Windows Phone 7/8 Catch All

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Have you tried contacting the people who do the podcasts and asking them to add them to the Zune marketplace? It's a pretty painless process as near as I can tell.

Yeah, but Russ Pitts said not to count on it. The big jerk!

Jayhawker wrote:

I have DGR thought Zune.

Just looked and it is still there.

Ha! So it is. You have to type in Drunken Gamers Radio to find it. I was just searching DGR, DG Radio, and DGRadio. Still can't find a couple, but I've got plenty to just use the Zune player.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

Have you tried contacting the people who do the podcasts and asking them to add them to the Zune marketplace? It's a pretty painless process as near as I can tell.

The one that came up was DGRadio. I would assume that it's an extra step that people don't want to deal with. I may just stop listening to that one because I don't listen to it too often these days. I had just started adding podcasts and when that one came up missing, I assumed there would be a bunch unavailable. Maybe I'll try adding them again and see how many the marketplace is missing.

I have DGR on the Zune.

Just looked and it is still there.

For people with a Zune Pass, what is the best way to use the streaming music? Right now, I have to go into the Marketplace app, music and search for a band or song. Is there a more "spotify" type experience?

Ulairi wrote:

For people with a Zune Pass, what is the best way to use the streaming music? Right now, I have to go into the Marketplace app, music and search for a band or song. Is there a more "spotify" type experience?

Yes, you can go to an artist and hit the "smart dj" option, which will bring in stuff you've got downloaded mixed with streaming stuff.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I started doing this and found the podcast had to be in the Zune Marketplace which means it's missing some of mine. Is there anywhere in the PC Zune software to add podcasts via RSS?

If you go to your Collection and then its Podcasts section, below all of the icons for your existing podcasts is a button to "add a podcast" using URLs.

Ulairi wrote:

For people with a Zune Pass, what is the best way to use the streaming music? Right now, I have to go into the Marketplace app, music and search for a band or song. Is there a more "spotify" type experience?

Pretty much no, as it doesn't store any sort of playlists or ratings in the cloud from what I can tell (Smart DJ even failed for me the other day, saying I needed more music to use it--and I've had an active Zune Pass since 2008). It's even worse when you realize that Windows Phone has zero support for Channels, unlike standalone Zune players.

The keyboard for windows phone is much better than my iPhone. Zune streaming kind of sucks.

I like the keyboard, too, although I have a, now discontinued, LG Quantum. It has a slide out keyboard that works really well. But I do due the touch screen keyboard sometimes, too. And even though the Quantum has a smaller screen, I find it to be really well developed.

I have to say, though, my wife doesn't like it at all. She gets really frustrated wit hit when forced to use it, as she is used to her 4s. But I think she is more frustrated because it is smaller. I like the smaller screen size because I want my phone to be smaller in my pocket. Of course the slide out keyboard adds a significant amount of heft to the phone.

I'm probably going to skip the physical keyboard when I upgrade, although I will miss its ease of use. But this means a larger screen like the Lumia.

As for Zune streaming, I jus have not bought into paying for a music subscription. I have a ton of music, and I would rather just play from my collection than pay a monthly fee for more.In this regard, the Zune is fine. It does not beat iTunes, though. But it is good enough that it is allI use for music anymore.

Got my work to switch me back to AT&T due to Verizon being miserable in my area (lag in texts, no ring on calls then vm alert, poor call quality, etc...). Lumia inbound on Monday.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I started doing this and found the podcast had to be in the Zune Marketplace which means it's missing some of mine. Is there anywhere in the PC Zune software to add podcasts via RSS?

If you go to your Collection and then its Podcasts section, below all of the icons for your existing podcasts is a button to "add a podcast" using URLs.

Awesome! I'll have to download the Zune software to my PC.

Jayhawker wrote:

I like the keyboard, too, although I have a, now discontinued, LG Quantum. It has a slide out keyboard that works really well. But I do due the touch screen keyboard sometimes, too. And even though the Quantum has a smaller screen, I find it to be really well developed.

I have to say, though, my wife doesn't like it at all. She gets really frustrated wit hit when forced to use it, as she is used to her 4s. But I think she is more frustrated because it is smaller. I like the smaller screen size because I want my phone to be smaller in my pocket. Of course the slide out keyboard adds a significant amount of heft to the phone.

I'm probably going to skip the physical keyboard when I upgrade, although I will miss its ease of use. But this means a larger screen like the Lumia.

As for Zune streaming, I jus have not bought into paying for a music subscription. I have a ton of music, and I would rather just play from my collection than pay a monthly fee for more.In this regard, the Zune is fine. It does not beat iTunes, though. But it is good enough that it is allI use for music anymore.

I think the Zune experience, visually is much better than iTunes. Also, the fact that there is a right to left/left to right gesture for changing music on WP and not on iOS is a HUGE improvement. I hated that with my iPhone I couldn't make that simple gesture to change songs. I'm like you, I have a huge music collection 25+ GB but I don't have a phone big enough to hold it so I need a streaming solution. I thought Airplay would be it but it doesn't allow me to stream my music, just download it and that sucked.

IF there was a good way to take my library and allow me to stream it, I'd be super happy.

Ulairi wrote:

IF there was a good way to take my library and allow me to stream it, I'd be super happy.

Subsonic!

I've got a Subsonic server set up, if you want a guest account to play around with it, just PM me.

While it's not the Lumia 900 or Titan II, newegg has the Dell Venue Pro on sale for $219 shipped. It's got a curved AMOLED screen and a slide out keyboard. It looks like it is the T-Mobile one (look at the 3g compatibility) but will work with AT&T (but not on 3g). I am very happy with mine. The slide-out keyboard is quite nice. It is fast and the screen looks fantastic. I also really like the overall design of the phone. The camera is okay but can't compete with newer phones.

I have a few complaints about it. First, due to the keyboard it is a bit thick and heavy. Doesn't bother me too much but it's worth mentioning. Second, the silver on the sides is plastic that's painted with chrome paint. Mine is coming off on the top and has some "dents" where I dropped it on gravel. Not big ones but they're there.

Apparently the Lumia 900 is sold out in both black and cyan at both Amazon and AT&T's online store. I hope that's a good sign. Looks like initial adoption has been very positive.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

Apparently the Lumia 900 is sold out in both black and cyan at both Amazon and AT&T's online store. I hope that's a good sign. Looks like initial adoption has been very positive.

I sure hope so! They rolled out that update to fix the data issue early which is awesome. Nokia/Microsoft definitely learned from the iPhone 4 antenna "issue". I think it was key for them to get on the good side of the media rather than the bad.

I installed the Zune software on my PC so I could backup and update my phone. It was extremely painless compared to iTunes. They let me keep it very uninvasive. I checked out the podcast thing and can add URLs like people mentioned earlier which is awesome. I think it took maybe 20-30 minutes total where most of that was updating the phone. Thank god I can leave iTunes off of my desktop PC. I'll leave it on my laptop so that I can backup my iPhone 4.

I'm divesting my self from Apple products. Lion is terrible.

I'm really enjoying my Lumia. A small feature that I really love is having the address bar for WP IEcat the bottom of the browser is really nice!!

Well with it costing $99 under contract and everyone getting a $100 credit if you get one before Apr. 21st its basically a free upgrade with a 2 year contract.. good deal for a great phone

TheGameguru wrote:

Well with it costing $99 under contract and everyone getting a $100 credit if you get one before Apr. 21st its basically a free upgrade with a 2 year contract.. good deal for a great phone

*sigh* We don't even have the 900 in Canada yet (just the 800 and only on one carrier) plus we have 3 year contracts and I bet when the 900 does come out here, it'll be $200 at a minimum. Ugh, I hate the cellphone oligopoly up here.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Well with it costing $99 under contract and everyone getting a $100 credit if you get one before Apr. 21st its basically a free upgrade with a 2 year contract.. good deal for a great phone

*sigh* We don't even have the 900 in Canada yet (just the 800 and only on one carrier) plus we have 3 year contracts and I bet when the 900 does come out here, it'll be $200 at a minimum. Ugh, I hate the cellphone oligopoly up here.

That's no fun. I thought Rogers had the Lumia 900.

I found a few very useful things regarding Windows Phone.

This thread has some useful tips that you might not notice. I figured out most of them on my own, but the best thing is setting up Sky Drive with GLADINET like iCloud so that your photos are synced to your computer. It sets up your Sky Drive as a drive letter on your computer.

Here's the main list from that thread.

Highlighting text in internet explorer and hitting the search button will search Bing with your highlighted text.

While listening to any kind of music, changing the volume brings up the expanded volume bar with the currently playing audio. Tap the title and it will take you into whatever app is playing the music.

Pressing the back button gets rid of the volume bar quickly.

There is an app called Stop The Music! That will remove any music that may be listed on he volume bar so that it goes back to its small size.

If you set the phone to upload photos to skydrive. There is a way to mount a drive right to skydrive on your desktop. Pictures sent right to my computer so nice.

In settings, you can allow your phone to upload your photos directly to skydrive.
you can tag people in photos when you upload it to facebook

Holding back button allows for multitasking

Holding start button lets you use voice

Holding camera button when your phone is locked opens up the camera
when typing, double tapping space bar adds a period, adds a space, and capitalises the next letter.

Tapping and holding on keys on the keyboard allows you to add less-used symbols/letters
you can "close" toast notifications (the ones that pop up on a tab at the top of the screen) by sliding it to the right
when you have 41 or more apps, the letter navigation pops up (just like in people hub)
you can share onenote documents with people (using skydrive), and it will sync to everyones phone/skydrive, makes it super easy to send notes around to a group!
onenote is a good alternative to a todo app, it allows you to have checkbox lists, add images or voice notes, and syncs it to skydrive automatically for you

You can have full sms conversations, using just your voice. go to settings->speech and turn on audio confirmations. if you get a text, the phone will tell you that you got a text, who you got it from, and you can say "read it" and it will read the text for you, after that's done, you can say "reply" and send a text back, without even touching the phone. it works like this
Tap and hold is the hidden delighter of windows phone. Try it on a bunch of different places in the UI to discover additional functionality.

Holding the search key while on the lock screen will jump straight to bing without having to unlock. - as reported by 'rdubmu' this does not work!

Pressing back with the soft keyboard open will close the keyboard.

You can show info for what's currently playing in the music+video app on your lock screen. Turn the setting on under lock+wallpaper.

You can swipe away the notifications

If your phone is connected to the PC and the Zune is open, then you can do 'reverse tethering' - use your PC's internet connection from your phone.

If you click the search button then hit the "Eyeball" icon you can take a picture of printed text and either copy it to your clipboard, or translate it into another language. I have used it with a very high success rate. Blew me away when I discovered it a few weeks ago.

Here's one that is not obvious. You can filter in local scout! Click on the small green text under eat+drink, see+do etc.

When a song is playing in the Zune app you can tap the artists name and go to their albums list.

If your playing music in shuffle mode and add a song to now playing through a tap and hold, it will be the next song to play. Same thing for an album
On the now playing screen in Zune you can tap below the song playing and it will list upcoming songs.

If you pin an artist to the home screen, you get the double tile.

You can tap and hold on the number key on the bottom left and then slide your finger all over the numbers and just let go. Basically you never have to toggle the numbers key. Most just think you can only do that on a few keyboard buttons like punctuation.

Continue hitting the back button will clear all your background running Apps. If you want to close a specific App running in the background, Hold the back button, select the app in the card view and then hit the back button.

If you stop playing music on the Lumia 900, the music on the volume bar will disappear after a short period of time. Unlike with older WP phones where it stayed until phone reset
In the address book view, if a person has multiple iterations of their info from Live, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Linkedin, etc. You can combine them all by using the 'Link' icon from within their profile view. WP actually gives you suggestions on the names from your address book. This way, there is only one iteration of their contact which combines all the different profiles of that person.

Within the address book, you can create groups and add add people within those groups. I have Family, Close Friends and Co-Workers. I can view all their social activity at one place. I can also pin these group/s as a home screen tile.

That Gladinet thing is very confusing. Why do you need Skydrive set up with third party software, when there is already a Skydrive client for Windows and Mac desktops? The client automatically syncs your photos + documents to web - device - desktop. It would be easy from there to map that folder to a drive letter in Windows if there's some reason a folder isn't sufficient?

When I logged in to Windows Live, I couldn't see a way to do that. I'll have to dig further.

You're looking for Windows Live Mesh.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

While it's not the Lumia 900 or Titan II, newegg has the Dell Venue Pro on sale for $219 shipped. It's got a curved AMOLED screen and a slide out keyboard. It looks like it is the T-Mobile one (look at the 3g compatibility) but will work with AT&T (but not on 3g). I am very happy with mine. The slide-out keyboard is quite nice. It is fast and the screen looks fantastic. I also really like the overall design of the phone. The camera is okay but can't compete with newer phones.

I have a few complaints about it. First, due to the keyboard it is a bit thick and heavy. Doesn't bother me too much but it's worth mentioning. Second, the silver on the sides is plastic that's painted with chrome paint. Mine is coming off on the top and has some "dents" where I dropped it on gravel. Not big ones but they're there.

I have had 2 Dell Venue Pros since they first (belatedly) shipped. I agree with pretty much everything Homer has said here - and intially, I was a big fan of the phone, but now that I've had to deal with Dell customer support, there is no way I could ever recommend the device to anyone I liked.

In November of last year, my wife's phone started to take pictures non-stop. While charging overnight, it would take 3000+ pictures. This eventually led to the phone bricking. A call to Dell got me a replacement w/in 24 hours - we were very pleased. Now, barely 5 months since getting a replacement, the phone as started turning the display off while you're on a call. Initially, the screen would blink very quickly where you had to try to tap the "end call" button when it blinked to end the call. Now, it is just a blank screen. The only way you can end a call now is to have the other party end it or pop your battery. Having a positive experience with Dell's customer support, I called them expecting to get a new device w/in the next 48 hours...Unfortunately, the warranty on the replacement device they sent me was only 3 months, instead of the 1 year that the devices had when you bought them. Dell did offer to replace the device for $246. No complaining on my part made any difference.

There was no way I was going to pay $200+ for what amounts to a 3 month warranty on what was most likely a refurbished device.

Regarding the camera...Unless you are in very bright lighting, the camera is basically unusable. I've tried using it to capture spur of the moment stuff that you'd expect to be able to do, but wind up left with a blurry mess of a picture. I have seen numerous folks with the same issue and I believe it is a problem Dell knew about when they shipped the device. I have logged complaints and filed tickets with them regarding the camera and non have been met with anything beyond "I'll forward that to our R&D dept.". Recording videos seems to be better, but indoor still photos are so bad that it is almost comical.

I really like the keyboard on the device and that is something I'm going to miss when I get a Lumia 900 after I throw both of our DVPs into the lake.

Sorry to hear that. I have not had any issues with mine but understand how having issues like you describe on two separate occasions can really sour you. I feel the same way about OCZ rebates after not getting the first (and last) one I sent in and having absolutely no replies from them on it. I just hope I don't start having problems with mine.

There are definately things to like about the device - and I had been very pleased with it for a while (with the exception of the camera quality, which I held out hope for a software/firmware update to fix).

Customer/Product support is a big thing to me. A company that stands behind their product, fixes it when issues arise and provides good customer support along the way wins big with me. Once I discovered that they really didn't stand behind the device and the issues with their lack of quality customer support really soured me on Dell as a company. Same goes for Best Buy - but that is another thread!

I thought the DVP had horrible noise issues while listening to music (or listening to nothing) with earbuds plugged in?

Kurrelgyre wrote:

I thought the DVP had horrible noise issues while listening to music (or listening to nothing) with earbuds plugged in?

Never noticed that. I used to listen to wired earphones only but now I spend most of my time listening with a bluetooth headset. I still use wires occasionally though and have not noticed any noise issues.

I use mine often to listen to audio books and haven't ever had problems.