Windows Phone Myths Debunked- The Truth

Okay guys, at the risk of being called out as a Paid Microsoft Fan-Boy; I’m gonna address the so-called “Devastating Problems in WP” that everyone has been talking about. First off I’d like to point out that some of them are just plain ridiculous, and the author obviously has never tried a WP and is practically talking out of his @$$ but whatever- these “101” problems are mostly 2 or 3 issues stated in a  different form but I’ll do my best to answer them; I respect anyone’s decision who thinks WP isn’t for them but please don’t start any flame wars; this is supposed to be a factual post. True I like WP but If I see something wrong I will say it, there’s nothing wrong with admitting when there’s something good in a phone/OS -( even though I hate Android I still applaud the OneXs design and looks, I’m not the biggest fan of Meego but I still admit it has some killer features…)

-Also I’m not a WP professional; so I might get some of the points wrong, if I’m mistaken please rather than starting a crusade against me correct me kindly (I have a weak heart and am extremely emotional) in the comments section.

My response will be written in Bold after each statement. (most things that I say “No Idea for” are features that most users probably won’t care about-in my opinion)

Before we start some features are part of WP as it is and basically part of the package deal (if they go against your believes by all means buy an Android or N9 or 808 or whatever floats your boat) Such as:

•  Closed OS- yes it is a closed OS; that’s something that probably won’t change anytime soon- if that’s a deal-breaker then WP isn’t for you- move on.
• Multitasking- WP uses it’s own “App freeze” I find it’s perfectly useful and it plays nice with hardware.
• BT transfer- currently not part of WP, but it’s rumored to come soon- if not –> android/Symbian.

OS LIMITATIONS
1. No true multitasking – apps are frozen in the background. – Although this has been covered a thousand times WP does have multitasking (fetching emails in background, playing MP3); the apps frozen in the BG are a way of quickly jumping from task to task without losing battery and Ram.
2. No Divx/Xvid video codec support. Zune will convert with loss of quality. Zune conversion depends on the output you choose (also DivX/Xvid are a thing of the past- what OS in the world supports them natively?- seriously I don’t know)
3. No mass storage mode. There is Mass storage mode but it has to be tweaked– regardless this is a WP “Feature” if you can’t live without it WP sin’t for you.. move on
4. No micro-SD card support. Coming in Windows 8
5. Only support up to 16GB storage . As far as I know that’s not true- there is no storage limit; just no current phones with larger storage- if there is then keep in mind SKydrive can be used as an alternative (not a true alternative but it helps)
6. No filemanager. Directory system is totally opaque. Same point as No mass storage
7. Need Zune to transfer files. Zune will only transfer photos, videos & music. All other files need to email/upload to yourself. Once again same point as before- WP is a closed system, files can be shared through skydrive though. 
8. Your contact details are automatically uploaded to cloud service whether you like it or not. –how is this an issue?
9. Limited to 800×480 resolution. – Newer resolutions coming in Windows 8- and it’s still a higher resolution thant Symbian which is stuck in nHD
10. No wi-fi hotspot. – Yes there is, the Lumia 900 and 610 come preoloaded with it and Lumia 800 & 710 are getting an update soon 9already rolling out) other WPs (sammy/LG) have had WiFi sharing forever- Keep in mind Symbian only allows Wifi sharing through apps that are paid (and I’m yet to get it to work on my N9)
11. Cannot use any MP3 file as ringtone except those with strict constraints. true- but there are multiple apps that allow you to set custom ringtones
12. Cannot set static IP address so no connection to ad-hoc networks. No idea
13. No VPN support for this “corporate enterprise” phone. No idea
14. Cannot sync with Outlook. Outlook is synced with your live account which is constantly synced with your phone (wasn’t this considered a problem in number 8?)
15. Totally closed OS, cannot sideload apps outside MS Marketplace. How many times are we gonna cover the same point? and there are legal ways to sideload apps
16. System font size cannot be changed. Seriously? it’s a hell lot nicer than Nokia Sans
17. Images and photos cannot be renamed in the phone. Not sure- but it’s not the end of the world and def. no where near a “devestating Problem”
18. Windows Live ID account cannot change country once set. that’s  to figure out which version of the marketplace you get- legal obligations or something
19. No centralized notification page. Who else has that other than Meego? Your tile page acts as a notification page – each respective tile shows respective alerts (phone = missed calls, Messaging = Messages & Chat.. etc.)
20. Alarm clock cannot work when phone is turned off. All Nokia Symbian and Meego phones can do this. Updated From Comments- Apparently the Alaram DOES ring when the phone is off
21. The idle screen is completely blank and cannot display time or notifications. One of my beefs with the Lumias, hopefully will be changed in Win 8- but still it’s not considered devastating, just tap the lock screen and it’ll pop up
22. Only photos allowed as email attachments, documents not allowed. – Updated from Comments- Text documents and other files can be emailed
23. Bluetooth cannot stream to car audio devices (no rSAP). Yes it can- i hook my Lumia up to my car daily- and it even automatically plays music once it’s conencted
24. Cannot stream audio from video to Bluetooth devices (No A2DP). Haven’t tried it
25. No support for full on-device encryption required for secure applications like mobile banking and online payment. Yes there is, the Lumia 610 with NFC is a mastercard approved payment device
26. Cannot use Bluetooth keyboard. No idea
27. Cannot silence ringtone or alarm by flipping the phone. A missed feature, hopefully to come (it was one of the thigns we discussed at MWC with the Lumia device team)- Available in other WP OEMs
28. Very limited customization option. What does that even mean? Tiles look nice unlike the default Symbian theme (until Anna came along with squircles)
29. Ugly 2D flat interface. Oversized fonts for headings treat you like an idiot. The author of the article is obviously unbiased. 

USABILITY ISSUES
30. No always visible status bar for battery life, signal strength, carrier, 2G/3G wi-fi, Bluetooth on. bar is easily accessible by tapping the top of the screen anywhere
31. Taskmanager has no option to shut down apps you don’t want running in the background. No need as it doesn’t waste any battery or Ram- if you’re going to rant show some consistency- this is a direct contradiction of #1
32. Search and Back button cannot be de-activated in apps or games and easily touched by accident which interrupt your user experience. Not all WP have capactive buttons (710 & 610 have hardware buttons)
33. Lockscreen need to be activated to show missed call/sms notification. how is this different than #21?
34. No way to close an app except pressing back button all the way to the first screen. Apps can be closed by pressing the windows button- and they dont need to be closed since freezing them doesn’t use any battery or Ram
35. Tiny fonts in messages is very hard to read for those over 45. Nice you scientifically found the age where WP becomes garbage..aslo WP supports reading all messages out loud
36. Cannot edit playlist or create new playlists from phone. Updated from Comments; not true- Here’s how
37. Cannot delete a song from phone. Actually you can
38. Cannot search your music collection on the phone. Yes you can. 
39. Cannot close music player, can only pause. Music player on lockscreen will stay until you reboot. Why is this an issue? If anything it’s a feature- being able to access your last played music with the touch of a button- and for anyone who claims it’s obtrusive it’s def. not- this is what it looks like
40. No progress bar for current track playing and no indication which track in an album is playing Obvious proof that author ahs never used a WP- of course theres a progress bar and Album name
41. Cannot lock screen orientation. Wp (like Meego) is mostly used in Portrait orientation- no need to lock as only games and some apps use landscape
42. Online and phone contacts are mixed together with no ability to filter. Settings- Contacts Filter.
43. Cumbersome dialing with no smartdial. No way to create a ‘Favourites’ list of phone contacts Favorites lists are known as groups, and Symbian is the only OS with smart dial
44. Cannot save draft sms messages. True
45. Call history only show phone number type. If a contact has multiple phone nos. for a type the number used is unknown. Not true- contacts can have as many numbers as you like and they all show as the contacts name
46. Cannot recognize phone numbers in sms or email to save or use as calling number. Also incorrect. 
47. Text messages can only be deleted one by one. No full threads of texts can be deleted
48. Cannot select multiple pictures for deleting, sending or uploading. They must be done one at a time. This is true, hopefully theres a fix coming soon
49. Notification for recurring events is only given once and none thereafter. Incorrect
50. Apps are listed alphabetically with no way to group by category. Can be hard to find if you don’t remember the name. games are automatically grouped together- and how is alphabetic organization a problem? I
51. Calendar scheduler has no weekly view and monthly view is non-zoomable. Yes it does
52. No peak/off-peak scheduling for email downloads. You can choose the push notifications for instant or a custom interval time- no idea what Peak/no peak means. 
53. If both wi-fi and data connection are available which one it chooses to use is unpredictable. User experiences don’t agree with Microsoft that it “typically” choose wi-fi over 3G. From what I’ve seen when WiFi is available it’s always used. (try active connection to check) 

FEATURE LIMITATIONS
54. No video call. Supports skype video calls, and normal video calls coming soon
55. No haptic feedback for keyboard. Theres a noise feedback on Lumias, but I’m pretty sure other WPs have haptic feedback
56. No Swype. No need, WP keyboard is effin brilliant 
57. No flashplayer support. True
58. No support for Java apps. Java apps are probably the lowest quality apps in the world in my experience- thank god they’re not supported
59. No call recording or app to do it. yes there is
60. No call blocking or app to do it. I believe there is , but I’m not sure
61. No screenshots or app to do it. Yes there is- but requires unlock
62. No auto wallpaper changer and no app to do it. what OS in the world has that??????????
63. Totally locked down os means apps which interact directly with hardware not allowed. Once again just repeating points
64. No equalizer for Zune music player. Only On Lumias- other OEMs have equalizers 
65. FM radio doesn’t work on speaker. Pretty sure it does (but not 100%)
66. IE browser has no text reflow, no download capability and no offline reading. All incorrect
67. No 3rd party browsers allowed except those based on IE. Doesn’t matter IE on WP is brilliant- no need for anything else
68. No built-in pdf file reader, need to buy app. Adobe reader is free and works beautifully.
69. Cannot open zip or rar files received as email attachment. Haven’t tried it

70. Cannot send or receive video by MMS. Haven’t tried it
71. Office Mobile has much less features than 3rd party Office editors like SmartOffice, QuickOffice and Polaris. Shame on you, Microsoft! ridiculous- office mobile is awesome
72. No native Google maps and Bing maps is useless for most countries outside U.S. Actually Bing maps is pretty decent, ans Lumia phones have Nokia maps which trumps any other map system
73. Email time stamp does not show the year. OH NO!!!!!! How will I find the attachment of the constitution 
74. Wide difference in apps availability in different markets and users locked to one market. As is the same with every single other Marketplace in the world (including symbian and meego) 
75. Not all Bing features available outside U.S. Can’t be sure but Bing features work fine in Jordan/MEA & Gulf)

DUMB AND DUMBER
76. One volume control for all functions including media playback, ringtones, alarms, notifications. Notifications have a separate Volume than media/games- but partially true 
77. Wi-fi disconnects when screen sleeps. Too bad if you are in the middle of a download. True, this is probably the only feature on the list that is a major issue for some, (although Push notifications wills till work while locked)
78. If you receive a text message when talking on the phone an audio alert will blast your ear at the full volume set. All other phones will give a soft beep. No idea where you got this from, you get a nice littel *teet teet* to notify you
79. Can only enter one mobile phone no. for each contact. Mobile nos. entered in other fields will not accept sms. Nonsense- all my contacts ahve multiple emails, Numbers, and live Ids
80. Cannot send/receive MMS without enabling 3G data connection. MMS does not use 3G data. Haven’t tried it
81. Phone cannot be charged when off. Seriously?? At this point I think he was running out of points- please explain how you would charge your phone if the battery died? or do you go buy a new one everytime?
82. Need to be plugged in to wall charger to sync wirelessly (a funny definition of wireless). At the same time if it synced in the night and drained your battery this would be considered a bad thing- the point of this is to make sure that battery life isn’t wasted so your ready to go in the morning- point of WIRELESS sync is that you dont have to bother connecting to the PC to get it done. 
83. Volume up/down buttons cannot operate when screen is off. Uhmmmm yes they can
84. Phone will wake up and display sms content on lockscreen when locked – a privacy violation. No it won’t it will only notify you of an SMS but to fully view it you ahve to enter pass code
85. Phone can be rebooted without unlocking to bypass security lock. BS- pass-code required on reboot

FEATURES EVEN DUMB PHONES HAVE BUT WP7.5 DOESN’T
86. No bluetooth file transfer. Supposed to come soon- once again if that’s a major thing for you get an android or an 808 with my full blessings
87. Cannot handle USSD codes necessary for prepaid users to obtain services. No idea what that is
88. Cannot save new contacts from call history. Yes you can
89. Cannot sms contacts from call history. Yes you can
90. Cannot show call duration in call history. True
91. Cannot delete individual calls in call history. Long press- Delete item
92. Call history does not group calls by contact. Uhmmm how is that bad?? if it didn’t tell you how many times a contact called you would be calling it another “devastating flaw”
93. Call history does not show the time of call for calls older than current day. Yes it does
94. Cannot set custom sounds for different types of notifications.  True- a feature I sorely miss (wish I could differentiate SMS notification from Whatsapp or IM)
95. No ringer profiles. True
96. No silent option (no vibrate and no ring). FALSE, you can quickly switch to silent by tapping the vibrate icon (pops up when pressing volume button)
97. Cannot send/receive contact as a csv file. Haven’t tried it- but a workaround is syncing the contacts through email
98. Cannot backup sms to PC. True
99. Cannot save contact to SIM card. Not sure
100. Cannot change alarm ring tone or use a MP3 file. Not sure- but probably true
101. Cannot set alarm snooze interval. Yes you can

As mentioned if there’s something wrong please point it out (I’m sleepy and have loads of studying so I’ll get back to you in the morning)- or if there’s something you would like proof of or to double check just ask.

Cheers, Ali

Delusional list here

Tags: featured

Category: Nokia, Windows Phone