Why I've Had Enough Of Windows Phone

I had an Android handset years ago before I joined a company that had a BES infrastructure - Although I missed the smartphone I soon found it far easier to email and message using the blackberry.

Of course that's part of the façade of permanent employment; "Here have a shiny toy!". Which is nice.

"Now we can reach you everywhere you go at any time".

Nuts.

When I came to my senses and left my last permanent job there were far too many options on the handset market but it essentially boiled down to either the horrifically insecure Androids or the locked down iPhones which haven't progressed in a decade.

Then I saw some SDKs advertised in my MSDN subscription relating to Windows Phone 7, which was a break from the Windows Mobile core / v6 (i.e. "It's different this time, we promise"). And it really was.

Innovative user experience which seemed to evolve in subtle ways (unlike The Emperors New iPhone) whilst retaining a nicely contained app space which stopped all the horrific memory sharing in Android [at the time].

Well. You have to go with the lesser of three evils if none particularly appeal, right?

Wind the clocks forward another year and I'm sold on Windows Phone. v8 is being talked about - hopefully solving the few remaining deficiencies. The app store is slightly bare in comparison to Google and Apples store fronts but all the essentials are available.

Friends with both Android and iPhone regard it as a curiosity because they "just don't understand" the freaky blocky UI; yet when they play with it for a few seconds you hear "Ahhh ok"; and "that's interesting"; until you just hear the fingers slipping over the gorilla glass over the silence.

WP 8 solved a lot of the speed issues but then so did the upgraded handsets - after a four year stint with WP I've gone from a Nokia Lumia 720 to Microsoft Lumia 935 with little fanfare - after all when I got a new handset and entered my MS account details it all just .... worked.

Wipe and reset the old phone without any concern about data loss because one you've logged in on the new one ... it's all there waiting for you. Tiles and all. Unfortunately because I'm quite clumsy I've dropped a number of them so this functionality is a complete life saver.

Your favourites and history are also retained if you use a Microsoft account so when the browser crashes (which it does a lot) you restart it pretty much where you left off.

You can amalgamate multiple tiles together into drawers (a la Android) and resize / re-arrange any way you want. Most tiles flip over and show updates or info related to their app at a glance.

I got all the integrations with Xbox and Windows 8.1 / 10 first via the beta programme, which allows me to project my phone screen to the TV via Xbox or PC whenever I need to. Handy for showing the full HD 5.1 surround sound movies taken using the Lumia camera. Who needs disk space anyway, right? If you're not using it you're wasting money!

In the last year things have turned round dramatically though; having Office on my phone has always been really handy during meetings or to sort out time sheets in a hurry when an agency is still using antiquated paper time keeping (this is 2016 ok?). But this year Google and Apple started putting their own office-alike out there - abruptly followed by Microsoft 'suddenly' releasing multi-platform versions of the same, along with the slightly-less-capable online equivalents via most modern browsers.

It's almost like they had them waiting in the wings to wring out one more conversion to Windows desktop...

Then the Microsoft website started having areas which stopped working on WP's browser. The browser crashed a lot (especially on news sites such as The Guardian). The Xbox and MS account passport no longer had a pass through capability in the phone browser - when you have 2FA this either means swearing + generating app passwords or swearing + authenticator app + hope that when you switch back the original phone app hasn't cancelled out of the login screen.

Assuming the browser doesn't crash during that process. Which it does a lot.

Which is extremely frustrating.

HERE Drive couldn't work out that you have no data and took 2 minutes to timeout on an online search before asking if you simply wanted to search offline maps (which can be cached on the device for any selected area of the world). Truly a dumb way of ruining a great experience - my better halfs iPhone 6 just doesn't have maps or satnav if she has no data.

A lot of GPS apps (Cycle Tracks GPS and CoPilot) simply don't work without data. Even though they're supposed to only need GPS and cached maps they just end up providing nonsensical cycle tracks or closing during a car journey. CoPilot was particularly useless: It would close itself unless you keep the app open and not lock the screen and have a way of charging the phone faster than the car charger. Money flushed down the lavvy.

Often areas of Microsofts own web pages don't work properly on WP8 - I tried to buy a Surface Pro 4 on my phone but gave up after a few minutes of wildly jabbing (and shouting for effect) at the screen, my repeated key presses ignored by the buttons on the page.

The vendor attitude towards FDE raised an eyebrow; essentially you can only enable FDE on your phone if you connect it to enterprise services. Why the restriction? Enterprises will have DR which allows them to unlock any devices they own, but what about mere mortals like you or I? If somoene nicks my device I want to be absolutely sure that my data is out of reach even if the handset isn't.

Even after taking the tin-foil hat off I simply no longer trust Microsoft with anything sensitive - having all my emails read by Cortana is a functionally nice existence but there's things in there she shouldn't be reading. Even my servers now send me their reports encrypted - although WP8 does allow for S/MIME encrypted email systems I've gone with PGP. And no longer use Windows for email at all except my Outlook.com accounts - I can't provide any guarantees to my clients otherwise.

In short, all those really slick integrations have gone - perhaps the development teams at Microsoft across different areas no longer stay friends? Perhaps this is a transitional phase where the whole company mindset is being moulded in different directions. Whatever the cause Windows Phone is no longer the fun place it once was.

The new handsets look great - I've not upgraded - Continuum is a brilliant idea (your phone is your laptop, plug the phone into the docking station which has a keyboard & mouse....). A bit flakey at the moment but, again, Microsoft pushing the boundaries.

Had a look at iPhone and it seems to look almost exactly as it did in 2006, albeit with a bigger screen and flatter handset. Not for me and my desire to tinker.

So my Android phone arrives in a couple of weeks and I've got to work out how to harden it properly before I swap the SIM card across. Maybe I'll download the source and alter a few bits before building my own image.

I'll probably miss the inherent security model of Windows Phone (n.b. not the same as Windows Mobile) - and it's [mostly] awesome user experience. I won't miss the raging frustration with it's shortcomings but I can't help but feel it could have been great.

Maybe Nokia shouldn't have been involved with the project - perhaps they wanted to stay Symbian too much. Perhaps it's a potential partnership for Blackberry due to the imminent demise of Blackberry OS? Who knows. A more robust Continuum would suit a number of businesses who are considering moving to thin terminals or all-VM environments perhaps. It's essentially a very cheap, ultra-portable laptop.

I may wander off into Android-land for a year or so and just get fed up with it - just in time for WP10 to mature more. But I can't get ProtonMail, Signal or other browsers on WP.

Maybe I'll find a Nokia 3310 instead and walk free of all the nonsense :)

Q1 Review

Miami winning 5-4 in the championship series...but it's close

It's been a busy start to the year beginning with having Swiftbiscuit show me how it's done on the kart circuit - even if he didn't bring is own racing boots, gloves or helmet from Miami. The marshals came up to him afterwards and mentioned their awe of his racing line. Total focus and precision - awesome to try and chase through the corners.

(I've also knocked a couple of seconds of my lap times and made it into the elite class since)

My birthday last month was pleasantly uneventful - although managed to get another kart race in on the weekend - there was one less birthday card this year which forced poignant reminder of the events of Jan and Feb.

Dad didn't tell us until it was too late and even though we knew he was ill, he didn't let on about how much pain he was in until right near the end. That was kind of his way of doing things (i.e. refusing to listen to anyone else). It didn't really sink in that he was beyond the point of no return until I got a call from the care home telling me he'd been taken into hospital.

We'll scatter his ashes in his home county of Cornwall this year so he can enjoy the countryside and coast he came to know as a boy. A lesson to all of us to make sure we take care of ourselves and always keep talking. Every hill is a victory in potentia after all.

There's too much to do on the information assurance front and I've re-focused my efforts significantly. The last two months or so has been flat out - no thanks to laptop problems and a 192 mile round-trip commute. This week should allow me to break the surface again whilst migrating corporate accounts to both a different package and different accountants.

All whilst studying for my CEH & CISSP...

I've made significant progress on the spam front too - from hundreds of spam emails a day down to between 20-100 is a big plus. I spend far less time trawling through nonsense looking for potential business or emails from friends & relatives. It's like whack-a-mole though...you get a domain disabled or an ASA complaint upheld against one and another pops up. Eventually the pattern will become obvious as individuals are already being tracked.

One thing I have noticed quite consistently is the attitude of spammers and their lawyers (with a handful of notable exceptions) - I'm becoming less and less surprised by the lack of knowledge surrounding DPA and PECR, as well as case precedent such as Vidal Hall vs. Google. I'm not suggesting an ambulance chasing model is ideal but it seems like the regulators are being restrained whilst the data traders and spammers are not.

Until the balance is restored however, ProtonMail, EFF and WWF will be getting more donations from me after winning or settling my cases.

Hopefully ICO's GDPR education campaign will keep momentum up as it's vitally important to drag the private sector into the current decade (before it finishes).

Fingers crossed that the EU referendum passes with a Stay / Remain vote and we can all get on with commerce again; as well as a wider, considered approach on privacy and information assurance in future.