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 Windows Phone 8.1 Previous threads: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3514718 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3439182 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3355922 http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3267845 What is Windows Phone? Windows Phone is Microsoft's mobile OS. It was designed as a complete "start from scratch" replacement for the old Windows CE platform known as Windows Mobile. What's new in Windows Phone 8.1? Lots. WP8.1 is a major upgrade over WP8. Here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAu0YgPnuXM If you've got more time, you can watch the whole keynote announcement from BUILD 2014 here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/KEY01 Here is an incomplete list of some of the major new items: For Developers:
For Users:
When will it be done? It's "done" now. It's currently in the commercialization phase. This means that a Microsoft team is working with OEMs/MOs putting in any last minute fixes/tweaks needed and are preparing to release new phones/update existing devices. What devices can upgrade to 8.1? All current WP8 devices can run WP8.1. Obviously, new devices will be coming with WP8.1. Nokia has announced all WP8 Lumia devices will be receiving the update. When will MY phone get the update? This depends on the carrier and the manufacturer. Carriers like to test any changes to the device to ensure that the new software will not cause network issues or result in their support centers getting flooded with support calls. Sometimes carriers need to ask manufacturer to provide updated firmware for phones so their phone variant can work without issues. How do I get the update? When it's release, there are two ways to get the update:
What does "platform convergence" mean? What's a Universal App This is for developers. In essence it means more shared code/APIs between a Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox apps. The result is that it is possible for a single app to target all Windows platforms, be it XAML, HTML, or DirectX. This is called a Universal App. Grab the SDK here and try it out! What is "Shadowboxing"? The start screen now has the option for a background that will appear "inside" your tiles*. When scrolling the screen, the background has some parallax effect. It looks great, you should try it. (Not all tiles are transparent as this is a developer setting)  Whats the deal with backup/restore? What what's the deal with app data being backed up? Backups are stored in your Onedrive space and can be managed on the phone or via the OneDrive settings page. Most settings are now backed up also (start screen layout, accent color, etc). The few that are new are done for design reasons (for example, Data Sense settings). Applications can now be coded to hook into the OS to have a user's application data backed up (THANK GOD) What is Wifi Sense? Carriers are moving away from unlimited data plans (at least in the states anyways), while phones are becoming a more integral part of our lives and our data usage is increasing. This makes managing your data usage more critical than ever. Wifi Sense is a feature that will help you save on your cellular data usage by connecting to free Wifi access points automatically without interaction from the user. Additionally, as a sub feature, you can add your own personal (ie home access point) and share access to your friends without them needing know your access points shared key. What is Miracast? See the Wikipedia definition. Basically this allows you to project your phones screen on another device via Wifi Direct/USB/HDMI. THIS MAY NOT WORK WITH ALL CURRENT PHONES, and is somewhat up in the air at the moment until we get some more concrete info from the handset makers. What is the action center? Any toast/notification that happens on the system gets stored in the action center for review. Along with this are quick action buttons (think quick enable/disable for things like rotation lock, airplane mode, etc). You can toggle which apps are allowed to show in the action center, play a notification sound, show a toast, or vibrate the phone. What is this Cortana digital personal assistant thing? Cortana is a digital personal assistant designed to help you in your daily life. The vision is to have her learn about you at a personal level (your tastes, interests, habits, etc) and then, like a real personal assistant, help you in a variety of ways at a personal level. If you want the marketing video, watch this Cortana replaces the Bing (search) button -- a single press brings Cortana up ready for input while a long press brings up Cortana listening for speech. Cortana is being designed for natural speech and has built with a learning backend -- meaning the more you use/talk to it, the better it will become overtime. If you walk to Cortana, she’ll talk back. If you type to Cortana, she won’t talk back. Both work equally well. Okay that sounds like marketing speak, give me examples of what it will do. Examples:
Okay that email scanning and other stuff sounds super creepy and I'm sure Microsoft is just selling our info and illuminati free masons bitcoin ron paul... You configure Cortana not to watch your email when trying to help you. You can completely disable Cortana you want. Additionally you can modify Cortana's on device notebook if you want to change/remove items. You can also clear Cortana data at your Bing personalization page What's the Cortana in beta all about? Microsoft is launching Cortana as a beta feature in 8.1. The reason being that there is ongoing "training" of the voice system as well as adding new features and bits. The backend will continually be updated so what you have on the phone will be improved in a continuous fashion. (Thanks to Xylo!) Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Apr 7, 2014 |
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Apr 6, 2014 01:00
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(reserved)
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Apr 6, 2014 01:01
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ElGroucho posted:My only complaint right now is with AT&T and Verizon and their awful exclusive nonsense. My contract on AT&T is up for my 900, and I can get a now underpowered 1020, or a 1520 with good hardware that is stupid-big. I'd be shocked if we don't hear something soon about AT&T picking up a version of the 930
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Apr 13, 2014 03:39
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cstine posted:So after the 8.1 update my AT&T 1020 now has Data Sense. Which is great. On past updates, have things like this gone away once you get the actual carrier update for firmwares and such?
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Apr 14, 2014 16:58
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Combat Pretzel posted:I read everywhere that Xbox Music became more terrible? Hopefully there is a team chained to their desks working on this, because yeah, the beta app on 8.0 was bad enough for me to go back to the built in one, and this is not an option anymore. EDIT: The new podcasts app does appear to be pretty nice though, so hopefully it works! Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Apr 14, 2014 |
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Apr 14, 2014 17:11
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WHERE MY HAT IS AT posted:Anyone manage to find the setting for the new lock screen layouts? It doesn't appear to be...anywhere Sounds like this isn't there yet. Anyone know where the ability to control background tasks went?
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Apr 14, 2014 19:31
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I had a backup 920 for some reason, so I loaded 8.1 onto it last night. If I can get everything set up I'll probably just switch my SIM card over and start using it as my main phone. You will be very very sad. I've got about 1100-1200 on mine and it's largely unusable. Very slow and unresponsive, sometimes fails to draw the UI (I just get a black screen), etc. The lock screen controls generally work fine though, but I can't set things like "shuffle" via it.
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Apr 15, 2014 16:08
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:Is any phone that wasn't already on three columns of tiles forced onto three columns with the update? I am sticking to the two myself, don't really see the need for more. Nope. I ended up going back to 2 just because 3 looked a bit too small (imho) on my 920.
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Apr 15, 2014 23:16
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GET THOSE XBOX MUSIC COMPLAINTS READY PEOPLE! http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...6571501b?page=1 http://xboxmusic.uservoice.com/forums/209733-xbox-music-suggestion-box/category/67365-windows-phone 
Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Apr 18, 2014 |
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Apr 18, 2014 17:09
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Horky posted:I could swear that before updating to 8.1 I could use the camera button to wake up the phone and go straight to the camera. Am I remembering this wrong? No 3rd party alarm apps going?
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Apr 18, 2014 21:11
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Doomsday Jesus posted:Can anyone comment on the picture quality of the 1520? My wife is worried it won't take a good photo and is convincing her self she needs the 1020. Yeah, I'd be reluctant to pick up the 1020 if the 1520 isn't too big. Here's some comparisons, the 1520 still bumps out 19mp images: http://www.wpcentral.com/cameras-nokia-lumia-1520-vs-lumia-1020
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Apr 18, 2014 21:25
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CalvinandHobbes posted:Is cortana providing traffic updates for anyone? I have this feature turned on as far as I can tell but have never seen this update happen. Just headlines, weather and tech news in Cortana's feed. Did Cortana ever ask you where you worked? I work from home, so this isn't super useful for me, but after setting my home address as a favorite it asked me where I worked next time I launched it.
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Apr 19, 2014 15:34
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Man, this has single-handedly made the "me" tile useful for me again in 8.1: http://www.wpcentral.com/integrate-4th-mayor-me-tile-windows-phone-81 Super quick checkin, no reason to keep 4th and mayor (or any other foursquare app) pinned to the start screen anymore!
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Apr 24, 2014 18:09
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Combat Pretzel posted:Apparently Belfiore did an AMA on Reddit. Just going through that poo poo, but it appears they're working on a native file manager. Screens Joe posted himself: http://imgur.com/a/hvqGD Sadly all the answers about Xbox Music/syncing basically seemed to boil down to "if you like manually copying poo poo to your phone or living 100% within the janky limitations of Xbox Music, you're going to LOVE 8.1!" and doesn't do anything to address people who are still looking for similar functionality to what existed in Windows Phone 7.x in terms of local sync. I'm assuming the answer is because there's not ever going to be a solution for that use case, and that they're stuck with the limitations of the Xbox music service as it exists now, but still that makes me pretty sad 
Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 3, 2014 |
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May 3, 2014 00:50
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Irritated Goat posted:What are you guys recommending for music? Just dealing with Xbox music? I'm fine with streaming it but I'd like to create playlists on my PC rather than the phone. Not many great options there, especially for Windows Phone 8.1 users. I haven't gotten the 8.1 music app to see anything other than Xbox Music playlists, so unless you have Windows 8 to edit Xbox Music playlists on your pc you are largely boned.
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May 5, 2014 20:46
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Wow, I went through and took a look at my gmail accounts and set them back to syncing at time intervals rather than letting 8.1 decide when to sync, and I went from having a dead battery every day by like 1 pm to having 75% left at 3:30 pm.
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May 5, 2014 23:37
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Anyone else have issues getting Cortana to play music? She recognizes the voice command, but then complains that streaming music has to be on in the music app, even though it is.
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May 8, 2014 17:19
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HorseHeadBed posted:Thinking that I might get a Lumia 1020 as I like the notion of a good camera on me at all times. I've got a mac, though, and am a little leery of interoperability problems from past Android and Blackberry handsets. Is it much of a problem swapping things between WP8 and Mac OS X? I've got a gmail account, calendar and contacts and wouldn't really be putting music on the phone, just taking photos and videos off it. Files will go through Evernote or Onedrive, but I don't think I want to sync HD video and 41 megapixel photos over Bluetooth or any other wireless connection. I know an iPhone would make life simpler, but there's something about that big yellow bastard of a Nokia that makes me want it... There's a sync app for Mac for syncing up music/videos/photos: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how-to/wp8/windows-phone-app-for-mac
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May 12, 2014 22:05
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Looks like a picture of LGs return to Windows Phone has leaked, supposedly for Verizon: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/13/5712798/lg-uni8-windows-phone-8-1-device-rumor Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 15:51 on May 13, 2014 |
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May 13, 2014 15:49
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Cybernetic Vermin posted:Man, that is a surprise. Especially since the current version worked impeccably. Not on 8.1 apparently. Hopefully Whatsapp is working on an updated version now, but not sure why they would pull it unless it was actually doing something bad to the service when being run on 8.1 devices.
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May 17, 2014 23:33
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Man I really hope AT&T announces some new phones soon. Verizon better not have a lock on the 930 in the US, because there's no way in hell I'm switching just for that.
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May 26, 2014 19:57
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Doomsday Jesus posted:I've been having a lot of issues with Bluetooth (still) and general phone performance. I have 17GB free on my 920 and very few apps installed. On 8.1? 8.0 with the latest updates is fine for me, 8.1 and my car (ford sync) went back to trainwreck status sadly
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May 27, 2014 21:55
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JPrime posted:Do any of the MS people in this thread know if syncing a playlist from the desktop app is ever going to work again? From libraries or itunes?
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May 28, 2014 21:01
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File Manager is out for 8.1 devices: http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/windowsphone/archive/2014/05/30/introducing-files-a-file-management-app-for-windows-phone-8-1.aspx
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May 30, 2014 22:15
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Stick100 posted:Sorry bad news WP enthusiasts. I saw people complaining about that around this time last year, (which corresponds with the start of the down line), sad that it hasn't gotten any better. What happens in these scenarios, do ads just simply not appear in the box or whatever?
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Jun 2, 2014 16:31
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Mecca-Benghazi posted:Some new devices from some of the new OEMs, presumably for the low and mid range of the market: http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-shows-off-a-range-of-new-windows-phones-at-computex Ha, do you want the HTC one knock off, the Galaxy S2 knockoff, or the Lumia knockoff?
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Jun 4, 2014 20:02
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Happy_Misanthrope posted:Xbox Music Update Report: Still horribly slow useless POS, continue on Yeah, I thought they had actually made it somehow WORSE, but it turns out the service actually also was having problems the day they released the update, so cloud collection didn't work and streaming from the store just got you the 30 second samples. At least we're back to the same baseline of blah.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:35
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Combat Pretzel posted:I sure hope so, because the release of the 930 is apparently tied to the general release of WP8.1. It's almost like an unicorn. Haven't they said at this point that the Lumia packages are all done for 8.1?
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Jun 13, 2014 00:36
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EdEddnEddy posted:+1 for a Zune and ZuneHD fan and still baffled as to why Microsoft thought it was important or a good idea to kill the name, brand, style, software. Yeah, I'm pondering jumping ship this year over the state of the music experience (both the app and syncing), and I was literally the only non-microsoft employee purchasing a phone back on 7.x launch day at my local AT&T store.
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Jun 19, 2014 19:47
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Drastic Actions posted:Now that Twitter supports GIF animations (kinda), I wonder how Ha, well might actually be easier than it sounds: http://blog.embed.ly/post/89265229166/what-twitter-isnt-telling-you-about-gifs
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Jun 19, 2014 22:23
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WattsvilleBlues posted:How much of a game-changer is Cortana on day-to-day use? I'm itching to get a new phone but if Cortana is balls-to-the-wall great, I might wait a while longer until it lands in the UK. So far I think Cortana is probably the best thing about 8.1. loquacius posted:Yeah, Cortana's type input option is great, and reminders are a huge game-changer. I haven't used the location- or contact-based reminders that much, but that's mostly because I keep forgetting about them. Well, for me, 8.1 preview was useful in that it showed that Microsoft really didn't seem have making the Music and sync experience any better in 8.1 a priority, and that it's probably time to look for a new phone. I don't see anything that would've led to me arriving at a different conclusion once 8.1 was released though either, the best I think the 8.1 music app can hope for is to be as good as the 8.0 one, which frankly sucked compared to 7.5 Maneki Neko fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 20:40
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". Instead we had to deal with it when it was completely crippled and broken for a really long time, and it pissed everyone off to the extent that tons of longtime users are apparently switching away because it's still not completely fixed, and 8.1 still hasn't even seen general release yet (and maybe Music is why it hasn't???).
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ack, double post.
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Jun 26, 2014 20:42
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wormil posted:Back on the 14th I ordered a 521 for $59 from Newegg. By the 23rd it hadn't arrived, UPS said they never received the package, and Newegg basically shrugged and said they would cancel the order and refund my money in a week or so. So on the 25th I ordered a 521 from Microsoft. Today, both phones arrived. Luckily MS does free returns. I don't use Google calendar for much, is there stuff the native calendar app doesn't support in regards to Google calendars?
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Jun 28, 2014 07:44
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EdEddnEddy posted:I really wish Pebble would make an official app for Windows Phone now that 8.1 pretty much fixed all the Notification API problems (or so I believe, I could be wrong as I don't develop). Nothing new on AT&T has been announced. They are getting the Bluetooth LE implementations certified, which should hopefully open up the door for all this stuff.
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Jun 30, 2014 21:02
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Edward IV posted:So it turns out that the Lumia 900 doesn't use microSD cards for storage. As a result, I can't expand beyond the stock 16 GB which is just barely enough space to get my base music collection. I'd rather have more so I can use it as a more modern Zune replacement and to store most of my music collection. Samsung Focus is about it in terms of 3rd party MicroSD support for 7.x devices. clandestine cactus posted:Why do people still have music collections when nearly everything is available via streaming, and wifi is more common than decent toilet paper? Air travel, and stuff that's not on the streaming services.
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Jul 1, 2014 04:55
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Edward IV posted:What about in cases where microSD is being used as the storage device and is not supposed to be user serviced like the Dell Venue Pro or HTC HD7? Yeah, those are also options, although more painful ones, and the HD7 and Venue Pro and kind of crappy choices compared to the Focus. The microSD card slot on the Focus is easily accessible, but it gets "stitched together" with the 8 gigs of onboard space to make a unified storage space (adding/removing the card is a hard reset situation though). The Focus was always pretty sensitive to the speed of the MicroSD card used, and it took me 2 or 3 cards before I found a usable one, but having 40 gigs of onboard space was nice.
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Jul 1, 2014 05:45
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Charles Martel posted:What are the chances of phone carriers doing 4th of July specials? If Verizon can cut down or even waive the $199 2-year contract price on the Nokia Lumia, I'll pounce immediately. That's all I'm waiting for. You can get it now for $109 on Amazon. Verizon has historically done July 4th sales, but I haven't actually seen anything this year for them.
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Jul 1, 2014 06:31
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Well TMobile 635 has an actual date now, still not poo poo for 8.1 devices from AT&T though. http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/07/01/power-packed-lumia-635-launches-u-s/
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Jul 1, 2014 19:18
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smr posted:Nokia 925 with 8.1 that says "no new updates" available and I have two questions: Do you have it set to automatically install updates? Store -> settings and check for updates to force. You can see what it has installed in store -> downloads -> history
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Jul 3, 2014 03:54
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Did GMail deletes change in 8.1 or something? I've noticed now that when I delete messages on my phone, they are just "archived", which is a godawful behavior, regardless of what the settings are in the IMAP settings page on my gmail account. I can't find anything else on the phone settings or GMail settings that would explain this behavior, and it's ONLY happening to messages that get deleted on my phone, not any other devices. Now I get to cleanup a shitton of unwanted messages, thanks Google for dropping EAS.
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Jul 7, 2014 01:03
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