A few days I switched back to Windows Phone 7.5 as my main smartphone operating system. Why? Well, because I can. I like to change things up every now and then, and blessed as I am with an iPhone 3GS (currently pulling duty at my best friend as her portable gaming device), Galaxy SII with CM9, and an HTC HD7, I have the luxury of doing so. Now that I’m back in the neat, tidy, and straight-lined arms of Windows Phone 7 – three long-standing issues really break the illusion, which all come from one source: the networking stack.
I’ve never made a secret of my love for Windows Phone 7.5 – a love which, come to think of it, is quite strange. I jumped on the WP7 bandwagon from day one, importing the HD7 from the States even though it was far from officially available in The Netherlands. The end result? A thoroughly limiting experience – no paid applications, no Xbox live integration, and so on. This actually happens to be the reason I never did a proper review of Windows Phone 7.
Luckily, that has all changed. I can now buy applications, which is a pretty big deal. The application selection has increased considerably, of course, but like with other platforms, most of it is crap. Finding the gems – like the excellent Twitter client rowi or the beautiful and delightful baconit Reddit client – requires traversing the web, but that’s hardly different from how I find stuff for Android or iOS.
Still, three issues really break the Metro illusion for me: WP7’s horrible wifi sleep policy, slow network performance, and live tiles that refuse to update. All three of these – including the last one, as strange as that may seem – are, or appear to be, related to networking.
The first one is actually the most annoying one. Windows Phone 7’s policy is to turn off wifi after the device has been sleeping for 30 seconds. After pressing the lock button, wifi is turned off after 30 seconds. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it takes WP7 really, really long to reconnect after waking from sleep. This means that whenever I grab my phone to check some mail or launch Facebook, I have to wait 20-25 flow-breaking seconds. First-world problem for sure, but it’s really, really annoying when you quickly want to check some stuff.
Sadly, there’s no way to change this. This policy is put in place to preserve battery life, but honestly, when I’m at home, I couldn’t care less about battery life. Giving me the option to set wifi to always-on would massively improve the user experience – especially since for some reason, I’m the only person in my small hick town who can’t get a 3G connection in this little piece of nowhere (cross-phones, I can’t hold a 3G connection here even though everybody else can. It’s creepy as heck).
The second issue is also quite annoying. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the applications, or with the networking stack itself, but pulling data from the web is often painfully slow, and often will just fail entirely – no matter the wifi network or 3G connection. Twitter clients, the People hub, the Facebook app, Reddit clients, and so on – it’s quite annoying, especially since other phones are blazing fast.
Third – what’s up with live tiles taking ages to update? Do they have some sort of update policy we’re not privy to? I’ll often see Facebook notification badges accumulate for hours and sometimes even days, even though I’ve already dealt with them on the phone itself, on the website, on other devices, everywhere. The live tile of the rowi Twitter client has been showing 70 at-replies all day – and I have no idea how to force the tile to update (I’m not that popular – it’s just counting all my at-replies).
I’m guessing the live tiles aren’t updating easily for me because once the phone goes to sleep, it doesn’t have wifi, and, as I explained, there’s no 3G to fall back on. In other words, all it can use is slow 2G (or whatever it’s called), and it might even be the case that live tiles refuse to update at all without 3G or wifi.
Especially the first two issues are close to gamebreaking for me – both Android and iOS have virtually zero issues with networking for me, so this really takes me back to the old days of wireless networking on my PalmOS and PocketPC devices, which was slow as well and couldn’t hold a connection through sleep either.
Other than these issues – and the obvious lack of quality applications – Windows Phone 7 is still every bit as fresh, fun, beautiful and fluid as when it was first released. Whereas iOS and Android essentially cram a WIMP interface onto a small display (don’t believe the PR speak), Metro has truly and honestly been designed from the ground up for smartphone displays and input, and that alone makes it special. As a geek, you owe it to yourself to at least go to your nearest phone store and play around with Metro.
And, that keyboard. Ah, the Windows Phone 7 keyboard. It’s so much better than the competition I can hardly believe I managed to do without since November 2011.
I can’t live without Swype for Android, have you tried it?
http://beta.swype.com/
I hate Swype.
Plus A Million. Now 8pen, thats where its at.
I hate swype as well… I use on screen keyboard from terminal IDE, but the buttons are too small unless in landscape, at least it is a full keyboard..
Swype is very nice once you get used to it, but there seems to be a wicked learning curve (at least for idiots like me.) I’ve started trying to use the version in MeeGo more and more though.
I also have a variety of phones, though on Verizon. I have a Droid Incredible, Galaxy Nexus, and an HTC Trophy. My order of preference: MIUI rom on the Incredible, WP7, and Galaxy Nexus (though I’m enjoying the MIUI launcher on the Nexus right now).
I keep thinking I’m going to go back to the WP7 phone except that I like the larger screen and form factor of the Nexus over the 3.5″ candy bars (Incredible/Trophy).
WP7 is a great phone with just a few minor issues, though my issues differed from yours; mostly lack of auto column width/rendering when zooming in/out on browser and lack of voice commands during navigation.
WP7.5 IE does have auto-width column zooming. Double tap any column of text, and the column is zoomed in or out to fit the screen. Or are you referringto some other functionality?
As a geek, you owe it to yourself to at least go to your nearest phone store and play around with the N9.(if you can)
For the the buttomless bigger screen on the N9 makes all the difference. The Lumia 800 is weird looking.(to me it looks unsymmetrical and ugly when the screen is lit)
I’ve never tried any WinPhone device, but I am fortunate enough to own both a Galaxy Nexus and N9.
I find the N9’s keyboard much more comfortable compared to the one on the Nexus’ ICS (non-swipe), despite the latter having a bigger screen (and bigger buttons as a result). Android’s keyboard has improved by leaps and bounds, but Meego-Harmattan/N9’s haptic feedback is truly something else. It’s almost like it’s organic, reacting at just the portion of the screen your thumb touches.
Edited 2012-05-03 11:17 UTC
My WP LG e900 has one of the smallest screens at 3.7″ (i think..) and I have quite big hands, not fat just big. And the keypad on the Windows Phone is great, I was a bit unsure of it before with all the problems with autocorrection on iOS, but I find I’m getting more and more lazy with my spelling and aiming now because it feels like I’m just bashing my finger randomly and the Winodws Phone somehow knows what I’m trying to say…. Now I feel like an Chimp.
Sure, the N9 looks nice, but I’m not sure the buttonless UI is all that great. Good for being buttonless, sure, but swiping twice to get from an app to the events screen (which is where new messages, mail, etc. shows up) feels more convoluted than simply pulling down the notifications screen on an Android device. Getting to the home screen simply by pushing the nice, mechanical home button is also better than the more error prone swipe movement.
They’ve made the swiping far less error prone. I’ll say I haven’t used ICS all that much, but all the earlier versions of Android tend to not be terribly consistent. Sometimes I’d hit Home, expecting the home screen, and instead it takes me to the program’s ‘home’. Though this same inconsistency exists on the N9, it’s not very common (a perfect example is Firefox, when you swipe from the top, it’s supposed to close the application, but because it’s Firefox, it swipes off the screen, but then flashes back on and asks if you’d like to close all tabs… You can turn that off though.)
I absolutely love my N9, and if the Blackberry 10 is as similar as Harmattan, then I may switch to them in a few years!
What? I’ve used Android for close to two years, and the home key has always taken me to the home screen. Which apps do you mean?
As for the N9, I like it a lot (bought one just a couple of weeks ago), I just don’t find the UI to be any more efficient than Android’s. Like some other guy said, the haptic feedback is excellent, so the touch screen experience itself is better than elsewhere (perhaps not the Lumias?), but it’s still just a screen. With actual keys, you can feel the touch before you press, haptic feedback will only tell you that you just did.
Thom, it may not be an issue with WP7.5 itself.
My Lumia 710 connects via WiFi in less than 4 seconds.
I also think it’s an HTC problem. I have an HTC Titan and also have problems with using WiFi and 3G. Whenever I’m on a WiFi network, I have to switch off my mobile data connection, or I won’t have access to the internet.
It’s off for ‘repair’ for the second time to resolve this, but I seriously doubt if it will ever be solved.
My girlfriend has a Lumia 800 and has never encountered problems like these.
HTC has been producing phones for some time now, one would think they should be able to get their act together…
I have an HTC Trophy (Verizon’s only WP phone), and there’s no WiFi problem whatsoever, so I don’t think Thom’s problem is necessarily an “HTC” problem. I don’t know what the cause of his problem is. I’ve never heard of a general WiFi problem wrt WP (sites like The Verge certainly would’ve ripped WP to shreds over it, were that the case.)
Edited 2012-05-03 21:36 UTC
I agree. This might be a hardware issue. I have a Titan II, and Wifi reconnect (or 3G reconnect after Wifi dropoff) is usually a few seconds, and web browsing is real fast (compared to my old HTC G2 Android phone).
Which phone do you have? And, did you try talking to customer service, maybe that unit is faulty?
yup – my lumia 800 also re-connects to wifi very fast. fast enough i’ve never bothered timing it (seems nearly instant).
also, i don’t have a sim card in my lumia (was a dev gift and i haven’t cut my trusim down to size yet) – live tiles update fine for me. i haven’t noticed any particular delay but i’ll fire it up tonight and see if i can observe any odd delay there.
perhaps my mileage varies because i don’t have a sim card in place? maybe live tiles try to update over mobile data first (failing entirely in the case described), falling back to wifi only if no mobile data connection is possible? i don’t know: what i can say for SURE is that my live tiles definitely update, and there is no possible way for my lumia to have a mobile data connection.
overall i like wp7 a lot. i switched from t-mobile to republic wireless a few months ago, and so my main phone HAS to be CDMA (yuck) and HAS to be the LG Optimus S (yuck again). i’ve got a trusim in my Nokia E7 that i’m thinking of trimming down to pop into the lumia, but the E7 offers so much more for international travel: better fine grained control of mobile data, integrated voip support (for truphone sip acecss via wifi), and a pentaband 3g radio (or as we call it in the usa now, 4g!). for those reasons i haven’t done much with my lumia 800 yet… but it is definitely a slick device and i really wish repulic wireless could support it instead of this crappy LG Optimus S i’ve got.
-bit
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Oddly, the Weather Channel live tile doesn’t update on it’s own, unless I get the Nokia-branded Weather Channel app from the Marketplace. The Nokia one works fine.
Four seconds isn’t a problem? I’d be upset with a two second delay. My Macbook has close to a four second delay, and it drives me nuts. Wake the heck up already and give me my content!
Now, with a 3g signal also available, does it instantaneously connect to that? Or is it never shut down? If it would just use the 3g until the wifi was ready and seamlessly switch over, that would be less of an issue.
well, It starts when I swipe up to unlock, so while I’m putting in my unlock code it’s trying to connect. It’s connected before I get a chance to even pick the app I wanted to use.
It may actually take less time before it’s operational, but it’s 3.8 seconds from the initial connect and DHCP request (which happen immediately when I swipe to unlock), and when it stops sending ARP messages.
I don’t have the HD7, but I do own the LG e900 and I’m not having the same problems you’ve having with that phone.
My wifi is connected pretty much all the time while under the lock screen, that or it connects quicker then I’m able to see or detect via using web browser.
The only things I can suggest is to check out the power saving options as it can turn wifi off and such while inactive. Also does the same problem persist if you use a different wifi router? I’m using a D-Link 615 with DD-WRT firmware. But I’ve not had any problems with BT’s homehub, 2 different Netgear routers and an old Le Fonera (stock).
Also, the market place is very poor. You’re best off using one of the community apps (bit of a catch 22 I know) to find the good stuff, such as Appflow.
Hopefully the price of the Xbox live games come down as well, like they have done with Angry birds but I have a feeling they’ll still be at a premium.
“As a geek, you owe it to yourself to at least go to your nearest phone store and play around with Metro. ”
To be honest, they’d be better off if they tried the Windows live ‘Into’ app on someones Windows Phone. It’ll give them a more interactive demo of just how personal the phone becomes when you see it with your own life being displayed and updated on the screen. That there is something that is hard to describe to someone until they’ve tried it for themselfs and I think thats one of Microsoft’s hardest things they have to sell.
The Windows Phones I’ve seen in store have been dull and lifeless with no personal information set up on it to show it ‘alive’. Even when I did get to see one of the employee’s phones, the information presented on it that he was so ecstatic about ment nothing to me, it wasn’t MY life I was seeing, it was his.
Edited 2012-05-02 23:35 UTC
Like other WP 7.5 commenters, I also don’t experience any WiFi issues. I have a Dell Venue Pro, and it connects in about 4 seconds.
This could be a driver or firmware issue.
It may be worth inquiring about this issue with other users of your particular model phone (e.g., XDADevs).
Yeah, I’ve had absolutely no issues with WiFi on my HTC Arrive. It actually connects quicker than my FC16 laptop and iPad.
Since you’ve imported it from the US I was thinking on this quote:
I would be interested to see what the supported frequencies are for the device and whether your carrier uses 2100 and 900 – and since you live in ‘in the sticks’ whether the 900 frequency is used for such locations hence. Regarding those other phones, I assume they can’t maintain a 3G connection because those other phones can support 900 and 2100 3G where as your HD7 may only support the higher frequency. In New Zealand we have 850/2100 used by Telecom for 3G, 900/2100 used by Vodafone for 3G where some end users have seen the cross over of being able to use 2100 but soon realise that the 2100 coverage in the case of Telecom is something that is extremely rare in favour of using the lower frequency of 850 to gain greater coverage and penetration of buildings. In the case of Vodafone they use 900 in rural areas and on the coast for marine based services.
Regarding the policy – I do agree there needs to be some sort of slider so that one can control the aggressiveness of the power saving policy. There is a weigh up between performance and power saving with the vast majority I’m sure wanting it to be left up to the handset vendor but equally there are times where one should at least have the freedom to over ride the defaults.
Edited 2012-05-03 01:24 UTC
Interesting theory, but T-Mobile NL only uses 2100Mhz for 3G, which the HD7 supports.
It’s really crazy. My brother’s girlfriend and I both bought a 3GS in the same week, both on T-Mobile. We held the phones next to each other – hers had perfect 3G reception, mine had none. Same for my other phones. The moment I leave town – as in, almost accurate to the metre – I get my connection back.
It’s insane, because outside of my hometown, my 3G connection is downright awesome. Elevators, buildings, it doesn’t matter, it always works. Just when I’m in my hometown, it doesn’t – no matter the phone.
As a wise and holy man once said: hold it different.
You did report this to T-Mobile, right?
I’ve had intermittent networking issues with my HTC Arrive on Sprint, both on WiFi and EvDO. Not quite as bad as what you’ve described though; mostly the web browser inexplicably unable to load a site via either connection method while the PC I’m at, connected to the same WiFi network, has no problem. It’s very random and has only happened a few times in the past six months I’ve had the phone.
I’ve also occasionally had live tile update issues, but only with certain third party apps and the “Me” social notification tile. My biggest gripe with WP7 is text messaging. The phone will not under any circumstances allow me to type out a SMS message with more than 160 characters. Every phone I’ve had in the past, on any carrier, would let me keep typing past the barrier and would break the message up into multiple ones if necessary. But WP7 on the Arrive will disable the “Send” button/icon if I go one character past the counter. I have to hit “Send” and quickly continue typing my message in a new text box. No other Sprint phone has this issue either, so it’s strictly a WP7 problem.
As an aside, we have a Sprint femtocell at my full time job, as all of the deputies are issued Sprint phones and in the past we’ve had issues with reception due to the building design. So, I get a full five bars of EvDO reception anywhere in the building. The funny thing about it is that my download speed drops to about 150-200Kbps in the building, whereas at home with only two or three bars, I can get up to 800Kbps. Since our officers are issued voice-only dumbphones, I’ve often wondered if the femtocell is configured to prioritize voice over data.
Have you tried replacing your SIM? It sounds crazy but this happened to someone I know. Reception issues no matter what phone they used, but then they replaced their SIM card and it started working perfectly.
Also worth looking at the construction of the building you live in, and the state of any electrical wiring or devices in there…
Certain building construction methods have a detrimental affect on wireless signals, and electrical devices or wiring can also cause signal problems.
I reckon you’d love the Pre 3 (I know I do).
Yeah, webos really was a good concept. Too bad the implementation wasn’t there. Now on a Nokia N9 due to really poor battery life, bad reception, slowness of my pre 2. ‘Though I love the looks of the N9, its reception and it’s apps are a lot better than the webos apps (drive, maps, sorely lacking on webos, especially since the move to bing maps, it’s one of the reasons why I wanted N9…). The N9 got more RAM and feels a lot snappier than any webos unit I used, it does however fall short in user experience to webos:
The swipe UI is just horrible conceptwise. The ‘feed’ looks and acts like similar apps, but you can’t swipe it down to close, a mistake I often make, perhaps due to being addicted of swiping cards directly away, created by webos). The notifications that popup in the ‘feed’ view should better be popping up in the drop down menu (which, just like the keyboard has a great haptic feedback, that is something they really did right).
It takes sometimes three swipes to get to the multitasking screen when you are in a program. There is no universal search, or if it’s there, it’s not as easy to access as on webos, I used that a loooot on my pre2. The messaging of webos was truly a shining example of how to do it right. Too bad for them they chose a slow platform to work on.
I’m really starting to understand why Nokia went for WP, the user experience for non techies on meego is just broken. They should have gone for either a maemo copy, or a webos’ copy on their N9 (considering MS borrowed just the right stuff from palm in it’s WP7 incarnation it counts to me as going for the webos clone, but I’ll never give my money to MS again).
“The second issue is also quite annoying. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the applications, or with the networking stack itself, but pulling data from the web is often painfully slow, and often will just fail entirely – no matter the wifi network or 3G connection. ”
It’s a fairly common problem. Some have fixed it with system restores, but that’s not an option for me.
The issue occurs when you have cellular and wifi data enabled at the same time. Even if you have great cellular connection. Thus, if you’re using wifi, disable cellular data. For now at least. It also gives a great boost in battry life and the phone runs cooler in my case. By a lot.
This may be the reason wifi is so slow for you. It isn’t for me, though. Up in a few seconds.
Edited 2012-05-03 09:39 UTC
Samsung Focus – no connectivity issues here either. Yours does sound like it could be a hardware issue.
The only thing worth adding is that when in the proximity of two familiar signals the WIFI doesn’t always connect to the strongest one.
Please Oh Please Try a n9 AND a Pre3.
i Used To Have To Setup a omnia 7, And It Was Really a Pain In The Ass…
i Have a N9 And a Pre3, And The Eat Windows Phone For Lunch….
(Badly Send With My n9.i’d Rather Use My Pre With Its Keyboard)
Isn’t it sad that Nokia screwed both themselves and their customers by not pushing the N9 like it deserves. I did call them idiots basically in an email when the Ovi store wouldn’t work for me one day. They said that the phone wasn’t supported in the US, so I replied back and told them that they were foolish to adopt Windows as a platform because Windows itself already has a horrible reputation formed over the past 20 years of being a buggy, crash prone, and virus infested pile of crap that people are forced to use on computers, so they don’t want it on their phones, and that they should have pushed the N9 in every market, because that is where the future is at, with Qt and Symbian.
They only replied saying they’d keep it under advisement. Ha ha!
I’ve wanted profiles linked to location and time for a long time. iOS and Android don’t seem to have that. (If they do, let me know! I’d really like to know about this.)
It would be really nice to not have to mess with my phone whenever I change locations.
Oddly, I was discussing that with two co-workers today. The N9 does have several profile based applications (Nokia sells one called Zones (it supports additional plugins too) and there is another one called profilematic or something to that effect.
Here’s another one as well, called ContextAProfile.
http://my-meego.com/software/applications.php?fldAuto=1130&faq=1
For a ‘dead’ platform, it shines!
Sorry for helping derail the “does windows phone 7 have crappy network?” topic.
My email, calendar and message tiles update before my PC apps do… I have my phone next to me… it chimes, I do an update on my PC to get the latest and read them. So I don’t know what’s up with your phone/network.
You just have to wait for the software to get out of beta first! LOL
Seriously, the good news is that MOST (not all) of the issues with WP7.5 will be addressed with Windows Phone 8. The bad news is you will probably need to buy a new handset!
This platform is DOOMED. I dont care how “intuitive” it is to some people, when BASIC functionality (like updates to the live tiles that are supposed to be so damn nifty!) is so horribly broken, when the specs are so underwhelming compared to the competition…how do they expect to compete? Oh yeah, by selling to the uninformed masses that don’t do any research! Good luck with that plan! It may work for a few months, then people will wake up and realize they bought into a crappy OS with buggy software, and you will NEVER see those customers again! Even better (or worse), these same customers will avoid your OTHER products! Have fun with the backlash Microsoft! You are only a few months away from total irrelevancy!
While I agree with all your other comments, including that WP7 is doomed, I still think far too many people are hardwired now to think SPECS!
I try to think of the mobile industry these days as much like the 16-bit era of personal computers. We had the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, Apple Machintosh and IBM PC Compatibles. The Atari ST and Mac’s OS were far more lighter weight than either the Amiga or the PCs of the time. Of course the Amiga was also far more capable for the same reason (some may argue which was more lighter weight, but a perfect example is color icons vs black and white, and actual multitasking on the Amiga, so by it’s very nature required more ram.)
Requirements for decent performance are dependent on the operating system. MeeGo for example runs awesomely with 1GB of RAM and a 1Ghz processor. In fact I had 32 Applications running (one of which was a magnifying glass that was using the camera in a live thumbnail) and only then had it started to get rather unresponsive but was still semi-usable.
Android and iOS would absolutely choke on that same hardware with trying to (REALLY) multitask.
WP7 seems to not even support multiple cores (I could be wrong about this, correction?) But that doesn’t mean it’s not optimized better than some of the competition.
No WP7 does not support more than one core. For that you have to go to WP8, and there is no guarantee that WP7 phones will ever get that upgrade. I agree that the OS is more efficient with limited hardware, but saying that the average customer doesnt care about specs is wrong, I think…I think its easy for someone to look at the little price sheet next to the phone, then compare it to the little sheet next to the other phones…
I have a Samsung Focus, and have had some of those same issues. I almost never have a problem with the built-in stuff like mail, but some 3rd party apps give me problems on live tile updates.
The weather app I use is supposed to have live tile support, and it sort of works, but then occasionally, I look and see that it’s telling me what the weather was like two days ago, or at some arbitrary point in time in the recent past; it’s kind of amusing. “Hey, it was cool and cloudy while I was asleep last night! Imagine that.”
And occasionally, even on WiFi, it’ll tell me that it’s having trouble getting updates from Facebook, which I usually take to mean that maybe instead of looking at Facebook updates on my phone, I should go do something more useful than look at Facebook updates, anyway.
I haven’t encountered long delays in connecting to WiFi after waking the phone up, though.
Under 2 secs on Lumia 900. I think Thom is possessed.
Edited 2012-05-04 02:34 UTC
I have an LG C900 and I have not seen any slow network stuff or broken tiles.
The wifi sleep thing is unfortunate, but I do not experience slow reconnection so I barely notice.