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.

What about Windows

So, everybody’s excited for Windows 10. And with good reason; after all – this is the Windows that’s supposed to get it right, isn’t it?

What do I mean by that?

Well, Windows flip-flops between good and bad (at least, with the non-server, non-NT versions).

Windows 98 – good.

Windows ME – bad.

Windows XP – good.

Windows Vista – bad.

Windows 7 – good.

Windows 8 – bad.

(We have to remember that Windows 8.1 is essentially just a service pack update and not a full version.)

Now, why is this? Some would say it’s because they are trying to be too radical for their customers – that customers don’t really like change – they accept change when they can’t see it happening or if they feel it a choice they are making, but they don’t otherwise like losing what is familiar. That Windows changes are “not glacial” enough I don’t think works. This is technology and people still get excited by what is new; even when it is technology for the masses. It’s why most of us upgrade our phones every two years.

The reason seems to be more simple – they forget what Windows is about. They lose track and then they get reminded and go back to what they do best.

I’m going to ignore Windows ME here firstly because I didn’t use it (hardly anyone did) so have little understanding of the problems.

So we’ll kick off with Vista. How did Microsoft get it so wrong? Well, what they did was they looked at the competitors. You know how I love a good analogy? Well, let’s go running. When you’re running, when you’re at the front, you don’t look back. Sure, you need to be aware of where your competitors are, what they are doing, but you don’t do so by looking back. Otherwise you trip up.

And Microsoft was looking back at Apple.

When it launched Vista, everything was about the look, the design. Windows were animated – they popped, swished, wooshed, pinged – and they were translucent. Gone were the simple stylings of previous, everything was 3D rendered. It was a bit of a backlash over the Apple = cool, PC = boring adverts that had been around. But in doing so they forgot a couple of key things.

The vast majority of PCs were (indeed, still are) used for business purposes. This meant two things – they needed security and they needed performance. People didn’t really care how they were styled, so long as they did what you needed them to do. People didn’t care if the window wooshed out of the bottom left corner, so long as it didn’t crash the PC. People didn’t care if it popped as it dissolved into the bottom right corner (they actually didn’t want it to, it’s actually quite irritating in an open-plan office if everyone’s computer keeps popping) so long as the system didn’t get attacked by trojans. And that was the problem – they had concentrated so much on the styling they had forgotten about security and performance.

So, they went back to the drawing board, and created XP – styled very similarly to 98 actually.

Once bitten twice shy?

No. Because the markets were watching, chattering. Investors needed innovation; dynamism. Actually they didn’t – what investors wanted was for Microsoft to be more Apple. Apple was raking it in (it still is), Apple was the darling, Apple was mobile whilst Windows wasn’t. But as well as Apple, there was another runner – Google. Whilst Apple was popular hardware, Android is a far more popular OS. So, Microsoft looked over its should at what Android was doing – how it was doing touchscreen. Because tablets were going to be the next big thing – tablets were going to rule all, weren’t they?

I remember a lot of people getting very excited about iPads, although the few people that I know that still use them, either do so because either they feel a duty to get some use out of these very expensive little trays, or simple because the size makes them a little more portable. Anyhow, I think I’ve had a rant on tablets before.

Now, touchscreen works very well for certain things, but not for others – typing for example. I believe that with enough refinement, touchscreen could replace the mouse as an input device. However, unless there is a stratospheric improvement in handwriting recognition technology, it won’t replace a keyboard (even with handwriting recognition, there are many circumstances where a keyboard is quicker, or reduces the use of the screen ‘estate’).

And so it was that Microsoft got distracted by Google. Or Android, more particularly. And just as Android had apps, so Microsoft suddenly had apps. And widgets (cf. “Windows Live Tiles”) which were apps that told you a little bit of info (or maybe even allowed you to control basic functions). Android had a regulated grid layout, with apps or widgets allowed to occupy any combination so long as it was rectangular – Windows is ever-so-slightly more prescriptive of its Tiles and Live Tiles, but the logic is identical.

So, mobiles and tablets are challengers when you don’t need to write an essay – when all you need text-input for is to type a URL or enter a search term in Spotify. For anything more significant than that you need text input for a number of reasons: tactile feedback; how much of the screen estate keyboards take up; comfort of screen/keyboard separate manoeuvrability and visibility; and screen-smear being just a few.

Only, Microsoft forgot: most of its users are business users, people still feverently gripping their mouses – the people who made Blackberry big because it had a hardware keyboard. People who only tap the tile to open Word and Outlook and Internet Explorer. And they couldn’t find where they were. It was too flash, too radical, too Android for people. Fine – change our icons into Tiles, just remember that a lot of people still use the Start button to find things, just remember that on a laptop or a desktop, the screen is often further out of reach that the keyboard.

But just as the markets were chattering, so the critics were desperate to report the death of Microsoft. They missed out on predicting the death of Myspace, so were eager to have their c.v. emblazoned with the words “First analyst to predict the collapse of …”. Microsoft was – if you look at certain figures – losing market share. It still held the desktop and business OS crowns as well as for email clients (note, clients not services) and Office-type applications; but if you took Internet Explorer, Media Player, and its late entry into mobile, it was not the dominant force that the analysts were used to. And Microsoft had to respond to that – it had to follow.

And this is the thing – Microsoft is neither a follower nor a disrupter. It’s lovely, it sits quietly in the corner telling you that you want a ham sandwich and then offering you a ham sandwich. And this isn’t an organically-reared prosciutto with Andalusian gerkin and carefully-caressed jalapeno pepper piccalilli on seventeen-grain-yet-gluten-free-bloomer sanwich. It’s a ham sandwich – it does what it needs to very well whether it’s sat in your lounge or on your business buffet.

People have always needed Windows to be everything; but now they (and particularly the analysts and investors) need Windows 10 to be even more of everything. It needs to be 5 inches as much as 55 inches. It needs to be touch and type. Most of all, it needs to be a brand – a unique identity.

From what I’ve seen, the see-saw has correctly rocked back to a “good” product.