Windows Phone 7/8 Catch All

Another question... does the 920 support 5GHz 802.11N wi-fi? My current mixed b/g/n network is on 2.4GHz; I've been noticing my wireless network hasn't been performing very well in recent weeks, and found this when I brought my work laptop home:

IMAGE(http://f.cl.ly/items/1Z140K3w0F3c1f2i3J2B/Screen%20Shot%202013-02-02%20at%201.22.22%20PM.png)

Haaaa! You should download inSSIDer for fun and take a screenshot. That looks like a networking disaster.

The Lumia 900 didn't. I highly doubt that the 920 does.

My Lumia 920 is connected to my 5 GHz network so it does.

breander wrote:

My Lumia 920 is connected to my 5 GHz network so it does.

Nice!

breander wrote:

My Lumia 920 is connected to my 5 GHz network so it does.

Awesome, thank you!

If you have an older windows phone, supposedly, microsoft released 7.8 for all WP7 phones. My Dell Venue Pro got updated yesterday (about a week and a half after I bought a new phone).

Jayhawker wrote:

I'm looking for fiends to play Alphajax with. So far Shag and Ubrakto are playing. Its a great free scrabble game.

Definitely an addicting game, though I wish I could get an actual Scrabble app on my phone. I still like the classic setup a bit better.

Sorry, btw, I didn't respond to your Pox comment in the in-game chat. For some reason it thinks I've got chat settings for it blocked, when as far as I can tell, I don't. It's very odd.

No problem. You really are kicking my butt in this game. You are pretty good at playing words next to others that racks up points for multiple words. Plus, it makes it hard to fit nd open places to play.

But its actually helped me get better.

ubrakto wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

I'm looking for fiends to play Alphajax with. So far Shag and Ubrakto are playing. Its a great free scrabble game.

Definitely an addicting game, though I wish I could get an actual Scrabble app on my phone. I still like the classic setup a bit better.

Sorry, btw, I didn't respond to your Pox comment in the in-game chat. For some reason it thinks I've got chat settings for it blocked, when as far as I can tell, I don't. It's very odd.

That's one thing on Alphajax that needs to bit of work. I didn't even realize the little word balloon meant some one had put something into the chat window. Might help if they make it really obvious.

I've found, after playing one game of AlphaJax, that I really hate scrabble style games because of their bullsh*t built-in dictionaries... too often people just guess 2 or 3 letter words so they can link a longer word...

Irritates the sh*t out of me.

AP Erebus wrote:

I've found, after playing one game of AlphaJax, that I really hate scrabble style games because of their bullsh*t built-in dictionaries... too often people just guess 2 or 3 letter words so they can link a longer word...

Irritates the sh*t out of me.

You could also learn them, and then see the strategies they provide. I haven't guessed them so much as seen them used on me.

If you watch Scrabble tournaments, it is essentially the same. There is a strategy in maximizing points and preventing your opponent from capitalizing.

Not strictly relevant for many people on these forums, but I think this is a cool story.

MS is making a strong push to grow infrastructure and skills in Africa, and as part of that they are going to introduce a low cost Win8 phone, as well as aid local app development.

Microsoft has set out on a mission to help one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world remain competitive. The software giant announced today that it was launching its 4Afrika Initiative to help accelerate adoption of smart devices for those in Africa.

In order to put more devices in the hands of educators, students, small businesses, and entrepreneurs, the company has teamed with Huawei to provide a new Windows Phone for the continent.

With the 4Afrika Initiative, Microsoft hopes to engage in Africa’s economic development in order to improve its global competitiveness. It estimates that by 2016, the initiative will help place tens of millions of smart devices in the hands of African youth, bring 1 million African small and medium-sized businesses online, upskill 100,000 members of the continent’s existing workforce, and help an additional 100,000 graduates develop employable skills. It also says it hopes to help 75 percent be placed in jobs.

Is the app market still filled with crappy ports of 'standard' apps? Is it getting better?

Can you be more specific?

Yeah, I'm not sure what you mean. I, personally, have plenty of apps to play with/use. There may be some apps missing but nothing I really need. Nokia has helped the app store and has gotten EA making some games (several of which are free for Nokia phones). Sure, they are all iOS games but they're still fun games. MS has started releasing games as well with the recent Skulls of the Shogun (fun turn based strategy game). Still no official instagram or facebook but there are clients for those available.

Jayhawker wrote:
AP Erebus wrote:

I've found, after playing one game of AlphaJax, that I really hate scrabble style games because of their bullsh*t built-in dictionaries... too often people just guess 2 or 3 letter words so they can link a longer word...

Irritates the sh*t out of me.

You could also learn them, and then see the strategies they provide. I haven't guessed them so much as seen them used on me.

If you watch Scrabble tournaments, it is essentially the same. There is a strategy in maximizing points and preventing your opponent from capitalizing.

Actually, I don't think AlphaJax has a built in dictionary. You can still go trial and error because it won't let you cheat, but there's no way that I've seen in the app to look up words. Either way, that only bothered me for a little while when I started playing Scrabble online and I just got used to it over time. It's still a level playing field and the dictionary can't find words for you, only verify if something you want to try is a word. It's non-traditional, but I don't mind.

Jayhawker wrote:

No problem. You really are kicking my butt in this game. You are pretty good at playing words next to others that racks up points for multiple words. Plus, it makes it hard to fit nd open places to play.

But its actually helped me get better.

I learned the same way. A few years ago an ex-girlfriend got me playing Scrabble against her on Facebook and for a month+ she just wiped the floor with me every single day. It was definitely a solid learning experience... and once I started winning games here and there, oh boy would she get pissed off.

Just a heads up for WP8 users / Spotify people. The beta Spotify app is now out for WP8. I had *severe* issues getting it to work, however. I don't know if it's HTC 8x specific, the hand of fate, or what, but the app couldn't stream anything at all when I was logged in using my Facebook credentials (which it claims to support). It would launch normally, but as soon as I'd select a track to play it would just hang there. To get it to work I had to set up a device password through my Spotify account page (via web browser) and then log in using my Spotify ID# and that password, which seems to have done the trick.

Hopefully if anyone else hits the same bug, this'll help. I've been waiting for this one to show up in the Store for awhile, so I'm pretty relieved to get it working.

Spotify is working for me on my Lumia 920 so far.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

If you have an older windows phone, supposedly, microsoft released 7.8 for all WP7 phones. My Dell Venue Pro got updated yesterday (about a week and a half after I bought a new phone).

That update still hasn't been pushed to my Lumia 900. I don't know what the deal is. I'm planning on updating it, wiping it, and selling it on Ebay.

Symbiotic wrote:

Spotify is working for me on my Lumia 920 so far.

Yep, it's working well on my 920, too. I was never a Spotify user, but pretty much eliminates the need for Nokia's excellent music app.

The only downside is that I recently did a big purge of unnecessary stuff I've been paying for. Unfortunately that included my 2 Gig data plan. I only saved $5 by dropping to 300 MB, but it was $10 including my daughter's plan. But looking at our usage reports made it clear we didn't need the 2 Gigs. We use WiFi for almost all of our data.

But that means steaming music will put me over. And AT&T does not offer 2 Gig anymore, so it will be $10 to upgrade to 3 Gigs. So I will pass on streaming in my car in favor of podcasts that I have set to download only over WiFi.

But it was nice for use at the YMCA,which has free WiFi.

Bah! T-mobile is saying they have no plans at the moment to roll 7.8 to the Nokia 710. Bastards.

Just found this thread and favourit-ed it.

I am a total WP7 noob. I had an opportunity to change my company phone (an ancient Android contraption) to a new one. I did consider getting a new Andie, but my Gingerbread experience was not too great. So, even though I had some Android apps purchased, I chose a Nokia Lumia 800 instead. I finally picked it up yesterday in a lovely shade of fuchsia (I had no choice colour-wise) and fiddled with it a bit last night. I haven't yet upgraded to 7.8 (though I'm slightly hesitant having read some feedback on teh internetz).

So far, the OS seems really good - everything 'simply works'. This is what I want my phone to be - minimum setup required. Google sync worked (for calendar/contacts/email). Just a few comments from me (after very brief usage):

PROS:
- The Nokia navigation (Nokia Drive) is great. The version I got out-of-the-box was very basic, but the app update made a huge improvement. I love the 'My Commute' option, and the map download for offline navi (gonna use it a lot during my trips outside the country)
- The appstore might not have thousands of items, but the main ones I use are there. LastPass, ToodleDo client, SimpleNote client, SmartRunner.
- I really like the idea of tiles. In the past I always liked a clear view of my wallpaper and never liked the widgets or notification area extras (like the extra menu that older Nokia phones had). But now I think the tile-based menu is great. It lets you access all basic functions lightning-fast!

CONS:
- Why the heck can I only have 1 mobile phone number per person? Many of my google contacts had more than one, and these phone numbers did not sync to my WP7. I had to manually switch from 'Mobile' to 'Work' or 'Home' in contacts.google.com. This is probably my biggest complaint about the phone so far.
- All of my google calendars are downloaded into the WP7 calendar as one category ('google calendar'), and got the same colour. This could have been done better (on my Palm Pre it works better)
- I read about Google stopping support for MSActiveSync (or whatever the API is called). I wonder if this will impact the WP7 world?
- I've not used the MS/SkyDrive ecosystem so far, so I keep some files on Google Drive. I wish there was an official GDrive app for WP7 (or at least a way to sync gDrive and SkyDrive).

I had to replace my 920 today. My power button stopped working. I tried a soft reset, but it really looked like the power button just wasn't registering. I could unlock via the camera button, but this wasn't ideal. I decided to go into the about and do a reset to see if it was software and not mechanical. I got the two spinning gears for over two hours. Some research indicated the phone could be re-flashed, but you have to be able to power it off. I skipped that and went to the AT&T equipment repair center. They took about 20 minutes and just gave me a replacement phone. I was pretty pleased with the outcome.

My Lumia 900 still won't update through Zune. Looks like I can force the update like this. This is ridiculous. I just want to sell the damn thing for 100 bucks or so on Ebay. Figured it would be nice if 7.8 was already on it. Sheesh.

Edit: That was a waste of time. They must have screwed me since I'm not on a contract with AT&T. I guess I'll just try to sell it with 7.5.

That's odd. I thought all lumias got the update. Surprisingly, my Dell Venue Pro got it.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

That's odd. I thought all lumias got the update. Surprisingly, my Dell Venue Pro got it.

It's up to your provider to push the update to you. Otherwise you have to find the files and do it yourself, which is what I'll probably be stuck doing with my Lumia 710 since T-Mobile isn't pushing the upgrade to it.

Edit: Nevermind.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

Can you be more specific?

Well, back towards launch most of the apps were ports off Android apps and just didn't fit the screen properly or ran slow and stuff. Stuff like Facebook was poorly integrated.

Nokia announced some more W8 phones. They're mid tier but all have the Zeiss cameras.

Also their maps app is available for all W8 devices.

garion333 wrote:

Also their maps app is available for all W8 devices.

That's cool. That app is great from what I experienced.