Various settings and customizations available in Windows Phone – Quite a limited one:
When it comes to system wide settings and customizations, then Windows Phone like to keep it minimal just like the way, it want to keep the experience. Not many settings to fiddle around and that’s why you find all the devices in hands of others look almost the same. But still its not like the case that you don’t have anything to personalize the phone as per your needs and mood, there are plenty of room to do things. Let’s see what you can do..
There is a settings app that let you alter many of the system wide settings with the same beautiful Metro UI. After opening you get system page with the following settings available:
ringtones + sounds, theme, flight mode, WiFi, Bluetooth, email+accounts, lock+wallpaper, location, mobile network, battery saver, date+time, brightness, keyboard, region+language, ease of access, spech, find my phone, phone update, about, feedback, feedback to Nokia and SIM applications.
Obviously, I am not gonna take a dive into each of the settings as most of them do the very much known tasks, but still I would mention some of things here that are worth mentioning.
ringtones+sounds Though Windows Phone Mango now supports custom ringtones like MP3 etc, but there is no option built-in for the same. You can either use some app from market to get custom ringtones or may use Zune on desktop to create a custom ringtone from an MP3/WMA file that fulfills the following
- 39 seconds or shorter
- smaller than 1 megabyte (MB)
- saved in MP3 or WMA format
- not copy-protected (i.e. DRM free)
Otherwise, you are provided around 40 Windows tunes or 20 Nokia tunes to play around.
theme You have two options for the background here that are dark or light. Then for Accent (that will color the Tiles etc), you get 10+1 colors to play around (namely magneta, purple, teal, lime, brown, pink, mango, blue, red, green and nokia blue). You can not choose a custom color here as of now though XDA & some forums have managed to do the same via hacking the device.
*mobile network Interestingly mobile network option doesn’t have any way to choose 3G only mode that sure gonna make many of the users with low 3G reception area pissed off badly.
find my phone It is an option that allows a user to login on Windowsphone.com and Ring, lock or erase your phone remotely via web.
feedback to Nokia is a kind of placeholder option that allows users to rate the device a scale of 1-10.
*I heard that the latest update has changed a lot things in these settings though. Yet to get the details on the same.
After System settings, there is Applications settings that covers the following:
background tasks, games, Internet Explorer, maps, messaging, music+video, Office, people, phone, pictures+camera, radio, search
background task It’s a list of applications that can continue to do things in the background, even when they are not open.
phone settings have an interesting option of International assist to automatically correct some common mistakes while dialing internationally dialing while abroad.
Nitish Kumar's Blog 
Holy shit! 24 pages? :-O Sorry man, I give it a pass.. I am too busy, like you 😦
Nice post. How about an option to display the post in one page? May make it simpler to read
You are just awesome dude… how the hell can u review soooooo much!! hats offff! even i own nokia lumia 800!! feels like reading n reading… (now in page 1)
Will consider to put a PDF file for whole post.
One hell of a review Nitish.
Thanks mate. Went out a little early than scheduled but hope I covered most of things
Looks like you can now publish a book on Lumia Review 🙂 Great Review..
Nice review , by the way about OTA , it’s a wp7 limitation and not lumia , soon wp in market currently supports OTA same is true about other few features.
Yup! The review is mostly about Windows Phone as a whole rather than Lumia only
Good post , though I must say I couldn’t read it in one go 🙂
Even though I havent used or tried any WP device for more than half an hour, I just hated UI and how it looks. I don’t think that perception of ugly,over simplified UI will change.
As expected and read all over for me 3 things stand out for WP. These can make it success.
1) People Hub
2) Brilliant Office Suite ( and its FREE)
3) Email
But sadly I feel Nokia is going away from their soul and going Apple way.
This may be good for company(I really doubt) but not good for industry as whole.
Suyog,
I had similar sentiments about WP UI before trying it myself. Even I mentioned once that I felt those uneven fonts as ugly. But trust me, views are bound to change once you allow it grow over you. Not all the praises going around are dummy.
Agree with Nitish, once I got my hands on Lumia 800, I didn’t like UI for few hours or a day and missed home screens. But later, started loving the UI and now I am a fan of UI. 🙂
People hub is exceptional as just like Meego it brings all social activities at one place and like WebOS it brings all the photos (even twitter ones).
So in all, people hub will effectively help people managing their social needs without going behind any apps that is a great thing for n00bs or even people coming from Symbian/Meego.
Second great thing is speed of UI that literally no offers either be Symbian or Android
Suyog, I’ll agree with Nitish.. in just two words…. you will see my views about it changing too… it’s actually a good UI. there are however some features that really were needed but if talking about UI, seriously I think if I was given more time with it I would been liking this UI. and I’ll not say like many out there that “Windows Phone 7.5” is not that good to be used.
But still I’ll say that MeeGo on N9 (for its given time) has been the most *Mature* smartphone OS (in most of the aspects) among all of them.
And Nitish; that really is great post above, I’ll try to read it completely 😛
Review is great for people want to know about the History, comparison , apps functionality , dimensions but drawback is too massive detail..
Very interesting article, Nitish. I’m very exited with Windows phone on Nokia, but lack of BT and file transfer worries me. Nokia has been great among other things because of its flexibility and versatility. Does is support USB on the go, like my N8? What about something small but GREAT in functionality, notification light? Man, I think Nokia should never get rid of this. It helps the user so much to see through a notification light, that you have a missed event.
Quite a thorough article on the Lumia 800(& upcoming 900)windows phone. The most important things for me are:i’m not going to sell a Rolls Royce to ride a better handlind motorcycle-ie,my Nokia E7-00 vs any Lumia! No storage! No tethering! No bluetooth! No sale!
One of the most comprehensive review of Lumia 800 I have read. sheer Brilliant.
Are u still using this device? How is the battery life holding up for you?
Any word on Lumia 900 launch date in india?
Thanks,
-Pankaj
The best review of WP that I have seen , kudos to u Mr. Kumar ! U r right , the Lumia 800 is beautiful ; it should be since it`s a copy of the N9 ! But that same design is also a problem in certain areas of the world ( more about this in a bit . ) .
i`ve always said that WP has potential but it`s still immature ( Takes 3 years to work out enough of the bus and work enough features in , to make the OS useful . ) , seriously late to the party and there r too many other OEMs trying to get a piece of the pie . In all fairness to Nokia , they haven`t had a chance to make an impact on WP yet , maybe WP8 will change this . Nor have the Lumias been out too long , though this is changing . So it`s still a bit early to say for sure .
That said , WP hasn`t exactly taken off yet , marketshare is still single digits . Nor do I like the Metro UI , though my issue with it is more function than form ( but I do think it`s ugly !) . I firmly believe that a homescreen should convey enough info to keep u current at a glance , and the Metro UI doesn`t do this . Even Windows Mobile could do this !
WP`s biggest problem , IMHO , is it`s requirements for a constant connection and Skydrive . Not so much a problem in developed countries , but in emerging markets with their infrastructure issues and the need to watch data usage, it`s a different thing entirely . I don`t think WP will do well in emerging markets ( It seems to not be … ) , though it also doesn`t seem to be doing well in many developed countries either , with the USA , Finland and Russia as notable exceptions .
Nor will do well in countries where the N9 was a success, most notably China , due to the problem that WP is functionally inferior to Meego , and Symbian , for that matter . even the new 311 is better from what I can tell !
For these reasons , I don`t see WP as more than moderately successful , assuming it takes off , of course ! Maybe WP8 will change this , ir really needs too ! cheers !
Mofo awesome! Never believed there existed a greater Lumia 800 fan than me! :p
Hmmm , no replies , can`t say I`m surprised lol !
On second thought , looks like the 10/19/2012 post MIGHT have a reply so I take back the previous remark , t least to an extent lol…
Every thing about Windows Phone OS is covered very well.