New Windows Phone 8.1 details unveiled in demo

Been on WP 8 for just over a month now and I am still impressed with it. The active tiles work great imo ... ideal for a mobile device for someone too busy to tinker and mess around. Everything is quick. One look at my start screen gives me a good overview of messages/mails.

The app store needs work, that is for sure, but the important apps are there. MS can/should contribute a lot more apps to the app store to help things along. Nokia is trying.
 
Mentioned elsewhere that I got my hands on a live Lumia today for the first time. Very impressed to say the least. Had me second guessing my S5 decision....
 
I watched the announcement, it looks amazing. Can't wait for the developer preview to be available later this month.
 
A mate of mine here gets to play with the latest MS stuff, and from what I have seen him demo, and what he runs daily, my next phone is definitely going run this OS.

While all the other OS's are great in their own right, I use very little of them. Where MS trumps is integration into it's ecosystem and offering for the business users. Yes, there are loads of people who like the cool of Apple and Android, but I am a business person and MS Phone so awesomely takes over the business void that Blackberry has left.

Love MS or hate them, but when they get it right, it's a magnificent thing to behold.
 
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Joe Belfiore.
And since you mention Win 8, this is the guy who invented the Start button. And the Menu Bar. Later, the whole UI user experience in XP was his baby. One of the nicest guys in tech, loved and highly respected by all, including MSFT enemies
 
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This is good news, especially the notification tray.

Contrary to other opinions here, I found WP8 on my Lumia incredibly frustrating and primitive compared to Android and IOS. The lack of a central notification system was a complete showstopper for me as the phone would beep with the same message alert tone for everything and if you didn't catch what it was on the display you'd have to manually check each messaging app.

Also, IMAP support was a joke as it sync's to each IMAP folder separately so if you have 20 IMAP folders you'd have to check each one separately. Background processing and multitasking in most apps could best be described as "best effort" and even common apps seemed buggy and primitive - e.g. uploading pics to Facebook had to be done one at a time and was extremely slow, completely cancelling every time you switch to another app.
 
I've been using a HTC 8X (with Win8) for 14 months. This is the first phone where I did not start looking for an alternative within 10 months. I will choose the same phone without hesitation if I had to upgrade today.
 
Arthur said:
Joe Belfiore.
And since you mention Win 8, this is the guy who invented the Start button. And the Menu Bar.
Click to expand...
Start button was for a while (under different name), so maybe Microsoft invented the name (ugly, BTW). Menu bar wasn't invented by Microsoft either. It was part of IBM research for common user interface in preparation for new operating system to replace DOS (OS/2).
 
Question have they fixed:
The single volume that adjusted all volumes, like when you lower the volume when watching a video, it will also lower the volume across everything on the phone, including your alarm?
Fixed the time syncing with internet time server? Wake up and suddenly your phone is 30 minutes out?
Fixed the music syncing? As it gets corrupted at times? (No really google it, songs duplicate and don't play)
Got syncing working with Google mail again?
Got corporate support? Our IT struggled to get my phone syncing with our exchange sever.
 
BBotha said:
Question have they fixed:
The single volume that adjusted all volumes, like when you lower the volume when watching a video, it will also lower the volume across everything on the phone, including your alarm?
Fixed the time syncing with internet time server? Wake up and suddenly your phone is 30 minutes out?
Fixed the music syncing? As it gets corrupted at times? (No really google it, songs duplicate and don't play)
Got syncing working with Google mail again?
Got corporate support? Our IT struggled to get my phone syncing with our exchange sever.
Click to expand...

And have they fixed:

The bright button lights at the bottom that don't dim with the screen so you blind yourself if you try to read in the dark.
The "live" tiles that randomly cease to be "live".
The endless scrolling up and down a single vertical column to get to your app.
The fact that it can only seemingly keep four apps running in the background at a time??
And lastly, the difficulty of dialling a contact as everything from your social media apps is mashed together in the contact list and it is only after a laborious process that you get to the point where you can actually dial.
 
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BBotha said:
Question have they fixed:
The single volume that adjusted all volumes, like when you lower the volume when watching a video, it will also lower the volume across everything on the phone, including your alarm?
Fixed the time syncing with internet time server? Wake up and suddenly your phone is 30 minutes out?
Fixed the music syncing? As it gets corrupted at times? (No really google it, songs duplicate and don't play)
Got syncing working with Google mail again?
Got corporate support? Our IT struggled to get my phone syncing with our exchange sever.
Click to expand...

Independent volume controls are in.
Never had an issue with my phone's time going out. Might be your network providing incorrect time as the phone sync with the network and not a time server.
Dunno about the music syncing, don't use it personally.
Google mail and calendar syncing is fixed.
Much better corporate integration, VPN has been added, ability to control apps installed and allowed to be installed on the phone, remote configuration of Exchange mailboxes.

If your IT had problems getting it to sync to Exchange then there is a problem with the configuration on your Exchange server and not the phone. We look after a lot of Exchange servers and we haven't had a single issue with users not being able to setup their Exchange accounts on iOS, Android or WP by simply entering their username and password, the server should provide all the rest of the settings automatically to the device.
 
grim said:
VPN has been added
Click to expand...

Ah, yes - good, forgot lack of VPN support was actually the final straw that lead me to chuck the Lumia in a drawer last year and forget about it. Might just dust it off now and give 8.1 a try.
 
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