Out of the Window(s)

On Tuesday (30th August 2016) the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is released to those who pre-ordered.

That was me.

I set my alarm to wake me up at 6am so I could pre-order. After significant issues (more on this later) I have eventually pre-ordered in the signature Coral Blue.

And so ends the experiment - the Windows Experiment.

So, you may remember that I tried to rely on a stand-alone wristwatch phone. Whilst this had a number of other failings, one of the critical failings was the camera - having to cope with a 1.3mp camera with a VERY glitchy app and a logistically difficult positioning/focusing "functionality" - was a really bad experience.

Now, I'm a photographer. Let me clarify this for the Millennials - I know a lot about photography and love (LOVE) taking photographs. I do not do this on Instagram. I do not do this on Snapchat. I do not use filters. I do not take selfies. To me, photographs are not disposable or temporary. If they are to you, cool, fine - you've found your thing, enjoy it. I'm not a snob about this, and if Insta and Snap are getting you to understand things like lighting, positioning, framing and the like; if they are encouraging you to take photos of things you perhaps might not take a photo of purely because you can share it with a vignette filter, I am happy - perhaps delighted. You are looking at the world because you either enjoy that beauty or you want people to see/acknowledge/appreciate/like/share what you have achieved.

And yes, I love "true" photography, but I'm not a professional photographer though. Unfortunately I am stuck behind a desk reviewing and redrafting very boring, complicated documents most days. But I do have professional and semi-professional kit, including a Pentax K30 and a Nikon D810. So I love photography. Maybe I picked the wrong calling in life.

But, if I can't have my big cameras with me - if they are too bulky or I see stuff on a random wander - then I need a good camera. This is where the wristwatchphone failed. So, when I went out to buy the replacement I specifically sought out the best camera phone, but also with the largest format screen: I am fortunate in having big hands and I travel a lot, so having a big screen allows me to watch stuff conveniently. This was particularly a concern at the time - I was about to travel to Japan. I needed a damned good secondary camera, I needed to watch video, and I needed a GPS signal (which had failed on my wristwatchphone).

Enter the (then) Nokia Lumia 1520. After a year and a slight incident on a New Year night and - being locked into the Windows system without any easy means of transfer - I bought a Microsoft Lumia 950XL. Basically, both the absolute top of the range in large format, best camera phones that you could get at the time.

But, I'm going back to Android?

Yes. And, seriously, it can't happen soon enough. And I do mean this from the perspective of someone who tried to embrace Windows Phone as an OS.

So, are there any real design problems?

Well, yes.

I actually really liked the 1520 except for how the camera stuck out the back. Yes, they were plastic, they didn't have the 'premium' feel of these new metal or glass phones; but they were gripable. One of the issues with the 1520 which was resolved by the time of the 950XL was the angularity of the corners. If used for any amount of time, the 1520 would leave noticeable, sharp corner imprints in your palm which - after a while - became uncomfortable or even painful. The 950XL eradicated these but - very stupidly - put the power button between the up-down rocker of the volume. It's such a really stupid place to put it, one can only think they did so only "to be different" to Android and Apple. Don't.

With the 950XL you can pop-off and change the cover. Remember when that was a thing with original Nokias? Obviously you can't buy a cheap cover from the modding-shop on the corner because the cover contains the aerial and the NFC loop. And - as you soon find with a low-take-up-phone - no-one's going to bother making them.

Anyhow... to get to the point, the Windows Phone experience.

This is bad.

Really, really bad.

Like, really REALLY fucking bad.

Now, some of this is down to Microsoft being late to market; to being reluctant to licence like Alphabet's Android;  to buying Nokia and essentially excluding other hardware manufacturer's from the OS (yes, Google bought Motorola but was careful to keep it at arm's length and golly wasn't that such a good purchase for them).

But we smiled, Windows Phone users. We regarded ourselves as "The One Percent". We were to be the early adopters - this would ultimately challenge Android. Wouldn't it - because, let's face it, desktop is still MASSIVE and this partnering would be so valuable?

Hmmm

The UWP

For those of us who bought phones and upgraded laptops to Windows 8 before Windows 10 existed; the Windows 10 UWP was supposed to be the saviour.

UWP stands for Universal Windows Platform. You could design a program - an App as they are now - using UWP and it would work on a Windows 10 desktop computer; it would work on a Windows laptop, on a Windows tablet and a Windows mobile. Simple. One app for all - irregardless of form or factor.

Only no.

UWP has massive restrictions, hold-backs and problems for desktops. After all, UWP is designed to be usable on a 5" touchscreen device. There are huge differences between that and a computer with a standalone 15" screen and two independent inputs. UWP was SO simple, it couldn't be used by Enterprise. So Enterprise carried on creating stuff using the Windows 10 desktop API with minor fudges if people needed to use a Surface (still the only major "tablet" to take up the Windows interface, although a LOT of laptops/transformables use it). Indeed, Windows allowed this - they allowed Windows10 and WindowsUWP APIs to exist side-by-side. The fact remains - you cannot simply design one app for a device that has so much functionality as a desktop or laptop and expect it to be useable or adopted on devices with a tiny screen with no independent keyboard or mouse.

The Bridges

The Bridges were supposed to be the other saviour.

As I said, Microsoft was hugely late to the smartphone market. Apple and Android had a huge command; even Blackberry was still giving off some very vigorous of its last dying throws... Microsoft wasn't there.

Also bear in mind that, until apps get huge, they are tiny. They are often created by one-two-maybe-three-man-band units. Apps were something the WebDev teams could "pick up" - very, very often they were not business-critical. Still, to this day, there are a hell of a lot of "apps" which are basic shell-interfaces to the company's standard website. But when you have such a small team of developers or - more often than not - you are outsourcing to an AppDev team, you need to prioritize.

This iss business - it's cash. If it costs you A to develop an app, it costs you 2xA to develop two apps for competing systems; and 3xA for three OSs.

Microsoft was third - sometimes even fourth - behind Android, iOS, and sometimes BB9/10.

Hence the really, really tiny commissioning of apps. BBC didn't commission WP apps for News or for Weather; nor did the Met Office; nor Grindr; nor Tinder; nor the Guardian nor SO MANY sites/applications.

What was supposed to happen was two bridges. These would allow companies to use their already-created iOS or Android app, and easily port them into WindowsPhoneOS.

18 months later, we are still waiting on our bridges, we are still waiting on any significant apps. We remain the 1%, with 1% of the apps, 1% of the content.

The Actual OS

Ok, so lets actually focus on the actual OS for a moment.

Wifi

The Wifi system is fucking appalling. It regularly connects to my home WiFi, but can't connect to the internet. It shows as "connected to WiFi, No Signal". This is despite every other device being able to do so. What you have to do is manually turn off the WPOS WiFi and then turn it back on again. Every. Fucking. Day.

Bluetooth

The bluetooth system is fucking appalling. It regularly drops for no apparent reason. I often go out with wireless headphones on and the phone in my trousers and it struggles - very often dropping entirely, leading to my headphones telling me they are "not connected" and then blasting the locale with whatever I have been listening to through the phone speaker. It seems to do this particularly just after it has connected to a random open WiFi hotspot - it seems the OS cannot handle the two different connections at any one time.

Oh, another issue - transferring files. Despite both my laptop and my phone running Windows 10, the phone failed on every occasion to connect to transfer. This is the laptop which used to happily connect, way back when, to my old Android phone (and even the wristwatchphone). It is able to see it, but unable to transfer anything to it, meaning you end up relying on cables for data transfer for a phone that has wireless charging.
 
 Apps

Other than the above, I am going to try to concentrate on only those apps which you have/can only use because Windows.

Edge
Throughout I will refer to WindowsPhoneEdge as "Edge" - it should be distinguished from desktop Edge.

Edge is the most fucking awful of browsers. This isn't a little bit terrible, this is full-on-fucking-terrible.

Maybe it is [ahem] ahead of it's time... but a LOT of stuff doesn't load. Or doesn't load well. There are still huge formatting issues which lead to a lot of content - pictures, videos, basically anything embedded - loading with a [x]. Or not loading at all. HUGE bugbares with Edge include the 'loading' bar scooting along to 95% loaded, only to sit there forever and ... eventually ... display the "this page can't be displayed" page. Get used to that page - you see it almost 50% of the time you try to load a page, even when you are on strong internet signal. Other bugbares include the loading bar scooting all the way along and disappearing, presenting you with an entirely white page which purports to have loaded your page ... only after a five minute wait to give you a "this page can't be displayed" page. Yeah, we hate Java, but a lot - A LOT - of non-Java sites were inaccesible.

Oh, and don't click the 'reload' button - it (apparently) does nothing. I've done it and the lying-loading-bar doesn't move at all. VERY regularly you can be hitting it and it does nothing.

Oh, and the worst - it loads a page and you start reading it ... only for it then to disappear and be replaced with a "this page can't be displayed" message because some third-party ad didn't load in.

Since the most recent update, it often doesn't take me to the link I have clicked on, just the most recently visited. And using the Back button doesn't take you back to your previous app, just back through the randomly selected number of pages until Edge decides to send you back to the homescreen.

When I tried to buy my Samsung Note (see above) it obviously used a plug-in which was incompatible with WindowsPhoneOS - payment worked when I was using Edge (still the worst rebranding in history) on my laptop; but simply showed failure-to-load boxes in WPEdge.

Groove

You have to use Groove because - as pointed out above - there are no competitiors. Groove is fucking terrible.

I have loaded up my SD card with around 2000 songs; and I have set Groove to Random. Groove plays around 50 of these. I can go in and select some of the other songs and Groove will happily play them; but not in its Random sequence (hence why I capitalise Random). Also, Groove does random stuff (aside from not actually playing music randomly). Once, I found Groove had 'slipped' into only Randomly playing certain songs that began with the letter T. I wish this had only happened once.

One of the "best" functions of Groove is when you connect your wireless headphones, press play, and it doesn't play ... for whatever reason. You have to drag your phone out of your pocket, open the apparently-already-open-and-functionining Groove app, and press Play. Because that is what wireless headphones are about (and yes, I have tried on other devices with those wireless headphones, all which worked - to be fair to Groove, whilst being Microsoft-owned, they are not contributors to WPOS).

Oh, and I permanently have Adele staring at me, no matter what song is playing. The image selection thing is terrifying.

Email

 The email app is fucking appalling. Firstly, it can't distinguish between my Outlook and my GMail accounts, so clicking on a notification could send me to either. That's if I get a notification - I don't, since the most recent OS update (and worse - I don't get a notification when I get a WhatsApp message).

Sometimes it will decide that stuff that has been filed to a Spam folder is actually real mail, sometimes not.

Always - even when you are on a stable, secure WiFi network - it will ask you if you want to download the rest of the message. Why is that not automatic? Oh, and when you click the link, any one of three things could happen:
1) it might appear to refresh but actually do sweet fuck all and simply show you the same link again;
2) it might appear to refresh but actually do sweet fuck all and jump back to the top of the screen making you scroll down again to select the link;
3) around 1% of the time, it might actually download. But don't click a fucking link in the email, because they won't work. And pictures won't download.

Oh, and you can't look at anything older than 7  days. Regardless that you filed it or any such stuff. It'll show you the folders, but nothing in the folders if it is older than 7 days. You'll have to log in to your web account (using that beautifully lovely WP Edge) to try to find anything older that a week.

Also, if you have multiple addresses registerered to your account, don't bother. Despite using the Outlook app with Outlook addresses, it automatically set my reply address as my main Outlook Account address, despite the fact that I use one of my other addresses much more siginicantly. And you can't change this - this is fixed.

Calendar

Don't.

Look.

Back.

Honestly, if you're trying to find out what you were doing a month ago, it's probably gone.

The calendar app also has this lovely, honestly wonderful, feature where sometimes it will let you click on a day; and other times it will randomly shuffle you forward to the next upcoming event to that date. So, when you touch a date to add an event, you'll sometimes find yourself in October because Microsoft thinks you need to be busier in October where as you were actually trying to add an appointment for August.

It can be really difficult to see events.

And certain basic defaults are not available - you can't automatically set events as Private for example - I found this out after a phonecall with my mother where she knew all of my plans for the week. This is - at best - annoying; at worst - fucking disgracful. The "Remind me" options are fucking awful and uncustomisable.

Camera

Ok,so I flagged up at the start how imperative the camera is - why I bought the phone. The camera app is terrible. So terrible that it has been my primary reason for moving on.

The camera - when it takes the photo that I want it to take - is good.: colours, lighting and stuff. Sometimes.

However the software behind it is fucking appalling.

On so, so, so many occasions it taken well over 3 seconds to focus on something and take the photo, that the photo has been unuseable. It takes it well over a second (and normally a shake) to tell it that you are taking a portrait photo rather than landscape. Every time the OS updates this gets worse. The focus really is that fucking terrible that I don't try to take "live" photos any more, only posed/landscape.

It really is the fucking worst.


OS Updates

The WPOS updates suggest to me that actually Microsoft really aren't committed to WindowsPhone as an OS.

What happens is this:
Major Update
Fix
Further fix
Fix to fix those further niggles
Major Update
Immediate fix
Further fix

Now, we know that nothing is perfect; we know that fixes and updates are needed - it's how life happens.

But, what Microsoft's policy suggests (which isn't confirmed by any means) is that they don't seem to be committed to Windows Phone. They certainly don't seem to Alpha or Beta test the Windows Phone 10 OS any where near as catagorically as they do the Windows 10 update releases. For example, this week, they seemed to be quite happy updating my phone with an OS that wouldn't take photos or connect to an WiFi signal for a good two days before they updated and 'fixed' that element.

I disclose - I bought a Samsung Note 1 way back in the day. I previously owned a Dell Streak (get that!) and I do massively dislike the amount of bloatware that Samsungs come with. But I've gone with it on this occasion because of the camera and form-factor.

A year like no other (so far at least)

WTF?

W

THE

ACTUAL

F?

Ok, so I'm going to start by explaining - you haven't heard from my for a little while. It isn't that I haven't had stuff to say - I REALLY do. I've said previously how busy my life is now I'm in London.

And I have SO many more blog posts to post. Remember how I used to be SO busy in an evening getting my house done up? Well, I had some "fat" days at old work - days which were not so busy, where I was able to do my own stuff and, for whatever reason, write at least the scratches of a dozen blogs. But I haven't yet gotten to post them. They sit there, some well over a year old.

But I haven't had the opportunity to post.

Which makes now a little more DESPERATELY NOW.

So, 2016.

Looking back, 2015 seemed to be quite sedate. I mean, there was a HUGE FLIPPING GENERAL ELECTION where every news source (including the BBC that I unashamedly love) concentrated on another coalition rather than what a winning party could do.

But otherwise, for a domestic UK resident, probably the only other significant event of 2015 was the Parisien killings in and around the Bataclan on 13th November; oh, and perhaps the HUGE GREAT BIG FIFA scandal but you know seriously that England and probably the rest of the UK (except since 13July2016 for the Welsh) will only use this to justify our football failings.

But otherwise we had, kinda a "fat" year over here ("fat" days are days where you don't do much. You might spend the day in bed; Fat days at work are days where you don't have to do too much, just coast through. Fat days are days when nothing happens, there's nothing to report), in the West, in the UK in 2015 (cos, you know, so many people die in other incidents like the earthquakes or other terrorist killings OUTSIDE of English speaking nations it's hardly worth reporting).

And so we get to 2016.

If we took a pill in Ibiza, (weirdly found "the original") we want a refund. Seriously, everything has felt like we're smashed off our tits

So.

Firstly, we seem to be having a bad time with people dying. A really REALLY bad time. Since the BBC published "Why So Many Celebrities Have Died in 2016" we've had more die

We had a month. (I won't post links because they are either well accepted fact, or so frequently changing as to be unreliable).

All major politicians were in favour of Remain (remaining in the EU)...

But Remain didn't win.

The Prime Minister stepped down. I'll be honest, I expected this. He had pinned himself so deeply to Remain he simply could do nothing but resign. And he had fully admitted back in March 2015, that he did not want a third term. This was his perfect 'Out', albeit a few months before that which would have been normal.

Lets mull: he wasn't going to be Leader for 2020 polls (Fixed Term), so presumable the new Conservative leader would have to be in place by 2019... well, 2018 to ensure a good transition. Well, any time between him admitting he didn't want a third term and 2018.

His expected next in line - George Osbourne - had made such a poison of his "Emergency Budget" that he said would be needed post-Brexit (horrible word) , he simply could not stand.

The leaders of the Leavers - Boris and Grove, managed to knive each other and then themselves in the back, front and face.


Theresa May was appointed by default (fast forward to 0:44).

And the ... opposition ... I presume we have to call it that ... has gone into meltdown. The Parliamentary Labour Party doesn't want Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. The members of the Labour Party apparently do. There was a vote of no confidence, there are challengers, but it all got muffled because of what happened in the Conservatives and Government and a MAHOOSIVE reshuffle which basically cut out all of the dead wood and - tripping off our tits again - installed Boris Johnson as the most racist Foreign Secretary to date.

As I write, Europe has gone crazy. There has been another ISIS-related terrorist attack in Paris, killing 84 and leaving a further 50 in a critical condition. Turkey has descended in to an attempted military coup.

Still, at least there hasn't been an aircraft go missing or get shot down this year, because that was a very 2014 thing to do.

A Silght Fantasy Land

So, I've lived in London for almost five months now.

One of the craziest things is the differences between when I lived in the middle land and here is that "going home" and "doing things" is so much easier.

So, for example, this bank holiday weekend. I know previously I've had "ok" bank holiday weekends. Some weekends I've even gotten drunk and woken up in San Francisco (seriously, I've never written about that?!)

Yeah, I could wander up to Piccadilly Circus after work, pop to a few bars and still be home before 8. These bars that had previously been "destination" bars, suddenly became locals. Well, regulars. And I like that.

But it still seems weirdly Hollywood - you know, in as much as people from the midlands still see a visit to these places as "destinations". And I hate to say "people from the midlands", but that is what this blog is about:

This very weird world in which I live.

Back in the Midlands, if I had nothing planned for a bank holiday, this was a disgrace. It was also rare. There were normally people that wanted to go out on the Friday night - celebrating the start of the bank holiday - and the footballers would want to go out following Sunday training.

But this was "going out". This was planned weeks in advance. Spontaneous nights happened rarely. This wasn't just "dropping into a pub" like I do now. Occasionally on a Friday someone would text "anyone fancy a night out tonight?" which would prompt "I can be out for 8:30ish"; "my tram won't get me to town until 9", "Can we make it 9:30 - I've only just got in and the cat's been sick and I have to order pizza", "bus is running late, I'll meet you guys at 10".

The pubs now are ten minutes down the road. My friends work in the city. If we want, I can text at 5:30 and meet someone before 6pm. I sometimes just drop in on my way home. My way home in my previous job was almost 2 hours from home. A walk, an hour train ride, a walk. And this wasn't just me. Transport links were such that if we were going out for drinks, people could be waiting half an hour for a twenty minute bus ride in (yes, we had taxis, but they were expensive). That's almost an hour - and that's pretty much at the least.

A couple of weeks ago down here I got home at around 10pm after a few drinks in town to a message from someone who was in a bar just down the road ... so I went straight back out, met him within 10 minutes and stayed out until 2am.

When I bought the house that I lived in for almost ten years, one of the critical selling points about it was that it would take me 15 minutes to walk to town. But that was me - other people lived further out; and that was also on this caveat that I didn't get back from work until 6:30pm; and that I was going out in town rather than some of the more tricky-to-get-to-suburbs. If I wanted to go out with people during the week, this required planning and - because of the amount of time it would ultimately take them to get home - was actually pretty unworkable spontaneously.

Now, this isn't an absolute now that I live in London. Yes, there is a lot going on, but some of these things can be a bit of a distance away. One of my friends in Camden invited me our for a rugby game a few weeks ago. Clapham to Camden is 30 minutes on the tube, not to mention the ten minutes walk at his end. But at least the tube runs until midnight even on normal, weekday nights. Buses back up in the midlands used to stop before 11pm and were at that time on between a 15 minute and an hourly cycle.

And, you know, people live far further east and west. Last weekend we did a pubcrawl starting out in Richmond. The starters were somewhat scant - we started with 7, and a lot of that was down to its westerly starting point. One of those starters came from Stratford and it took him just over an hour and a half (albeit via a bacon sandwich seller). Most of those who joined later had actually being doing other things during the day, but there were a couple who were only going to meet us once we "got more central".

I remember dating someone who lived in Tooting. For him, "heading into town" - that being Soho - was quite a big thing. They had a couple of local bars in Tooting to pop to, a bigger night out would involve Clapham; and that would be because a night bus back from Clapham could take half an hour. A night bus from "town" could be almost two. Believe me, I know - Sunday I walked for a good 10 minutes to wait 15 for a night bus which took not far shy of half an hour. So an hour in total from Tottenham Court Road to Clapham. That said, back up North on a Sunday (even a bank holiday Sunday) there would have been nothing other than taxis. And a huge queue for those with policies such as "we don't do journeys of less than 5 miles" (Uber only arrived as I left).

But, where the real fantasticness and - more to the original point of the blog, rather than just commenting on connectivity - fantasyiedness comes in occurred on Monday.

At around 5pm (bank holiday) Monday night my friend Brian rang. He wanted to watch a movie. I was in Soho photographing stuff. I said I'd be there at 7:30. Within two and a half hours I had had another drink, gotten the tube home, cooked pie and mash (I actually did, this isn't just a cliche) and gotten to Brian's - no tube, just a 30 minute walk (I stopped off to buy a sugar-free lemonade). At 11, after the film had finished and we had our post-movie chat, I poddled back home.

All sorts of awesome.

But what makes this particularly weird from my perspective is that whilst I lived up North, I stayed with Bri down South. When I turned up on a Friday I "moved in" for the weekend. I turned up with a rucksack, I stayed the nights, and then I went off to the train station.

Brian was my base - my second home.

This Monday there was no "moving in". I turned up in my own time, watched and left. I went home. Home. Not to a train station but to this weird, fantastical London home. I left with nothing - nothing at all, rather than hulking a rucksack around with me. This is the dynamic change not just to the relationship I have with my friend, but to the whole relationship I have with London. Despite the fact that I used to visit 3/4/5/6 times a year, that's what I was - a visitor.

Now?

I am a Londoner.

A Brief Life Update

Ok, so where was I?

No job, no home ... and awaiting an operation to disable one of my arms.

Yeah. All was looking good.

No - it actually was looking good.

No job lead to the no-home situation. This was the best thing ever.

No, seriously.

You see, I should have been in London ten years ago. I think I've explained this before. And the only reasons I wasn't was because of the house and the job.

I just got the house into a sellable (though not perfect) condition.

And at exactly the same point I got made redundant.

But, I got my new job - heart of Mayfair. Does it get better? Working a proper 9-5:30, few late nights, good salary, Mayfair. It's all a bit too fucking awesome.

So, I'm renting down in Clapham. This is the best thing ever. It's so convenient for everything. For town, for work, for the outer zones, for nights.

The house sale hasn't been as quick or successful as hoped. The first sale fell through, half because of the buyer's situation, half because the agents suggested that I would take responsibility for some of the works required by the buyer's lender.

Second sale - for more, although no thanks to the agents (who wanted me to take less) seems to be progressing ok. So far.

But London is the best move I made - albeit like I said 10 years too late.

I set myself a challenge: #DoOneThing . #DoOneThing involves doing one thing a week that is a little off beat. Something outside of the 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as seems to have become the norm).

How often have you spoken to people from even your own home town, said that you'd done something and heard "I must get around to that"? Too often with me. And with my London friends - it seemed as though I'd done more living outside of the city than they had.

And so in the last four months that I've been down here, I've been to more gigs, theatre, comedy, art, film and sports stuff than I perhaps ever have. I've certainly broken the rule and done more than one thing a week.

I broke my rule. Many times. Take next week - depite it being a bank holiday, I'm going to the recording of a tv show, a theatre performance and a comedy gig. That's more than one thing.

Isn't it all fantastic?