Just got a Nokia Icon, first real Windows Phone 8 experience ensues

[vbuggy]

I noticed some recent apps be much more responsive, but 'resuming' never quite went away for me. It is definitely an apps thing, not just OS dependent.

The problem given this is WP of course is that there's plenty of 'MS's check cleared, now we can ah heck off and work on actually relevant platforms' quasi-abandonware out there which people need to use if they want to get anything done in WP, which clearly aren't coded with ultimate efficiency in mind.

I also get that people are still coming into WP dev new to mobile development (and again, this may be a primary reason for the exceedingly poor quality of the majority of WP apps that might potentially do something useful) and feeling their way around the OS - at least this is the defensive feedback I get from a lot of devs when I've complained about the state of their apps, even though their apps may be as old as Android apps which went from basic to stellar in the same timeframe.

 

[bearxor]

Unrelated and I've seen that defensive reply from more than one revisionist-selective-amnesiac Applezombie - the thing is though, the performance disparity between the fastest G5's and the fastest P4 and the Core. P4->Core = notable leap. G5 ->Core = ludicrous speed (and of course, no leaks).

And the Core rolled out at the same time as the Intel Macs did - not 'long after'.

That's all I have to say on that.

I'm just going to leave this here...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/1702/5

As a workstation CPU, the G5 was significantly faster than a P4-based system. But so was Opteron. Intel f***ed up with P4. Everyone knows that. It took a P4-based Xeon 1000mhz to match the performance of a G5 or a Opteron. You have it totally backwards.

The problem with the G5 was the thermal limit. IBM just couldn't get it to go any faster than 3ghz. And, undoubtedly, Intel and Apple were talking while Core was in development. So, yes, Apple was ready to go right when Core was released.

But anymore discussion on this and we should probably take it to ATA.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I've had my Icon for almost 5 days...


iCon.
It's kinda funny, but I keep catching myself starting to type it as 'iCon' with a lower case i and capital C. Not that it is anything like an iPhone, but apparently when I type the name of any device that begins with an "i" my brain feels the instinctual need to capitalize it a certain way.


Performance.
So far zero performance complaints with the Icon. I used an iPhone 5S for a few months, had been recently using my Note 3 and Nexus 5. And I haven't scrutinized them side by side to say which is faster. But to me the Icon certainly feels plenty fast.


Resuming.
I didn't know this was an issue until it was mentioned in this thread, I don't recall seeing anything like that happening to me during my first 5 days of use with the phone. I needed to Google the issue to understand what it is and how to duplicate it. Sounds like it's an issue that happens when switching between apps.

I tried to test it. First with Skype I was just opening it, going home, and reopening it. Nothing so far. Then I opened Skype, Home, opened Twitter, Home, back to Skype and boom I got a black "resuming..." screen for a few seconds. I was pretty surprised I was able to cause it so easily and hadn't noticed it before. So I tried doing it again and but it worked fine the second try. I tried a few more times. Still nothing.

I gave up trying to reproduce the problem for a bit and went on to doing something else. Then about 15 minutes later I just happened to be going from Twitter to Skype again and I saw the "resuming..." screen a second time, though it was shorter this time, about two seconds.

I've been trying it with other apps. IE, Netflix, One Drive, Store. So far no luck with other apps. So I'm wondering if it's and issue that only happens to some apps. I've been using Twitter a lot the last 5 days and hadn't notice the problem and only scarcely used Skype, so it's an app issue I'd lean towards the culprit being Skype in this situation.


Apps.
The apps are definitely the biggest negative I've had with Windows Phone. And unfortunately everything I feared about the app ecosystem seems to be true. Microsoft will tell you they have most of the major apps. But the quality of even big name apps like Twitter and Netflix are much poorer than on Android and iOS.

Netflix for example. This app has to reload everytime I open it, even if I just go to the home screen and back into it. It doesn't take long, but it's still an odd issue. The UI looks dated and bland, not nearly as beautiful as the Android version.

Twitter is a similar situation. I think all the functionality is there, but the UI is clunky and obtrusive, while on Android it's very minimal more vibrant and still as functional.

And IE's address bar that doesn't hide just feels archaic.

For the most part, the apps Windows 8 has, they seem to be as functional as what I'm doing on Android. They just are not as polished or as sophisticated looking.

But the app store is smaller and more niche stuff is harder to find. I still haven't found an audio book app that fits my needs. But apparently this is a limitation of the file system.


Wireless.
The wifi data works perfectly fine. However it seems Windows Phone 8 has no "link speed" visible in the wifi options, so I can never see just how fast I'm connected to an access point. Normally I wouldn't mind and don't pay much attention to link speed, but I'm having another issue that makes me wish I could see my link speed.

I have my Icon and Note 3 connected to my office wifi. Both show 4 bars of strength at first. After a while I notice on the Icons it goes from 4 bars to 0 bars. The Note 3 still shows 4 bars. I disabled the cellular data on the Icon and confirmed I still have a data connection and the phone does say I'm connected to my wifi access point, but with 0 bars. I test the speed and am getting the same on the Icon as the Note 3 with 4 bars.

So apparently there is something wrong with the Icon not showing signal strength correctly after a while for me. Also this is a WPA2-Enterprise secured network. I haven't noticed this on my WPA2-Personal network at home or the open guest network here.

The data is still working, so it's not a big problem. But it did have my confused at first whether I was really still on wifi or using LTE until I turned the LTE off and confirmed I was infact on wifi.

 

[vbuggy]

Once you get into everyday app usage, shifting from camera etc and obviously the ironically (I hesitate to use that anymore, since the non joined up state of MS's online services and its relation to its own OSs is beyond irony and getting into really tiresome) crappy Skype, I found it pretty easy to replicate 'resuming' on even a 1520 - and definitely a factor on the other presently available (and still current, at least until the 930 is available globally) handsets running WP8.1.

At least in comparison to 8.0 you don't get quite the "Hey Why Don't You Buy Our New Shit engineered slowdown" like iOS with existing handsets, but the experience compared with similar iOS and Android devices is not good.

And on a 512Mb device... oy, pretty painful (which leads me to wonder why the hell they stuck with 512Mb on the 630).