Windows 10 Mobile Wish List: It's time to catch up or die

[RWalrond]

I'd just like to point out that the People App on Windows Phone does not simple load up a static list of contacts. Your "Evidence" shows one device loading up just contacts (Android) and the Windows phone loading up contacts and their latest Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn post. Of course it's hard to tell from your post which one of those services you have attached to the people app.

So I don't think your "Evidence" really shows how slow Windows Phone is, it might show how much more information WP will give you if you wait 1 second.

 

[RWalrond]

My Previous comment seems to have truncated. Oh well,

the point I wanted to make in the "Evidence" Posted about the speed of the Contacts list on Android and the People Hub on Windows Phone is that it really shows how much more information Windows Phone can give you in almost the same amount of time.

Perhaps the author doesn't realize that the people hub not only returns contacts but their latest twitter, facebook and linkedin post. Of course I can't tell if all those services are enabled on the people hub but at most I can see some status updates so at least 1 must be.

A fair comparison might be you would have to load up all those apps on Android to get the same information and I bet it would take much longer than WP.

 

[Scorpus]

My Previous comment seems to have truncated. Oh well,

the point I wanted to make in the "Evidence" Posted about the speed of the Contacts list on Android and the People Hub on Windows Phone is that it really shows how much more information Windows Phone can give you in almost the same amount of time.

Perhaps the author doesn't realize that the people hub not only returns contacts but their latest twitter, facebook and linkedin post. Of course I can't tell if all those services are enabled on the people hub but at most I can see some status updates so at least 1 must be.

A fair comparison might be you would have to load up all those apps on Android to get the same information and I bet it would take much longer than WP.

You do have a point that the Windows Phone contacts app shows more information. It was the first app I could think of making a comparison for. But I also looked at opening the calendar app, gallery app, browser, and some third-party apps and it's a similar situation: Windows Phone takes longer due to the animations. I can't be bothered making more GIFs to show this, which means people probably won't believe me, but if these animations were shorter, performance would be comparable

 

[aTree]

I knew app loading times were bad ('one word 'Resuming...'), but I hadn't realised just how bad it was in comparison. I loved my 1020, but having superior pictures wasn't enough to keep me - I jumped ship in December and picked up a Z2.

I really miss Lumia Camera though, Android is miles behind there. The same goes for the games - there was less on WP, but they were of a higher calibre.

 

[Guest]

But he has a point.
In your comparison the app in WP doesn't just open a list of contacts.
I've been using the Moto G for the past 7 months and it opens the contact app between one and half a second slower than in that gif, it only opens the app that fast if it's already loaded.

But like I've said using both the Moto G and the 730(which is my work phone, single sim) and the Android phone doesn't feel faster it actually feel slower at the end of the day.
My plan is to get a Moto G 3rd generation(if it will have at least a S610, 615 and 2gb ram and the price doesn't change) or another Android phone with at least 2gb ram and the same price range. Honestly with the 730 I don't feel the need for for more ram, the 1gb is obvious only when I try to load a lot of intensive apps but in average usage it behaves much better than the Moto G.

Anyway The Lumia 640 is not as bad as you try to make it look, most reviewers had mostly positive words about this phone. Check the Gsmarena review, at every point you tried to downplay the phone they were saying positive things.
In the end your analysis of WP platform has a lot of hols and sorry but you are not right in most instances.

 

[Nero7]

Sounds like windows phone users pay a small price compared to not having to have something made by google or apple.

 

[Guest]

Even when presented with physical evidence, MS apologists keep showing up, it's as if they never learn, from Me to RT everything is always great. It's not.

I just bought a new Note Edge and you know what, it's not that much faster than my GS3 when opening my main apps... it also is running a hell of lot more in the background and driving a few more pixels. That's the excuse, the result is I don't care, when I press the button, give me my info.

When I'm on the phone with a client, looking up calendar info, meeting notes etc, every second feels like an eternity. I know devs like to makes things pretty, but once again, make it an OPTION. The size of those headers is comical. The time for animations matter (to most outside the cheerleading circles and 10 year old girls) but the lack of top apps is the deal breaker.

He's pointing out things that would make OTHER people actually want to buy a WP. Instead of agreeing and adding useful pressure, most here stamp there feet and enter their programmed full on denial and excuse mode. That is exactly how so man other projects have failed, exactly how.

I'd love to try WP...just for a few weeks..but there is no way in hell I'm investing a penny in it as it stands now and I just know w10 isn't going to impress me enough to make up for the app issues. I don't need 1 million apps, but MS should do whatever it takes to have the top 100. PERIOD. Pay, bribe whatever and after you establish a foothold, then you can change back to aspiring after the Apple profit model.

For now WP, you're just the ugly girl at the dance...and the next day things only get uglier. Buy hey to the usual suspect, enjoy your "experience".

 

[Guest]

When is the last time an OS in last place moved ahead of the others?
To me Microsoft's phone platform looks like Linux on the desktop. It will always have a very small share with rabid followers who always predict better things to happen just around the corner.

 

[ChilenoinUSA]

I've only used windows phone going all the way back to Windows Mobile 5. Although everyone around me was shifting to iOS or Android, I remained loyal to Windows. Now, I'll be the first to admit that the Windows mobile market still needs a lot of work, including some of the things you mentioned here. But to complain about 0.3 of a second or 0.6 of a second delay on apps, really it just makes me feel sorry for you that your life has to be accounted for each millisecond.

 

[yRaz]

And please, elaborate further on what the "REAL" problems are. I'd like to hear.

Well my problems with WP were fixed in the Denim updated. The app problem isn't really a problem for me as I don't need every new facebook game that comes out. I also think social media is a plague on society so that less of that I see, the better. Nothing is more annoying than going out with friends and everyone's snapchating each other and playing candy crush

Perhaps the lack of bank apps is problem for some people, but my bank has a windows phone app. However, you have a full HTML 5 browser to go and look at the website, the way that I've been doing it for years before I had a phone.

And I really don't know what you're talking about with the hardware software advantage of iOS. The way WP can't freeze things in memory to free up resources is amazing. WP has the best resource management around making it ideal for low end hardware.

I real problems facing windows phone is that everyone goes into with a bias, too many reviewers go into the review already not liking the phone and just want to get the review done without giving it a fair chance. It was readily apparent in your article that you don't like Windows Phone. Many of the things you listed as cons were the reason I like the OS

 

[Guest]

Just a couple of thoughts...

Utility of Action Center- probably worth noting that Windows 10 is already slated to expand the number of quick actions (in addition to actionable notifications as you mentioned).

Camera App- I would like to see a few additions but I disagree about the “major overhaul”. The Nokia Pro Cam app was arguably one of the best shooting apps with its brilliant manual mode that you could easily get into and out of. Then to be fair, Lumia Camera 5 itself was close to a major overhaul that offered some dramatic improvements:

• The shooting experience is now much, much faster
• Moment Capture so you can pull individual frames from video, which on the 930 or 1520 means an 8MP still image from a 4K video clip; this is not nearly as easy on iOS or Android
• Rich Capture, which handles not only traditional HDR but also a unique way to turn up/down the amount of flash in flash-assisted shots. I prefer having this as a one-tap button right on-screen rather than having HDR be the default for every single shot
• Living Images (though I wish they could figure out a way to make these work on the wider web)
• Improved manual controls like Exposure and focus for video

That said, there are definitely some things I’d like to see in the camera. Slow Motion video and a better Panorama experience top the list. And I agree that there are too many Microsoft/Lumia lenses, some of which should be baked into Lumia Camera. Maybe add another radial dial for additional modes (as an aside, I really do not like the way the iOS camera app handles the mode switching- too many things to cycle through; they need to break those out somehow). Maybe a radial dial for Lenses (or modes) that you can select from without actually leaving the main camera app.

As far as accessing the camera, many Windows Phones already have a dedicated camera button; you can also put Camera in the quick actions for easy access from the lockscreen, Start or any app.

In regards to Cortana, certainly expect Cortana to continue adding context-sensitive alerts and capabilities; but I’m not sure about changing what the button press does by default. Your suggestion of directly launching Cortana into more app-specific contexts is interesting and has merit. I would point out however, that in both Windows and Windows Phone there is already precedent for users rejecting “context-sensitivity” in favor of “consistency”. Microsoft actually set up Search to be context-sensitive several years ago but had to backtrack when too many people found it unhelpful and/or baffling; users wanted consistency. Maybe Cortana could be different, but I’m not confident. Perhaps they could use the first “card” area to show app-specific stuff, then scrolling down would lead you to your interests. If they hadn’t so obviously deprecated Pivot controls, that would have been another route. Just as a Bing search has different pivots for web, local, images, videos, news, phone they could have put pivots into Cortana for different functions (e.g. scheduling, travel, interests, app controls, etc.).

3rd party keyboards? Meh,,, maybe? The current WP keyboard is pretty darn good. You can instantly switch from tapping to swiping and it has fantastic auto-correction and auto-completion. Not sure how much more you need for “parity” with iOS and Android. iOS actually limits where and how you can use 3rd party keyboards so you’re forced to switch back to the stock iOS keyboard (which I’m sorry to say is absolutely a step below WP or Android).

 

[Guest]

Just a couple of thoughts...

Oh, and in regards to Settings- this has already been overhauled in Update 2 which is rolling out now.

 

[Vaibhav Sharma]

MS should have a major ui change now. The app design language is confusing too as options are accessible by swiping right from app or from bottom bar in some apps. IE has a horrible ui and real world performance in front of chrome.

The splash screen and animations annoy me even more as by going into dev options on android, I keep transition anim to 0 and others to 0.5 which really makes it a lot faster than wp.
The dialler is horrible as there is no t9 support despite it showing alphabets on top of numbers. The people's app isn't connected to dialer.

Only good things I can say about wp is manual camera control, ms's backup system infront of android and update system. Although updates take far more time on wp than android. The music player was pathetic as well before wp10, wuth not even having a slider for timeline and the videos app does not support hevc nor does any 3rd party developer whereas my s5 does by default.

Comparing lumia 1520 and s5 here.

On another note, multitasking system of s6 is superb, really haven't seen an implementation like that.

And finally live tiles are no match for widgets and action center is again archaic when compared to android's notification center.

 

[Captainpie]

Just a couple of thoughts...

Oh, and in regards to Settings- this has already been overhauled in Update 2 which is rolling out now.

As said earlier, Camera button can be set to open Camera on lock screen. Regarding overhaul of cam app, if you have a favourite you can set that to be the default application for the camera although that said, a couple of extra features to the basic app and I would be happy - HDR, slo mo video, 4k etc. leave the more advanced functions to dedicated apps or you make a confusing experience.

Also regarding loading times and animations, whoever says that however many miliseconds are vital is a bit stupid, during the animation, parts of the app are being preloaded and despite how the contacts app is quite simple and not need all that time, something else requiring that time can then utilise it to have a shorter "black screen" loading time. Personally, I think it is a clever way to keep a "consistant user experience" across the device family whilst being able to make use of the, in effect, free time to preload.

it is one of the reasons it is difficult speed comparing similar apps . . . how does speed opening Facebook for example take?

 

[Boris]

I think the author of this article should first look at what Windows 10 Mobile already has integrated already in its Preview. And it's no secret that Microsoft is already planning to implement most of the features mentioned. Instead of saying "I would want to have that implemented", find out whether it is implemented already!

 

[Vaibhav Sharma]

And I completely forgot, 512mb ram devices no longer keep the home tile menu in memory but ms still gives just 120mb max for app development on these. 200 something I think for 1gb. Resuming animations everywhere :/

It doesn't let apps to stay on when screen is off ie unofficial version of shareit. I dont think there is a torrent client too? Sometimes docs just vanished after transfer from bt in 8.0 I haven't shared since.

 

[allnameused9876]

I want widgets from windows 10 that have the same functionality as an android widget but keep the aesthetics of a windows phone ui

 

[psycros]

Many if not most of the improvements the author mentions would be welcome on Windows 10 as well.

 

[TheNetAvenger]

Additional note...

99% of the things you 'point out' are features that are already present in the preview builds of Windows Mobile 10, and a few things are even in version 8.1, but you don't seem to realize they exist.


(Camera from Lockscreen - WP7 feature, still exists in WP8.1 as one example.)


In politics, the best defense is to attack the competition on the things that they do better than you.

Example: If illegally deleted emails as a government official, then you would be sure to remind people that your competitor deleted her emails, even though she did so legally. (See Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, etc - who all illegally deleted emails while in office, and yet love to talk about Hillary's email server.)


Is this what you are doing, because it seems like you are picking on what WP has always done well?



Your article goes after UI and App speed of WP, something that isn't even debated as iOS and Android friendly sites still concede WP is faster. (One reason WP can have extra animations is that it uses a kernel level GPU thread scheduler and a very fast composer, so it can add animations without taking CPU time away from other operations. - Neither iOS or Android can process GPU operations like this.)



Then you also take a shot at the Camera being less accessible and slower, when the access and speed of the camera is something that has been touted as a WP feature since WP7 was launched, and still holds true, with even older devices.


I don't mean to be rude, but your article is lacking of a lot of technical facts, and I'm not sure if you are just not as familiar with WP as you proclaim or you are trying to make WP look bad.

 

[Scorpus]

Just a couple of thoughts...

Utility of Action Center- probably worth noting that Windows 10 is already slated to expand the number of quick actions (in addition to actionable notifications as you mentioned).

Camera App- I would like to see a few additions but I disagree about the “major overhaul”. The Nokia Pro Cam app was arguably one of the best shooting apps with its brilliant manual mode that you could easily get into and out of. Then to be fair, Lumia Camera 5 itself was close to a major overhaul that offered some dramatic improvements:

• The shooting experience is now much, much faster
• Moment Capture so you can pull individual frames from video, which on the 930 or 1520 means an 8MP still image from a 4K video clip; this is not nearly as easy on iOS or Android
• Rich Capture, which handles not only traditional HDR but also a unique way to turn up/down the amount of flash in flash-assisted shots. I prefer having this as a one-tap button right on-screen rather than having HDR be the default for every single shot
• Living Images (though I wish they could figure out a way to make these work on the wider web)
• Improved manual controls like Exposure and focus for video

That said, there are definitely some things I’d like to see in the camera. Slow Motion video and a better Panorama experience top the list. And I agree that there are too many Microsoft/Lumia lenses, some of which should be baked into Lumia Camera. Maybe add another radial dial for additional modes (as an aside, I really do not like the way the iOS camera app handles the mode switching- too many things to cycle through; they need to break those out somehow). Maybe a radial dial for Lenses (or modes) that you can select from without actually leaving the main camera app.

As far as accessing the camera, many Windows Phones already have a dedicated camera button; you can also put Camera in the quick actions for easy access from the lockscreen, Start or any app.

In regards to Cortana, certainly expect Cortana to continue adding context-sensitive alerts and capabilities; but I’m not sure about changing what the button press does by default. Your suggestion of directly launching Cortana into more app-specific contexts is interesting and has merit. I would point out however, that in both Windows and Windows Phone there is already precedent for users rejecting “context-sensitivity” in favor of “consistency”. Microsoft actually set up Search to be context-sensitive several years ago but had to backtrack when too many people found it unhelpful and/or baffling; users wanted consistency. Maybe Cortana could be different, but I’m not confident. Perhaps they could use the first “card” area to show app-specific stuff, then scrolling down would lead you to your interests. If they hadn’t so obviously deprecated Pivot controls, that would have been another route. Just as a Bing search has different pivots for web, local, images, videos, news, phone they could have put pivots into Cortana for different functions (e.g. scheduling, travel, interests, app controls, etc.).

3rd party keyboards? Meh,,, maybe? The current WP keyboard is pretty darn good. You can instantly switch from tapping to swiping and it has fantastic auto-correction and auto-completion. Not sure how much more you need for “parity” with iOS and Android. iOS actually limits where and how you can use 3rd party keyboards so you’re forced to switch back to the stock iOS keyboard (which I’m sorry to say is absolutely a step below WP or Android).

I'm glad someone took the time to actually read the article, rather than assuming I think Windows Phone is terrible (which I don't). I agree the camera app is okay on high end phones, but the lack of features is disappointing on entry-level devices. For example, you can use HDR from within Lumia Camera on a Lumia 930 but not a Lumia 640, which is odd considering other entry-level phones can use HDR.

As I mentioned in the article I don't think having a shortcut that simply loads the search app is all that useful, although I can see how changing it would confuse people.

Are you stupid or just dishonest?

The Android App you are opening is JUST A LIST OF CONTACTS. The Windows App you are opening is Contacts along with the latest status updates from all the people in the Contact list.

So one is just opening a list of people, the other is opening all the people, checking their twitter, facebook, etc and displaying the latest information on them... And this is what you use to demonstrate WP being slower?

Really?


Your video actually shows how freaking fast WP is considering it was able to load all the contacts and then access the network and pull all their twitter updates and their facebook updates and do it in a micro second.

(smacks head on desk)

If you had used Windows Phone you would know that information is pulled from the internet after the app has opened, not during the opening animation. It takes an extra 1-2 seconds to refresh the app with current info after opening it.

And yeah, I could have showed a different app being opened. I guess then you would have nothing to say because it would still show Android as being faster.

 

[yRaz]

And yeah, I could have showed a different app being opened. I guess then you would have nothing to say because it would still show Android as being faster.

You were actually making a pretty strong case until you made this statement. It's obvious you don't care and it was easy to tell from your review that you didn't want to write or do it. If you did care you would have tried it with different apps, as there are plenty of apps available on all platforms to use as a control. If you want to say Android is faster, prove it, otherwise everything you're saying is foobar.

Try apps that actually do something instead of effectively opening up a text document. Isn't Office available on android now? That'd be a wonderful thing to use as a benchmark. To eliminate human error you should individually record the loading on each phone then count the frames in a video. I'd say you need to record a minimum of 60FPS, preferably higher.

If you want to make a real article, that's how you need to do it. On top of that it's fairly easy and I'm sure plenty of people would actually like to see, lots of clicks involved. There is literally no reason not to do it and plenty of incentive to do it. So I look forward to seeing some legitimate benchmarks on TechSpot to support the outrageous claims it's making

 

[Scorpus]

You were actually making a pretty strong case until you made this statement. It's obvious you don't care and it was easy to tell from your review that you didn't want to write or do it. If you did care you would have tried it with different apps, as there are plenty of apps available on all platforms to use as a control. If you want to say Android is faster, prove it, otherwise everything you're saying is foobar.

Try apps that actually do something instead of effectively opening up a text document. Isn't Office available on android now? That'd be a wonderful thing to use as a benchmark. To eliminate human error you should individually record the loading on each phone then count the frames in a video. I'd say you need to record a minimum of 60FPS, preferably higher.

If you want to make a real article, that's how you need to do it. On top of that it's fairly easy and I'm sure plenty of people would actually like to see, lots of clicks involved. There is literally no reason not to do it and plenty of incentive to do it. So I look forward to seeing some legitimate benchmarks on TechSpot to support the outrageous claims it's making

I actually did do this for the article. I recorded the two phones opening apps (not just the contacts app) at 120 FPS. The average values were presented in the article (copied below). Of course some apps were faster on Windows Phone, and some were faster on Android, but on average Android opened apps more quickly. I didn't want to go and present massive graphs or anything because it's the principle that matters more than the data itself

"On a similar Android device, the Moto G 2014, equivalent apps open around 300ms quicker when accessed for the first time after a restart. This lead extends to roughly 600ms when the app is re-opened, due to the lack of lengthy animations in Android Lollipop."

The average figures were 1.3 seconds for Android, 1.6 seconds for Windows Phone on first load. This extended to 0.7 seconds and 1.3 seconds for repeat loads. Data was counted to first view of a usable screen, beyond splash screens, blank screens, etc.

 

[yRaz]

I actually did do this for the article. I recorded the two phones opening apps (not just the contacts app) at 120 FPS. The average values were presented in the article (copied below). Of course some apps were faster on Windows Phone, and some were faster on Android, but on average Android opened apps more quickly. I didn't want to go and present massive graphs or anything because it's the principle that matters more than the data itself

"On a similar Android device, the Moto G 2014, equivalent apps open around 300ms quicker when accessed for the first time after a restart. This lead extends to roughly 600ms when the app is re-opened, due to the lack of lengthy animations in Android Lollipop."

The average figures were 1.3 seconds for Android, 1.6 seconds for Windows Phone on first load. This extended to 0.7 seconds and 1.3 seconds for repeat loads. Data was counted to first view of a usable screen, beyond splash screens, blank screens, etc.

It would be quite interesting if you put these into charts and posted them either in this article or a separate article. I was serious when I said you should make an article and post benchmarks. Benchmarks comparing Windows Phone to other mobile OS's are extremely rare, if you wrote that article it would bring in a considerable amount of traffic.

If you choose to do that and would like to expand on that, it would be interesting to see in app performance. How long it takes the same PDF file to open in office on both platforms. Measure responsiveness in apps once they're opened. While your at it, might as well do a web browser comparison too.

You have a lot of options to make a really interesting article out of this and I personally would like to see it.

 

[drjekelmrhyde]

Why not join the insider program for WM10 builds AND GIVE FEEDBACK. Microsoft do and will listen.

 

[drjekelmrhyde]

The first 2 points of your article are simply just false. I'm not sure what you did to make Windows Phone slower than Lollipop but I own both (Galaxy Tab S and a Lumia 930) and I can most definitely say that WP is miles faster than Lollipop. Even my friends who use android are amazed at how fast my WP is despite having a really old SoC (Snapdragon 800).

Nope. And here's some evidence to prove it.

Here we have a Moto G 2014 on the left, running Android 5.0. On the right is the Lumia 830 running Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2. Both are Snapdragon 400 devices with 1 GB of RAM and 720p displays.

This image shows the two devices opening an app straight after the phones were turned on:

This image shows the two devices opening up the same app for the third time, 30 seconds later:

In the first shot, the Moto G 2014 is 2-3 frames faster. In the second, the Moto G destroys the Lumia 830, displaying useful content before the 830 has even begun its animation

This is a direct, side by side comparison of two phones with similar hardware. Please keep telling me Windows Phone is faster because it is categorically not.

I wonder how long before that Android starts to slow down after garbage apps running in the background? Joe 24pack will just download crap till he calls his "nerd friend" to do a factory reset on his Andriod device. I'm willing to bet that everyone in this thread had to factory reset a Android device for someone because of lag.