[Prilicla]

I wish they incorporate a forward button on the inbuilt browser. If you backout a page and want go back to same page there is no forward button on WP7.8 or 8

[Nick2008]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prilicla

I wish they incorporate a forward button on the inbuilt browser. If you backout a page and want go back to same page there is no forward button on WP7.8 or 8

That is an annoyance that will hopefully get rectified in future updates. I like the performance of the browser but it's missing quite a few features that would make browsing a lot easier and user-friendly.

[Nick2008]

Quote:

Originally Posted by barbeler

I can promise you that these are serious questions and I have neither a red button nor a blue button to end the call, in fact there's hardly anything there at all. I tried the left arrow but I could still hear a humming and when I went back I was just in time to see that the other person had just hung up.

Thank you to those who explained that the apps close down automatically (I assume when you touch the left-pointing arrow icon). I haven't found it explained anywhere else, so how are you supposed to know that?

Has anybody managed to transfer their Windows Live Mail contacts onto a Windows phone? I've signed into Outlook both on my phone and through WLM, but synchronise doesn't do anything except update emails and the WLM export option will only export a csv file to elsewhere on my computer. I've spent hours searching for information about this and have only found other people describing similar problems, never any answer.

It's difficult to find out where the contacts are actually stored on the phone. If you go into one section (forget where) it says email and contacts, yet it only seems to list the ones I eventually managed to import/export via bluetooth from my old phone. I get the feeling that they're not actually on the phone at all, but somewhere in the ether. If they were in a folder it would be easy simply to transfer them via Windows Explorer.

I have around 200 contacts, so I definitely don't want to have to type the whole lot in again.

Can you post a screenshot of what you see when you're in a call please?

Also, I don't suppose your handset is an import?

Your contacts will be stored in 'People'. Follow Ivan's advice to get them there. What is your previous phone please as there may even be an easier way to transfer them. I came from Symbian and in Nokia Suite, there's an option to backup my data to SkyDrive then when I setup the new Windows Phone, it imported them with ease. When I upgraded handsets to the 1020, again, it was a breeze to import all my data from the 920 including sms, calendar and contacts.

[barbeler]

Under People, it simply has the contacts I successfully tranfered from my old C1-01 via blue tooth, then it has something called Together and something else called Groups, although I haven't a clue what they're for. When I'm looking at the few contacts I did manage to bring in, there is a + button, but that only allows me to add new contacts line by line. There is now import or export facility there at all. There is something called What's new, with set up account underneath it, but this phone is absolutely over-run with invitations to set up accounts, when I already have more than will ever use or want.

How do you take a screen shot and how do you post it on here?

p.s. One mystery ended at least. I just made a call to my landline and now there is indeed a big, clear, blue button to end the call.

What threw me was that the first time I tried to test it in the same way, I was automatically put through to TalkTalk to register the phone. The first thing I was asked to do was confirm that I wanted to register the phone I was calling from by pressing 1, but the screen had gone completely blank and I couldn't find any way of bringing up the keyboard. When the call was finished, the screen was still black, with no icons on it at all, so I assumed this was its normal state.

[barbeler]

I've now managed to import my contacts, but I found that it was only possible to do it by going into my outlook.com account from my computer. Even then, it took me ages to find that People section, which included all kinds of options that you simply can't see on a phone. The trouble is that outlook.com seems to be a site aimed purely at teenaged social networkers and this is really a buisness phone.

I will bore you to tears with the Office app next, because that was one of the main reasons I chose the phone, thinking that I could import all kinds of useful documents into it for use away from home, but at a quick glance I can't really see what it offers at all. I have a feeling that I'll still be lugging my laptop around with me, so I might have actually been better off with the Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini, but I was put off that by some very indifferent reviews. Oh well - I'll just have to live with it now... for another two years.

[barbeler]

My nephew is already chortling at my comments about it on Facebook, so I'm calling his bluff at Christmas, when he can bloody well sort it out for me

p.s. I will never, ever again take the piss out of my parents for being bewildered by the remote control on their telly.

[barbeler]

If I've learnt one thing from all this, it's that actually making phone calls is no longer the prime concern of the people who proramme these things, It is now to get you to register with all kinds of services that you neither need nor desire.

I would like to delete all the social network and music streaming functions altogether, but it doesn't seem possible. Also, I've never used instant messaging in my life and for the life of me, can't see what its function is.

[neo_wales]

Quote:

Originally Posted by barbeler

Surely you must be able to turn off the camera. I've had to shut the damned thing down by switching the phone off and it doesn't help that the button is very easily pressed accidentally. Why can't isn't there a simple OFF button at the botton of the screen? Surely that's a fundamental requirement? If you can't turn it off, no wonder the phone has such a short battery life.

I'm guessing your new to smartphones?

[IvanIV]

You do not have to use any of that social networking stuff. I don't. I don't have Twitter or Facebook, Google is pushing me into g+ on YouTube, but I resist. I know I probably do not exist because of that, but I don't care I use my phone for texts, calls, emails, browsing and I use a handful of apps. I do not spend hours molesting the phone, I prefer reading a book on my Kindle.

[barbeler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by neo_wales

I'm guessing your new to smartphones?

Err, yes; that was the whole point. I've had lengthier and more detailed instructions supplied with a flashgun I bought than with this infinitely more complex phone. If you've just upgraded from one of the previous type, you get absolutely no help at all.

I was in Aldi today and I noticed they're selling an old-fashioned dumbell-shaped handset that plugs into the earphone socket of most mobile phones. It even has buttons on it to accept and close phone calls, but it says that function might not work with all phones. I was sorely tempted to buy it, just to see people's faces if I used it in the pub. I can't send you a link unfortunately because it isn't on their offers lists, but they're in black, red and orange. At seven quid, it could be the ideal Christmas present

[barbeler]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IvanIV

You do not have to use any of that social networking stuff. I don't. I don't have Twitter or Facebook, Google is pushing me into g+ on YouTube, but I resist. I know I probably do not exist because of that, but I don't care I use my phone for texts, calls, emails, browsing and I use a handful of apps. I do not spend hours molesting the phone, I prefer reading a book on my Kindle.

And me. Do you know how to delete all that stuff, rather than relegating it to the secondary list?

[TheBigM]

Your main problem OP is that you are going in with all these preconceptions and notions of how it should work, what it should do, what is good and what is bad. Nobody wants fat manuals and to memorise commands and functions, we just want visual cues that help us intuitively figure things out.

You need to discard all that from your head and instead just play around with the phone and click around and see what the phone does.

A few tips:
1) You will often see an ellipse of three buttons in the bottom-right corner of screen, this signifies that there is a menu off-screen that you can pull up by tapping on the ellipse.

2) In areas such as the people hub and dialler app things like names and phone numbers are clickable.

3) Learn about the use of long press in windows phone, the best way to figure out when you can long press or not is to just try it when on different screens.

[qasdfdsaq]

This brings me back to the old argument of Office 2003 vs. Office 2007.

It was mostly people with preconceived notions of how things used to work that had problems using Office 2007 - a completely new user who had never used Office before found it a lot easier.