Be Excellent To Each Other

Vine and Instagram are now available for Windows Phone. It's fair to say that it's got a long way to go with apps compared to IOS and Android, but it's getting there. Both apps work very well and I'm sure will prove to be very popular.

That's what I said when I got a WP7 phone in 2010. I'd expect it to have come a lot further in three years, to be honest. They really haven't managed to catch up at all.

I'm convinced the last lumia 800 updates fucked the battery accounting, on thursday it turned off so as I was hammered and making my way home I did a battery drop then kept the screen active. It lasted a further hour-Thursday like that, then didn't actually turn itself off again til 11am friday. The diagnostics were reporting capacity as under 800mAh instead of 1300. I've been doing full cycles since and its back up to 1100ish but still not lasting anywhere near long enough.

Yet I'm still going to have grabby hands for the 1520 on the 6th, 1320 maybe if it's out on the same day and more than a ton fewer.

Free £20 windows store credit if you've recently bought a new Lumia. Here's how:-

Cortana is going to be your Siri.

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2 ... nd-go.aspx

I'm getting a bit of a nerd tingle, I must confess.

I've tweeted about this this very morning.

I'm excited and in a way, it's good that Google aren't all over the Windows Phone as it gives MS a bit of a head start with Cortana with no competition. I understand that Google Voice (I think that's what it's called) is directly competing with Siri on IOS?

Either way... I hope Cortana and I get along.

Whoah.

If they do a good job of simulating the voice, that's going to make me want a Windows Phone.

Doesn't anybody still use siri?

That's the spirit Grim...

I'm surprised that you two have only just heard about this though? I guess that's indicative of the press coverage Windows Phone gets.

Feex.

People on trains wanting to show off their new iphone, mainly.

I use Google Voice to set alarms and reminders, and to Google things like "How old is Nathan Fillion?" (42, fact fans).

Voice controls are shit though and actually more onerous than just pressing a button. See also: Kinect.

Likewise, but with Siri.

They're good for certain things - setting alarms and reminders, for instance, and to Google things like "How old is Nathan Fillion?" (42, fact fans).

This is actually my single use case for voice control; setting alarms for cooking by saying 'set alarm fourteen minutes' is easier than working out what time is fourteen minutes for now and fiddling to set the alarm to that time. Which could actually be done directly with an app that had a more appropriate interface to the alarm clock but I haven't bothered looking to see if such a thing exists.

?
Pretty much any alarm clock has a countdown timer. No need to calculate the time, surely?

"Set TIMER, 14 minutes" would be my command. Great for cooking.

Heh, probably actually; now that I bother to think about it. But I've just been setting alarms which requires a concrete time be specified. Oh well, that's voice control literally useless to me now!

Oh, no, wait; I'll often have a few timers going independently (X minutes until one thing and Y minutes to another) which I can't do with the single countdown timer on my phone app so setting alarms is still useful.

Are you a professional plate spinner who occasionally nods off?

1. Put thing X in oven which takes longest to cook and set two alarms.
2. Alarm 1 goes off when it's time to put thing Y in oven that takes less time to cook.
3. Alarm 2 goes off when it's time to take everything out of oven and eat stuff.

I could just set a second alarm at stage 2 but I find it more convenient to just set everything up at the start as I'm an idiot and likely to forget otherwise.

I actually used my Kinect voice search feature thing last night and it did a sterling job. It was much quicker than pressing buttons too.

I know.. I'm just as surprised as you are.

Yup, that it literally the only use for Siri that I have found.

Yeah, there are plenty of kitchen timer apps, many with multiple countdowns on screen at once.

The standard clock on android has multiple timers...
Surely all voice recog is is a second interface to the same thing. Depends whether you trust the interface.

No there's loads that's useful.
"What does the fox say?"
"Tell Mimi she smells."
"Turn on my 6.25 alarm"
"What's 9 inches in centimetres?"
"Open Shazam"
"What can I say?"
"Set reminder Post to Beex tomorrow at 8am"

I love new ways of doing this and am not a luddite by any stretch of the imagination, but talking to my phone just doesn't feel a natural way of interacting with it, even if it gets it right first time (which is no guarantee). It's faintly embarrassing, in fact.

I'd be ok with it if I was in the car, on my own. Anyone talking to their phone/games console/toaster in front of anyone else looks like a tit. Fact.

There's no such thing as a 'standard clock on android'; mine is different from people with a Samsung phone which is different from anyone with a Nexus device etc. Mine doesn't allow multiple countdown timers.

The Nexus has the standard clock, of course.

For that version.

Is it the same as the AOSP clock?

Christ knows.

Assuming it's not that just further muddies the water about what's 'standard'.

No longer on Windows phone 7, but I've upgraded to the Lumia 950 today. It's very nice, although very samey to my Lumia 1020. I imagine this is how iphone users feel when they upgrade.

The ability to unlock it just by looking at it is pretty amazing though.

Surely you unlock it by having it look at you? The other way round would be amazing but I doubt we're at that point yet.

Got a Nokia 640 as a work phone. Seems generally nice, although cortana is actually worse than siri.
The screen is very nice, and the interface, although unfamiliar at this point, sends pretty good.

Anyway, are there any windows exclusives with getting? Are there any windows exclusives?

Also, can I set the keyboard so that it had long press shift items?

That's adorable.

The Halo games are meant to be pretty good.

What's the calculator like?

Perfect!

I don't know about the keyboard problem but as for apps, the usual apps like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc are all fine.

If you're looking for exclusives, yeah.. They're a bit thin on the ground. I regularly use the 6 nations app, an app called Grin (an imgur app), Metrotube (YouTube), One note, one drive and trueachievements.

The main thing I like about the phone is earning achievements through the games.

This is pretty much the only reason to own one, and pretty much the only reason I bought one back in 2010. Sadly the games were all shit and I luckily I no longer care about achievements.

With the IP Microsoft own they could have made some great exclusive games for Windows Phone (Gears of War, Forza, Fable, etc). Instead we got that shite Crackdown tower defence game that they ended up pulling and two Halo twinstick shooters they ended up porting to PC.

You say that, but their IP in the form that made it popular can't be ported to a mobile phone. So actually they're in the same position as anyone looking to develop mobile games but with the added risk they could massively piss of fans of their existing IP by turning in something shite based on a beloved franchise.

As it was, there is absolutely no killer app or reason to get one. An Epic-developed Gears of War game for mobile could have been really good, for example. MS have so much money they should have thrown it at developers to make some really worthwhile exclusives.

Anyone who has to take photos of documents and/or whiteboards should check out the Office Lens app - it is actually pretty good.

Anyone know what the bacon symbol means on a windows phone.