WP 8.1 is growing up. How would you change it?
|This is seems like an obligatory post that pops up on Engadget at least once every two days and they’re getting paid the big bucks so I figured let’s give it a whirl. I will however be injecting some uncomfortable and deranged sexual innuendo into the process that I feel is desperately missing from the AOL sponsored and boring vanilla post they bring to the table.
I’ve been messing around with Windows Phone 8.1 excessively for the same seven days most of you have. Exploring its nooks and crannies like an awkward teenager fumbling with their new found physical maturity, discovering hair in weird places we didn’t know the OS even had, but hopefully not any awkward smells. There will probably be some mixed and emotional feelings sweeping over you as the hormones of OS update take hold and drive you crazy in one way or another. You’re either in love with your new shiny thing and having weird discoveries of tents in your pants that you thought you’d left behind in high school or possibly fits of teenage rage and angst about how the OS no longer understands you and your hopes and dreams and broke up with you out of no where. Since this is the most important thing in your entire life that will ever happen let’s have a little Pow wow about all these confusing adventures we’ve been having. Let us discuss the moist nocturnal reverie we’ve awoken to find in our digital lives. Tell us what you’d like to change about how Microsoft thinks WP 8.1 should grow up.
Love it
Overall I think it’s great.
The activity center is welcome and has already been used 20+ times for rotation lock, brightness and notifications.
I love the new see-through tile effect but for me it needs to be a texture image. Photos seem a little distracting and too incomplete to be effective.
The 3rd column helps a lot a I feel I can go with full size tiles without wasting space. I only went medium or small before the update.
Cortana has been very useful. I’m still learning but for search, directions and notifications she’s been great.
Bad:
I know it’ll be updated soon but right now the music player is terrible.
Performance needs to be optimized. I get some jitter when I go from app to start screen.
This is just a part of screen size but on my NL920 the small tiles are a touch too small. It works and the small tiles are only for occasional apps but a 5″ screen for me would be great (hopefully NL930 soon).
Cortana should present herself as a holographic image.
I LOVE everything they added. Cortana, notifications, swype, sense apps.
I HATE everything they changed. hubs are now apps. facebook integration is gone. bing vision now separate from search button. games now fill the app list.
I guess the changes to tiles and wallpaper are alright but would prefer they didn’t change anything and only added the new bits.
I just read how google hangouts have just merged their SMS and conversations. Windows phone has had this feature for years with facebook and now, just when the competition catches up they remove it!
windows phone 8.1 = 2 steps forward, 1 step back
I am guessing the Facebook change was not a Microsoft idea. And I am pretty certain I will be using FB less because of it. The previous implementation was damn near perfect for me but didn’t do much to help FB.