Yesterday was a fairly huge day in the world of Microsoft news with the unveiling of Outlook.com, the successor of Hotmail. But what's so great about the new service and how does it affect Windows Phone users, if at all? The Windows Phone Central community forums have been bustling with discussions, with a thread covering today's announcement.
One of the pressing questions about the new Outlook is if you change your email address (from @hotmail.com for example) to the new Outlook email domain would you lose all your Windows Phone apps and have to re-purchase under the new email address. mtmjr90 created the thread "Update to outlook.com and keep purchased apps" asking exactly just this.
"I have purchased apps under my @hotmail live account ID, so I want to confirm that these would be retained (after I factory reset and log in using my @outlook login). I'm also using Windows 8 which requires a Live sign in which is also my @hotmail account...so I'm assuming the behavior would be the same. I'm just hesitant to update my ID if it means losing my settings=/ I would hope MSFT would anticipate this and it should work perfectly."
Luckily, we've answered this concern with a positive article detailing how Microsoft propagates all content from the previous account to the newly created one. That's the good news, but as with any good news, there's bound to be some negativity. While you'll keep all your stuff, you'll be required to hard rest the Windows Phone.
What's missing in Windows Phone 8?
We covered the leaked Windows Phone 8 SDK and found some interesting pieces which were worth looking at. Unfortunately, we don't believe all was revealed so we expect (or rather - hope for) more surprises closer release. gusto has created a thread asking the question, "what's missing from the SDK?".
"The new OS is in my opinion on par with Android and may even surpass iOS especially with offline maps and pureview. With all that being said, I am curious to know what you all believe is still missing or have yet to see in the leaked SDK? What functionality does this phone still need to improve on?"
We agree that there are some features that are missing or weren't present in the SDK but we're interested to know what you want to see in Apollo, which hasn't been confirmed or mentioned yet. There have been a number of entries in the "WP8 (SDK,Dev.Conf.) what's missing??" thread, but we'd like your input to the discussion.
Miscellaneous: AT&T enraging Windows Phone owners
Tango, everyone loves to Tango. But what happens should you not be able to Tango? We should ask AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint that very question. Billed as Windows Phone's "premier partner" it's surprising to see that customers haven't received the Tango update yet. Even Verizon has begun rolling it out for the HTC Trophy. This is the anger inteller has vented on the forums, with many agreeing with his points.
"ATT refused to release 8107, or anything else that provided a critical update. Fine. It was assumed they would release Tango post haste to fix those critical problems and also include the updates. Here we sit on the last day of July with nothing. We've suffered the disappearing keyboard for almost a YEAR and we have a carrier who could care less. Microsoft should have NEVER taken down the where's my update page. It was the ONLY thing that cast the spotlight on carrier's (ATT) shady ways."
Are you on AT&T and have some concerns you'd like to voice with others? Be sure to head on over to the "Tango...aka royal screw job by the 'Premier Windows Phone carrier'" thread for more details and a centralised location for all the ranting! More customer pressure on carriers normally gets them moving slowly, but surely.
