Oh, man. On a lark, mostly because I hate what Android is becoming, I
bought a Windows phone. In 2023.

"Well, there's your problem right there."

It sucks. So fucking much.

I THOUGHT I knew what I was getting: a dead OS that probably has 22
apps total in the store and probably more stock apps that would be
better. I'm fine with stock apps and using mobile sites to pick up the
slack. But that's NOT what I got. I received a phone with negative
apps.

"What?"

Negative, as in less than zero. Well, not quite, but the geniuses that
loaded up this phone didn't actually install many "stock" apps. You
have to fucking download them, even though they show up in your app
drawer. I have more "ghost" apps than functioning ones. I guess
they've been doing stuff like that since Windows 8, so I shouldn't be
surprised.

I reduced the Start Menu to only "functional" apps, and that's being
generous. It has a calendar, contacts, settings, IE, Windows Camera
(not Lumia Camera, which is considerably better, or so I've heard),
music, videos, photos, "phone," and "messages." Why do I put phone and
messages in quotes? Because even the SIM slot doesn't work. It is
designed for microSIM, for which I have a nanoSIM-to converter. The
problem is the contacts stick up like spears and don't allow me to put
the SIM in regardless. So I can't even use the phone as a phone. MTP
transfer seems to only be working while connected to a Windows PC, not
GNU/Linux (via jmtpfs). It reads fine, but you can't write at all.

I migrated my contacts and messages via Bluetooth to the WP. It
worked, sort of. Contacts were 100% fine, but the messages ended up
being formatted like emails with To: and CC: in them. Not great. Xbox
Video works, as long as you have an MP4. Also no subtitle support for
common formats like SRT and Vobsub. So it's a shitty video player and
my entire collection, outside of a few ancient MP4s, are incompatible
MKVs. Okey-dokey. Xbox Music is the best app that works how I actually
want it to. It plays local music just fine. Not the greatest speaker
of all time, but it's a budget phone. It doesn't even have a file
explorer!

Finally there's IE. This was, once upon a time, the one browser to
rule them all. More because it was the default rather than any actual
merit. But I've been restricted to IE with Windows 8.1 RT as well, so
I'm not shocked. What does suck is IE doesn't support more modern SSL
encryption, so sites like Invidious just error out. Strangely enough,
Jootube's mobile site works... like molasses. I wasn't expecting much,
again, but boy, it's like going back to the dial-up era. Sluggish (I
blame the modern web) and lame. I'd say it's 60/40 or 50/50 on whether
the site you visit is going to work in IE, since it has been
officially too old for major sites to support for a few years now. I
won't go on another tangent about how the WWW is too bloated and
needlessly complex. I can also go on the mobile Gmail page, but why
would I want to? And gopher is of course only available via HTTP proxy
(not that I was expecting more).

The main feature I was looking for was Live Tiles. Those were
unmatched in the other OSes. But when the only app that can possibly
take advantage of it is an offline calendar app (and Contacts if you
want to see the same profile pictures over and over). I guess Xbox
Video has a Live Tile that lets you resume playback.

My frustration brings me back to something I mentioned before:
destructive stupidity[0]. The ONLY reason WP8.1 is this unbelievably
bad is because of MS's destructive stupidity. They could have left the
Windows Store open and available. I realize it wasn't particularly
profitable, but it's not like it would cost much upkeep. If it came
with all the ghost apps, it would honestly be a solid smartphone. If
it simply let me sign into ANY account, it would be a solid
smartphone. If it used a nanoSIM instead of a microSIM, maybe I could
use it as an actual phone, full stop. But it's just a shitty gimped
media player and phonebook now. It's basically a Zune. What a waste.

0. gopher://republic.circumlunar.space/0/%7enp89/glog/2019/20190126-google_rant.txt