It’s been roughly a week or so now since I got my Windows Phone 8 iPhone clone — I mean, Nokia Lumia 920 (it was a joke, relax).
The phone itself is quite large, and that for me isn’t an issue except I find my thumbs don’t get as much surface coverage on either side of the phone. The battery life on the phone is nice but the overall user experience within the phone drives me mad.
The camera for instance was annoying because when it came to take a photo I had forgotten I had the setting on close up, so when I took my shot of choice it came out blurry. It took a while for me to remember that the setting was changed as there was no visual indication that the said phone was in a particular setting — as if having an icon on display all the time was a failure Nokia wouldn’t tolerate (you failed me Nokia)
There are a lot of other settings that also drive me crazy and I could list the postives & negatives all day (Still trying to sort through my emotions on whether this phone will last or go). However, the one and most crucial thing of all that I dislike about the experience is the App Store clones.
What I mean to say is, despite the various ups & downs that come with having the actual phone — which I can live with — the one piece to this equation is just how immature and terrible the applications that you have on offer are within the Microsoft store. It’s like all the other kids (iPhone/Android) are riding dirtbikes but your parents give you a new bmx bike (Windows Phone 8) with a fake muffler attached.
I’m struggling even as I type this to come up with some examples of great apps, the ones you cannot live without. The only application that I find actually useful and fairly well designed was Skype. I found Twitter apps to be half-done, broken, prone to “an error has occurred” status messages or the worse offender of all — the official Facebook app (which feels like it was written by a first year programming intern). These are really two applications that a smartphone today must own in terms of unique experience, as these i’d argue are probably the most frequently used outside email (would it kill the design team to use “bold” font to indicate unread emails btw?? and text messaging + threads… really.. threads? what is this a texting forum?).
There is much I’d tolerate about owning this phone but looking at my iPhone apps that are sitting idle and then staring at my Windows Phone I can’t but help develop buyer’s remorse at the moment. I miss my instagram, twitter, flipboard, facebook (yes even iPhone Facebook app), games, XBMC remote, ANZ Bank and the list goes on and on.
There are really only two applications within the Windows Phone 8 market place that stand out for me — Qantas and ZARA. The Qantas app is still a bit flat but it looks different enough to give it a pass whilst the ZARA app (Fashion) looks quality elegant / tastefully done — even though I have zero use for it but can appreciate its design.
My underlying point is this. I want to keep using this phone, I want to get off the iPhone crack and try new things but if you keep rinse & repeating the same stupid template driven applications whilst touting “I’m being authentically digital” then you in turn are killing yourselves more than my experience.
If this phone has a chance of success it’s going to come down to development teams engaging a designer and throwing out the Windows Phone 8 “Design Guidelines” by Microsoft.
Microsoft have not a consistent coherent clue as to what good design is and have consistently shown they themselves can’t even lock onto the concept of what good design is. They rely heavily on design agencies, contractors and partners to do the majority of the actual design for solutions they “make”.
There are currently 90+ designers on the Windows Phone 8 “team” and I ask a simple question — What the f**K are you all doing? You’re not helping the community & marketplace that’s for sure.
So please hire a designer today.
