From Mango to Apollo: The HTC Windows Phone 8X on the Daily
by Dustin Sklavos on January 28, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- windows phone 8
- Windows Phone 8X
- HTC 8X
Essentials: Browser
As Brian mentioned before, the browser experience on Windows Phone 8 is improved largely under the hood. Windows Phone 8 enjoys the Trident 6.0 engine shared by Internet Explorer 10 on the desktop and even identifies itself as IE10. It's smooth and gets the job done, but actually feels too stripped down. I've come to accept that if I want Flash on a mobile platform I need to be running Android, but tab management is sorely lacking.
That isn't to say that you can't actually have multiple tabs open, but the only way you can get a shortcut to the tabs you have open without having to bring up the drop menu on the bottom of the display is to swap out the stop/reload button for it. So while the browser in Windows Phone 8 is very functional and snappy, it's extremely easy to outright forget which tabs you've left open in the first place. This was a problem in 7, and it persists here.
Again, though, performance is definitely up from 7, and compatibility as well. I've found IE10 in WP8 to be a noticeable improvement in practice.
Essentials: E-Mail
I've heard complaints of the e-mail app in Windows Phone 7 (and 7.5 and now 8) as being too stripped down, but I've never actually felt it was particularly oversimplified. I have three different e-mail boxes that I need regular access to: my personal e-mail, my Gmail, and my AnandTech e-mail. You can choose to have each mailbox store all of your e-mail from that box from the past week, from the past month, or just plain all of it. My AnandTech e-mail box is a nightmarish abyss of spam and clutter that I've done a horrible job curating, so that gets set to "past week."
What's evident is that the app is still designed as a way to check your e-mail in a pinch, not as a way to actually do your e-mail bookkeeping and keep up on all your correspondence. Unfortunately, the lack of a robust app ecosystem keeps power users from finding a more comprehensive e-mail management solution (much as it keeps power users from finding an alternative browser to IE10), so if just having e-mail threads organized by subject line and middling multi-mail selection and management isn't adequate for you, you're stuck.
Essentials: Calendar
Just as the People hub brings all of your contacts from all of your disparate social networking accounts under a single unifying banner, so the Calendar does with your events and calendars. The Calendar app is also essentially unchanged from Windows Phone 7: a single calendar aggregates your Google calendar with events from Facebook.
The complaint I've heard registered about Calendar is that it only allows for a single calendar, while Google allows you to have multiples. If you need multiple calendars to keep organized (for example, one with birthdays, one with tasks, one with meetings, and so on), this is probably going to be a dealbreaker. Note also that by default Calendar will integrate Facebook events you've been invited to but not actually responded to; this is something you can toggle off, but I'm confused as to why it's on in the first place.
Meanwhile, assuming you have it set to be the single text readout on the lock screen, the lock screen itself will tell you what, where, and when your next Calendar entry is.
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ananduser - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
"Gamers for example are forced to use windows because of DirectX. MSFT refused to follow open standards."What a load of bull. DirectX was a tremendous effort on MS' part that had them derided by the game outfits of the 90s. Like Apple feels that it has a responsibility towards its users to create imessage, facetime and airplay so is MS responsible towards its users to create a gaming API(keep in mind OGL was built with CAD in mind not gaming).
Office/Exchange are just the best in their market segments.
Furthermore with Windows you're locked within software not sotfware AND hardware like with Apple. I would happily pay Apple for OSX and iWork to run on my PC but unfortunately I am forced to buy another set of redundant x86 hardware to be able to run said software. Vendor lock-in is significantly more atrocious if it's Apple's style.
RevLuck - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
I noticed the Lumia 920 battery info seems wrong, It's not removable.I've been using Lumia 920 for about two months now and love the phone, coming from Android, the tiles fit me lot better than widgets. Easy, consistent and you can fit lots of info in one view. While there are still features that I miss from Android, I don't think I could go back.
For me, the two features that really stand over X8 are the wireless charging and super sensitive screen. Twice in few weeks I've been freezing my fingers off trying to use phone outside before realizing I can just put the gloves back. After getting used to the wireless charging its the kind of convenience I would probably find hard to go back on. I guess I'm lazy :)
I pretty much thought both features as gimmicks when I bought the phone, but now I hope my next phone will have them too. I just wish the charging pad prices would go down, the current price point is pretty ridiculous.
shompa - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
I hate that people still thinks its great dragging files back and forth in explorer. That is 1970 thinking. A good OS should make it so you never have to see the filesystem.How should a person with a huge library do? I have had over 40K songs in my library since 2002. In "Windows" thinking I should drag and drop the stuff I want.
No.
The computer should do the work for me.
Give me songs, rated 3 stars and above, that have not been played for the last week.
Smart playlists.
It amazes me that people still 11 years later don't use playlists, automatic syncing and so on. This is typical Windows thinking. So 30 years after the fact.
boozed - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
Wow. Hate's a pretty strong emotion to feel towards someone... Especially people whose only crime is that they want to be able to do things a certain way.If I wanted to be churlish I'd have said "...they can do things for themselves." instead, but I won't.
madmilk - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
You can use rsync for syncing and playlist files (duh) for playlists.Or you can wait for the music management software you're using to suddenly come out with a craptacular update (cough iTunes and Winamp), and then wonder what the hell you're going to switch to.
piroroadkill - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
I could do exactly that, with smart playlists, using my player (J River Media Center), but you know what, I don't bother.I prefer exposing the files and doing it manually.
karocage - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
"How should a person with a huge library do?"You should probably either continue using the Zune client with WP7.5 or the new desktop client for WP8. Using Windows Explorer would be a pain for that.
dragonsqrrl - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
"If you're one of the precious few people who invested in Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 like I did, Windows Phone 8 is going to feel pretty lackluster initially, if not even capable of engendering a mild feeling of resentment. Windows Phone 7 was a rough draft and a product with no real future the moment it left Microsoft, and they knew it."Microsoft did the exact same thing to Zune HD users, otherwise known as Windows Phone 7 beta testers. Anyone who owned or followed the news about the Zune HD a couple years ago should know what I'm talking about. And lo and behold they've done it again, although the situation with the Zune HD was far more severe. And this is why I didn't get a WP7 device, and I won't be getting a WP8 device. Microsoft has proven itself time and again to screw over its customers and early adopters in the mobile market for the sake of its grand mobile development plans.
I'm actually a little surprised Microsoft repeated this behavior twice, but now there's no doubt in my mind that it's systemic. They essentially use their customers as nothing more then beta testers, and each revision of their mobile platform is nothing more then a brief, unsupported, unadvertised stepping stone to the next thing. I'm sure not supporting or investing in a new platform saves a lot of money, initially, but eventually this kind of behavior is going to catch up with Microsoft in a big way, if it hasn't already. They're probably losing a lot of potential and once loyal customers.
karocage - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
I'm still trying to figure out what I got screwed on as a WP7.5 user. All my apps I bought would still work and be useable on a new WP8 phone so....? They didn't give me a new free phone? This is asserted in the article multiple times without ever laying out what the tangible harm is. And neither did you here.steven75 - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link
You lose out on any apps made for the WP8 APIs, obviously.