls, missed calls, and outgoing calls. There is no option to filter by one of the former categories, nor does Windows Phone allow you to narrow down call events to one contact.
So in case your best friend recently had a whinge about you not calling in weeks, good luck finding the call log entry proving that you indeed tried just a few days ago.
So in case your best friend recently had a whinge about you not calling in weeks, good luck finding the call log entry proving that you indeed tried just a few days ago.
Sonntag, 22. Mai 2011
Phone Numbers
Daily usage of Windows Phone will enhance your short term memory for long numbers. This is because
Being able to paste numbers into the dial pad was my second most anticipated use of the copy-paste feature added by dint of the NoDo update, but for some reason Microsoft failed to see the benefit in that.
- it won't render any number on any webpage or in any email as a clickable phone number - this will only work with SMSes, and
- it won't allow you to copy-paste a number into the dialing app
Being able to paste numbers into the dial pad was my second most anticipated use of the copy-paste feature added by dint of the NoDo update, but for some reason Microsoft failed to see the benefit in that.
Excel on Windows Phone
Let's try something together, my esteemed Windows Phone users. Open Excel on Phone 7, enter anything in any cell, make that cell boldface, and finally change font color. Nice, eh? Now try to revert that cell back from bold to regular typeface. Tough luck, so it seems, as Excel on Windows Phone does not permit to take back the formatting which has been applied to a cell. You can change it, but not undo.
Plus, there are several functions missing, some of which rank among the most versatile and useful Excel functions like SUMPRODUCT(). I could excuse if Excel on Windows Phone did not (yet) implement the whole slew of functions introduced with Office 2007 and 2010, but come on, sumproduct, really?
Plus, there are several functions missing, some of which rank among the most versatile and useful Excel functions like SUMPRODUCT(). I could excuse if Excel on Windows Phone did not (yet) implement the whole slew of functions introduced with Office 2007 and 2010, but come on, sumproduct, really?
Samstag, 30. April 2011
Interim thought: should I stay or should I go?
I just realized that this blog is ever growing, yet my list of quick notes about what more to add grows even faster. Moreover, I recently caught myself preferring to play around with my girlfriend's HTC Inspire while the Omnia 7 rests on its charger untouched.
There are so many things I miss on Windows Phone that are build into the Android OS or just one marketplace click away from using. Some of these are
That's quite a list, I suppose. Some time ago, Engadget deplored Microsoft's taciturnity about revenues generated by Windows Phone 7. My speculation is that, as of today, sales were fair, but not overwhelmingly good. A hint comes from the price trend of WP7 devices. Just compare the Samsung Galaxy S price chart
to that of the equivalently spec'd Samsung Omnia 7
(both pictures courtesy of geizhals.at).
In the same period of time during the first six months after market launch, the Android device lost about one fourth (minus 100€) of its value while the WP7 device sells for less than half of its original price (minus 250€). That's saying something, I guess.
So, with eager eyes on the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy S2 - should I stay or should I go? Update: Whoa, look at Mango. It's not the only saving update to rule them all but a substantial leap to catch up with iOS and Android.
There are so many things I miss on Windows Phone that are build into the Android OS or just one marketplace click away from using. Some of these are
- Turn-by-turn navigation, which I'd happily pay for if it only were available (got that in Mango)
- Unified inbox (got that in Mango)
- Even the slightest bit of multitasking, so that opening the music hub would not annihilate the GPS tracking app (got that in Mango)
- Popular apps like Doodle Jump or Skype (Doodle Jump is there, Skype will most likely come soon)
- A flashlight app that uses the camera LED
- HD output
- A camera that won't forget the previous settings upon closing (got that in Mango, sort of)
- A maps application with more contemporary maps - many of Bing's maps are years behing the Google versions (maps got much more contemporary recently)
- Alternative keyboards, like Swype
- A better browser (got parts of that in Mango)
- Larger storage capacity, presumably by means of an SD card slot
- Video chat
That's quite a list, I suppose. Some time ago, Engadget deplored Microsoft's taciturnity about revenues generated by Windows Phone 7. My speculation is that, as of today, sales were fair, but not overwhelmingly good. A hint comes from the price trend of WP7 devices. Just compare the Samsung Galaxy S price chart
to that of the equivalently spec'd Samsung Omnia 7
In the same period of time during the first six months after market launch, the Android device lost about one fourth (minus 100€) of its value while the WP7 device sells for less than half of its original price (minus 250€). That's saying something, I guess.
So, with eager eyes on the gorgeous Samsung Galaxy S2 - should I stay or should I go? Update: Whoa, look at Mango. It's not the only saving update to rule them all but a substantial leap to catch up with iOS and Android.
Navigating within movies
When navigating to a certain playback position within a movie, most people are used to clicking on an arbitrary position on the progress bar to have playback jump to this position. As far as my knowledge goes, iOS, Android and Symbian all provide this feature. Not so with Windows Phone 7, where the progress bar is visible, but not interactive. In order to fast forward or rewind you have to click the according buttons which will then cause the playback position to move about in rather coarse steps. I haven't seen such behavior since my parents bought their last VHS recorder back in the nineties.
Update: Microsoft added that in Mango.
Update: Microsoft added that in Mango.
Bing safe search
Some days ago I was searching for the web address of a German publishing house called "Otto Bauer Verlag" on my Samsung Omnia 7 with Bing. Despite both Otto and Bauer being rather common German names, Bing on Windows Phone 7 returned not one single result for the search term "Otto Bauer" while the desktop version of Bing reported a whopping 9 million hits. Among those hits, as I became aware, one of the most prominent is a link to a Wikipedia page concerned with the life and times of a certain individual named Otto Bauer who obviously made a reputation by starring in adult movies.
With growing suspicion I tried other lewd search terms like "sex", "penis", and the despicable "intercourse", each time ending up with identical results as for the illustrious Mr. Otto Bauer - none. It appears that Bing on Windows Phone 7, at least under German T-Mobile branding, imposes the safety filters of Bing.net upon its search results. These filters do not just wipe links to explicit content from search results but block entire search terms, like said "Otto Bauer".
Such a behavior may be desirable for many, but only if one were provided with the option to disable it, which is not the case on Windows Phone 7. Hence, Bing won't let me browse to the evangelical publishing house Otto Bauer due to some enterprising and eponymous adult actor. There is a fine line between cover and confinement.
Two side notes that keep me wondering even more. First, I haven't yet found any mention of the safe search restriction anywhere on the web. So either Windows Phone users are a remarkable squad of puritans or nobody just uses Bing. And second, Microsoft seems to reckon men's primary sexual characteristcs nastier than those of women: "penis" boasts no hits, "vagina" brings up a most colourful assortment of results.
With growing suspicion I tried other lewd search terms like "sex", "penis", and the despicable "intercourse", each time ending up with identical results as for the illustrious Mr. Otto Bauer - none. It appears that Bing on Windows Phone 7, at least under German T-Mobile branding, imposes the safety filters of Bing.net upon its search results. These filters do not just wipe links to explicit content from search results but block entire search terms, like said "Otto Bauer".
Such a behavior may be desirable for many, but only if one were provided with the option to disable it, which is not the case on Windows Phone 7. Hence, Bing won't let me browse to the evangelical publishing house Otto Bauer due to some enterprising and eponymous adult actor. There is a fine line between cover and confinement.
Two side notes that keep me wondering even more. First, I haven't yet found any mention of the safe search restriction anywhere on the web. So either Windows Phone users are a remarkable squad of puritans or nobody just uses Bing. And second, Microsoft seems to reckon men's primary sexual characteristcs nastier than those of women: "penis" boasts no hits, "vagina" brings up a most colourful assortment of results.
Sluggishness of the pictures hub
Today, a friend showed me the very fancy threedimensional movie roll type of photo gallery on a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro. Scrolling proved surprisingly smooth but what astounded me most was that even the fastest flicks through the gallery did not yield empty spaces instead of pictures, something I am rather unaccustomed to from using Windows Phone.
When you scroll through even short pictures lists on Windows Phone, like the "Saved Pictures" category or "Favorites", which are populated but scarcely on my device, you will inevitably face empty squares instead of picture thumbnails upon fast flicks. Despite its processor offering a surplus of 340 MHz compared to the Xperia and the graphically much more humble pictures hub, Windows Phone does not manage to keep up with the maximum speed of flick scrolling already during one single flick. It will initially display empty squares and require you to wait for them to be replaced by the slowly loading thumbnails.
So not only can the pictures list become exceedingly long, as bemoaned in my previous post, but you have to confine yourself with respect to flick scrolling speed in order to permit Windows Phone to keep up with thumbnail loading.
Update: Mango to the rescue! The empty square lag is gone in this fruitful update.
When you scroll through even short pictures lists on Windows Phone, like the "Saved Pictures" category or "Favorites", which are populated but scarcely on my device, you will inevitably face empty squares instead of picture thumbnails upon fast flicks. Despite its processor offering a surplus of 340 MHz compared to the Xperia and the graphically much more humble pictures hub, Windows Phone does not manage to keep up with the maximum speed of flick scrolling already during one single flick. It will initially display empty squares and require you to wait for them to be replaced by the slowly loading thumbnails.
So not only can the pictures list become exceedingly long, as bemoaned in my previous post, but you have to confine yourself with respect to flick scrolling speed in order to permit Windows Phone to keep up with thumbnail loading.
Update: Mango to the rescue! The empty square lag is gone in this fruitful update.
No folders
Yesterday, I wanted to show some pictures from a recent paragliding trip to my family. After ten or more seconds of flick scrolling through the list of hundreds of photos stored on the phone, my mother, whose mastery of all things technical borders on computer illiteracy at times, asked "Why don't you organize your pictures in folders?" Yes, why not? Even she can accomplish that on her five years old Nokia phone. Well, Mom, Microsoft opted against custom creation of folders or categories in the pictures hub because they want to keep things lean and simple.
Ok, granted, you can browse by date, having the pictures hub jump to the beginning of the current month, but then again, there already is one "Favorites" category, so why not allow me to add more such categories like "Vacations", "Work", "Norp", or else. Combined with (1) the lack of interactive scroll bars, (2) the fact that the pictures hub invariably sorts pictures by the oldest date heading the list, and (3) the pictures hub does not remember your view position from where you previously left off makes the omission of folders a strong contender for the So-Dumbed-Down-It-Hurts award.
The same holds for the app list, which just becomes longer and longer on my phone.
Ok, granted, you can browse by date, having the pictures hub jump to the beginning of the current month, but then again, there already is one "Favorites" category, so why not allow me to add more such categories like "Vacations", "Work", "Norp", or else. Combined with (1) the lack of interactive scroll bars, (2) the fact that the pictures hub invariably sorts pictures by the oldest date heading the list, and (3) the pictures hub does not remember your view position from where you previously left off makes the omission of folders a strong contender for the So-Dumbed-Down-It-Hurts award.
The same holds for the app list, which just becomes longer and longer on my phone.
Forgetfulness, or: Where is the text I wrote
I already talked about the sms app and Windows Marketplace but there is one more thing that frequently has me wanting to kill my phone. Both the sms hub and the rating system in marketplace will not remember what you just wrote after exiting the app. So any text you entered in said apps which had not been send will be lost upon hitting either the back or home butten. No saving as a draft, no reminder dialog, nothing. Your precious words will just pop out of existence. It beggars belief.
Cursor positioning
Cursor positioning on Windows Phone is either hit or miss, sometimes a grace, sometimes a curse. To move the cursor to any given location within a text, Windows Phone offers two methods. First, you can long-tap the screen, upon which a positioning cursor will appear that may be dragged around to the exact desired position, and second, you can click anywhere in the text in order to move the cursor to somewhere near the clicked location. "Somewhere near" meaning that this second option will only allow for the cursor to be placed behind a word, not within, thus rendering this method moot for spelling corrections within words.
When the text you're editing only spans so many lines as fit on the screen at once, there won't be any problem. However, if the text extends beyond your screen real estate, prepare for swearing. Windows Phone loves scrolling and consequently, scrolling will commence virtually as soon as you bring up the positioning cursor by long-tapping on the screen. The horizontal stripe your finger needs to hit in order for Windows Phone to not scroll up or down is so minuscule that you'll barely ever manage to position the cursor where you wish to. It's no less impossible than nailing the star on a slot machine, and the omission of cursor keys on the virtual keyboard does not change things for the better.
So in essence, what I'll eventually do when spell correcting words is highlighting the whole word, deleting it and rewrite. That's such a shame because the idea behind the cursor positiong logic is quite brilliant, only its execution comes about as epicly lackluster.
When the text you're editing only spans so many lines as fit on the screen at once, there won't be any problem. However, if the text extends beyond your screen real estate, prepare for swearing. Windows Phone loves scrolling and consequently, scrolling will commence virtually as soon as you bring up the positioning cursor by long-tapping on the screen. The horizontal stripe your finger needs to hit in order for Windows Phone to not scroll up or down is so minuscule that you'll barely ever manage to position the cursor where you wish to. It's no less impossible than nailing the star on a slot machine, and the omission of cursor keys on the virtual keyboard does not change things for the better.
So in essence, what I'll eventually do when spell correcting words is highlighting the whole word, deleting it and rewrite. That's such a shame because the idea behind the cursor positiong logic is quite brilliant, only its execution comes about as epicly lackluster.
Samstag, 29. Januar 2011
That whole live thing
Seriously, what's with Microsoft and the "live" services? On my phone, I got Windows Live, Office Live, Xbox Live, and above that, there are Skydrive, Hotmail, which somehow is Windows Live but then again isn't, and a plethora of other cloud based services. I don't know what all of these are. I don't see why I should require any of that live stuff. And I don't want to have my life online.
There are reasons why people prefer to not share everything personal with some arbitrary internet service to which they are only bound due to their decision for a certain phone OS manufacturer. It is inexcusable to be coerced into uploading any Office document you wish to view on Phone 7 to Office live. Recent sales figures? Yeah, just upload them to Office live. Strategy papers? Fine, share them with a third company. Contracts? Office live, baby, your safe haven on the internet. Or why don't you just email 'em to yourself, unencrypted.
Please do not misunderstand me, the live services like any cloud based service may be very helpful, efficient, and enriching, yet they ought not be the only means of getting certain things done on my Windows Phone. Why does the Zune software not allow transferring Office documents between my desktop and my phone? Why do I need to sync Outlook with Hotmail to have contacts and calendar entries appear on the phone? There should be other ways of accomplishing such tasks which only involve my computer, my phone, and a cable. Alas, with Windows Phone and its live service integration, Microsoft not just allows but forces you to share your personal data online. Not acceptable.
There are reasons why people prefer to not share everything personal with some arbitrary internet service to which they are only bound due to their decision for a certain phone OS manufacturer. It is inexcusable to be coerced into uploading any Office document you wish to view on Phone 7 to Office live. Recent sales figures? Yeah, just upload them to Office live. Strategy papers? Fine, share them with a third company. Contracts? Office live, baby, your safe haven on the internet. Or why don't you just email 'em to yourself, unencrypted.
Please do not misunderstand me, the live services like any cloud based service may be very helpful, efficient, and enriching, yet they ought not be the only means of getting certain things done on my Windows Phone. Why does the Zune software not allow transferring Office documents between my desktop and my phone? Why do I need to sync Outlook with Hotmail to have contacts and calendar entries appear on the phone? There should be other ways of accomplishing such tasks which only involve my computer, my phone, and a cable. Alas, with Windows Phone and its live service integration, Microsoft not just allows but forces you to share your personal data online. Not acceptable.
Samstag, 22. Januar 2011
Dictionary word recognition with special characters
Many languages comprise special characters outside the 26 characters in the standard alphabet. For example, in Germany we have so called Umlauts like ä, ö, and ü, as well as ß instead of a regular s in certain instances. Yes, I know, this is so Old Europe but we Germans are not alone here. The Danish have their Smørrebrød, the Czech the Škoda, and what do you know, even the wittiest Brits can't help but being naïve from time to time.
What I'd like Windows Phone to do is to recognize me writing "Gruse" and suggest "Grüße" from its dictionary - meaning "greetings", by the way. Unfortunately, it won't because the word correction/suggestion algorithm seems to lack the association between special characters in different languages and their standard alphabetic counterparts, like "u" and "ü" or "s" and "ß". Would be a huge leap in usability if Microsoft enhanced the dictionary by just this bit.
What I'd like Windows Phone to do is to recognize me writing "Gruse" and suggest "Grüße" from its dictionary - meaning "greetings", by the way. Unfortunately, it won't because the word correction/suggestion algorithm seems to lack the association between special characters in different languages and their standard alphabetic counterparts, like "u" and "ü" or "s" and "ß". Would be a huge leap in usability if Microsoft enhanced the dictionary by just this bit.
Landscape mode thwarts Internet Explorer
Granted, the main task of the Internet Explorer is to facilitate browsing. Occasionally though, you might feel the urge to enter a URL manually or access favorites. Internet Explorer in Windows Phone will allow you to do so, but only in portrait mode. When you switch to landscape mode, the address bar disappears, and so does the menu bar. As of today, I failed to find any way to have IE display either of the two during landscape browsing. This means turning the phone into portrait mode each time you want to enter a URL, access or store favorites, or switch between tabs. Please, Microsoft, spare my wrists and provide IE with a full-fledged landscape mode.
The "sms could not be sent" bug
Every once in a while Windows Phone will refuse to send a short message that was composed in threaded view. Seconds after clicking on the "Send" button, the phone will flag the message as undeliverable ("Message could not be sent" or "Nachricht konnte nicht gesendet werden" with german localization). The sms app then offers to try again which surely is a nice touch but always, with no exception, amounts to nothing, for the message just won't go out. I have tried to send the same message by hitting retry every couple of minutes over the course of about one hour without any luck. Even worse, further sms to the contact in question will also be flagged undeliverable.
There might be a workaround to this issue. During testing I realized that, while messages to, say, "Alice" firmly withstood delivery, messages to "Bob" would relay without a hitch. I then tried to send Alice a second message, however not from threaded view but by composing a new message in list view and inserting Alice as a recipient. This message was delivered immediately, following messages were, too.
Thus the sms delivery bug appears to occur a) sporadically and b) only/mostly when sending messages from threaded view. Composing a new message to the same recipient by clicking the plus sign in list view will mend matters.
Update: The bug appears to have been remedied by the NoDo update. It did not occur ever since I updated.
There might be a workaround to this issue. During testing I realized that, while messages to, say, "Alice" firmly withstood delivery, messages to "Bob" would relay without a hitch. I then tried to send Alice a second message, however not from threaded view but by composing a new message in list view and inserting Alice as a recipient. This message was delivered immediately, following messages were, too.
Thus the sms delivery bug appears to occur a) sporadically and b) only/mostly when sending messages from threaded view. Composing a new message to the same recipient by clicking the plus sign in list view will mend matters.
Update: The bug appears to have been remedied by the NoDo update. It did not occur ever since I updated.
Mittwoch, 19. Januar 2011
Calendar syncs
Just stumbled upon a real downer. Phone 7 offers to add a Windows Live or Googlemail account and have the phone commit full synchronization with those accounts. Windows Live even allows push updates. That way, your contacts, calendar entries and mails from both Windows Live/Hotmail and Google will be in sync with their counterparts on your phone. Very nice in theory, agreed, but actually done painfully sketchy.
Phone 7 refuses to sync any other but your main calendar from both services. Neither of your own subordinate calendars nor any subscribed calendars will appear on the phone. While I to a certain degree understand the lackluster integration with Google, there is no excuse for Windows Phone 7 not allowing a complete sync with Windows Live.
Windows Live. A Microsoft service.
Phone 7 refuses to sync any other but your main calendar from both services. Neither of your own subordinate calendars nor any subscribed calendars will appear on the phone. While I to a certain degree understand the lackluster integration with Google, there is no excuse for Windows Phone 7 not allowing a complete sync with Windows Live.
Windows Live. A Microsoft service.
No speed dialing
Yes, I know the lack of speed dialing to be one of the more widely criticised feature ommissions in Windows Phone 7. Nonetheless, allow me to again point out how entirely incomprehensible and annoying this is to me. Speed dialing is t-h-e most efficient way to call somebody from your contacts list. Every other method - except maybe custom favorites lists - requires at least twice the number of screen taps to reach your desired contact. I mean, come on, even Bill Gates himself could code a sufficiently performant speed dialing feature during lunch break. How hard can that be? What makes things even worse in Phone 7 is the absence of any third-party apps retrofitting smart dialing. For Android there exist a variety of smart dialpads while on Windows Marketplace - void.
Keyboard language settings
The keyboard in Phone 7 is one of the most efficient virtual keyboards I have ever used. The dictionary word pool is unfathomably huge, correction works very well and accuracy is quite high.
Confusion lingers as soon as you need to write in different languages - like myself when posting on this blog. The language selection itself is a snap, involving just a tap on the language button to cycle through the activated languages. Unfortunately, changing dictionary language will also alter the keyboard layout corresponding to the specified language. So for me, that means adjusting to QWERTY layout every time I switch to English as the dictionary language. I don't know who at Microsoft thought tying dictionary language to keyboard layout a good idea but I've got a proposition for his superiors: sack him!
Confusion lingers as soon as you need to write in different languages - like myself when posting on this blog. The language selection itself is a snap, involving just a tap on the language button to cycle through the activated languages. Unfortunately, changing dictionary language will also alter the keyboard layout corresponding to the specified language. So for me, that means adjusting to QWERTY layout every time I switch to English as the dictionary language. I don't know who at Microsoft thought tying dictionary language to keyboard layout a good idea but I've got a proposition for his superiors: sack him!
The sms app
The sms app in Phone 7 bears the highest potential of greatness among all short messaging systems I have ever seen in a smartphone, and that mainly owes to its combination of list and threaded view. Upon starting the sms app you are first presented with a chronological list view of all recently received short messages. Clicking on one of the entries opens a threaded view of your conversation with just this person. I completely dig that combination because it gives you the best of both worlds. However, there are some flaws about the Phone 7 sms app Microsoft should fix better sooner than later.
(1) There is no list view of sent messages. There are times at which I just know that I sent some information out to one of my contacts but fail to remember who that was. With sent messages only showing up in threaded view, I need to review all threads to search for messages.
(2) There is no text search option for short messages.
(3) Confirmations appear as separate messages, thus bloating the whole thread. Why not use a symbolic indicator to signal whether the recipient has already gotten the message.
(4) Sent and received mails have the same color in threaded view. They are only set apart by the speech bubbles of sent messages being right aligned while received messages are left aligned. Some color differentiation would be just nice.
Update: Point (4) hast been remedied with the advent of Mango, where your sent message bubbles exhibit a darker color than received messages.
(1) There is no list view of sent messages. There are times at which I just know that I sent some information out to one of my contacts but fail to remember who that was. With sent messages only showing up in threaded view, I need to review all threads to search for messages.
(2) There is no text search option for short messages.
(3) Confirmations appear as separate messages, thus bloating the whole thread. Why not use a symbolic indicator to signal whether the recipient has already gotten the message.
(4) Sent and received mails have the same color in threaded view. They are only set apart by the speech bubbles of sent messages being right aligned while received messages are left aligned. Some color differentiation would be just nice.
Update: Point (4) hast been remedied with the advent of Mango, where your sent message bubbles exhibit a darker color than received messages.
Freitag, 14. Januar 2011
The camera shortcut
When Windows Phone 7 was presented, Microsoft's officials seemed to nearly have wetted themselves over the snappiness of the camera. Clicking the camera button from almost any app will open the camera window in under a second, allowing you to take snapshots that really honor their name.
It would have been fine if Microsoft had just stopped here but they decided to take this instant on camera idea too far. The camera button even works when the phone is locked and the screen is off. Holding down the camera button for about three seconds will have the camera window pop up ready for action from almost any state of the device except when it is completely shut down. I do not like this behavior at all. It introduces the risk of accidentally turning on the phone while it resides in your pocket, backpack or suitcase. Just three seconds of depressing the camera button plus a click on the home button will leave you with a phone that displays an active, clickable home screen dangling around.
Above all, the camera shortcut does not even bear the advantage of being a real short cut. Clicking the On button, swishing away the lock screen and triggering the camera button hardly takes longer than the camera shortcut to activate, rendering this feature entirely useless.
Addendum: As I just noticed, this feature can be switched off. Go to "Settings | Applications | Camera" where the option to turn on the phone by depressing the camera button can be deactivated. Neat!
It would have been fine if Microsoft had just stopped here but they decided to take this instant on camera idea too far. The camera button even works when the phone is locked and the screen is off. Holding down the camera button for about three seconds will have the camera window pop up ready for action from almost any state of the device except when it is completely shut down. I do not like this behavior at all. It introduces the risk of accidentally turning on the phone while it resides in your pocket, backpack or suitcase. Just three seconds of depressing the camera button plus a click on the home button will leave you with a phone that displays an active, clickable home screen dangling around.
Above all, the camera shortcut does not even bear the advantage of being a real short cut. Clicking the On button, swishing away the lock screen and triggering the camera button hardly takes longer than the camera shortcut to activate, rendering this feature entirely useless.
Addendum: As I just noticed, this feature can be switched off. Go to "Settings | Applications | Camera" where the option to turn on the phone by depressing the camera button can be deactivated. Neat!
Marketplace
Windows Marketplace is at first glance a fancy looking experience, sporting slick graphics, lean design, and a reasonably populated assortment of apps. Unfortunately, when actually using it, edges get quite rough. Let me rub on a few.
(1) There is no sorting option. You are bound to the inherent and rather impalpable logic of the creators of Marketplace when it comes to the sequence in which its entries are listed. While Microsoft offers certain categories like "Top", "Free", and "Highlights", there is no option to sort for rating, alphabetic order, downloads, price, or anything else whithin those categories. This may sound like a minor hassle but has ridiculous implications in reality. An example: Most of us would expect the "Top" category to list the top rated games in descending order of average rating. Not the case. Among the first five results in the "Top" you'll currently find two games with meagre average ratings of less than three out of five stars while some of the highest rated games in Windows Marketplace like 7cave or Carneyvale: Showtime do not even make it into the top 50 of the "Top" category. Can anybody explain this to me?
(2) The rating meter and price tag are omitted in search results. You have to open each entry to see both these informations.
(3) You never know where an app has been stored. There are two distinct storage areas for apps in Windows Phone. First, the main app repository, and second, Xbox Live. Normal applications become stored in the app repository, thus appearing in the main app list and, if you wish, on the home screen. Games are installed within Xbox Live, where they are initially invisible to the rest of the Phone's ecosystem. An Xbox Live item does not display in the main app list but can be added to the home screen. Now there are borderline cases of apps that do not intuitively fit well into either the application or game category. Marketplace does not inform you where an app has been installed, leaving it to you to search the app list and then Xbox Live in order to find the app you just downloaded.
(4) You cannot specify in which category to search. Search results will be a bedlam of applications and music, all crammed into one, often way too long list of hits.
(5) The app crashes - at least on my Samsung Omnia 7. Every once in a while, clicking on a category or an app will cause the screen to black out, render the phone unresponsive for some seconds and then return to home screen. After that, marketplace will fail to open, at least for several minutes, with only a restart of the device providing for immediate remedy. And by the way, not only will marketplace cease to function, Xbox live and the music app (!) will, too.
Update: Issues (4) and (5) appear to have been remedied in the NoDo update. Two down, three to go.
(1) There is no sorting option. You are bound to the inherent and rather impalpable logic of the creators of Marketplace when it comes to the sequence in which its entries are listed. While Microsoft offers certain categories like "Top", "Free", and "Highlights", there is no option to sort for rating, alphabetic order, downloads, price, or anything else whithin those categories. This may sound like a minor hassle but has ridiculous implications in reality. An example: Most of us would expect the "Top" category to list the top rated games in descending order of average rating. Not the case. Among the first five results in the "Top" you'll currently find two games with meagre average ratings of less than three out of five stars while some of the highest rated games in Windows Marketplace like 7cave or Carneyvale: Showtime do not even make it into the top 50 of the "Top" category. Can anybody explain this to me?
(2) The rating meter and price tag are omitted in search results. You have to open each entry to see both these informations.
(3) You never know where an app has been stored. There are two distinct storage areas for apps in Windows Phone. First, the main app repository, and second, Xbox Live. Normal applications become stored in the app repository, thus appearing in the main app list and, if you wish, on the home screen. Games are installed within Xbox Live, where they are initially invisible to the rest of the Phone's ecosystem. An Xbox Live item does not display in the main app list but can be added to the home screen. Now there are borderline cases of apps that do not intuitively fit well into either the application or game category. Marketplace does not inform you where an app has been installed, leaving it to you to search the app list and then Xbox Live in order to find the app you just downloaded.
(4) You cannot specify in which category to search. Search results will be a bedlam of applications and music, all crammed into one, often way too long list of hits.
(5) The app crashes - at least on my Samsung Omnia 7. Every once in a while, clicking on a category or an app will cause the screen to black out, render the phone unresponsive for some seconds and then return to home screen. After that, marketplace will fail to open, at least for several minutes, with only a restart of the device providing for immediate remedy. And by the way, not only will marketplace cease to function, Xbox live and the music app (!) will, too.
Update: Issues (4) and (5) appear to have been remedied in the NoDo update. Two down, three to go.
No alarm time display in lock screen
The alarm application in Windows Phone is very close to what I would call a perfect, i.e. sufficiently easy, versatile, and powerful implementation of an alarm clock. It allows for multiple labeled alarm times, repeated alarms and individual alarm sounds assignable to every alarm. Moreover, the alarm clock live tile displays the time of the next alarm on the home screen which is a gift for all you obsessive-compulsive alarm time recheckers out there.
In contrast to the live tile, however, the lock screen only shows the alarm clock symbol to notify you that an alarm is active. It omits to tell you when this alarm will go off. Hence, you might just mistake the alarm you forgot to set for tomorrow's pivotal job interview with the everyday "kiss wife" alarm. How hard could it be to include the time of the next upcoming alarm alongside the alarm symbol in the lock screen?
In contrast to the live tile, however, the lock screen only shows the alarm clock symbol to notify you that an alarm is active. It omits to tell you when this alarm will go off. Hence, you might just mistake the alarm you forgot to set for tomorrow's pivotal job interview with the everyday "kiss wife" alarm. How hard could it be to include the time of the next upcoming alarm alongside the alarm symbol in the lock screen?
The flack about flick scrolling
Flick scrolling on many levels is a highly approvable gesture, for it bears all the immersiveness, casuality and coolness a distinguished tech bohemian as well his pubescent sister demand. However, the usability of flick scrolling is limited by the length of the list you want to scroll through. While several dozens of list entries can be efficiently handled with flick scrolling, several hundreds of entries eventually become a real drag. And such several hundreds of mails or short messages or photos today are the rule rather than the exception, particulary with social networking so tightly integrated into Windows Phone.
The limitations of flick scrolling led Google to implement scrollbar-like grips when scrolling through long lists in Android so that you can move from A to Z in no time. Windows Phone 7 also provides visual feedback when flick scrolling through a list or web page by displaying an ethereal scrollbar that signals your position. However, this scrollbar only serves as a visual indicator, not as a means of user interaction. I would opt for slightly larger but touchable scrollbars which would allow you to navigate lists of arbitrary length most efficiently.
The limitations of flick scrolling led Google to implement scrollbar-like grips when scrolling through long lists in Android so that you can move from A to Z in no time. Windows Phone 7 also provides visual feedback when flick scrolling through a list or web page by displaying an ethereal scrollbar that signals your position. However, this scrollbar only serves as a visual indicator, not as a means of user interaction. I would opt for slightly larger but touchable scrollbars which would allow you to navigate lists of arbitrary length most efficiently.
Donnerstag, 13. Januar 2011
No "Select All" option in mail hub
Let's stay with the mail hub a little longer. When I first synced the Exchange mail account at my office with Windows Phone, the device received over 500 messages, each of which mysteriously flagged unread although I had opened all of them in Outlook before.
No problem, I lightheadedly thought, just select the whole bunch and..., wait, where is the "Select all" button? The shattering answer after thoroughly searching through every menu I could find in the mail hub: there is none. You cannot select all messages in a mail folder with one command. Instead, you have to select all mails manually - which is very neatly implemented in Phone 7 but doesn't make up for the need to flick scroll through hundreds of mails and tap each and every one of them. No excuse.
No problem, I lightheadedly thought, just select the whole bunch and..., wait, where is the "Select all" button? The shattering answer after thoroughly searching through every menu I could find in the mail hub: there is none. You cannot select all messages in a mail folder with one command. Instead, you have to select all mails manually - which is very neatly implemented in Phone 7 but doesn't make up for the need to flick scroll through hundreds of mails and tap each and every one of them. No excuse.
Dienstag, 11. Januar 2011
Quoted text in mails cannot be edited
When I reply to or forward emails I often quote parts of the original message, either within my response text or below my own message. The emphasis here lies on "parts". There are seldom mails worth quoting in their entirety so editing quoted text has always been a matter of course for me. Not so with Windows Phone 7. It doesn't allow for any changes of quoted text in mails, and it even does not offer any way to specify whether or not to quote the original mail when replying to or forwarding it. TOFU is the default and sole behavior when responding to received mails.
What could be so difficult about just including the quoted text as normal text in the mail editor when hitting the reply/forward button.
What could be so difficult about just including the quoted text as normal text in the mail editor when hitting the reply/forward button.
You cannot remove a contact picture once it has been set.
Assigning a picture to a contact is an easy task in Phone 7. You chose the contact, enter edit mode and tap on the empty picture space. The pictures hub will then open and allow you to select a picture, crop it to the desired picture part and finally save the picture under the edited contact.
This is all fine but Phone 7 proves stubborn when you later wish to remove a picture from a contact. Note that I'm talking about a deletion of the contact picture from the contact, not the replacement of a picture by another one. So how do you do it?
You can't. There is no way to remove a picture from a contact entry once it has been set. No long-tap, no context menu, no trash symbol. It's as simple as that: you can't.
The only way to liberate a contact from an unfavorable picture therefore is to create an Exchange account, sync your Phone 7 with it, remove the contact picture in Outlook or any other Exchange enabled software, and wait for the next sync of your Windows Phone 7.
Come on, Microsoft, how hard could it be to add this feature to a context menu.
This is all fine but Phone 7 proves stubborn when you later wish to remove a picture from a contact. Note that I'm talking about a deletion of the contact picture from the contact, not the replacement of a picture by another one. So how do you do it?
You can't. There is no way to remove a picture from a contact entry once it has been set. No long-tap, no context menu, no trash symbol. It's as simple as that: you can't.
The only way to liberate a contact from an unfavorable picture therefore is to create an Exchange account, sync your Phone 7 with it, remove the contact picture in Outlook or any other Exchange enabled software, and wait for the next sync of your Windows Phone 7.
Come on, Microsoft, how hard could it be to add this feature to a context menu.
The home screen does not rotate
Screen orientation is a mixed bag on Windows Phone 7. There are applications which change between portrait and landscape view depending on how you hold the device while others keep stuck in portrait mode regardless of how you maltreat the gravity sensor. For example, the mail hub rotates, contacts don't, pictures in the picture hub rotate, the picture hub itself doesn't, calendar rotates, the Zune hub doesn't, settings rotate, marketplace doesn't. See a pattern?
In case you fail to, welcome to the club. The only explanation I can think of is that Microsoft decided to have function follow form while crafting some of the Phone 7 experiences. The layout of these applications seems to have been designed specifically for portrait mode, following the premises of a "taller than wider" approach. Switching to landscape mode would imply said applications to split vertically onto two different screen, thus introducing the need to scroll vertically.
However, there is not reason for the home screen to refuse rotation between portrait and landscape mode. Currently the home screen offers space for a matrix of 4 rows times 2 columns of tiles. Tiles can be either square and occupy one tile space or elongated and span a complete row, i.e. two columns. Given this layout you cannot come up with any configuration in portrait mode that would not have a direct correspondence in landscape mode. To move from portrait to landscape would just require tiles to rotate by chunks of 2x2. I'll provide some examples to illustrate.
This is a typical home screen in portrait mode:
Rotating this to landscape orientation is an easy task. You only have to commit rotation in chunks of 2x2 tiles, just like this:
You can't conceive any configuration of tiles in portrait mode that would disallow to apply this 2x2 rotation scheme. In landscape mode on the other hand, certain configurations of square and elongated tiles pose a problem for rotation. Consider this layout, where rotation to portrait mode is not straightforward:
A very simple solution comes to mind immediately. Microsoft could simply prohibit home screen reorderings in landscape mode or automatically switch back to portrait mode whenever the user attempts to reorder tiles.
Hence the question arises: with landscape mode being a rather prominent screen orientation for many people, especially for those with heavy use of internet, games or texting applications, why does Microsoft not allow the home screen to embrace landscape?
In case you fail to, welcome to the club. The only explanation I can think of is that Microsoft decided to have function follow form while crafting some of the Phone 7 experiences. The layout of these applications seems to have been designed specifically for portrait mode, following the premises of a "taller than wider" approach. Switching to landscape mode would imply said applications to split vertically onto two different screen, thus introducing the need to scroll vertically.
However, there is not reason for the home screen to refuse rotation between portrait and landscape mode. Currently the home screen offers space for a matrix of 4 rows times 2 columns of tiles. Tiles can be either square and occupy one tile space or elongated and span a complete row, i.e. two columns. Given this layout you cannot come up with any configuration in portrait mode that would not have a direct correspondence in landscape mode. To move from portrait to landscape would just require tiles to rotate by chunks of 2x2. I'll provide some examples to illustrate.
This is a typical home screen in portrait mode:
Rotating this to landscape orientation is an easy task. You only have to commit rotation in chunks of 2x2 tiles, just like this:
You can't conceive any configuration of tiles in portrait mode that would disallow to apply this 2x2 rotation scheme. In landscape mode on the other hand, certain configurations of square and elongated tiles pose a problem for rotation. Consider this layout, where rotation to portrait mode is not straightforward:
A very simple solution comes to mind immediately. Microsoft could simply prohibit home screen reorderings in landscape mode or automatically switch back to portrait mode whenever the user attempts to reorder tiles.
Hence the question arises: with landscape mode being a rather prominent screen orientation for many people, especially for those with heavy use of internet, games or texting applications, why does Microsoft not allow the home screen to embrace landscape?
Samstag, 8. Januar 2011
Welcome to the Windows Phone 7 annoyance and admiration blog
Yes, in this order.
I truly love my Windows Phone 7 mobile. I love its looks, its lean aesthetics, the snappiness of the user interface, the novel ideas Microsoft put into many of the applications, simply everything that makes Phone 7 stand out among the crowd of other evenly capable and competitive smartphone operating systems. Over the last weeks I have become a huge fan of my Samsung Omnia 7 an its software entrails. Microsoft has done a magnificent job with Windows Phone 7 that even had me abandon my iPhone 3 and move over to the archenemy. Alas, as with probably any gadget one owns there are a few (or a few more) things about Windows Phone 7 which are unexpected, unpleasant, or flat out annoying.
This blog will capitalize on the share of issues Windows Phone 7 has. Despite the predominantly adverse attitude most of the blog entries will sport, I'll try to retain the winking eyes of a big brother tapping you on the head and saying: "You'll learn".
This blog will fill bit by bit over time so please accept my apologies for the sparseness of entries during the first days of its lifetime. Most of the pieces I am going to discuss will certainly have been whined about elsewhere, so the only thing I can promise to avoid too much redundancy is to not reiterate the most common complaints raised by every of the arrived reviewers out there.
So without further ado I warmly welcome you to join the bashing. Feel very heartily invited to post comments, correct me wherever I err and post solutions or workarounds for the nitpicks I'm making. And allow me a final remark concerning the sequence in which issues are discussed. It will be truly random and in no way imply any hierarchy of awkwardness.
I truly love my Windows Phone 7 mobile. I love its looks, its lean aesthetics, the snappiness of the user interface, the novel ideas Microsoft put into many of the applications, simply everything that makes Phone 7 stand out among the crowd of other evenly capable and competitive smartphone operating systems. Over the last weeks I have become a huge fan of my Samsung Omnia 7 an its software entrails. Microsoft has done a magnificent job with Windows Phone 7 that even had me abandon my iPhone 3 and move over to the archenemy. Alas, as with probably any gadget one owns there are a few (or a few more) things about Windows Phone 7 which are unexpected, unpleasant, or flat out annoying.
This blog will capitalize on the share of issues Windows Phone 7 has. Despite the predominantly adverse attitude most of the blog entries will sport, I'll try to retain the winking eyes of a big brother tapping you on the head and saying: "You'll learn".
This blog will fill bit by bit over time so please accept my apologies for the sparseness of entries during the first days of its lifetime. Most of the pieces I am going to discuss will certainly have been whined about elsewhere, so the only thing I can promise to avoid too much redundancy is to not reiterate the most common complaints raised by every of the arrived reviewers out there.
So without further ado I warmly welcome you to join the bashing. Feel very heartily invited to post comments, correct me wherever I err and post solutions or workarounds for the nitpicks I'm making. And allow me a final remark concerning the sequence in which issues are discussed. It will be truly random and in no way imply any hierarchy of awkwardness.
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