So far now about 48hrs into my new Windows 8 Phone, I have been pleased, disappointed, and hopeful. But then just now I was surprised!
First the surprise. I ride a motorcycle, and my helmet has a Bluetooth com system on it (Sena SMH-10). I’ve used this for almost a year on my iPhone 4 and it played music OK, it could receive and send a call OK… but that was about it.
On my ride home I heard a chime, and then the phone say “<my wife’s name> has sent you a message" it was a text. "Would you like me to read it?" I said yes, and it told me "I am on my way home” which is what her text was. That was an awesome way for very little if almost no distraction to hear a message. And I have the option to just say no if I am not interested.
It also had the option to voice reply.
This was all the phone’s doing, and I am sure Siri or the goggle analog do similar, but still it was impressive and the fact it understood me, and worked fine for voice control even while doing 75Mph on the freeway.
Now for the disappointment and other stuff:
- The MS developed Windows Phone Facebook app is a pile of crap. I am truly bad. Worse than almost any other 3rd party FB app. Shame on you MS… shame.
- I haven’t quite put my finger on it, but I believe there may be some latency issues on it seeing new emails… going to watch this closer. Either it was the phone, or google delays.
- The inability to kill tasks you are done with. Seems like something you would want to do if you had a task eating power or cycles. MS seems to think they know how to handle it better… so be it.
- Still the lack of platform consistency. I can replicate my cookies, passwords, favorites, etc… all between Win 8 and Win 8 RT with no issue… but absolutely no current functionality to the phone. That’s kind of a bummer.
- Needing to be Sky Drive focused if you want to use pictures or open docs is OK.. but I am not using Sky Drive much at all right now and I’ll need to leverage it way more now to get the utility of cloud or cross platform documents.
- Music syncing… Xbox music is a worthless pile if you don’t pay their subscription… please Amazon save me.
- Not sure if this is an app, or a MS API issue but only tools that will keep playing music/media when you switch away from them are the Xbox Music, or the Nokia music app. makes it a PITA if you wanted to switch and check your email quick while you are streaming some audio… This may be app dev issues more than WIn Pho issues if they just aren’t accessing the right API.
So… that’s that. Overall I am digging it, but I am a pretty critical tech guy, so any small item is going to annoy me. I know quite a few of these issues are already being addressed by Blue and the minor update (GDR2) by MS in the coming months. More news as I find stuff to complain about 🙂
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