Forced to give up Windows Phone

Conversation 27 comments

  • Writerlad

    17 April, 2017 - 2:28 pm

    <p><em>Weird. My post completely vanished when writing in IE. Let me try this again in Firefox/Palemoon…</em></p><p>I've been one of the few crazy holdouts who had been sticking with Windows Phone (currently have a Lumia 640 on T-Mobile), but the platform seems to be going out of its way to drive me away. I'm the type who only uses their phone to do a certain few things — web browsing, reading ebooks, listening to music and podcasts — and don't need a lot of apps. However, I <em>do</em> need the few apps I use to actually <em>work</em>!</p><p>Several months back, the ancient Hotmail account associated with my Microsoft Account finally got updated to the new outlook.com backend. This completely broke all syncing of email/contacts with my Windows Phone, and required a factory refresh to get the phone working again.</p><p>The refresh solved the problems with my Microsoft Account. But when I went to reinstall my apps, I discovered that several apps I had been using regularly had vanished from the windows store during their most recent purge, and thus could not be replaced — and also, the Amazon Kindle app no longer worked for Windows Phone either. (Oh, the app still there in the store, and I was able to download and install it. But they've broken the activation process so that I can no longer link my Amazon account to the app, rendering it useless.)</p><p>In the months since then, my Windows Phone is steadily becoming useless. The few remaining apps are growing increasingly buggy, and since the platform has been all but abandoned, I don't hold out any hope of there being any updates to solve these problems. (Websites crash roughly 50% of the time when viewed through Edge. My&nbsp;Facebook app is barely functional. My Facebook messenger app can receive messages but as of last month stopped being able to send. My OneNote app stopped syncing as of last week. Microsoft's music app is unreliable and often refuses to stream from my music collection stored on OneDrive.)</p><p>So, it looks like I'll be shopping for an Android phone in the near future. Not because I wanted to leave Windows Phone, but because Windows Phone seems to be actively trying to drive me away.</p><p>So… Anyone have any suggestions for an Android phone in the same overall performance, size and price range as my Lumia 640? (I love the hardware. I just wish the OS &amp; Apps still worked on it!)</p>

    • skane2600

      17 April, 2017 - 2:35 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#98417">In reply to Writerlad:</a></em></blockquote><p>I don't know about you but we got our Windows Phones fairly cheap due to their relative unpopularity. So I suspect you might have to pay more for an Android phone with similar performance. Good luck! </p>

    • krayziehustler

      17 April, 2017 - 3:44 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#98417"><em>In reply to Writerlad:</em></a></blockquote><p>Actually after your failed login to the Kindle app, Amazon should send you a temporary password that should allow you to log into the app. Worked for me.</p>

      • Writerlad

        18 April, 2017 - 3:02 am

        <blockquote><a href="#98433"><em>In reply to krayziehustler:</em></a></blockquote><p>Thanks for the tip, but I could never get it to work. I'd try to authorize the app, they'd claim to send out the temporary password that would expire in 10 minutes… but then the email containing the temporary password wouldn't actually be sent until two or three hours later, by which point the password had long expired. Spent a whole weekend trying, but the resulting dozens of temp password emails never arrived within the timespan required. I tried reaching out to Amazon tech support, but once they learned it was for the Windows Phone version of the Kindle app, they pretty much told me not to bother trying.</p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      17 April, 2017 - 5:19 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#98417"><em>In reply to Writerlad:</em></a></blockquote><p>Moto G, baby. If you've got to go Android, they're great choices.</p>

  • Albatross

    17 April, 2017 - 3:14 pm

    <p>A Nexus 5x may suit your needs for a Lumia 640 replacement. It's a couple years old and probably closer to a Lumia 950 rather than a 640, but you can pick one up used on Ebay for under $200. Good phone!</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    17 April, 2017 - 3:37 pm

    <p>Welcome to the 99%, and you made the right choice 🙂 </p><p>There are certainly alot more budget Android phones available now than Windows phones. The current Moto G is a very good option, and don't fall for the lies about Android performing poorer than Windows Phone on weaker hardware. Even low-end phones have decent enough performance.</p>

    • skane2600

      17 April, 2017 - 4:04 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#98431">In reply to rameshthanikodi:</a></em></blockquote><p>We paid $65 for our 640 back in 2015. That's about 1/3 as expensive as a Moto G. As I said below, the problem is that Windows Phones were heavily discounted because of poor sales, so it's probably going to cost significantly more to get an Android phone with equal performance. Having said that, I understand all too well the frustration of owning a phone nobody is supporting.</p>

    • goodbar

      Premium Member
      18 April, 2017 - 11:22 am

      <blockquote><a href="#98431"><em>In reply to rameshthanikodi:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>From my experience, a $40 Lumia 650 performed FAR better than a $40 ZTE Maven.&nbsp; The ZTE Maven crawled horribly slow and ran out of storage space before I even finished installing basic apps (and I'm not an app or game guy by any means).</p>

  • YouWereWarned

    17 April, 2017 - 11:55 pm

    <p>As one hobling along on a 640 because I don't want to pay $200 to fix a 1520 with phantom-touch issues, I feel your pain. If the Creator's Update doesn't fix a serious memory-leak issue in the mail client, I too will be abandoning the ship.</p><p>Android or Apple — sort of like death by hanging or firing squad, no? With firing squad, you get the OS updated regularly and you know the battery will last all day, rather than burning all night. All with an industry-leading profit margin. OTOH, hanging saves you some money and keeps you on your toes with the occasional zero-day. And Google knows you in a much more direct and accurate way. Great choices, huh?</p>

    • Tony Barrett

      18 April, 2017 - 9:51 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#98536">In reply to YouWereWarned:</a></em></blockquote><p>And WM10 was all promise, and no delivery. Diabolical app store. Terrible unreliable unstable 'upgrade' from WM8.1. Almost zero phone choice. MS's appalling treatment of the once great Nokia and it's staff. Horses for courses.</p>

  • Writerlad

    18 April, 2017 - 2:53 am

    <p>Thanks everyone for the phone reccomendations, I'll keep them in mind! </p><p>I usually don't bother upgrading phones until the hardware itself wears out, but I don't know how much longer I can put up with the slow but steady increase of glitchy app problems that will likely never be updated. And the phone was barely a year old too… Sigh.</p>

  • JudaZuk

    18 April, 2017 - 7:09 am

    <p>What/Who is forcing you to stop using Windows Phone?</p>

    • jrswarr

      Premium Member
      19 April, 2017 - 11:51 am

      <blockquote><a href="#98570"><em>In reply to JudaZuk:</em></a></blockquote><p>Microsoft is! </p>

    • Writerlad

      19 April, 2017 - 4:11 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#98570"><em>In reply to JudaZuk:</em></a></blockquote><p><em>"What/Who is forcing you to stop using Windows Phone?"</em></p><p>Sorry for the confusingly blank headline. I had originally posted from IE, and it apparently ate the contents of my original post. I reposted my original comments as a reply elsewhere in this thread.</p><p>Short version: My Lumia 640 is having increasing problems with a lot of buggy/unusable apps, and I've given up hope of them being fixed. So I feel forced to look elsewhere for a replacement phone, even though I would have otherwise been quite content staying with Windows Phone if I could trust in reliability and support. </p>

      • napkatz

        20 April, 2017 - 3:56 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#98988">In reply to Writerlad:</a></em></blockquote><p>Exactly the same issue o my Lumia 640. The final straw was that Edge itself was becoming more and more unreliable, which is a real liability when it is needed to fill in the app gap.</p><p><br></p><p>Try the Moto G5 Plus. I have the 32 GB / 2 GB version ($230), and it is a fine mid-ranger.</p>

        • JudaZuk

          24 April, 2017 - 2:08 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#99227"><em>In reply to napkatz:</em></a><em> – and this is on a non insider build?</em></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • siko

    18 April, 2017 - 10:27 am

    <p>I am using my wp (lumia 532) for navigation (sweet as in free) and some messaging (WhatsApp, but try to avoid that since it's only supported on a device with SIM, and I'm a laptop user first). No need for me to adopt hideous Android… yet. Still think that wp (better: uwp) will live on and that I can escape google's mess. so far so good :)</p>

  • Jules Wombat

    19 April, 2017 - 8:06 am

    <p>Nope still lovng my Lumia 650. At £80 I doubt if I could get a decent experience from a similar proced Android. iOS and Android User Interface are just too dated for my tastes, albeit I appreciate that if you really need the latest Apps, then Android is the only real choice. </p>

  • Wolf

    Premium Member
    19 April, 2017 - 1:23 pm

    <p>What a load of nonsense. Everything works as expected on my 950XL, and I imagine that will continue for the life of the device, which I expect to use for another year or so. At that point I'll re-evaluate and make a decision on what's available at that time. The core apps you need are mostly available, Kindle works, Audible works, Starbucks works (sort of), my many games all work, Maps works, Skype works, Outlook and Calendar work. Heck, even the phone and texting work!</p><p><br></p><p>I say stop whining and enjoy what you have as long as it's supported. Then re-assess when the time comes. Nothing/no-one is forcing you to do anything.</p><p><br></p>

    • Writerlad

      19 April, 2017 - 4:03 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#98917"><em>In reply to Wolf:</em></a></blockquote><p><em>"What a load of nonsense. Everything works as expected on my 950XL, and I imagine that will continue for the life of the device, which I expect to use for another year or so…"</em></p><p>I'm happy for you, but your good fortune has no bearing on whether apps are working on my own Lumia 640 T-Mobile handset.</p><p><br></p><p><em>"I say stop whining and enjoy what you have as long as it's supported. Then re-assess when the time comes. Nothing/no-one is forcing you to do anything."</em></p><p>That was exactly my point. I'm re-assessing because I had a phone and apps I enjoyed, and they have stopped working. Microsoft's Edge browser, outlook, onedrive, onenote, music and podcast apps only work maybe 75% of the time on my phone, and are prone to random (and useless) "an unexpected error has occurred" messages. And after a phone reboot several months ago, my Kindle app stopped being able to authenticate my account; when I tried getting the reactivation emails to work, Amazon tech support told me point-blank not to bother trying to fix it once they learned it was the Windows Phone app. The fact that these apps may still be working on other people's phones doesn't help make my phone any more usable.</p><p>So yes, I <em>planned</em> to enjoy my phone for as long as it was supported. Then the apps on my phone stopped functioning reliably, and the companies show no indication they plan to fix them. I'm therefore not going to throw good money after bad by buying a new Windows Phone to replace this one, if I can't be confident it will be any better supported than this one. Hence my request to other users for suggestions on a non-WP replacement.</p>

      • Jules Wombat

        19 April, 2017 - 5:09 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#98983"><em>In reply to Writerlad:</em></a></blockquote><p>I call bull on this.</p>

      • Wolf

        Premium Member
        20 April, 2017 - 11:25 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#98983">In reply to Writerlad:</a></em></blockquote><p>Understood. I would never recommend for anyone to buy a Windows Phone at this time. That would be crazy! :)</p><p><br></p><p>I'm really just saying, if it works, enjoy it while you can. In your case, the experience has obviously gone south, so it's time to move on. I get that.</p><p><br></p><p>I guess I was reacting to the "forced to give up", but I get where you're coming from. Good luck with it. I'll ride out my luck as long as I can, and will probably have to join the Android world in a year or so myself :(</p>

        • Writerlad

          20 April, 2017 - 3:16 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#99125">In reply to Wolf:</a></em></blockquote><p>Thanks. I definitely would have been happy to stay with the platform for as long as my phone lasted. I only described it as "forced to give up" because the lack of support from the companies behind the phone and apps have left me with so few options that I felt like venting. It's just so frustrating that everything <em>had </em>been working fine until Microsoft upgraded my ancient hotmail account to the new outlook.com back end… and ever since then my Windows Phone has had nothing but sync issues and app problems. (My frustration is from that, plus the unhelpful tech support from Amazon regarding my still-broken Windows Phone Kindle app.) </p><p>Thanks again to those who offered suggestions on replacement Android phones. Sad to give up my Lumia, but I guess it had to happen eventually.</p>

  • napkatz

    20 April, 2017 - 12:46 am

    <p>I kind of feel like Microsoft has been doing everything they can to try to get regular consumers away from the Windows 10 Mobile platform, without actually explicitly saying "Leave!"</p><p><br></p><p>I just moved to a Moto G5 Plus ($230 Android mid-ranger) from a Lumia 640. Did I absolutely have to. Well no, but there are so many things better about Android these days.</p><p><br></p><p>1) Facebook's app launches without delay and without crashing every two seconds. The clone on Windows 10 Mobile is much slower and crash prone.</p><p>2) A web browser that is reliable and doesn't refresh mid-page scroll (Edge is horrible compared to Chrome).</p><p>3) I can actually access my full Ultraviolet collection (Vudu app available)</p><p>4) Pokemon Go!</p><p>5) Top quality native Apps with discounts (Starbucks, McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Safeway, etc…) </p><p>6) The Moto G5's camera is much better than the Lumia 640 and Lumia 650</p><p><br></p><p>And the only real sacrifices for moving from Windows Phone is the Live Tiles, Microsoft Movies and TV, Halo/Microsoft Studio games, and Continuum. The amount of top-tier Microsoft apps on Android is staggering, and Microsoft has even made an Android launcher that make's Google's blush. Cortana can also be installed and used as the primary voice assistant. Is the Microsoft ecosystem more integrated on Windows 10 Mobile? Yes and I miss that, but for the most part, it is present and installable on Android</p><p><br></p><p>Let's face it; much of why we fell in love with Windows Phone is gone. Deep social media integration and aggregation – gone. Stellar unique hardware – gone. Metro UI – mostly gone. Contact Groups – gone. At some point, it's not so much about toughing it out. It's about opening ourselves up to what could very well be a better phone experience (and one Microsoft's own Android software helps deliver).</p><p><br></p><p>For me at least, the trade-off calculus made making the switch worthwhile. I'll still keep my Lumia 640 around as a backup to play some of my older exclusive Windows Phone games. But I just don't have the Enterprise-like needs that make continued usage of Windows 10 Mobile as a my daily driver worth it.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

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