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[WINDOWS PHONE] Windows Phone 8. From Very Small to Sorta Small.

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  • EshEsh Tending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles. Portland, ORRegistered User regular
    Not sure about Apple Lossless (what format is it? I don't use iTunes, so I really have no idea), but WP8 will ask if you want to use iTunes libraries for media management when you first sync it up to your computer.

    edit: did some googling. Looks like Apple Lossless is m4a, which WP8 supports. Can't 100% confirm, though, given that I have no files in that format to test.
    You can also sync your device with iTunes, but you'll need to use Microsoft's desktop companion app to do so (available for Windows 7 and Mac; Win 8 has the feature built-in). In fact, this particular program is the only option Mac users will have if they want to connect the phone to their machine. When you dive in, the program first asks you if you want to sync iTunes or Windows libraries. If you choose the former, it brings up iTunes in a separate window and begins loading all of your music, pictures, videos, podcasts and ringtones. From there it's just a matter of picking and choosing what you want to toss into your phone. This alleviates one of the biggest concerns iOS users have had in moving over to Windows Phone, and it works seamlessly.

    It's basically Apple's proprietary FLAC format. I love how slick the Windows phone interface is. As long as they can get the apps I need by Summer (when I'm up for a cheap phone again), I'll be game to switch.

  • maximumzeromaximumzero I...wait, what? New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
    edited November 2012
    So I know someone just asked about iTunes but does the Windows Phones play nice with Mac OS X at all?

    I have an iPhone 4, but I don't really use anything outside of the stock apps and Facebook. I can count the number of times I've been on the App Store with two hands, and I don't game on the thing, so there's very little keeping me tied to the iOS ecosystem.

    But I do use my phone heavily as a iPod/Music Player, so I need to make sure it'll work with OS X in addition to iTunes.

    Edit: Also, I super-hate that phones are trending towards the larger side. I fuckin' love tiny phones. What's the tiniest Windows phone available?

    Edit 2: If I were interested in the Android camp I'd probably go with the Xperia Mini

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    maximumzero on
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    Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Lumia 920 confirmed for $100 on contract, preorders tomorrow, release date on the 9th.

    @maximumzero - there is connector software for OS X. It's pretty barebones compared to iTunes or the Windows clients for syncing WP, but it gives you the option of handling all the media on the device through iTunes.

    As far as phone sizes... the current WP8 offerings are all kind of large. Both the HTX 8X and the Lumia 920 are the smallest available, with 4.3" screens. Compared to the iPhone 5, both of them are maybe half an inch taller, around 10mm wider, and 2-3mm thicker. There were a lot of 3.7" WP7 handsets, but I don't expect many to be released on the newest software.

  • iguanacusiguanacus Desert PlanetRegistered User regular
    Smallest is probably the Lumia 810/820/822. I'm right with you though, smaller size is better then these goliath things like the note 2 are not the way I want to go.

  • maximumzeromaximumzero I...wait, what? New Orleans, LARegistered User regular
    Lumia 920 confirmed for $100 on contract, preorders tomorrow, release date on the 9th.

    @maximumzero - there is connector software for OS X. It's pretty barebones compared to iTunes or the Windows clients for syncing WP, but it gives you the option of handling all the media on the device through iTunes.

    As far as phone sizes... the current WP8 offerings are all kind of large. Both the HTX 8X and the Lumia 920 are the smallest available, with 4.3" screens. Compared to the iPhone 5, both of them are maybe half an inch taller, around 10mm wider, and 2-3mm thicker. There were a lot of 3.7" WP7 handsets, but I don't expect many to be released on the newest software.

    4.3" is definitely too big. The biggest I'd like to go is the roughly size of the iPhone itself,

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    Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
  • DusdaDusda is ashamed of this post SLC, UTRegistered User regular
    Got the 920. It is fucking enormous, and built like a tank. The size is honestly a little off putting, but I'm getting used to it. The screen is gorgeous.

    and this sig. and this twitch stream.
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    I've ordered one, which should be arriving Monday. Also tried one out in a store, and I think it's a good kind of big. It's basically the same weight as the HTC Arrive that I've been carting around for the last 1.5 years, and only a little taller than the HTC Evo 4G I had before that. It's vastly thinner than either of those phones, of course. Anecdotally speaking, there was a pretty long line at the mall AT&T store when I walked by it at around 3pm today... maybe there's been some healthy demand for devices? Seemed to be about 40-50 people; kind of crazy given that the store had been open for hours already.

    The software felt really, really good.

    Dehumanized on
  • MorskittarMorskittar Lord Warlock Engineer SeattleRegistered User regular
    There were lines all day Friday at a number of Seattle area stores. Early on, plenty were MS employees, but by midday, most were customers. There does seem to be pretty healthy demand.

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  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Dusda wrote: »
    Got the 920. It is fucking enormous, and built like a tank. The size is honestly a little off putting, but I'm getting used to it. The screen is gorgeous.

    I managed to get one on EE network in white. I'd ignore the few reviews that put down the camera quality, its really amazing and far better than the S3 I had previously. My only complaint is that theres little option to auto upload photos to a cloud service other than Skydrive. Something of a minor blip in an otherwise top class phone.

  • MorskittarMorskittar Lord Warlock Engineer SeattleRegistered User regular
    The Zynga apps suck. Unplayably buggy.

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  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    iguanacus wrote: »
    Smallest is probably the Lumia 810/820/822. I'm right with you though, smaller size is better then these goliath things like the note 2 are not the way I want to go.
    Just be aware that the 820s have lower specs in general compared to the 920.

    Which is the main reason I went to the iPhone 5, I also like, small high spec'd devices and unfortunately it appears apple is the only company doing this.

  • Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    And even if not Nokia put out a well spec'd w8 phone, it wouldn't have a turn by turn setup until next year due to Nokia's lisensing agreement.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    Dusda wrote: »
    Got the 920. It is fucking enormous, and built like a tank. The size is honestly a little off putting, but I'm getting used to it. The screen is gorgeous.

    I managed to get one on EE network in white. I'd ignore the few reviews that put down the camera quality, its really amazing and far better than the S3 I had previously. My only complaint is that theres little option to auto upload photos to a cloud service other than Skydrive. Something of a minor blip in an otherwise top class phone.

    If I'm not mistaken, it'd be possible to implement this as a camera lens app.

  • AyulinAyulin Registered User regular
    Question for those with WP8 and Zune/Xbox Music - how are you finding the experience of syncing media from a computer? I know Zune Software doesn't sync with the device any more, so how do the various connector apps handle auto-playlists?

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  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    The last update to Zune Desktop appears to have been designed to kill it; the program straight up crashes whenever I click on the "Marketplace" tab. Basically, I'm not happy with the syncing changes so far.

  • AyulinAyulin Registered User regular
    Oh, it crashes if I'm on the "picks" tab in Marketplace - you basically have to click Marketplace, then really quickly click Music.

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  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Ziggymon wrote: »
    Dusda wrote: »
    Got the 920. It is fucking enormous, and built like a tank. The size is honestly a little off putting, but I'm getting used to it. The screen is gorgeous.

    I managed to get one on EE network in white. I'd ignore the few reviews that put down the camera quality, its really amazing and far better than the S3 I had previously. My only complaint is that theres little option to auto upload photos to a cloud service other than Skydrive. Something of a minor blip in an otherwise top class phone.

    If I'm not mistaken, it'd be possible to implement this as a camera lens app.

    In future it should be but at the moment there isn't and getting files onto other cloud services like Box require you to do it manually. Something minor which should be resolved soon.

    Also The mac music sync software is useless. It doesn't actually work at all.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Phone and wireless charging plate finally arrived. Gotta get my hands used to working a big phone again, after being on the 3.7" HTC Arrive for so long. Nokia absolutely made the right choice putting the power button on the side!

  • MorskittarMorskittar Lord Warlock Engineer SeattleRegistered User regular
    The charging plate is pretty cool. It recognizes 100% and turns off, so you don't have to worry about the phone staying hot overnight or for long periods.

    No idea if this is a standard thing, but it struck me as a nice detail.

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  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Yeah, it seems nice. Doesn't charge particularly quickly, but I'll leave it at my desk at work so I can just toss it on the plate while I listen to music. Today I'm just letting the phone die through regular use, both to get an idea of the unassisted battery life and to condition the battery stats.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Fun realization: the Lumia 920 has the same length/width footprint as a 3DS. Heightwise, it is about as tall as the upper screen.

  • Donovan PuppyfuckerDonovan Puppyfucker A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered User regular
    edited November 2012
    It's a couple of millimetres smaller length and depth wise, and half as thick, but yeah, it's pretty close. The rounded shape makes it feel a bit smaller than it is in your hand, which is nice.

    Donovan Puppyfucker on
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Definitely the coolest thing about Xbox Music is that I popped my Microsoft account into my phone, and basically my entire music library appeared on the phone in streamable format. The only things that are missing is stuff that Microsoft doesn't have rights to stream (for example, The Beatles). It even included items that I've never went through the music store to acquire, like CDs that I've ripped and some songs that I bought off Amazon's store.

    WP7.5 could stream all this stuff already, but to access it you had to search on the artist in the store and hit play. With WP8, it just appears as part of your actual library and the only way it's different is it takes a few seconds to buffer before playing. 90% of my music library is right there without me using up any of the on-device storage.

    Here's a picture of what my music library looked like, about an hour after I activated the phone. I had not been home to sync with my computer or anything by that point.

    As long as they keep the song credits flowing to my account every month, I can put up with the oddities in the updated Zune client.

    Oh, and I did a battery rundown yesterday. Phone lasted about 16 hours with no charge, on slightly more usage compared to how I usually use my phone. Should have no trouble squeezing as much battery out of my Lumia as I did my old HTC Arrive, and the wireless charging plate should make it easy to stay topped off while I listen to music at work.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Wow, so WP8 will stream my existing MP3/WMA/whatever music collection so long as it's sorted out in Xbox Music? That's pretty slick. I'm still holding out for a keyboard WP8 (keep dreaming, Synth), but that's a nice feature to hear about.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    Yeah, it's all super slick. It's like a hybrid of iTunes Match and Google Music, but better. The only setup you have to do is make sure that "Xbox Music Cloud" is enabled in the Xbox Music app preferences. I think that's the default setting, but I'm not sure.

    Edit: Also, kinda cool that the way it streams results in gapless playback once you're past the first track. There's sometimes a tiny break in the music right near the end of a song, which I assume is the phone buffering up the next song in the playlist. Audio quality on streamed music sounds like the same 192kbps that Zune Pass music has always used (with higher bitrates on purchased tunes). The Lumia 920 also supports Dolby Headphone, which sounds great when enabled.

    Dehumanized on
  • VestyVesty Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    I picked up the HTC 8X yesterday and so far I'm really enjoying it. This is my first Windows Phone experience after coming from a crappy old Blackberry. The only thing really annoying me is the Facebook notfications/app seem kinda broken. I'm not receiving any notifications at the OS level and the app icon doesn't change to indicating I have any. In the Messages app I can send Facebook messages but I can't seem to receive any, even if marked Online. I was going to chalk it up to being just launch bugs but looking over at WPCentral it seems Facebook on Windows Phone has always had issues.

    -e- and as I post this I get a notification. 10 minutes old though. I guess it just doesn't ping me as fast as my Blackberry did. Messages still seems wonky though.

    Vesty on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    Got the Lumia 920 (my wife got the red and I got the black) and what a piece of work this phone is. Its built like a tank like someone else said but after getting accustomed to it other phones just feel... weak and cheap. My Focus S feels like a kids toy.

    Its nice to be reminded that thinness and lightness even has its limits when it comes to desirability. Most people I know love the weight and feel of this phone when I show it to them and it just looks badass.

  • amnesiasoftamnesiasoft Thick Creamy Furry Registered User regular
    Vesty wrote: »
    In the Messages app I can send Facebook messages but I can't seem to receive any, even if marked Online. I was going to chalk it up to being just launch bugs but looking over at WPCentral it seems Facebook on Windows Phone has always had issues.
    Honestly, I've found that Facebook messages are pretty wonky anywhere but Facebook.

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  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Yeah, they don't expose the entirety of the Facebook messenger in the public APIs. What I'd find (and I don't think this changed in WP8, because it's a straight up limitation of the API) is that I could send/receive Facebook messages through the message hub, but any sent messages wouldn't sync off the phone. So it looks like whoever I'm talking with is a crazy person that just keeps saying things without response, if I check the messages on the website.

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    I haven't had too many problems with Facebook, honestly. Now the Zynga games on the other hand...

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    So far I've found the WP8 version of Facebook to be a lot better than the app was in 7.5. So far my only complaint is that the lockscreen picture feature doesn't seem to be pulling pictures from a new photo album that I recently created.

  • VestyVesty Registered User regular
    The one thing I give the blackberry I had is it was the bomb for notifications. Just something I'll have to get used to. I had some issues trying to get the info from my google contacts to sync with the backup assist info. Think I finally got that figured out.

    I think I've rearranged my start screen tiles 5 times already in 24 hours. Is the ME tile useful at all if you already have twitter and facebook pinned to the start screen? Seems like it would be redundant info.

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    I use it to aggregate post to both services at the same time... it also can notify you from either source. Mostly a personal preference thing, though. I have Facebook below the initial "page" of live tiles, so I don't see any notifications from it without swiping down... the Me tile takes care of that for it.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    Yeah, it's all super slick. It's like a hybrid of iTunes Match and Google Music, but better. The only setup you have to do is make sure that "Xbox Music Cloud" is enabled in the Xbox Music app preferences. I think that's the default setting, but I'm not sure.

    Sounds pretty good--I mean, ultimately, I wouldn't use it on the phone itself, but the extensions (Xbox 360, next Xbox, etc.) are exciting to think about.

    All the same, between Surface Pro coming out next year, and no QWERTY WP8, I'm not going to get a WP8 soon either. Shame, some of those new options are very nice...

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    It's kind of funny, one of the biggest reasons that I picked the 920 over the 8X was because of the doubled storage capacity, but it turns out that Xbox Music means I've basically got my whole music library with less than a gigabyte of local storage used. On my last device I had 11-12GB of music loaded locally out of a 16GB total capacity and still felt like I was having to make hard choices as to which albums I put on there.

    Course, I'm still glad that I've got the 920 for the camera and the Nokia software additions. The low light capabilities of the camera is amazing... if I'm in a room that's completely dark except for a small light on in the next room, then take a picture of the back wall... the picture will come out brighter than it looks in person, with very little in the way of noise. Plus dat screen

    Dehumanized on
  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    The screen is unbelievable. In broad daylight I can see just fine. In fact, I'm posting this is broad daylight right now.

  • ZiggymonZiggymon Registered User regular
    Finally got my itunes music to sync with the 920 on a Mac. Someone on the reviews section of the app store posted it. On the Window Phone 8 connector software, select file and allow access to folder. Then select the folder where your itunes music is stored. Otherwise the software won't sync any music.

  • BamelinBamelin Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    Here is my 920:
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    So far I like the phone alot. It takes amazing pictures and the OS allows me to organize my notifications via live tiles that gives me instant information in a glance.

    I'm coming from an iPhone 4 ... Its still going to be an adjustment but every day in liking the OS more and more.

    OS aside the screen and camera on this thing are sick. And LTE is amazing. I do find LTE kills the battery though ... I get 8 hours usually from 100 percent ... I'm a pretty heavy user though.

    I've calibrated the battery via drains 3 times now but find it still dies prematurely ... That is to say phones dies but a minute later i turn it back on and still have a half hour of juice left even though battery shows 0.

    ive heard this us a widespread problem do im hoping a week of calibration resolves this issue.

    Aside from that i love this phone.

    Bamelin on
  • BamelinBamelin Registered User regular
    Got the Lumia 920 (my wife got the red and I got the black) and what a piece of work this phone is. Its built like a tank like someone else said but after getting accustomed to it other phones just feel... weak and cheap. My Focus S feels like a kids toy.

    Its nice to be reminded that thinness and lightness even has its limits when it comes to desirability. Most people I know love the weight and feel of this phone when I show it to them and it just looks badass.

    Agree with you completely. I love the solid feeling of the device ... I held an iPhone 5 the other day and it was so light to the point that like you said, it made it less desirable to me. I

  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    Hmm, I've had much better battery life than that, even when using the device pretty heavily. Did you download the Nokia Drive+ Beta? I've heard from other users that it can ruin battery life, because it automatically enables itself for background processing (which includes polling GPS). Go to settings -> swipe to applications -> background tasks -> Nokia Drive+ Beta -> block.

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