So, it seems that MS was finally able to upgrade the thing and currently the preview is available. There's also some sort of review.
http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-81-reviewIs the review biased? Yes, quite a bit actually. I don't mean that the new changes are bad, on the contrary. But the review makes it sound like MS just discovered a way to turn shit into gold which is far from the truth. Examples? You will notice how Cortana is described to be at the very least on par with Siri and Google Now, but later in the text it is compared to them in a different manner (on a level of Siri and almost as good as Google Now). Not to mention that the reviewer believes that the fact that Cortana's uses Bing is an advantage.
Then you have IE11's new "secretive browsing", a feature which is available in other browsers for years now. Same for that special service (forgot the name) that acts as intermediate station when browsing websites as it can compress images and reduce network load on the browser. That's a really great idea. Except that Opera Mobile did that even before smartphones were actually a thing (i.e. before the iPhone).
Did I mention how you could change the background? Wow. I am amazed, Microsoft. But seriously, it was about goddamn time.
I just couldn't keep on reading after about half of it without getting sick so I just stopped.
Given, MS has done obviously a lot and that's great. But this only means that they are now not completely useless and only a few years behind everyone else.
But I'm not done. Oh no. I tried installing the "Developer Preview" on a company phone which should allow me to download early updates, including Windows Phone 8.1. The first problem? When I tried activating it through the web browser on my PC, I kept getting the error message that the phone "could not be found". It also said to turn on the option "Find My Phone". I did. Still nothing. Then I used to phone to access the store and try to download it. This time it worked. Way to go, Microsoft, way to go. Google Play has no problems with me clicking on "Install" on a web browser on my PC and doesn't need any special "find my phone" bullshit. Learn from them.
So, the download went smoothly which is a rare thing on Windows Phone. Then I started checking for updates. Needless to say that it took 5 freaking minutes to do that. The download died on me only once with the very informative error message "There was an error (0x0b986322)". Such information, much fix. At least the second time it was successful. I probably would have given up if this happened more than 2 times.
Did I mention that one of the first comments on "Developer Preview" was how easy updating it? (It's in the
Croatian store.)
QuoteVrhunska stvar, nešto za što na Android platformi moraš uhakirati telefon ovdje je vrlo jednostavno... Odlična stvar za one koji žele više...
Quote from: TranslationTop stuff, something that on the Android platform requires hacking your phone, here it's very simple... Great thing for those who want more...
I don't know if MS paid this person or if he is just retarded. But judging from the fact that he thinks updating Android from an official provider requires hacking you phone is enough for me to doubt his intelligence. He probably deserves a Windows Phone where you have so little options that it's very difficult to break something (my old Nokia 6600 had more built-on options and functionality than Windows Phone 8 has). Oh wait, I take that back. My the company phone likes to crash/restart/freeze without me touching anything.
Ok, I'm done now.
EDIT: Oh my, they finally added auto-rotate on the default menus. It was about time.