Phones HTC 8X owners

I just got this phone yesterday and it's my first Windows phone. So far I'm growing to love it. There are a few annoyances which I'll mention soon.

What phone were you using before it? How was it adjusting? Can you list some of the good apps and alternatives to apps that aren't available on WP8 but were on your previous phone (Android/iOS).

The battery plain out sucks so far but I'm gonna give it the benefit of the doubt and blame it on the first few charge cycles. I have 2 emails set on push and very few apps installed so far. No Skype as I've heard lots of bad things about it How's battery life on yours? I've been using it lightly/moderately for the past 2 days and I had to charge it twice today (I didn't let it drop all the way down, maybe till about 20%).

Is there no way to easily switch between ringer/vibrate/silent? I have to switch vibrate off in settings? So it's either ringer+vibrate/vibrate or ringer/silent? I know you can press on the icon in the top right corner in the sound panel to toggle between those.

I don't get why there's a search button that always takes you to Bing search. Don't get me wrong I actually really like the feature but I thought it would actually be used by other apps like if you're in contacts it'll search for a name you type. I think a menu button would have been more useful so it would eliminate the need for the bar which is usually at the bottom of apps and has options.

I'd like to end by saying that I really like WP8 and I was a previous iPhone and Android user. I still have my Nexus 4 which I'll eventually go back to using if I can't sort out the battery life issues with the 8X or just switch back and forth between them when I get bored of one or the other which I know I will.

Is there any way to get screenshots to sync with SkyDrive? They don't seem to show up but other pictures do.

Edit: is there a way to control the battery notification light for other notifications? (like Light Flow for Android)

MacRumorUser said:

I just literally traded my One X for a HTC 8X on adverts 3BS. Should be here Tuesday.

From what I read battery life should be better than what your experiencing. Maybe change the email push to check every 15-30 minutes instead and see if that increases battery life.

Also if it's like the HTC One X then battery life is generally terrible first few days and then starts levelling out. My One X used to get 8 hours when I first got it, now I can get a day and a half battery life out of it.

The search button is a strange windows anomaly and one that I had hoped they would have rectified in Windows phone 8. The search should be adaptive and search the app your in, or offer a menu when no search is applicable. The constant 'bing'ing of the search needs to be addressed, and hopefully Microsoft will do so in the next software update.

Out of interest matey what colour 8X did you get ? I'm getting the blue.

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Oh hey long time no see. I think my issue could have been 2 features I had turned on which raised the volume when I put the phone in my pocket and flip the phone to mute it. I'd imagine those would cause a significant drain if they kept the gyroscope or accelerometer on the whole time. I guess time will tell and I'll see in the next week if things get better. I got the blue too

Why'd you decide to let go of your One X and Android for the 8X and WP8? I wasn't ready to do that which is why I still have my Nexus 4 in case things don't work out

lordofthereef said:

I have a Lumia 920, but I can answer most of your questions, since they seem to be about WP8 more than the 8x, specifically.

Battery life for me was terrible for the first few days. It really did get better, but never quite as good as I had with the iPhone. The iPhone 5 I am using right now is at 40% at the end of the day. The lumia was at 5-10%.

Currently, the only way to change ring/vibrate/silent is the way you described. I know... bummer. I can't see why this was overlooked like this, but it was. Hopefully there is a fix coming?

WP7 used to allow apps to use the search button. The problem was that devs were coding the search button to do all kinds of things (not just search), so they canned it. As it sits it's a Bing search. It wouldn't be so bad... except I often accidentally hit the search button, exiting the app I am in and entering Bing search. ANNOYING!!!

I liked WP8, butI ended up returning my phone/ Ultimately it came down to the phone freezing/locking up/ rebooting at seemingly random times. Apparently this is an issue with the OS as it is happening on various handsets, but seems to be the worst on the Lumia. I NEED to be contactable 24/7, and the bottom line is that the phone wasn't reliable. I am definitely going to be back when I have read that the issue has been patched. Off contract the phone is cheap enough ($450 in the states), and I can find it for even cheaper used.

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My phone has been pretty reliable so far, no reboots/lag/crashes yet but it's only been 2 days. Can you explain how multitasking works on WP8? I haven't found an app switcher/recent apps section so if there is one it must be really well hidden and hard to access Do apps stay running in the background? It seems like most apps I go back to just start up again as a lot have a splash screen or something similar and you can tell it's loading the app again instead of resuming it.

MacRumorUser said:

I wasn't really using it other than as a glorified MP3 player since I got my iPhone 5 64gb. Add the fact I have a google nexus 7 16gb if I'm missing any android applications.

I like the design of the HTC 8 X and the roll out of Jelly Bean on the HTC One X was wrecking my head. They announced October and it still hasn't hit uk & irish phones.

So as trading for the HTC 8 X isn't going to cost me anything other than postage costs I decided what the heck, go for it

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Yeah I really wanted to try out a WP8 phone and the 8X seemed like my best option. Please keep post back here about your experience and any issues you have maybe we can figure some things out.

I find it very hard to believe anyone gets battery life this good! I'll keep waiting and stay hopeful that my battery life will improve in the next few days. It just seems like it would be doubling if not tripling if I got battery life that good which would be amazing.

http://blog.gsmarena.com/htc-windows-phone-8x-flunks-battery-test-results-are-inside/



Edit: I've found the app switcher! I had no idea there was one. You access it by pressing and holding the back button.

lordofthereef said:

Best of luck with the phone. From what I read it is not a matter of IF, but rather WHEN. My first phone locked up for times in the first day (no joke). My second one had no issues until nearly two weeks in. But seriously, crossing my fingers for you. Dealing with reboots sucks.

As far as multitasking, it is basically like iOS. Most apps will have something like a "frozen" state. They don't actually run in the background, they are suspended. A few items, such as GPS mapping and music will run in the background legitimately though. My issues with backgrounding is that it seems to support a maximum of 6-8 apps. Now don't get me wrong, iOS, with its 32847238476237846324 "backgrounded" apps is ridiculous. It stores FAR too many apps in a frozen state IMO. But WP8 takes it to the other end of the extreme IMO.

Tip: If you want to open a backgrounded app, hold the back button until the tiles come up. DO NOT load the app from the app list or your live tiles. I am not sure if this is purposefully by design, but if you load it as in the latter two of my examples it loads the app from scratch. In other words, you are starting fresh, not from where you left off.

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Well I really hope it doesn't start crashing on me

I think it's REALLY stupid the way WP8 deals with multitasking. Pressing a tile opens the app as if it wasn't open when it is

.macbookpro. said:

I bought the 8x a couple of days after it came out on tmobile uk. Coming from android 2.1 on a 3 inch screen, there is a huge difference. The screen is lovely. I thought it would be too big, but going to an iPhone is like going to a kids phone. I got the blue one. Looks kinda purple, but its a sexy phone. When i take it out at college, everyone wants to use it. The live tiles are beautiful, however other than Microsoft apps, none have been updated to use the full 720p or use the different live tiles.

The app switcher is opened by holding the back button. Holding the home button brings up speech recognition. My phone has crashed randomly maybe 5-7 times in the month ive had it. I've had to soft reset it a couple of times, after there was no sound, and when i first got the phone, the rear camera wasn't working and the front camera was flipped. After that, there hasnt been any major problems. The battery is OK. It gets through the day, which is all i need it to do. One thing that i dont like is that HTC, compared to Nokia, have no Pre-installed apps. You get a photo enhancer, a clock, and thats it really. Nokia, you get a sat nav, and lots more. Until big companies release games on Windows store, I cant tell how powerful the phone is.

Syncing with macs is fairly easy, and i've only had one problem. I can't add any videos, no matter what they are. Since I dont watch video's on my phone, its not a big issue though.

Overall i am very pleased with the 8X, but Windows phone just needs more attention.

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I love the design/size so that's not an issue at all. My battery life also seems to have improved dramatically. I set my 2 emails to 30mins (I hate that I had to do this but oh well) and I turned off the raise volume in pocket and flip phone to mute features.

The Windows Phone Mac app is decent so that's not an issue. SkyDrive is also neat but I hate how it doesn't sync my screenshots. Is there any way around that? I don't watch videos either but I'm pretty sure they're on my phone because I synced some.

Edit: I very rarely ever take photos so as long as the camera is half decent I'm ok with it. I've only taken a few random shots but I am very impressed with the camera.

Vegastouch said:

Turn off the XBOX app as well and it will help a ton. My Wife has a Windows 7 phone and her battery was awful. I turned that off since she dont need it and it really helped. I really like the feel of the 8X. Just dont care for HTC and their battery issues.

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There's no standalone Xbox app but I turned off syncing for music and apps+games.

Vegastouch said:

Not sure if it is an actual app or just some notification thing for XBOX for your online stuff but it used the battery up pretty good.

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It would be useful to have something monitoring which apps are using how much battery but I think that is asking too much of WP8

thejadedmonkey said:

If you go into internet settings, under advanced you can change the default search provider from Bing to Google.

I have an 820 and love it. It's not an iPhone, but IMO it's nicer

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I actually like Bing so far but just out of curiosity where can I find this? I can't seem to locate it.

Don't get me wrong, I love my HTC 8X and WP8 so far but there are some missing features that just don't make any sense being left out.

.macbookpro. said:

On my phone, I dont see any option to raise volume in pocket and flip phone to mute features. Is it carrier or country specific?

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Settings > attentive phone > 3 features

- Quiet ring on pickup
- Loud ring in pocket or purse
- Flip to mute ringer

I'm not sure if it's country or carrier specific or neither.

thejadedmonkey said:

Internet Explorer -> Settings -> Advanced Settings -> Default Search Provider. It's a dropdown list.

You can also access it under Settings -> Applications -> Internet Explorer...

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I don't seem to have that option. Maybe it's different on HTC phones?