iSwitched to Windows Phone 8 - Day 30 Experience Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,153 words · ~15 min read
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gaming promo.com welcome to day whatever this
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is of the Epic I switched uh trial with
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Windows Phone 8 so I'm going to start
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with telling you guys the conclusion the conclusion is I am not going to be
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switching to Windows Phone 8 um I feel like there's some things that are better
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about it versus iOS but there are some things that were serious problems for me
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that would make it so that I would actually uh you see I'm holding an 8s
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now because I spent the last week of my I switched using the 8S rather than the
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8X the reason for that being that especially when I'm typing so um on the
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8X I have small hands and I've had people say oh get a note too because
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you'll get no I'm not going to get used to it I'm not going to get used to my
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hands are actually just small and can't reach so so I wanted to switch to a
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phone that I can actually type on handed with like I could on my iPhone 4 and I
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found that pretty much fixed every complaint I had about the keyboard and
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the keyboard now that I've spent some time with it on a phone that I can
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actually use I like a lot better than iOS and it's for a couple simple things
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number one is the inclusion of smilees here that makes a big difference and
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then there's uh there's your most recently used ones and you can it'll
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just default to that every time once you select that so so you can just navigate
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to all the ones that you actually like and the inclusion of period and comma
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here because I do actually still care about punctuation even though I'm mostly
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texting so totally got used to that liked that about it but I have a whole
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other list of stuff that's bothering me so I've been using Row for tweets uh
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which is uh apparently yeah there it is
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looks a little something like that and I was having some weird issues with it
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like in the timeline I'd click something here but it would actually open up the
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one under it or two under it there'd be like these weird offsets on the touch
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interface and it was driving me crazy to the point where I was ready to just get
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off Windows Phone 8 entirely because the stock Twitter app is was horrible and
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then Rowe was having all these issues but Twitter has updated their native app
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um and it is actually pretty awesome now like they've actually put some time and
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attention to it into it to the same sort
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of standard as on the other platforms so it's uh yeah really really liking the
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Twitter experience although this sort of um epitomizes some of or not epitomizes
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I don't know whatever it illustrates some of the issues I've had with Windows
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Phone 8 in general so a lot of the apps tend to be not that well labeled if
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you're not already a Twitter user so you you haven't used Twitter on a mobile
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platform before and you go you open up the Twitter app on Windows Phone what is
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everything okay home I get what's that
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what's that what's that what's the difference between this and home I don't
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know so you have to actually just like dink around with in order to figure out
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what anything is and I mean if you're experienced Twitter user sure but as someone coming into it like this just
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isn't it's just not labeled well you know like there's these things down here
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you got some like settings and stuff and yeah anyway so we're done with that um
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yeah so way better uh overall um I prefer swipes to clicks so
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I prefer SC so uh one of the complaints I had early on was that I whoops okay
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well let's go back to hold on uh you
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know what let's go to a song list that'll do as if you guys can't just
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freeze the frame and read that stuff anyway so let's go to a oh right I don't
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have the music loaded onto the 8S okay fine we will go to we'll go to a contact
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list right okay so the way that you navigate um from letter to letter is
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instead of scrolling down the side like you do on Android and iOS you click here
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and then click the letter of let me just
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make sure there's nothing sh here yeah
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sure whatever so you and then you click the letter and it takes it jumps to the
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right spot um I actually find this not
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as easy to work with for a couple of reasons number one is that I find like I
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said I find touches less intuitive than just scrolling down the right hand side
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because that's where my thumb is anyway I'm right-handed for a left-handed
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person maybe that's not as good the other thing is that now that I'm here I
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kind of have to hunt and Peck because it's going to be a long time before I
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memorize this grid and if I'm looking for e that's actually not conveniently
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within my reach whereas this entire right side is within my reach so I find
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that faster and more intuitive and that goes for scrolling long lists whether
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it's uh contacts whether it's installed
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applications or whether it's uh things like music I just I find this not as
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good and then you see when you don't have something for every letter like
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some of them are just kind of grayed out and it just it makes it more visually
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confusing I find to actually navigate it uh generally speaking far more crashes
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and hangs than iOS um in my month of using it and I think that's one of the
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reasons why it's important to use the platform for a month before drawing any
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conclusions I mean I did the the in progress updates where you know some of
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them you know I'd say things that were just totally wrong and I'd say things
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that that were right but sort of more by chance than from experience with it
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whereas now I actually feel like I know how to use the platform and any
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complaints I have are based on we know this is what it's actually like to use
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it for a long period of time um one thing I noticed about the 8 8s versus
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the 8X was that the spacebar is the thing that seems to get uh shorter you
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got a little tiny space bar in there so I know I said that I do like things like
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the smiley face but I mean come on language why does that need to be there so space bar would be something that I
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would have liked to see extended because I find myself often hitting these
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instead um on the condensed keyboard on the 8S so the 8X had a slightly bigger
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one just because of the W the the bigger screen um I prefer folders and desktops
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for navigation uh versus this tile interface because tile is interesting
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and I mean okay so you press the Windows button to go up to the top and you know
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you can prioritize things based on size but what I discovered is even on the 8X
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which has a bigger screen I am never going to want to make an
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icon like here uh let's find one that
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goes full size like photos goes full size I
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think I'm never going to want to make an icon like or not an icon whatever a tile
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this big because it takes up so much space that it's just ridiculous like
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maybe if it was something that I absolutely needed to have sort of in my
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way all the time then fine but as it is
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if you're even using so if you're using those you'd get like three per scroll on
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your screen if you're using the medium-sized ones you're only going to
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get about eight per scroll on your screen and if you're using the small
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ones even then you're only getting about
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what whatever it is like 32 per screen so you're actually
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scrolling to find applications whereas when you compare that to a folder based
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structure like on the iPhone 4 where you can go folder folder folder folder
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folder folder folder folder and put like nine things in each one it's less
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hunting for things because you categorize them you go okay I want my
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utilities one click two clicks and I'm
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in whereas if I have to go scroll scroll scroll to find something something I
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mean even okay so on iOS I might scroll from desktop to desktop I keep
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everything on my first and second page so I might have to go scroll click click
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so I find that that a little bit easier and okay so the the argument after that
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is oh well you can just swipe to the right and see all your apps that way
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scrolling slow and then I still have to go click click potentially scroll click
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to actually get into something and the interface for anything should always be
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as few clicks as possible and I find that this tile interface doesn't really
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achieve that for me dedicated camera button Awesome every phone should have
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one um I'd love it if it was a little bit more stiff cuz I found myself
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accidentally hitting it but when you want it just being ready to go sort of
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hold down a button and you're ready to take pictures is is actually just kind
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of freaking amazing uh one of the other problems for me and it I mean mobile
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platforms it's all about apps Cloud media is not nearly uh or a cloud player
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or whatever they call this thing is not nearly as polished as air video on iOS I
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found that extremely frustrating because I do like to watch videos on my phone
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that I stream from my home server so um yeah Skype integration also wasn't as uh
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as smooth as it is with iOS so I mean
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check out the Skype app hopefully I'm doing something wrong here and someone
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can post a comment on the video uh oh whatever I'm not signed in well okay the
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point is uh no it's okay I couldn't find a setting within Skype to make it so
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that it stayed signed in all the time and would push me chat notifications it
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just worked on iOS it's like Yay Apple it just works um but no but seriously it
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just worked and then this one it's like I got Skype calls but not um written
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message notifications I mean that's very frustrating to me because i' find them
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like hours later uh so yeah it just okay
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so what I'm trying to say is maybe there's a way to make it work maybe you can force it to somehow but what I said
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was Skype integration is not as smooth as iOS because you have to fuss with it
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so that's very confusing and the inability to turn off auto rotate
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honestly is just a deal breaker for me like I can't function without being able
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to turn off auto rotate even on iOS I find it incredibly frustrating that on
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the phone you can only lock in portrait you can't lock in landscape but not
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being able to lock at all being forced to have auto rotate on no matter what is
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just asinine um and and there's a huge
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thread on Microsoft's forums asking for it I've had people tell me no you must
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be wrong there must be a way to do it no there actually isn't a way to do it even
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though it must be the simplest possible thing um to to integrate so it just
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it'll always auto rotate so what that means is if you actually want to view
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something in portrait mode and you're laying in bed you want to read something
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oh oh it moves around oh well actually hold on no I don't want to so you have
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to kind of hold it like this and then scroll through it's just ridiculous um
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one thing that was way better than iOS is integrating multiple accounts so
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going okay yeah I want like Hotmail calendar and a Gmail calendar and I want
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some other random thing and I want my Facebook and my LinkedIn contacts and I
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want my Gmail contacts the way that it integrates things within the People app
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here as well as your contacts as well as your calendar is just awesome way better
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than iOS where there's certain things that are just randomly weirdly locked
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down like iOS will grab your Google calendar but not your Google Contacts
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and you have to kind of fight with it whereas this one you just kind of go sign sign in sign in sign in sign in
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done and I mean even things like um like
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multiple entries where you have someone on Facebook and Linkedin and you had
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them in your phone already it'll even merge them and then there's tools to to
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merge them differently or unmerge them or play around with them however you need to absolutely awesome that's
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probably one of the high points of Windows Phone 8 for me uh Nokia's Drive
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app was another one I don't think know if it's called noia Drive anymore it
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seems to be called here drive now I don't know why they would have changed the number oh yeah this is going to show
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where I I am right now but that's okay um is awesome when it finds your
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destination I found it was a little bit less uh reliable than Google Apps for me
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or Google Maps rather for me here in uh in Vancouver Canada so there you go it
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might be perfect where you live but I I found it a little bit less consistent um
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Internet Explorer is awesome compared to Safari um going back to Internet
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Explorer one of the things I complained about last time was needing to go in here for tabs apparently this refresh
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button can be changed to a tab button but that still means I have to go two
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places for refresh and I found that frustrating as well um so it's again
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it's just that more clicks thing and last but not least see that see the time
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there okay so if I'm actually like I I
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understand you want to use as much space as possible for um just sort of actually
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viewing your content but I think that uh because so many people are moving away
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from wearing watches and moving towards using their phones as their only real
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time piece I found that not having quick easy access to that information um so
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especially battery life there's a battery life app I don't know if I've
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actually moved it onto the desktop of the uh of the 8S no it looks like I
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haven't but having things like battery life by percentage and time and cell
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reception always at the top I think is worth it because it's just ridiculous
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when you're when you're watching a video for example actually I don't know if uh
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I don't know if this one's going to work right now okay well let's not worry too much
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about like that here let's go to met Tu metr tu's awesome I really like this uh
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really like this YouTube app so let's find something and we're watching some
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video so I'm used to in iOS just
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pressing on something and having the time show up for me and I I I like that
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so I missed that always knowing the time
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um I think that's pretty much it so at the end of the day I won't be switching
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but what I will be doing is I will be doing an Android ey switched with the
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allnew HTC1 phone so this is pretty much
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as highend as it gets for an Android phone so I'm going to give it a shot and
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slicks got a little smirk on his face going on over there because I said I
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wouldn't do it but I'll be going back to my iPhone 4 in the meantime oh honestly
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having a newer phone really made me see how slow the iPhone 4 is now cuz I'd
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gotten used to it I used it for like two years so that that part's going to be
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hard to go back to I kind of wish I had a more upto-date phone but uh so I'm
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going to go back to the iPhone 4 till I can get my hands on an HTC one but this
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has been fun and guys leave a comment if you've hung in this long leave a comment
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under the video because I will be giving away an HTC 8s I was going to give away
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the 8X but it turns out someone needed it so I'll be giving away an HTC 8s to
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one of the people who comments under the video give me like a couple weeks and
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then I'll contact you and you'll be getting a free phone yay and as always
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