May25
I love and HATE the Windows Phone!
Sort of left behind by iPhones and Androids when it comes to app availability, it's still a pretty decent machine. A lot of creative people out there making alternative apps and those that connect to the same platform that an official app would. Still a little put down that I can't get Snapchat in any shape or form due to the CEO barely acknowledging the existence of Windows Phone (and by extension, their users).
I like the Windows 8.1 design, Cortana's pretty helpful when finding the hours of a fast food joint or retail store and she can update me on the weather. Having like 50 different alarms set up is awesome too, not sure if other phones can do that...but this is exceedingly helpful in the morning when I need to wake up and I have one at the drop of 6:00 AM, one at 6:05, 6:10..6:20 and then 6:30. Two more at 6:45 and 6:50 as I head out the door.
Eh...that's about the only pluses I got right now other than the cool black and red scheme I got going on. The last thing is the major reason I even got a Windows Phone - achievements. That's right, being able to earn achievements for my Xbox Live Profile on the go is the only thing that put this device on the radar for me. Otherwise, beforehand, I was using an Android. It wasn't a fantastic Android mind you and well...let's take a second to retrace my phone history.
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I didn't get a cell phone until about age 12 or so, it was one of those crappy things. Silver with a grey rubber antenna and the plastic buttons "glowed" yellow. Very basic little black and white screen too. Man...2002-2003. Throughout the next 10 years I'd move on to flip phones but nothing more advanced than a Motorola Razor. I'd hang around Cingular (or AT&T as it's now called) primarily until a couple years back when I got a Trac-Phone flip-phone and stuck with their service for awhile. Note this is 2013 and I still did not have a smartphone, while most everyone else was using iPhones/Androids/Samsung/etc.
Come 2014, I decide to upgrade. I notice that I can get an Android Avail 2 (whatever model that is) from Walmart for like...60 or so bucks. Maybe it was more expensive, I dunno...but it was my first smart phone. Great little device for the most part, though the screen wasn't really big enough and I'd often hit the wrong keys when typing something. At this time I still hated touch screens and preferred the old button usage (one phone I had at some point, a Blackberry I believe, had one of those slide-out keyboards). I got ahang of it though and eventually I dropped the phone, several times. Quite a bit actually. It never really cracked though. Until I was sitting out on break one day, just holding it in my hand when it took a nose-dive flat on the concrete and cracked the screen real bad. Now I was thinking I could stick around with this phone for awhile, which I did...cracked screen and all like so many others do...or move on. And I did, when I saw the Nokia Lumia 520 (a Windows Phone!). Finally my chance for playing games and earning achievements! I had always wanted one but friends told me they were like $200+ and ain't nobody got time for that...
Anyways...I've dropped this thing numerous times but it's a Nokia, the screen is made out of vibranium as far as I'm concerned. The only damage it's received has been along the plastic corners, not the screen itself...and even that's minor.
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Jist of it is I got a Windows Phone because it was a decent price and I had just cracked my Androids screen. As soon as I got it I hunted down a few games like Castlevania: Encore of the Night. This was the first game I noticed an issue with - crashing. It would be running for 15-20 minutes then drop to the main menu. And this crashing extends to all apps, some apps won't even turn on after the initial crash and you have to restart the damn phone. You'll just get a "Resuming" screen and then bam you're on the menu again.
The crashing became pretty annoying that I set down Castlevania and moved on to other things, like Rayman Fiesta Run. That went by pretty well for the most part, limited problems. Even the achievements unlocked properly after it was completed. What more could I ask for? Then I started Rayman Jungle Run...already a tough decision because I knew how hard the thing was supposed to be. It crashed, as expected, after roughly 13 levels. This boiled into masterful frustration until I figured out a trick (which I made a TA solution for no less) that hitting the lock screen every so often "reset" the phone's shutdown time on games. I was able to make it all the way to get the hardest achievement out of the way.
But then came the problem...after unlocking that achievement, it glitched. Well, not really "glitched" so much as it didn't properly sync. The achievement was counted as unlocked on my Windows Phone and checking the list, it said 200/200 with the final achievement. But I had to hassle for roughly 2 weeks with Xbox Support to get everything lined up perfectly (so it would actually count as a completed game). In the meantime I worked on other stuff...even Assassin's Creed Altair Chronicles. That too ended up with a situation where the achievements didn't sync upon completion...and worse yet, this effected OTHER games I was playing. Thankfully they were kids games like Lego Harry Potter but the scores were all wrong and the achievement points not properly accumulated into the final score.
That was another situation I had to bring to Xbox Support. But now...the reason I decided to blog about this and rant...is that yet again I'm faced with finishing a game and it not syncing properly - Hitman GO. I had completed all the achievements except for one last night, which is to die 200 times. I figured I'd grind it out later today so I set it down and came back, getting the last 76 deaths that I needed (apparently I made it through the game only screwing up 124 times *shrugs*). Wouldn't you guess...my score's stuck at 190 and my gamerscore total is still 125,970 instead of 125, 980.
I'm getting sick of this crap, I don't know if it's my model of Windows Phone or what but why do so many games on the Windows Phone not properly sync upon completing the last achievement?! Some take weeks to sort themselves out and it's beyond stupid. I really hope the Windows 8 Platform (where many of these games are also available with additional lists) doesn't have this kind of achievement syncing crap...cause I'm getting sick and tired of it.
I MIGHT update to a new Windows Phone, so that I can run Assassin's Creed Pirates (another reason for me to bitch here - my 520 won't run the game, pretty much ONLY that game but every other game works fine on it!) and maybe achievements will not screw up like this. Ugh...about to hit up Xbox Support again...