Problems downloading and installing applications on Windows Phone. What to do if the Windows Phone Store isn't working

Now fans Windows Phone are approaching a turning point in the history of their beloved operating system. A lot of things will change this fall and, God forbid, these changes will have a positive impact on Windows and its reputation. But Microsoft sacrifices a lot, so let's see what happens to the operating system and where its main charms and features go.

Before you start reading this article, which, in our opinion, very successfully describes a strange phenomenon that occurs with Windows Phone, we want to assure you that we continue to be fans of Windows Phone and will continue to love this OS. True, we do not want to be blind "fanboys" or "haters" of other operating systems and want to adequately assess what is happening.

Windows Phone and I met when I went to the nearest store looking for a new gadget. I was twirling in my hands xperia smartphonewhen suddenly my eyes were riveted by Lumia 900. I was pleasantly surprised by the unconventional appearance operating system, its smoothness and brevity. This made me go home and take a closer look at this OS. Previously, my devices were only iPhone and Galaxy, and I thought that I was unlikely to be ready for something non-standard. When I started using the Lumia, everything felt smart, well thought out and perfectly polished. People's hub, music hub, office applications hub - everything was just fine.

Then came Windows Phone 8.1 ... and the vast majority of my favorite parts of the system are a thing of the past. The photo hub has turned into a wretched static application that even looks bad. The functionality turned into some kind of "Spartan" experience - only a list of photos with albums from OneDrive, links to other applications and everything ... We can say that the application has lost its soul.

Music ... there's nothing to say about music. The entire music experience of Windows Phone was destroyed (editor's note: and now instead of a beautiful and fast, like lightning, standard player, we suffer from the terrible Xbox Music and wander in the store in search of sensible alternatives). The application is buggy, unstable, looks bad, there are always some problems with the collection of compositions, and so on ...

Windows Phone social integration is a thing of the past when we got the 8.1 update. It doesn't matter why Microsoft did it. This integration no longer exists and nothing can replace it. Gone useful functionality tiles "I", the ability to view photos of social networks in the hub "Photos" and even more the ability to publish messages to several social networks at once is gone. Microsoft tried to remedy the situation by allowing apps to integrate into the Contacts app, but in an attempt to recount the apps that got this integration, you will have too many fingers even on one hand.

All this can be described in a little sarcastic words:

User: I love hub music + video!
Microsoft: We will remove it.
User: I love the hub of games. All games in one place!
Microsoft: We will remove it.
User: The hub of photos is wonderful!
Microsoft: We will remove it.
User I love social integration!
Microsoft: We will remove it.
User: ...
Microsoft: What else do you love? Tell me and we will remove it ...

And somewhere now Microsoft is preparing Windows 10, which will remove even more windows features Phone. Metro (Modern) UI is gone, no more hubs, no more familiar menus with cute round buttons, no more pivot menus. The original Windows Phone will almost entirely be a thing of the past this fall, when the official distribution of the top ten begins. Even the name will be forgotten as it is now just Windows. This is again a new, unfamiliar OS ...

No, don't think that I am afraid of change. Microsoft can do whatever they want with their operating system and can engage users however they want. The metro interface has not worked in five years (we are still with 3.5%) and something needs to be changed. The company spends a lot of time analyzing and researching, so they know better what to do with their product. Yes, this will not happen, but who knows what fate awaits the most recognizable aspect of Windows - live tiles ...

"Why love Windows Phone now?"

The trend that is now observed with Windows 10 is somewhat similar to attempts to forget Windows Phone and return Windows Mobile... Yes, as I said above, I will accept all changes and the vast majority of users will. But if we could forget hubs, built-in social integration, and even, as weird as it sounds, Metro UI, why would users love Windows Phone? If Microsoft just crosses that out, Windows 10 for smartphones will be more like iOS without apps with Android elements. Who needs iOS without apps? Here is the answer ...

What will you like best:

Beautiful, quirky and unique OS that can't run Android apps
Weird Android Element Craft That Can't Run Android Apps

No, don't think, I am not judging Windows 10 until its final release. I will turn on the couch analyst when I see and use the final windows version 10. But already now, based on what Microsoft showed, we can safely say that version 10 will already be a new OS, which, God forbid, will receive its own unique functions that make us headlong to buy new gadgets, update existing ones and strain ourselves trying to shut up Android and iOS fans. But do not forget also that Microsoft is now a cross-platform corporation and many Windows Phone exclusives have come to iOS / Android - office applications, MSN services and so on. Even Cortana will be there soon.

I am not leaving Windows Phone. She leaves me, no matter how strange it sounds. It leaves me and millions of other fans of this operating system. Sometime in September Windows Phone will be killed by Windows 10 and there is no way to save it.

Recently, I have often encountered negative or, more precisely, decadent sentiments in relation to the future of the Windows Phone platform. "It never took off", "a failed project", "Microsoft's stillborn child" - these and other similar epithets are awarded to this system by the authors in various articles and reviews (here, for example).

As a user of a WP7 smartphone (Lumia 800) and a developer for this platform, on the one hand, and as an adequately (I hope) thinking person, on the other, it is a little incomprehensible to me what caused such panic and negativism towards Windows Phone. This attitude I have repeatedly expressed in various discussions generated by the above publications. During these discussions, I gathered a number of arguments (mostly in defense of Windows Phone), which I wanted to collect in one place (of course, here :)), so that in further discussions I would not waste my time on repeating what has already been said, but simply send opponent to this post.

So, further under the cut you will find a number (yet I do not know exactly how many) considerations "FOR" the Windows Phone platform. I tried to give arguments based on bare facts, and not on personal likes / dislikes. Whether it worked out is up to you.

Reason # 1: Great product.

I have not yet seen a single person who, being windows user Phone smartphone, said that this is a bad and low-quality product. I want to note right away: we are not talking about people who picked up a phone in a store or from friends, exclaimed "what ugly tiles" and put / gave it back. No. We are talking about people who actually use a WP smartphone for at least a week, and preferably two.
You will, of course, say that this is my personal observation, made on a very small sample. However, several different surveys confirm the idea that users love Windows Phone. For example, here is the result of one of these polls. Or here's another one.
Microsoft has managed to do something with WindowsPhone that it has probably never done before. Namely: to offer a truly new approach to user interface... Undoubtedly, the way users interact with mobile devices and applications has changed a lot with the arrival of the iPhone and, a little later, Android. But here myself graphical interface (and now I will probably get a minus in karma from Apple fans), in fact, it remained just another implementation of the same concept of a desktop with icons, which has been widely used since the early 80s of the last century.
Windows Phone is, in fact, the first mainstream product in which developers abandoned the desktop concept and tried to do something completely new.

Reason # 2: Microsoft.

In fact, for a long time I hesitated whether to put this item in the first place. But, despite the trend of recent years, which asserts that, they say, “the product is nothing, marketing is everything,” I am still inclined to believe that without a good product you can only count on short-term success.
So Microsoft. We may strongly dislike this office. Call her products glitchy, unreliable, "lacking in style", etc., etc. All this does not negate the fact that for about 20 years now it has been one of the most influential companies. And, most likely, it will remain so for the next at least 10 years. Let's just look at the numbers.

92% is Windows' share of the desktop market. To be honest, I was surprised myself when I started looking for this data. After all, judging by the number of people with Macbushechkas around, I expected that the share of OSX is already somewhere around 20-30%. But no, according to this statistics, only about 7%.
600 million copies - that is how much was sold (I emphasize again: SOLD !!!, not just installed) copies of Windows 7 from the date of its release. And this, mind you, we are talking about the very Windows 7, which only recently surpassed in prevalence ... another Windows - old XP.
47% is Xbox market share game consoles... And in the near future the situation, if it changes, will only be in favor of Microsoft.
Market share of MS Office on the market office suites - about 90%. As of 2010, they were selling "offices" for 19 billion a year (I couldn't find more new data, sorry). We are all vigorously discussing Facebook, how it came to the IPO and what will happen next. So, it turns out that Microsoft can buy about half of Facebook "and for the annual revenue of ONLY ONE of its products!

In general, we can continue this list for a long time. The facts speak for themselves: Microsoft controls the largest software platform in the industry with the largest number of users and a huge number of developers for this platform.
In addition to its huge size and shares in different markets, the company has one more feature that needs to be mentioned. Namely: Microsoft almost never abandoned its projects, even if they were not very successful at first.
Let's remember the history.

MS Multiplan was not very successful spreadsheet, which could not compete with the then dominant Lotus 1-2-3. Several years of development, several versions and MS Excel becomes the de facto standard.
Nobody took Windows 1.0, 2.0 seriously. Windows 3.x quietly crushed all competitors. WIndows 95 is also the de facto standard.
The same one mentioned earlier, Xbox was at first a completely disastrous project.
The guys from Netscape and with them the entire Internet laughed at the first internet versions Explorer.
Windows NT was simply impossible to use at first.

What happened next - we all know very well. To be fair, it should be noted that I still cannot use IE :), which, however, does not in any way negate more than 50% of the share of this browser at the moment and the fact that all of us loved AJAX initially appeared precisely because of this browser.

In general, already on these examples, it can be noted that Microsoft is like such a pit bull - if it clings to something, it is unlikely to lag behind :)
Therefore, all the talk that "Windows Phone 8 is, they say, Microsoft's last chance to gain a foothold in the mobile OS market", "pan or disappear", "with a shield or on a shield", etc. personally, I take it with some irony. Guys, what's the "pan-or-go"? Well, let's assume for a moment that Windows Phone 8 doesn't run as well as we would like. So what? The guys from Redmond will still continue to code and release Windows Phone 9, 10, etc. until this platform conquers the minds and hearts of users. They have everything they need for this (as discussed earlier): huge base users, a lot of dough, a lot of money, a good product and an army of developers who are ready to write (or are already writing) for this platform.

Myth # 1: Few programs.

Here, in general, there is almost nothing to discuss. This information is outdated by about a year. There are already about 110 thousand applications in the Windows Phone Store, and in terms of growth it is ahead of Android, although it is slightly inferior to the growth rate of the App Store.
And by and large, it's not about the number of programs. Everything that a normal user needs has already been written for Windows Phone, and if something is not there, then most likely this is due to the limitations of the platform itself.
In addition, one should not forget that only for Windows Phone "out of the box" the mobile version of MS Office is available, which can become a rather serious argument, especially for business users.

Myth # 2: Bad sales.

Yes, sales are bad. It's true.
However, we must immediately make a reservation "bad" is it in comparison with what? With the current iPhone sales or Android devices? Yes, absolutely. But if we look at the sales of the same iPhones or Androids 2 years after launch, the difference is not that big. So, for example, in the first quarter of 2009, Apple sold about 4.3 million iPhones according to this resource. It was somewhere in the 7th quarter from the start of the iPhone.
At the same time, IDC informs us that in the second quarter of 2012 (and this is also somewhere in the 7th quarter since the launch of Windows Phone) "only" 5.4 million Windows Phone devices were sold.
Do you get it? Windows Phone sells even better than the iPhone in the same period of its "life" and at the same time everyone is screaming about the complete failure of the platform. Paradox.
Among other things, you need to consider the obvious fact that the iPhone and (to a slightly lesser extent) Android have entered a practically new and unoccupied market. Well, if you already completely face the truth (and here I expect pluses in karma from Apple lovers :)): to the market created by Apple. While Windows Phone was not at all lucky in this regard (we read, they were slowed down by Microsoft): at the time of the launch of this platform, most of the potential users had already been divided between the two main players.

Let's summarize.

Windows Phone is a very decent platform, which in its functionality is in no way inferior to other players in this market and, in addition, offers a new, in many aspects more convenient approach to the user interface mobile devices... As is usually the case, this new approach is both powerful and weak side platforms. On the one hand, the new interface is in many cases more convenient to use, especially on mobile-tablet devices, on the other hand, it is unusual for most users brought up on classic desktop-icon interfaces, which means it takes more time to adapt.
The shortcomings and "failures" of the platform on closer examination turn out to be not so terrible and "failed".
Microsoft. You don't even have to write further. The company has a desire to develop eco windows system Phone, there is a plan for its development, and most importantly, there are a lot of fucking resources to promote it.

In general, it is difficult to imagine a product that would not be successful under such conditions. Those. here the question is more likely not in the "yes" or "no" plane, but "when".
Well, convinced? Still reading this post and not downloading the Windows Phone SDK? :)
Well, okay. We'll get more :)

Upd
In response to some comments.

Neither myself, nor my relatives are employees of Microsoft or any of its divisions.
I did not receive money for this article from anyone (although if they offer me it, I will not refuse, I am not proud :)).
What I do you can see in my profile. The only thing that connects me with Windows and Windows Phone is the development of applications and components for these platforms. What, I think, a good half of the readers of this article can say about themselves.

For me, an admirer of Microsoft products, it is painful to watch how the most promising mobile operating systemhow the image of a multinational company was barbarously trampled upon, how the hopes of fans were cynically destroyed. Recently, I admitted that Microsoft smartphones have gone to another world. Sadly, it must be admitted that Microsoft's attempt to become the third mobile OS was unsuccessful. The share of the smartphone market is falling dramatically; the company has not been producing new devices for a year. Some may argue about some kind of imaginary rebranding, revision of views, etc. All this is just talk and idle chatter.

For me, an admirer of Microsoft products, it is painful to watch how ineptly ruined the most promising mobile operating system, how they barbarously trampled on the image of a transnational company, how cynically they destroyed the hopes of fans. Recently, I admitted that Microsoft smartphones have gone to another world. Sadly, it must be admitted that Microsoft's attempt to become the third mobile OS was unsuccessful. The share of the smartphone market is falling dramatically; the company has not been producing new devices for a year. Some may argue about some kind of imaginary rebranding, revision of views, etc. All this is just talk and idle chatter.

Case design and materials

The world around us is changing inexorably: to replace the old plastic materials metal and glass cases came. But it seems not for Microsoft. I got the impression that the developers and designers of the company continued to get blanks from the warehouses of Nokia, putting new filling into them, and tried to sell them. I was very surprised how in 2015 you can release flagships, the body of which will be plastic. I understand the thesis that plastic is different from plastic, but in Lumia 950 / 950XL it was clearly of low quality. And how can you explain that the body of smartphones creaked, “like a shabby saddle” by Mikhail Sergeevich Boyarsky. Didn't the authors of the design really notice this before throwing their products on the market? Didn't they run crash tests? Or the banal "maybe it will pass" is inherent in them? To say that this defect is due to the fact that the removable battery looked just banal and ridiculous. Only the lazy did not write about the creaky body. When I first took a smartphone in my hands, I myself felt the cheapness of the product. It was a 2013 smartphone, but not 2015. What kind of competition with Samsung, Apple, LG and even some Chinese manufacturers in terms of design quality could we talk about? Competitors have gone far ahead, learned to make devices that are almost masterpiece in beauty and style.

Tiled interface

I will immediately disappoint those who think that I have seen the light about the "wretchedness" of the "tiled" interface of Windows smartphones. I still like it very much. Moreover, I think that he is a fresh breath of air against the background of a bored blank Desktop on Android and iOS.

I still don't like the desktops of competitors. As a friend of mine said: "The greatest fun in the iOS world is swapping widgets and putting them in folders." I'm not talking about Android at all. Sometimes it reminds me of a battle between functionality and aesthetics. I am annoyed by the clutter of Desktops on such smartphones. A couple of widgets and icons and your desk looks like a dump of unnecessary things.

In Windows Phone / 10 Mobile, tiles act as both a widget and an icon quick access... They are lively, interactive, comfortable.

But Microsoft wouldn't be itself if it hadn't screwed up such a cool idea. Not only did the developers lack the patience to wait, improve their work, and seek recognition. The company tried to make concessions and compromises. I understand that many users disliked desktop Windows 8 and then transferred this dislike to mobile version... But why didn't the developers of the "tiled" interface continue to bend their line? Why did the transparency of the tile and the ability to set your own photos for wallpaper appeared only in the second year? Why couldn't you copy the best in this respect from competitors? They never disdained it. No, we are proud, we will not copy, we would rather lose the market! Some questions ...

Platform progressiveness

Until the last moment, I did not believe that Microsoft's mobile OS would not be able to impose at least some kind of struggle on its competitors. It was sad to realize that Windows smartphones are no worse, and sometimes even better in their price segment. They were equipped with pretty good hardware, excellent cameras, excellent speakers. After all, few of the budget smartphones on Android can boast of such gorgeous cameras and an application for them, as in the same Lumia 640. Few will be able to work at 1 GB random access memory and at the same time work correctly. Surfing the Internet, chatting with friends in social networks, even through those not very high-quality applications (about them below) - this is a special strong point of smartphones.

But this applies to the first Microsoft smartphones, and then it got worse and worse. A particularly egregious fact for me is that most Windows Phone smartphones never received the upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile. The excuse was gorgeous: they say, the hardware component will not cope. But the new devices, which immediately received Windows 10 Mobile, were much weaker than their predecessors. How can you not respect the user to lie so blatantly and feed him with promises? Only Microsoft can do this. The smartphones that replaced the solid x20 series were on old hardware and only irritated fans and laughed at competitors. Over time, the release was completely stopped. There was no reason to hope that users would not move en masse to competitors.

Universal Applications

Almost one of the reasons for the failure of Windows smartphones was considered to be the insufficient number of applications on this mobile platform. For me, a certain logical chain has lined up. There are no applications because Windows Phone is not popular, and it is not popular because there are no applications. Some kind of vicious circle. I understand the developers: why make an application for a platform where three and a half are crippled.

This is where Microsoft was supposed to work. It was necessary in every possible way to encourage these same developers, to allocate resources and funds to them. The company has high hopes for universal applications, tried to create all sorts of projects for porting applications from Android and iOS, but almost all of them eventually closed or were postponed indefinitely. Some promises, words, words, words ...

I am particularly perplexed by the cross-platform focus of Microsoft. It defies logical explanation that the same Skype and Office 365 work much more correctly on the iPhone than on Windows smartphones. It's like not believing in your products in order to create applications for them that work much worse than those that the company itself produces for competitors. Or, as in the saying: "Give your wife to your uncle, and yourself ...", which is very strange.

Continuum

This innovation is the only one that makes me very sorry for the mobile OS from Microsoft. A truly chic feature that turns your smartphone into a full-fledged desktop PC. None of the competitors have such a thing. It was a real shot at the mobile market.

Microsoft missed this chance. In the year since the introduction of Continuum, it has hardly changed. Some applications have appeared, some functions have been improved and that's it. One gets the impression that the company has lost interest in this idea too. Development is possible, but very unnoticed. Plus, I read more and more that universal apps in Continuum mode sometimes work disgustingly.

Recently, rumors have been circulating that work is underway to rethink the mobile platform. I really hope that there is a place for Continuum in this new Microsoft concept.

User care

The success of any operating platform primarily depends on how the development company treats its users. Alas, Microsoft has always had problems with this.

It is necessary to deceive your users twice so brazenly and shamelessly without even bothering to explain everything elementary. Probably everyone understood that I was talking about Microsoft's empty promises to update old smartphones to new version BY. Not only were they simply delayed with the entry into the smartphone market, they also managed to lose even that small part of users. You just need to be able to!

One gets the impression that immediately with the arrival of Satya Nadella as head of Microsoft, the company has already decided to get rid of the mobile segment. There can be two reasons: either the new CEO got rid of the legacy of his predecessor, or it is corny the company did not know what to do in this smartphone market. Then it would be more logical to switch to Android right after the purchase of Nokia, in parallel promoting its services and services on this platform. I cannot find any other explanation.

Usually, when a person or in this case a company is late somewhere, he looks closely, adjusts, copies, develops and adds his own. But apparently prejudices about their greatness prevailed in the company and the fall was very painful and unpleasant.

The fact that Microsoft finally had the courage to admit that they failed in the mobile segment, that they were unable to oppose anything sensible to competitors, is encouraging. The latest news that Windows 10 will be compatible with ARM-processors gives hope that Microsoft will be able to return to the mobile OS market in a new quality.

The mobile operating system Windows Phone is now very actively developing, and it is difficult to argue with that. I also have a Windows Phone ( Nokia Lumia 925), and I am very pleased with it. To be honest, Android is bored, I want something new. But this article isn't about my Lumia, or which OS is better. Phones on this operating system work stably, and in terms of Internet access via Wi-Fi, everything is just as good.

For example, for several months I have not noticed a single problem in which Nokia Lumia would not want to connect to Wi-Fi, or the Internet would not work.

But, as I noticed, different questions appear about the problems that still arise when trying to connect a Windows Phone phone to Wi-Fi, or after connecting. Typically, these are problems when the connection to the wireless network is established, but the sites on the phone do not open. Or, for example, when Nokia Lumia does not see the Wi-Fi network. And he does not see only one, desired network, and sees the neighboring ones.

In this article, we will try to figure out why there may be problems connecting your Windows Phone to wireless networks, and how to solve these problems. At the moment, WP version 8 (I will show using this version as an example), an update to Windows Phone 8.1 is coming soon. Perhaps there will be some changes in the work with wireless networks.

Windows Phone connects to Wi-Fi, but the Internet does not work

This is probably the most popular problem. And as a rule, it is not the smartphone that is to blame for this problem, but the access point itself (router). You connect the phone to the network, as I wrote in the article, it connects (status: connection established), but when you try to open the site in the browser, an error appears: “The page cannot be displayed”... Applications such as VKontakte, Twitter, Skype cannot go online.

When the smartphone cannot get the IP address

Usually, routers distribute IP addresses themselves, they have a DHCP server enabled. But it happens that DHCP is disabled for some reason (when, for example, IP is registered manually on devices)... To be honest, I have not found how to manually register an IP address on Windows Phone 8. I think that in Windows Phone 8.1, this problem will be fixed.

If your phone cannot receive IP, then you will most likely see an error, something like: “The phone cannot connect to wi-Fi networksince the network is not responding. Please try again later ”... Or, near the name of the network, there will be just an inscription "Protected".

You need to check if the DHCP server is enabled in the router settings. If not, turn it on. How to do this, I wrote in a separate. See after the heading “Check if the DHCP server is enabled on the Wi-Fi router”.

You can also try which wireless network is running on. Try, for example, only n, or g.

Nokia Lumia does not see Wi-Fi network

When I write Nokia Lumia, I have to enter any phone on Windows Phone 🙂, you get the idea.

Highlighted on some forum the problem that Lumia (I don't remember exactly which model), did not see home wireless network... It simply wasn't on the list of available networks. The problem is not uncommon and can occur on any device.

So, in the case of Microsoft's operating system, I also advise you to change the channel on which the router broadcasts your wireless network. How to do this is written in detail. Since it is the interference on the channel that usually causes these problems. Try some kind of static channel, not Auto mode. And don't put the channel higher than 12th.

Afterword

It seems to have written about all the popular problems. If you are faced with any other problem in the Internet via Wi-Fi on Windows Phone, or if you know some new solutions to the problems described above, you can share useful information in comments. Don't be lazy 🙂