There’s lots to love about Windows Phone, but since I’m nitpicking stuff anyway I figure I might as well rant about the rest of my annoyances.
1. Headphone volume
The EU has some dumb rule about audio devices not being allowed to output more than a certain dB level without nagging you every 20 hours. My Windows Phone unfortunately follows this rule. So, every 20 hours, my phone’s headphone volume gets reset down to 13/30 and I have to dismiss some silly hearing damage warning before I’m allowed to crank it up again.
I could spend an entire post explaining how utterly retarded this EU regulation is, and how much of a disconnect from reality it attests to, but I won’t get into that right now.
My annoyance with Windows Phone’s implementation of this rule comes from the fact that it’s bugged out. You see, more often than not, my phone will reset the volume level to 13/30, but won’t show the accompanying warning message. Which means there’s no warning message for me to dismiss. Which apparently means that the volume controls (and not just for the headphone volume; no, all of them) remain locked up until I reboot my phone.
Wonderful.
2. Apps
Yeah, I have to talk about the apps. I’ve been using Windows Phone for years, and while the really important apps have always been there, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that Windows Phone is a second-class citizen in this regard. Which I guess is because it is.
When companies release an app for one of their services, Android and iOS are virtually guaranteed to get it. Windows Phone, not so much. An when we do get an app, it’ll often feel like an afterthought. Windows Phone apps often seem to miss features and feel less polished than their Android counterparts, probably because companies just don’t invest in them as much. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense, too. Why spend top dollar to build an app for a platform that’s only got a ~1% marketshare?
This didn’t really used to bother me, but it’s been getting to me more and more lately. My Lumia 930 is (was) a premium device, the Windows Phone flagship at the time I got it. But most of my time on the device is spent in 3rd party apps, and these don’t exactly deliver a premium experience. I spent hundreds of Euros on this phone, yet here I am using my mediocre podcast app and my barebones newsreader app…
3. HERE Maps / Drive
This one is simply painful.
One of the big selling points of my Lumia 930 was the inclusion of HERE Maps and HERE Drive+, which were developed by Nokia at the time. HERE Drive was especially great, because it offered offline turn-by-turn navigation completely for free! It was no TomTom, but it was still very good. The apps were initially a Windows Phone exclusive, but were eventually also released for Android and iOS.
And then it happened. With the arrival of Windows Phone 10, support for the HERE apps was dropped. While support for Android and iOS continued.
I mean. I don’t know how to respond to that.
These apps were supposed to be ours. It’s one thing to add support for Android and iOS, but to then take support for Windows Phone away… And yet, that’s what happened. On Windows Phone, the once wonderful HERE apps were silently replaced with some generic Bing Maps app. Which, while still licensing its maps from HERE, is an absolute usability shitshow.
What a kick in the teeth.
We had one thing. One thing…
Microphone
The microphone on my Lumia 930 is broken. Sometimes. The mic works for:
- Calling (thank god)
- Video recording
However, the mic does not work for:
- Calling on speakerphone
- Any sound recording apps (including Microsoft’s own Voice Recorder app)
This suggests a software problem. It’s been around for a while, and I’m not the only one suffering from it, but as of right now no fix is yet in sight.
In conclusion
Although my Lumia 930 is about 3 years old by now, it still works fine and I’m currently not in the market for a new phone. Yet. But once I do decide it’s time, there is a very good chance I’m making the switch to Android. Which is a shame, because I do love the Windows Phone OS. I’m simply tired of begging for spare change in some side street of the app store.