Rant: Why Windows Phone Live Account Linking is EVIL
Ok I might be slightly exaggerating right now, but it’s because I’m pissed; with yesterdays release of Outlook.com and a whole field of untapped email accounts going live I jumped at the chance to grab a nice one for myself; after all this looks to be the future of Hotmail/Live = Future of WP. Playing it smart (or so I thought) instead of making a whole new account I popped into my live account and “upgraded to new Hotmail” which got me the new clean sleek Outlook interface (no more distracting ads and ugly colors Yay!)- first thoughts about the new email service were that it was beautiful in it’s simplicity (something Microsoft seem to have going for them now; ohh how the tables have turned). After admiring it for a bit I set off on my task; carrying on with the “keep it smart theme” I chose to “rename my account” usin @outlook as the domain, after choosing a fitting ID that doesn’t sound like a 5th grader made it I hit “rename”.
So far so good, I have a nice new email and a clean interface, life’s good; or not… As I was skimming twitter I saw that the wildly popular Youtube App for WP “MetroTube” just got an update, Sweet! Opening the marketplace I hit “update”, only to be greeting with the following page asking me to sign in.
Usually the above image is what you get when you change your Live ID’s password (tip- change password at least every 6 months); you might be seeing the problem now, notice how the box with the live ID is grayed out, whoops- that means it can’t be changed. “No Problem” said logic, “I’ll just go to my accounts, delete the account and add it with the new username, easy”; well apparently WP isn’t a fan of logic since your main ID can’t be removed, renamed, edited, deleted, changed or any other word that implies that it doesn’t stay the same. Apparently the only way to sign in with my new account name (which keep in mind is THE SAME ACCOUNT) is to Hard reset my phone, yes, Delete all apps, photos, phone numbers, SMS, Whatsapp conversations Etc. and just keep the fun in things WP doesn’t have a backup feature meaning they’re all gone for good.
Basically right now I have two options, either never use the marketplace again, or lose all my data (including some Nokia apps that can’t be re-installed due to region restriction), so just a word of advice to you guys, don’t switch to the new outlook unless your willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING.
Edit: True there is a warning before renaming your account; which is why i’m not ranting at outlook (I am to blame) I’m complaining about the difficulty of changing/editing an ID (outlook just happened to be in the line of fire)
Category: Applications, Nokia, Rant, Windows Phone
About the Author (Author Profile)
Heyyo, names Ali- Currently a fourth year Dental Student from Chicago; studying in Jordan. I love all sorts of gadgets almost as much as I love my cookies! (Have: Green Nokia N8, Cyan Lumia 800, Black N9, Stormtrooper White Lumia 900, Black 808 PureView, Red Lumia 920). Follow my twitter handle '@AliQudsi' - no pressure. Thanks.Subscribe
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Nokia I Hate My Lumia Windows Phone : UK Mobile Review | August 8, 2012
- Windows Live ID Resolved? : UK Mobile Review | August 8, 2012
I’m pretty sure it gave you a big warning that would happen. You can just add outlook.com aliases to your existing hotmail login, works perfectly.
Maybe they should of given an even bigger warning
True there was a warning, rant is mostly about how difficult it is to change IDs more than outlook itself :/
Fair enough. I am annoyed as while I have the Live ID i wanted, by XBox gamertag is stuck in the past.
oh, and the @outlook.com alias i wanted to add has already been taken, as well as simple variations on it.
Get your own domain name. A decent provider will allow for secure IMAP with a usable webmail as fallback. Yes, it will cost you €20 a year or less, but you can make all the accounts you want, use a decent desktop client, mobile client, have no EULA to accept, can keep it for life (as long as you pay, of course…), switch provider if your current one f#cks up while keeping your e-mailaddress and e-mails, and it sure looks much better than a @outlook.com/@hotmail.com account.
Wao you think things are too simple
I immediately jumped and got it even though I don’t really need it.
Did you try restoring your device using Zune?
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/basics/restore-a-backup-to-my-phone.aspx
Sorry to say this, but i was going to do the same thing, but it says right there on the screen that to change your Live ID will do this.
IN stead, there is a scetion (i just found out about) called Outlook alias which has a way to add an outlook.com alias to your account and not have this happen. Open More Settings and Alias is second from bottom in the Managing Your Account list. Account Details is top.
Full text from the outlook.com update your address page, accessed via Account Details:
Use a different email address as your Microsoft account
Warning: You might not want to change this email address if you’ve used it to set up a Windows Phone. On your phone, features that use this address will stop working, including Marketplace, Xbox LIVE, SkyDrive, email, and others. To use these features again on your phone, you’d need to restore it to factory settings, which erases all personal content.
When you change the email address you use as your Microsoft account, your other account information, contacts, and email don’t change. (But it might take up to 48 hours for all the info to switch to the new address.)
Ugh Ali and his dumb rants at the end of the day you will take Wp7 in your butt like a champ so stop your bloodclat cryin
Suggestion- Refine your trolling skills, I really can’t tell if your a WP hater or a WP fan
Go kiss Stephen Eflop in the mouth
haha well said! I think some months ago Incognito’s comments was spot on about this so called “Nokia fanboys” mynokiablog authors…..these guys are like dogs chasing cars!
Don’t be too hard on the kids, they need uncle Ballmer to finance their, ahem, studies.
“in your butt like a champ”
“kiss Stephen Eflop in the mouth”
…. so i guess we can all expect you to come out of the closet soon ??
+1
+1
And LOL at the Steven Seagal reference!
@Jay,
Whilst the open nature of the MNB message boards is something of a breath of fresh air, I think perhaps some of these comments are starting to over step the mark a bit…
+1.
open source fans (NOT NOKIA) at their finest.
thanks, migo, for verifying Nokia as a closed source b**** of ms.
Bet that Qt sale would rake them lotsa cash.
im not migo.
and for your verification thingy you said, how personal insults against a blogger stating his opinions (which you completely agree by) prove nokia is closed source is beyong me. but then again you open source hardcores have a different way of thinking.
Why are you even here? You don’t have anything to say.
With fans like you and some of the cretins below then no wonder Nokia are goosed. You cry like spoiled children because you don’t get your own way.
Just go already.
said by who? Mark Nothing Useless
LOL! You really have nothing to say, do you?
You’re an utterly pointless individual. So bland and weak.
Go away, you pale little shadow of a man.
That’s why I never like the idea of linking a device with a e-mail ID… I would prefer something less sticky…
I am sorry to hear that.
But for all future users: There is a big bold and red warning before changing the mail. So this is the right time to read those things or you will end up in a lot of troubles.
It was already posted on WPCentral 2 days ago:
http://www.wpcentral.com/guide-switching-your-hotmail-outlookcom
Ahh, the nice benefits of vendor-lock-in and the obscene requirements for accounts to be able to do anything at all.
Seriously, just *DO NOT BUY* phones which require you to register an account to do anything useful. I’m glad Nokia still got that somewhat right with Symbian and Harmattan, but now your @ss is handed over to Microsoft.
To be fair Symbian now requires a Nokia account to use the store, maps and Social.
Yes, Symbian requires an account, but it’s MUCH less restricted and painless than in Windows Phone.
And i’m not even mentioning the N9, because you hate it and doesn’t even try to like it, since you handed your soul to Mr. EFlop.
He doesn’t hate the N9. He just prefers WP. Nothing wrong with that. There’s a difference.
“but it’s MUCH less restricted and painless than in Windows Phone.”
How is that possible? Nokia account is linked to an email, and I have already lost all of my applications after hard reset and upgrade to belle and without changing anything in my Nokia account, and no, not from my phone, from my account so I couldn’t download them anymore, yes, the paid ones.
Please elaborate on how Symbian is “MUCH less restricte and painless”.
At least on Symbian you can change your Nokia ID without needing to hard reset your phone. Come on, don’t be dumb. It’s so obvious you are biased it’s even funny.
Android is the EXACT same way. You have to sign in w/ a Gmail account. Symbian operated like this also at one point. Remember Ovi accounts?
Ali just unfortunately didn’t read. The benefit to tying into an email account is you can have contacts sync yo new devices. This also helps w/ app markets so you don’t have to pay again for an app you already paid for.
yes, i remember it happening to my e72. but at least you could change it. this is worse, you have no way to login into your old id.
You Sir, are one of many who choose not to read the “terms and conditions” before hitting the “I Accept” button.
I went throught the same process saw the warning and quit.
but like you said “you are to blame”, now many will avoid this disaster
+1 But than again I hardly read those.
Not good what happened to you. I hope Microsoft will sort this issue out soon. But to avoid this what I did after JUMPing to get myself a new id (which I couldn’t by the way with FireDragon) I get it another one and than I create several other fitting to me Aliases. I like Aliases feature in it much more than everything else so far.
But again, it was easy for me because I do not use my hotmail/live account much.
“I hope Microsoft will sort this issue out soon.”
flabbergasted that they overlooked common sense
Yeah, there are a number of underlying problems. I’ve tried deleting an old account, but couldn’t because it was linked with an Xbox Live Silver account that I hadn’t used in ages.
MS has made a focus on visual polish, but they haven’t carried that through to the back end. I imagine that might be WP9/Windows 9.
LOL, that wouldn’t happen if you’d used your Meego-powered N9, my dear Ali. See what being biased towards Microsoft and hating Meego does?
It’s got NOTHING to do with the OS being used and EVERYTHING to do with reading before jumping in. PERIOD.
You just painted a big douchebag sign on your forehead.
I think it was there all along.
I don’t get where this crap about Ali “hating MeeGo” comes from. Show me where he said he hates MeeGo. Your problem is that you hate WP so much you can’t see the difference between “preferring” WP and “hating” MeeGo. I think you of all people should tread lightly when it comes to accusing others of bias.
EXACT. SAME. PROBLEM.
Disaster for me. I now hate microsoft with a vengeance. what happened to logic and common sense ? Thanks for putting up this to warn other, at least some others can’t be burned. the title of the article does not reflect it though.
lol ye age old saying goes,if it aint broke dont fix it.shoulda known better.though shalt also not accept upon being given a big red warnings.oh well on the bright side we al learnt from this didnt we fellas?
Hey Ali, a suggestion you can try.
Since you had changed your live id to outlook now create another live id with the old name(now it will be unoccupied) and try login in with that id.
Tell me if it works.
“with yesterdays release of Outlook.com and a whole field of untapped email accounts going live I jumped at the chance to grab a nice one for myself”
good advice, i did the same and now i have a nice new email name. thanks.
I also think that WP is too much dependent on Live ID.
When I’ve got a poor signal/bad internet connection, my Live ID stops working. Whenever I try to send an email, download apps from marketplace, upload to skydrive… It says- Windows Live ID is unavailable.
And sometimes it gets stuck!
I’ve reset my phone more than 10 times because of this.
And finally, I’ve changed my SIM/Career/Service Provider. :/
But the worst thing about WP is Zune!
On symbian you can change your nokia account id without a reinstall ..
herez the fix 4 al yal ranting bout the hotmail ting http://www.dailymobile.net/2012/08/02/windows-phone-7-users-can-safely-get-an-outlook-email-address/