Author: Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]One of the most common things smart phones are used for is as a music player.  Windows Phone inherits this feature from the old Zune HD and as a player is quite capable.  However where the Zune Desktop software was a great for both the Zune HD and Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8 dropped it as a client.

As a replacement Microsoft  introduced the use of either Windows Media Player, the Windows Phone App for Desktop or the Windows Phone App for Windows 8.

These apps are ok for sending files over to the phone but they really lack the playlist editor function that the Zune Desktop had:

• Windows Media Player is a one way sync.
• Windows Phone App for Desktop is buggy and slow for large libraries.
• Windows Phone App for Windows 8 doesn’t let you edit or create playlists.

To top it off, the tools on Windows Phone for making and editing playlists are extremely limited, to the point of being almost useless.

Windows Phone 8 also doesn’t use a simple XML file like .WPL or .ZPL files so with the new access to the file system in WP8 you can’t just edit them either.

However if you connect your WP8 device to a Windows PC you can explore the file system and find a hidden folder under Music called Playlists.  This folder won’t show up in the right hand pane of a File Explorer windows but you can browse to it from the left hand directory tree.  Once there you will find all of the playlists that are on your phone as 0 byte files.

Selecting one (you have to select it from with a left click) and then right clicking it and selecting properties will bring up the following dialog box:

It doesn’t look like anything impressive but the important part is the second tab “References”:

Suddenly things got interesting!  Here’s a list of all the songs in the playlist. And what’s this?

Those look like a way to move and remove songs from the playlist 🙂

Selecting a file lets you, from left to right:

• Move to top of playlist
• Move up one spot in playlist
• Delete from playlist
• Move down one spot in playlist
• Move to bottom of playlist

This dialog also has one more surprise in store, its drag and drop enabled!  You can browse your phone with file explorer, find the song you want to add and simply drag it to the reference list and it will be added.

While still not a perfect way to manage your playlists, it’s still a lot easier than any of the other options Microsoft has provided so far.

[sc:mobile-category ]The VOIP apps for Windows Phone are coming fast and furiously now, LinPhone is the latest.

Unlike Adore Softphone, LinPhone is a much more complete softphone.  It’s user interface is more polished and complete, but it has the Skype issue of crashing the entire phone when unlocking the screen.

It seems likely that the issue is actually with WP8, GDR2 has several “stability” updates for VOIP apps.  Before I had installed GDR2, I had to remove both Skype and LinPhone to keep my phone stable, however since GDR2 I re-installed Skype and it has been running flawlessly since then.

I waited a few days before installing LinPhone and unfortunately, it installs, but now it no longer launches.  Presumably whatever Microsoft fixed in GDR2 has changed some of the low-level API’s and broken LinPhone.  I’ll have to wait until they push out and update to address GDR2 before I can say how well it works.

I look forward to seeing a new version soon.

[sc:mobile-category ] Well Bell finally rolled out GDR to my HTC 8X and here’s what I’ve found so far.

Installation was pretty standard, about a 210meg package, installed in two steps.  First the ROM update and then the data migration.  Overall it too probably 5 minutes or so.

After coming back up three things caught my attention:

1. New IE settings
2. Data Sense
3. FM Radio

On the first load of IE after the update a new settings dialog box popped up, several new options (or ones I don’t remember for the last first time) came up:

1. Reduce data use by sending URLs to the Data Sense service
2. Send browsing history to Microsoft to help improve Bing services
3. Use SmartScreen Filter to help protect against unsafe websites
4. Send a Do Not Track request to websites you visit

No real explanation on the first one so I disabled it.  I assume it probably sends the request to MS and then proxies it to try to shrink images and other content for size.  Not something I want a third-party to be in the middle of so I disabled it.

The second one I disabled as well, MS doesn’t get my browsing history and likewise, SmartScreen was disabled as well.

I left the Do Not Track enabled, it can’t hurt even if it doesn’t help much either.

Data Sense is kind of neat, it’s wrong on my phone, but neat non the less.  I have a 500meg data plan and it currently things I’ve used 44meg, while Bell thinks I’ve used 133.  This could just be due to the fact that this is the first month and Data Sense doesn’t have enough data to go back far enough in to my usage.  I’ll keep an eye on it next month when things reset and see how close it is to what Bell reports.

And finally the FM radio.  It’s not really useful, but having the hardware support it and the OS not kind of was irksome.  On my old Zune HD I did use the FM radio once in a while so I might use it on my phone as well.  Have to wait and see I guess.

There are three other things to note about GDR2:

1. There’s been a change in the Mail app, when you change to a different folder, the folder list has a brief pause and a “loading” animation now that wasn’t there before GDR2.
2. I have a BlackBerry Music Connect in my car to add Bluetooth support to my radio, previously when I shut the car off, the Bluetooth connection would drop and the music would continue to play (that was a bug).  Now on the disconnect the music stops correctly but instead of just a pause it is a stop (which is another bug).  This means the current play list stops and is no longer accessible from the lock screen.  You instead have to unlock the phone and restart the playlist from the music hub.  You can get around this by pausing the music before shutting off the car, but it’s defiantly a bug in the updated Bluetooth code.
3. I’ve re-installed Skype and so far the phone hasn’t locked up on my yet so I’ll give it a few more days and then say MS has fixed their VOIP instability issue.

So far so good, another touted feature of GDR2 is better battery life, still too soon to say if there is any difference, but it will be something else to keep my eye on.