My Lumia 900 is turning into an iPhone

While I patiently wait for AT&T to roll out the WP7.8 Part Deux update (to fix the the Part Un update) to fix the (or as Yogi would day, déjà vu all over again) Live Tile debacle one more time, I noticed that my Start screen is slowly turning into a display of static, dormant icons. You know, like the ever popular iPhone.

Let’s review, shall we.

Here is my Weather tile. Notice all the exciting detail it’s displaying. I have been using The Weather Channel since 2010, but the first day the tile stopped updating, I noticed it was doing that little chatter thing when it tried (but failed) to flip. And my research indicated that would cause a serious battery drain issue (a bonus problem to go along with the broken tile updates. So, TWC has been temporarily uninstalled, just to be safe. I hoped that AccuWeather would update when I installed it, but that was not to be. Now I have to open the app and wait for the first page to load before I can see the temperature. Nearly 5 seconds to find out if it’s going to rain today. So 2005ish.  

Here is my equally exciting CNN Tile. This space used to be reserved for my USA Today tile. But when that tile stopped updating, I uninstalled the app and went to the Marketplace to reinstall, only to find that the official USA Today app had been pulled. Dirty rat bastards they are indeed.

Here is the front and back of my Weave tile. It’s still flipping (without any chatter) but that same kid has been doing whatever he is doing for about a week now. Getting a bit tired.

And this is my Pro Sports Scores tile. It should be noted that Pro Sports Scores does not use the new method of updating tiles every 30 minutes. They use a dedicated Push server, which can update the app every 30 seconds and uses those Registry Endpoint things. So this problem is bigger than a little glitch. This tile died on about the same day as the tiles noted above. So it’s a similar problem affecting multiple methods of updating. Oh, and that Devils-Jets game. It was played on Sunday, March 10th. At least I get to see see the Devils winning a game. That has not happened much lately.

And finally my SportsScores tile. It flips, but hasn’t updated since, let me check, since Thursday, March 7th. Yeah, that’s a Yankee exhibition game there. Oh, and this is another Push Live Tile app.

All of my local updatable tiles, meaning tiles that don’t rely on a connection to update, are still working fine; Clever-To-Do, Lists & Things, Network Dashboard. Mehdoh, Folders and Battery Meter. I am also still getting notifications on apps like Sports Calendar & Package Tracker. Interestingly though, Urban Dictionary and Fox News still appear to be updating fine. And yes, all my Background Tasks for the associated tiles are turned on and active.

Once again, I am sure developers are going to catch some crap for their tiles not updating. And just like last time, this is totally out of their control.

After reading today’s staff notify thread about Lumia 920 users having connection problems after the latest Nokia/AT&T update, I am not getting a warm fuzzy feeling about whatever it is AT&T is doing to “test” the WP7.8 Update/Fix. Non-branded Lumia devices have been enjoying their Live Tiles (again) for a couple weeks now. When will it be my (our) turn.

I didn’t buy an iPhone. And I don’t want my Lumia turning into one.