Five Things I Hate About Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform | TechTree.com

Five Things I Hate About Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform

A list of things that spoil the Windows Phone experience.

 
Five Things I Hate About Microsoft's Windows Phone Platform

Windows Phone is a promising mobile platform. Moving away from a tradition grid of icons, Microsoft came up with a bold new user interface. Its dynamic live tiles display all the relevant information right on your homescreen. The interface is cohesive and as fluid as the Apple's iOS. At the same time, you get Android-esque flexibility such as the mass storage mode, bluetooth file sharing, and official file manager. In terms of battery life, Windows Phone handsets can beat Android any day. However, this doesn't mean that the platform is perfect. It has its share of drawbacks, and here are the top five things I dislike about Windows Phone.

Lacks A Good Third-Party Video Player
In terms of video playback, Windows Phone platform natively supports Full HD MP4, WMV, and AVI formats. The most popular video format used on Torrents, MKV is still not supported though. The subtitle feature introduced with the 8.1 update is not compatible with popular SRT files. MoliPlayer solves some of these issues to a certain extent, but it's still nowhere near its Android competitors such as VLC and MXPlayer. For instance, MoliPlayer can't scan the entire file system for videos. The videos need to be copied in the app folder, Camera Roll, or memory card.

Action Centre Is Broken
Copied from Android, Microsoft's Action Centre offers quick access to settings and notifications. Default Microsoft apps such as Outlook, Messaging, and Store work in sync with the Action Centre. However, this feature doesn't play nice with the third-party apps. For example, notifications refuse to disappear even though you have already checked the messages. At times, the entire Action Centre gets flooded with a single alert showing up multiple times. A user doesn't care whether Microsoft or developers are at fault. For them, it's a broken feature on a platform that belongs to Microsoft. So it's their responsibility to fix these issues.

Sharing Is Confusing
Sharing files was a major problem on Windows Phone in its early days. Things got better with time though. Now with Windows Phone 8.1, you can share files from Microsoft's file manager or from within the apps. However, it's still far from perfect. Although you share images and music over bluetooth, there's no such option for videos. In fact, WP should get the Wi-Fi beam option (ideal for transferring movies), which is there on almost every Android device. Another issue here is that you don't 'always' get the WhatsApp sharing option from the Photos Hub (gallery). This is strange considering that you can share these images from the WhatsApp client. Similarly, you cannot share places via WhatsApp or any other messenger from the HERE maps.



Many Games Are Still Missing
Windows Phone OS has matured over the years. It now has almost all the popular apps in its repository. However, four years since its inception, game developers are still giving it a cold shoulder. Although the platform now supports powerful hardware such as a quad-core processor, popular titles including Real Racing 3 and Dead Trigger series are still not available. Even a simple puzzle game such as Candy crush Saga is missing from the Windows Phone Store. Among the big three, Microsoft is the only company to own around 17 game development studios including 343 Industries (known for Halo series). I don't know what holds them back from developing games for the company's own platform.



App Updates
Unlike Android, developers don't update their apps regularly on WP. If the apps work properly, we can live without the updates. However, that's not the case. There are plenty of buggy apps in the marketplace (mostly from Indian developers) that are left to die due to the lack of interest in the platform. Even top developers take unusually long time to iron out the bugs. Just a few weeks ago, world's most popular messaging app WhatsApp wasn't running properly on Microsoft mobile platform. Facebook (who now owns WhatsApp) pulled down the app for damage control. Even after receiving direct help from Microsoft, the developers took a couple of weeks to rectify the problem and get the app back in the store.


Tags : Mobile Phones, Microsoft, Windows Phone

 
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