Windows phone, is it any good?

So now that @InsanityFlea and @teejo have had theirs for a while is it any good?
I have had android and iphone in the past which both of you have too so its a good basis for comparison.
Im quite interested in WP but I dont want to get a phone that sucks and Im stuck with for 2 years.
Been looking at the Nokia’s I like their design and the S5 was a big letdown to me so going to skip Samsung for a while.

I like my phone. The major drawback with it is the lack of notification LEDs. That is a very poor design choice. The updated glance does help with the problem though, but you still have to remember to check your phone… something I don’t remember to do and I occasionally miss time sensitive messages from the wife… which gets me in trouble.

Not sure if I would go for another one though when upgrade time comes. I may switch back to Android (Samsung most likely), or try an iphone, which I have never had.

Im a little worried because a few people have tried WP and did not like it much after android.
Im not overly eager to get one so I might wait out for the iphone6 or see what happens with the sony Z2.
The iphone doesnt have any form of notification light or glance, you need to activate the screen to see notifications on the lock screen.

I’ve been on android, and Iphone and this one is by far my favourite. It’s ease of use and uncomplicated menu’s and battery life is what I like the most.

But if you’re into apps and that kinda of thing dont look at this phone, the apps are non-existant or clones.

For business use I need: vnc, rdp, wifi, lte,email,vpn(coming soon) sms, calls it’s fantastic in this department.

As for call quality, it’s clearest out there. The OS is super fast, there’s no slow downs or waiting.

Also has a handy Call & Sms filter where you can filter out unwanted marketing calls & sms’s :smiley:

I dont have a lot of requirements app wise, its mostly business apps like evernote and some others which Im sure are on WP.
Oh and whatsapp or telegram, cos those be important y0!

Whatsapp is there. I have no idea what telegram is.

Have a gander here : http://www.windowsphone.com/en-za/store

This is a must have for migrating from any phone:

I used the nokia ‘here drive+’ app while I was in Durbs, it was flawless. I could type in a restaurants name and it led me straight to the door. It also worked when i searched for ‘caltex’ because I only use caltex garages.

Telegram is like whatsapp minus the the slow. Also you can use the same telegram id(cell number) on multiple devices including desktops. I expect it to do some damage to whatsapp quite soon.

Thanks flea, nice to be able to see what is on the store.

I’m now glad I dumped this platform and went back to Android. It’s too limiting for me, in one particular scenario:

Unfortunately I am the recipient of a crap ton of text messages sent from one of my work systems. It’s kind of stupid, since they send emails too. So for every email that the system sends, I receive a text message. BAH! The problem is that the sending number is extra long: (not the actual number) +2799000123400000
The last 5 digits are different on every text. The built-in text blocking system uses an exact match, so it can’t block these stupid texts. You can’t even edit the numbers in the blocking list.

No problem, I figured, I’ll roll my own. Fired up Visual Studio, did some research only to discover that the trigger event for receiving SMS messages is only available to mobile operators. I’ve seen tons of pre-WP 8.1 hype about how you will be able to change the default messaging app, which shows promise for the ability to do what I need, however it seems that this didn’t actually come to fruition on the actual release of 8.1.

(And no, I can’t just get my number removed from the system, that’s a whole other pile of dung that I don’t particularly want to deal with)

In all honesty I will be dumping it too when my next upgrade rolls around.
I love WP and I love the battery life on my phone but it is a little too big.
Im also battling with some cycling realted apps like strava not being on WP, I end up having to take my wife’s old xperia with me when I cycle which is starting to get annoying.
Its sad because WP is actually an awesome OS.

Here’s another stupid thing particular to the Nokias - the Drive maps REFUSE to download on cellular network. So even though you have huge amounts of cellular data, using an LTE connection - it will NOT let you download maps. It insists on wifi.

I’m having an issue with time on my windows phone. It’s 2 minutes slow, despite the fact that ‘Set Automatically’ is on.

From what I’ve found, it seems that prior to Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, WP could not retrieve time from an NTP source, it would only get it from the cellular network. Apparently if your phone supports retreiving NTP time, you should have an option for ‘Set Timezone Automatically’. Unfortunately, it seems MTN hasn’t released Update 1 yet, as my phone OS version is: 8.10.12393.890 (Windows Phone 8.1).

Update 1 version numbers are: 8.10.14141.167, 8.10.14147.180, 8.10.14157.200, 8.10.14176.243, 8.10.14192.280 or 8.10.14203.206

Oddly enough, even if I manually set my phone to exactly the correct time, as soon as I set it to automatic, the time jumps to the next minute ahead. WTF.

Looks like Denim is only available on one model in ZA so far.

I’m on the latest dev release and it’s fine. (also MTN)

Version: 8.10.14219.341

I switched to development mode because MTN is so slow with updates.

Whats really frustrating on this phone atm, no SSTP VPN support.

Last week someone offered me a really good price for my 1520 so I caved in and sold it.
My contract was long due for upgrade so I ended up getting an iphone6, its quite nice actually.

Windows phone 10 beta is released on the 21st of January 2015, lets hope it has more options for business.

Something I’ve just stumbled across, all my saved WLANs on my phone are transferring to my desktops.

“netsh wlan show profiles” from command prompt

Pretty cool.