Windows Phone 8.1 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 14, 2014 10:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- windows phone
- Windows Phone 8.1
Wi-Fi and Data Sense
Windows Phone 8.1 includes automatic handling for a large number of WiFi hotspot captive portals. If enabled, your phone will automatically agree to any terms and even automatically provide a name and email address to get you past the portal.
The new Wi-Fi Sense feature also allows sharing of Wi-Fi credentials with other WP8.1/Wi-Fi Sense users. The users on the other end never see passwords, they’re just automatically allowed to join networks you choose to share. This is one feature I wasn’t able to test as I only had a single WP8.1 device.
Where Wi-Fi Sense attempts to make joining Wi-Fi networks easier, Data Sense tries to help you manage bandwidth usage on cellular networks. The new tool gives you insight into how much bandwidth all of your apps are using, down to a split between cellular and WiFi traffic.
You can input how much cellular data you’re allocated each month and Windows Phone 8.1 can automatically monitor your cellular data usage and respond appropriately as you approach your data limit. WP8.1 can restrict background data usage, as well as reduce bandwidth requirements for Internet Explorer.
With IE11 on Windows Phone 8.1 Microsoft introduced optional server side web page compression. Similar to Amazon’s Silk browser’s accelerated page loading, Microsoft’s Browser Optimization Service (BOS) uses a proxy server to compress images, HTML and JavaScript before sending the contents to your device. MS claims to not store any personal data during the process. When enabled (either manually or automatically triggered by Data Sense), Microsoft claims the compression can save up to 45% of your browsing data usage in standard savings mode or up to 70% in high savings mode.
I setup a web server and looked at the impact of BOS on image compression. Below are some samples taken from our Galaxy S 5 review when viewed in IE11 with BOS disabled, standard savings enabled and with high savings enabled.
With the most aggressive compression enabled, the impact on file size and image quality is pretty substantial. Microsoft provides a simple override if you want to load a full quality version of the page without diving back into the Data Sense settings.
Tap the override symbol (to the left of anandtech.com) to load the full web page
The standard compression image honestly doesn’t lose a ton of quality, but the savings on already compressed images aren’t huge.
BSO Impact on Image Sizes | ||||||
No Compression | Standard Compression | High Compression | ||||
Night Shot (Image #1) | 57KB | 41KB (71.9%) | 38KB (66.7%) | |||
Product Shot (Image #2) | 284KB | 253KB (89.1%) | 182KB (64.1%) |
In high savings mode IE11 will also prevent loading long pages and avoid loading some ads. Visiting AnandTech’s mobile site with BOS set to high revealed a mostly useless front page with nothing more than the main logo but that seemed to be the exception as we have a rather image heavy front page. As it’s optional, I can see BOS being important to some users on aggressively capped data plans.
IE11
There’s a running joke at AnandTech that the only thing mobile IE10 was optimized for was SunSpider. While javascript performance optimization has become a primary pursuit in Android and iOS, the only javascript test that seemed really fast on IE in Windows Phone 8 was SunSpider. If I ran any of our less well known js tests I either got scores that represented phones from a couple of years ago or the browser couldn’t complete the test. Windows Phone 8.1 integrates IE11 and with it comes a number of performance optimizations.
SunSpider doesn't show a meaningful increase in performance (likely because it's already thoroughly optimized for). The good news is the rest of our js suite does get substantially better:
Kraken completes in less than half the time than it did in WP8.0. Octane actually completes now instead of hanging during the asm test, and WebXPRT sees a 13% increase in performance as well. IE11 definitely isn’t the fastest mobile browser on the planet, but it at least moves WP8.1 towards a more modern level of performance. Note in the case of WebXPRT running on the Lumia Icon, we're at performance that's nearly equal to the LG G2 - also using a Snapdragon 800 SoC. That's one of the slowest examples of S800 running Android however. The Nexus 5 by comparison does substantially better - there's still room for improvement in IE11's js performance.
I did notice improvements in actual page load times however it seems to me that there’s a bit of image compression going on even when I have Data Sense disabled which effectively invalidates any comparison results. It’s not clear to me if this is intentional or a bug with the dev preview at this point. In side by side comparisons, Mobile Safari running on the iPhone 5s still manages to load pages faster than IE11 running on the Lumia Icon, despite whatever image compression may be active on the WP8.1 device. It just goes to show you that having the fastest silicon does matter.
IE11 is more compatible than its predecessor. Running HTML5Test the new browser gets a score of 378, compared to 328 in IE10. Chrome for Android and Mobile Safari both score higher however.
I’ve included a screenshot gallery showing the individual scores, but the new browser wins a lot of points by including support for things like WebGL. Despite adding WebGL support however, I couldn’t get the old aquarium test to actually animate on the device.
IE11 sees functional improvements compared to its predecessor as well. The refresh button at the bottom of the screen has been replaced by a tabs button (you can change it back if you’d like). You can now also swipe right/left to go back/forward through your history in a tab. There’s better YouTube support with IE11 as well. You can now play YouTube videos within an embedded page instead of always being forced out into a full screen mode.
Performance
Since its incarnation, Windows Phone has always been late in adopting high end silicon. It normally wouldn’t be a problem if the platform primarily targeted entry level and mainstream consumers, however for much of its recent life Windows Phone has pursued the high end particularly with Nokia’s flagship devices. The result was a platform that had a high end camera, but with a mainstream SoC. It wasn’t too long ago that Microsoft was parroting the dual-core isn’t necessary for performance and is bad for battery life mantra, but it’s good to see that’s now over with.
Qualcomm remains the sole silicon provider for Windows Phone, which is fine given their position of dominance and the lack of any appreciably better alternatives. With the GDR3 update to Windows Phone 8 Microsoft added support for Snapdragon 800. Although that SoC has since been superseded by the Snapdragon 801, Windows Phone 8/8.1 at least support the highest end mobile silicon family available today.
The Lumia Icon was my first Windows Phone experience on Snapdragon 800, and I have to say it is quite good. Launching and switching between apps is pretty quick and the OS as a whole feels nice and responsive. Having spent the past few weeks in Android and iOS 7.1 land, the Windows Phone 8.1 UI animations seem a bit excessive but no where near as bad as iOS 7.0. The platform overall is quite pleasant to use and never really feels slow, at least with the S800 under the hood.
There are a few native benchmarks available on the Windows Phone Store, which I used to track changes in system performance between WP8 and 8.1. I didn’t find much of a delta between the two platforms:
Windows Phone 8.1 vs. 8.0 GDR3 Performance | ||||||
BaseMark OS II | BaseMark X 1.1 (Medium, Overall) | GFXBench 2.7 (T-Rex HD, Onscreen) | ||||
Windows Phone 8.1 (Lumia Icon) | 1046 | 25536 | 25 fps | |||
Windows Phone 8.0 GDR3 (Lumia Icon) | 1033 | 24748 | 25 fps |
The individual BaseMark OS II scores are worth drilling down on as they expose the improvements in web rendering performance, as well as highlight a slight regression in some of the other areas:
Windows Phone 8.1 vs. 8.0 GDR3 Basemark OS II Performance | |||||||
System | Memory | Graphics | Web | ||||
Windows Phone 8.1 (Lumia Icon) | 921 | 1492 | 1409 | 619 | |||
Windows Phone 8.0 GDR3 (Lumia Icon) | 1146 | 1474 | 1192 | 566 |
The slight drop in system performance (these are mostly CPU bound tests) is unusual, but this is a dev preview of WP8.1. IO performance (memory suite) doesn't change, but graphics and web performance both go up. I suspect there are some improvements on the GPU driver front, which are responsible for the uptick in graphics performance. The increase in web rendering performance is also made evident here.
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rudder - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
I have the $59 Nokia 520. great phone with GPS, camera, SD slot. I have been using a windows phone for almost 2 years now. My wife has an android phone and the kids have iphones. I like the windows UI the best out of all of those.The problem continues to be the app store. It takes forever for popular apps to show up. Or they never show up. I shop and Kroger and they have a nice app for android and iOS. Still no windows version. Just one example but this is the most frustrating aspect of having a windows phone.
EddyKilowatt - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
Finally, the elephant in the room: Apps. No, Microsoft, NOT the latest Flappy Bird or whatever the flavor of the month is, that you will dutifully get ported for you. It's the thousands upon thousands of small specialized apps, like the above-mentioned retail store app, or the one for controlling my new smart TV, or the one that remote-starts my new Nissan. ALWAYS these apps are "now available for iOS and Android". SELDOM and I mean like <1% of the time (and shrinking) are they available for Win Phone. When was the last time you saw Windows mentioned in an app ad?I know because I've had the original Lumia 900 for two years and am just in the process of deciding what to replace it with. I would love to another Nokia with a nice camera, but I'll just feel like "fooled me twice, shame on me" if I go Windows Phone again.
hangfirew8 - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
One such small "killer app" is a Data Sense replacement, since AT&T deletes this absolutely essential App from WP8.Jonahkirk - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link
Data Sense is built into 8.1 if you get the developer preview (even on my ATT Lumia 920)Romberry - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link
Yes, it's in the developer preview. I hope that when AT&T releases their OTA update that they don't take it out...but I'd almost bet that they do.Klimax - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
Some things to note:1)What for is powerful hardware, when you kill it by software stack? (Android) Chase after hardware is mostly misguided thing if it doesn't have real effect. (And that is mostly true for WP, too optimized) Or rather forced to compensate for bad software.
2)Reminder html5 test is testing unfinished specs and thus its score is useless. (What is support now may turn up as obsolete unsupport) Or did everybody forgot lesson of IE6?
3)" It’s no coincidence that the two players that do have that feature also derive revenue from selling advertising against user data."
That's Google, not Microsoft so it is mostly wrong.
akdj - Tuesday, April 22, 2014 - link
"3)" It’s no coincidence that the two players that do have that feature also derive revenue from selling advertising against user data."
That's Google, not Microsoft so it is mostly wrong."
Google AND Apple. IOW; in your quote 'the 2 players.' ;)
HTML 5...useless? LoL. Tell that to the 90% of real 'players' (YouTube? Facebook?) on the web while Flash goes the way of the DoDo, even Android has abandoned Flash support..Adobe isn't refining Flash for mobile any longer. HTML 5, while still being 'refined' is certainly FAR from 'unfinished specs' rendering Anand's measurements/'scores useless'. IE6? It's 2014. The ONLY one that needs to 'remember that lesson' is MS. Not you, not me, not 'us'. Just. Microsoft.
I'll agree whole heartedly with your first point although I'm not sure it gold water for Window's phones. They're still babies as is Win 8.1. As this is really the biggest and most significant update to the handset yet. Opening their A/SPK and providing an optimized platform for developers, IE XCode, they'll make in roads with developers. I've not spent real time with any Win phone but a colleague of mine at the radio station refuses to use anything but his year and a half old Nokia. He LOVES it and isn't interested in a different platform. As Anand mentions in the article, those in the camp seem content for the most part. Point being this is the FIRST round of Window's handsets using recent silicon. They've NOT chased fluency of the GUI with 'specs' and faster, more powerful silicon ala Samsung. TouchWiz is a HOG...And that added layer of peanut butter...I mean java script to eat through as well as the default apps installed by the carriers mandates hearty silicon JUST to achieve parity with iOS fluency. That said ...Apple isn't resting on their laurels when it comes to graphic and computational power. Look at the 5s/Air/rMini reviews. The A7 is a MONSTER. And 7.1, much like 8.1 on Windows slapped a lot of Mosquitos out of the way born from the virgin rewrite of iOS 7's rewrite for the ground up. Again, these are infants. The OS'es. We've been computing on our desks for 30 years give or take a decade pending your wealth in the 70s/80s. Mobile computing is really REALLY young. While we've had cell phones for decades, the 'smart' phone reimagined by blackberry....evolved/revolutionize by iOS in 2007 & Android '08---we're not even a decade into this serious computational paradigm. Many (excluding those of us geeks hanging and commenting on boards such as this) are finding iPad or Surface or the latest incarnation of Note/Nexus tablet computing to be ALL they need! Facebook, surfing and reading, music and media, email and gaming, social media and communication via FaceTime and iMessage...the list gets HUGE when you add the 2,000,000+ apps/software available in the Play and App Store. More software is available (and for significantly Less $) than any time in HISTORY! That's awesome. And faster, more powered I, and more efficient 'guts' IMHO is a welcome addition. Not for the sake of powering the basic, default UI but the option to access more data faster, play bleeding edge games, lower latency creative (audio, drawing, video manipulation, etc)... Faster radios and LTE infrastructure ...we're JUST getting a peak of the future. And Moore's Law seems to have jumped ship (desk and laptops) to the skiff...and the mobile platform. Intel is jumping HEAD FIRST...That should tell ya what the real 'players' are thinking. Did you see any of the reactions from Intel, Qualcomm, et al when the 64bit A7 dropped? If not, spoiler...so did ALL of their jaws. Snapdragon is aiming for their 64bit chips late this year, early next. Qualcomm ...maybe first or second quarter of '15. Intel is building out 64bit ULV chips as we speak and Haswell was a serious update efficiency-wise in comparison to ivy and sandy bridge...not to mention the phenomenal increase in iGPU performance. While you absolutely MIGHT be right on all accounts it would be sad if the barriers aren't continuously being pushed and more companies 'play'. Competition helps ALL OF US, as well as the companies doing the innovation from the polyurethane companies to the radio producers, SoC and silicon providers to the display and optic development for Gosh Sake...DON'T slow down! Keep it going!!!
J
akdj - Tuesday, April 22, 2014 - link
My apologies for the length and typos! Anand...is it mobile only or just the response 'system' that doesn't allow for editing? Seems like I remembered a small edit button post, posting;)...if that makes any sense. Anyway...hopefully you understand my points. All in fun and enjoyment of technology...I wasn't trying to come across as a 'dick'. If my initial response did, my apologiesJ
RollingCamel - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
No T9?Da W - Tuesday, April 15, 2014 - link
Just bought an HTC 8x on ebay, going back to WP8 baby!Got an HTC ONE for SALE! Good bye android, you never did what i needed the way i needed it!