[Q] Message Access Profile [MAP] on Windows Phone 8? - Windows Phone 8 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Is MAP (to sync SMS and E-Mails, possibly the Calendar to devices such as Navigation Systems (Kenwood, Ford, BMW) or Smartwatches (Pebble)) functional on any WP 8 device in any version (GDR2 / GDR3)?
According to some articles, Nokia wanted to (or did already) implement MAP as part of the "Transfer My Data" App?
(e.g.) wpcentral.com/nokia-adding-bluetooth-support-message-access-profile-map-future-update
Wondering if I could get, or expect MAP Support for my Ativ S.

Transfer My Data is indeed supposedly capable of transferring SMS. It's possible to install it using a proxy to spoof the device ID.
I don't know how easy it is access such things through third-party apps, though. I also don't know about support for any of the devices you mention. If it's not available now, it's probably coming in WP8.1, expected early next year (about when GDR4 would otherwise be released) although I suppose it's possible that it's part of the next "service pack" style update, which mostly adds a bunch of business-y stuff (S/MIME email, mobile device management rules, VPNs, etc.)

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Thinking of switching, but I'm looking for 2 specific apps

I have been using Android since the G1 launched, I took one break from it about a year ago to give the Nokia N9 a try (great phone, poor battery life). I am considering switching to Windows Phone 8 (Lumia 920) after it launches. There are two apps that are really important before I make the switch though.
- LBE Security Equivalent. This is a 'firewall', but for application permissions. You can have it prompt you that application 'x' is trying to read from contact data, for instance. If something this exact isn't readily available, is there at least a network based permission firewall? Some applications are fine to use, but I don't necessarily want them to connect to the internet.
- Tasker. This is the bigger of the two that I need to have. If you're unfamiliar with it, Tasker lets you change any device settings, based on any other condition. E.g., if it's between 8am-5pm and I can see the wireless network, "Work", then put the phone on silent... if it doesn't meet those conditions put it back on loud. Very basic example, but I need something like this because it makes my life a lot easier.
I searched around and couldn't find anyone really talking about either of these options too much, can anyone help me out?
Neither one of them is possible with the current SDK, maybe when wp8 pops up.
Windows Phone does not allow any Apps to interfere with System Settings or other Apps. All Apps are sandboxed with only certain interaction points to exchange data or embed themselves into the Hubs. Having looked through the leaked SDK this is not changing with WP8, although there are additional interaction possibilities other Apps functioning as well as system settings are still off limits.
You can look at what permissions certain Apps request before installing them but the only thing youncan do then is to decode not to install them (aside from using background processing and using location data - those can be configured separately).

[Q] Apps for VNC and Myphoneexploerer Alternative

Hey,
i´m currently wondering if i should go for the Lumia 920 or the Note 2.
There is the everlasting app question that´s holding me back, so, if anybody could give me a headsup if the following is available ...well, it would be nice:
1. An app/tool like myphonexplorer (http://www.fjsoft.at) to a) write sms on pc b) backup these c) sync
2. is there a vnc server available (did not find anything) for winphone? or is this possible with winphone8?
3. I´m aware that there´s no real notification center - but what if you have a news app installed (say cnn for example) and some breaking news is coming in. is there something like a popup on ios/iphone?
thanks in advance
1.) There is no local sync functionality with Windows Phone. All PIM data has to go through ExchangeActiveSync which means GMail/Outlook.com or another MailServer like Exchange. SMS can be backed up to the Cloud although there is no export functionality (Apps can't access a users SMS in WP8).
2.) There is no VNC server as Apps can't access other Apps visual state. I don't know why you would need a server on the phone anyway. Looking through the Marketplace brings up several VNC Clients, I didn't test any of them though.
3.) There are Toast-notifications that pop down from the top of the screen. Those are displayed for a set amount of time (some seconds) and then vanish (or you can swipe them away to make them disappear before that or tap on them to be taken to the App). Aside from that there are tile-notifications that display info on the Live Tiles. Which of those features an App uses and how information is displayed on the tile is up to the App's developer.
Thanks for your answers, which lead me to one more question:
Is it safe to assume that (sadly) such a tool like Airdroid (http://airdroid.com/) will never see the light of the day on wp8?
I´m asking all this because i don´t always have my phone in my hands and accessing most of it functions via a browser was a *huge* plus in the past for me (especially with the mentioned aidroid).
With the current official APIs it's not possible. Perhaps someone could hack something like this in the future but as always I would not count on this. It didn't happen for WP7 for sure.
So in the end I guess that's a no.

[Q] WP8 Noob Thinking about switching from android

I am a hardcore Google user. I have an android phone and tablet and lots of google stuff online. My phone is getting old, and I was thinking of trying out something new.
Couple questions:
1. Whats the equivalent of "rooting" on wp8, if any?
2. How would you go about "rooting" your phone.
3. Are there any recommend phones for general use+development?
Julian90090 said:
I am a hardcore Google user. I have an android phone and tablet and lots of google stuff online. My phone is getting old, and I was thinking of trying out something new.
Couple questions:
1. Whats the equivalent of "rooting" on wp8, if any?
2. How would you go about "rooting" your phone.
3. Are there any recommend phones for general use+development?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. There is no equivalent of rooting at this time, as Windows Phone is much more locked down than Android (comparable to iOS) and there aren't as many devs working on it
2. Nothing yet, but its very easy to developer unlock it to side load custom made apps
3. You are probably best off getting a Nokia, either a cheap (~$100) Lumia 520 or a higher end like the Lumia 920/925/928 (I'd go with the 1020 if you can afford it). Windows Phone is very efficient, and runs almost as well on lower end hardware like the 520 as it does on higher end.
If you are really a hardcore Google user you are likely to find Windows Phone lacking as Google is intentionally keeping their programs and services off the platform (at least first party, nearly everything can be accessed through third party apps).
I made the switch, and I love it, but Windows Phone is not for people that want to constantly tweak everything because it is locked down. I used to love to tinker, now I love that I can't.
Yeah... WP7 was eventually broken wide open, but WP8's lockdown has been harder to bypass. There's a few devices (Huawei W1?) for which people have reported being able to edit the stock ROM somewhat, which is probably usable for "rooting" the phone, but none of the high-end devices have a known working exploit yet.
Developer-unlock, which will allow sideloading low-permission (no special capabilities, just the standard public ones) apps, is available for free, but you have to use PC tools to do it. Get the WP8 SDK from Microsoft (free, but a big download) and run the Windows Phone Developer Registration tool. Unless you pay for a developer account, there will be a very low limit on the number of apps you can sideload.
I'm actually personally pretty happy with the Samsung ATIV S phones; they have the best hardware in many ways (biggest battery, biggest and nearly highest-resolution displays, biggest internal storage that also has an SD card slot, best currently-available-in-WP8 CPUs) and you can install many of the Nokia apps anyhow (you can also install the Samsung apps on Nokia phones, same for HTC, etc.) using a proxy to modify the store requests. However, for a budget phone, the Nokia Lumia 52x line is hard to beat, and for camera quality, the Lumia 1020 is the best smartphone available, bar none.
There's plenty to do if you like to tinker with the phone... the problem is, you have to find it all yourself. There's not that much, aside from things like using a proxy to get apps intended for different OEMs' phones, that we've found to work so far. I've written a neat app that lets you browse the visible parts of the WP8 file system and registry from your PC (see my signature, it's the webserver app) which I hope will help people find something exploitable to get full Admin privileges on the phone, but so far, that hasn't happened. There's lots of other potential exploit vectors too; people just need to find them and make them usable!
Like GoodDayToDie said, it's NOT rootable. End of story.
As an experience goes, though, I switched iOS -> Android earlier this year because I was firmly in camp Google. I seemed to have problems that most other users did not, but all in all it was a miserable experience. After about 4mo switched to WP8.
For reference, on the phone; I use Google Maps, Google Voice, GMail, Contacts, Calendar, and search.
Contacts, Calendar, and mail all sync smoothly with built-in stuff. Search is an app, and it can't take Bing's place on the search button.
There's not an official Google Maps app, but there are apps in the Store that offer it. After about 6w now, I'm mostly using Nokia's Here stuff for mapping though.
Google Voice is available as a third party app. I was using Metrotalk. It was better than GV on iOS but inferior to GV on Android.
For what it's worth.
Except, you know, the part where it's nothing at all like a desktop OS.
No support for arbitrary applications or running as Admin. No file browser or registry editor. No command prompt or built-in scripting engine. No third-party background services (officially, at least; unofficially it's possible if you can work with the low permissions) or multiple windows at once. No task manager or management console. No device manager or third-party drivers. No user installer or recovery tools. No way to uninstall updates or make disk backups. No way to pass a file directly to another application (it must go through a registered extension handler, which the other app must be selected as the handler for). No multi-user support. None of the standard Windows power management tools. No OpenGL support, or ability to manually update the drivers. No support for external mice (or really for any mice, properly speaking). No support for USB host mode (that I can see, at least not in the base OS). No support for Windows networking or VPNs. No (built-in) support for remote desktop. No printing. The included version of Office is very limited compared to the full thing. No way to change the default web browser, email client, or several other such things. No support for installing new system media codecs or fonts. No way to choose what store a certificate is saved into, to export a saved cert, or to delete a saved cert.Browser has a limit of six tabs, no Flashplayer, and no Tracking Protection [Lists] feature.
Windows Phone 8 has about as much to do with Windows 8 as Android has to do with Ubuntu. In fact, it has significantly less, from the user's perspective.
some Noob's experience with WP8/ Nokia 928
Some other problemsthat i have stumbled on while trying WP8 for past 2 days, Nokia 928.
1. Ringtones and txt messages are changeable but notifications sounds for other programs are not (i.e. metrotalk - client)
2. Using public wifi that requires a comfirmatory click on their acceptable use page - Broken - works first time for me, then every time after it constantly loads up "w w w.msftncsi.com/nsci.txt" and the phone is constantly asking if I want to continue connecting to that wifi hotspot - Annoying.
3. Internet explorer is the builtin browser ( with some 3rd party UC browser, Surfcube 3D browser) but NO chrome nor firefox, - some pages load weird, especially if you choose desktop mode.
Images that appears in the browser search in IE 10 or UC browser, using bing or google comes back blurry, until you choose to open that one pic in full size image , but then you can't scroll through the result of images until you go back, at which time the images will sometimes not load, mind you this is on wifi.
4. No native Google voice apps - Metrotalk is good but you have to go through some hoops to setup push notification (ie having the app be able to notify you of txt and voicemail without actually having that app open), and you can't change the notification sound of Metrotalk as stated above
5. No file browsers
As I said, this is my experience with the phone and WP8 for the last 2 days, YMMV

Should i buy a lumia 520 or w1?

Hello guys i have been using smartphones for almost half a decade now starting from symbian to android. But i haven't used ios and wp8 yet.
The devices i had used so far are:
Nokia 5233
Nokia c6
SE live with walkman.
Se mini pro
Samsung galaxy y.
Sony xperia j.
Now i am quite bored of the same android. I had used custom roms on everyone of my phone but now i dont care if i can use custom roms or not. I just want a decent phone that can provide me a decent daily usage. Starting from watching youtube videos to playing some games.
Now before i finalize my decision i need to know few things.
1) Does windows market place have at least some free games(that is fully free not trail)??
2) Does the fb app of wp really s**ks??
3) Does wp have a youtube app.??
4) Does wp have basic apps like facebook messenger, whatsapp, a nice photo editing app like picsart in android??
5) And the most important what is meant by developer unlock and interlop unlock???
6) Can i do the above two things on nokia lumia 520 or acend w1?
And the main question which one of these i should buy?
Thank you guys.
Regards,
Totally noob in WP.
Lots of free games, and most of the "trial" games are just a "buy the game to remove ads" trial; the game is otherwise fully functional. Even a number of Xbox Live games are free.
The FB app is pretty good, in my limited experience. I actually almost always just use the built-in FB integration and have no need for the app; just about the only things I use FB for these days are a great big address book + ability to see event invitations + ability to see posted photos, and the built-in integration handles all of that quite well. The app is pretty fast and fluid, with lots of features, though, as of the last update or two. There's always the browser in any case; touch.facebook.com works fine last I checked (or the full site, but it's not mobile-friendly).
There are many Youtube apps (plus again, you can just use the browser for HTML5 videos). Google has gotten into a pissing match with Microsoft over the official Youtube app though, so sometimes it's just blocked from working. There are alternative apps that I've never seen blocked (even though they work just like the MS app...), though, and there are apps for other video sites too,
Facebook messaging is built in to the "Messaging hub" of the OS, or accessible through the FB app; there are also dedicated messenger apps that can use it. Whatsapp is available. I don't know picsart at all, but there's some basic photo editing built into the OS, plus a crapload of apps for it.
Developer unlock is the ability to install unsigned apps (usually meaning apps in development, but also homebrew apps which aren't allowed in the store. It's the equivalent of the "Allow installing apps from untrusted sources" (or whatever) checkbox on Android. Interop-unlock is a hack that allows the installation of higher-privilege apps this way; without it, you can only sideload apps that have pretty limited capabilities.
All WP devices can be dev-unlocked; it's an official feature. If you want to sideload more than 3 apps at a time, though, you'll need to buy a developer account (~$20 USD/year). Interop-unlock is currently only available for Samsung WP8 devices, although Huawei phones *supposedly* can support custom ROMs (but this news is months old, and I haven't actually seen these ROMs myself) which would give the requisite unlocks too.
Do bear in mind: the phones you've mentioned are the lowest-end WP8 models, with the slowest CPUs, least RAM, least network technology support (no LTE, for example), and least internal storage (although I believe both support microSD, which can be used for photos/videos/music but not apps). Between the two, I would recommend the Lumia just because it will have Nokia's collection of apps.
Thank you mate now i atleast have a basic knowing of WP.
Can you please explain what is sideload??
Well i can manage a few more bucks to get lumia 620 but i just want to have a feel of WP for now since i have been using android since 2011 so i need to see if i can adapt to WP.
Sideloading is installing apps from unofficial sources (in the case of WP, installing apps from anywhere except the store). There are two ways to do it in WP8:
1) "Company" apps that are available from your organization. These apps are signed, but by a company certificate rather than Microsoft's store certificate, and installing them mostly just requires that you have the relevant account set up on your phone. Then email yourself, or open in the browser, the relevant .XAP files (XAPs are application packages, much like APKs).
2) "Development" (or homebrew) apps are unsigned apps directly produced by Visual Studio or similar. They can (currently) only be installed using the Windows Phone SDK, which includes a program called XapDeploy.exe ("Application Deployment" in the Start screen) on your PC (connected to the phone using USB). This is the type of sideloading that requires dev-unlock (or interop-unlock, for highly-privileged apps) on the OS, and without interop-unlock, you will be limited in how many such apps you can deploy at once.
Okay so security from microsoft huh... Okay thanks a lot mate.
||""Playing Asphalt™ 8 Airborne on my sgy. LoLz.
Joke of the year. Gameloft devs will die if they hear this. ""||

[Q] New at WP8, questions not stored in FAQ

Hello,
I'm just starting my dev journey with WP8 with my new T-Mobile Lumia 520.
First what I need to do is to debrand my lumia - for faster updates. T-Mobile is not offering yet the next release of fw which allows to disable images in IE, and as dev I need to be up-to-date as fast as possible. I need to download the FW, but I don't know which one - localized for sure, but what GDR is? What Amber means? I can't decide which one do I need to download and flash. (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2515453 This instruction doesn't show the moment of decision).
Next question is about unlocking. I'm downloading music from Soundcloud via Cloudoh and I want to access them from my PC, same as files located inside of other apps - do I need to unlock the device to do that? For example - how to upload a pdf from PC to winpho pdf reader?
Windows Store allows me to download installable files at PC and install them via SD Card. Some apps aren't supposed to work with my device. Is there any solution how to install them at my risk?
And the last question, but not least - I have my dev account but its time limited and app-count-limited. Is there any way how to check if my Lumia is dev-unlocked, how long this unlock lasts and what is my current app-limit? Just for my information - I like to have the ways to check everything.
Please, help me
GDR = General Distribution Release (a brief web search would have told you this). Microsoft-ese for a post-initial-release update (think of service packs for other MS software). The current version is GDR3, also called Update 3. "Amber" is Nokia's codename for the firmware version that they ship along with GDR2. "Black" is Nokia's firmware name for GDR3. Note that OEM firmware (such as Amber or Black) are different from Microsoft OS updates (such as GDR2 or Update 3), although they are typically delivered together. If you're already on at least GDR2, you can get Update 3 directly from Microsoft without waiting for T-Mobile or Nokia; search the Store for "Preview for Developers".
You cannot access files stored inside an app from anywhere else, either a PC or another app, unless the app explicitly makes them available by including a method to export them. Most apps don't implement this. The only exceptions to this rule are for images (which can be stored in the Pictures Library of the phone, much like the built-in camera app or screenshot functions) and OEM apps, which can have extra permissions (Capabilities, such as ID_CAP_PUBLIC_FOLDER_FULL) that aren't allowed for third-party developers. However, for development apps (that is, ones which were sideloaded to your phone from an unsigned XAP file), you can access their Isolated Storage from your PC using the aptly-named Isolated Storage Explorer Tool (or any other program that implements the required APIs, such as Windows Phone Power Tools).
To upload a PDF to the phone, you can do any number of things. Over USB, copy it to the Documents folder on the phone using any MTP software (Windows Explorer works). Over Bluetooth, just send the file directly. Over email, just attach the PDF. Over the Internet, you can use SkyDrive, or any other "cloud" app, or if it's on a web server you can get it from the phone's browser...
I'm not aware of any work-around for the minimum-memory restriction on some apps. I believe it mostly only applies to large games? In any case, you have one of the lowest-end WP8 devices on the market; there are limits which come with that.
The official way to tell if your phone is dev-unlocked is to use the Windows Phone Developer Registration tool, the same one you use to do the dev-unlock in the first place. A paid developer account always gives a limit of 10 apps (the free one is 2 apps). There's no official way to tell how many apps you have remaining, but it's simple enough to tell if you have any space left; just try sideloading any app that isn't already installed!
GoodDayToDie said:
GDR = General Distribution Release (a brief web search would have told you this).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I did some sort of search on forums and Google and I haven't found anything.
GoodDayToDie said:
You cannot access files stored inside an app from anywhere else, either a PC or another app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After unlock it is still unaccessible? I had to jailbreak my iPad because without jb it is not easy to operate. I thought about something like this for Lumia. I think it is only the need of time for others to omit this problem
Disney offered lastly a promotion for its games. I was interested with some of them, but only one was accessible for my device. xap file needed only 70 mb of space. I think there was a problem with performance, but if I want see a laggy game I should have the ability to install it despite everything.
There's no jailbreak available for Lumia phones yet. Something like that should, indeed, allow accessing the storage of the apps (and everything else) but we don't have one...
The size of the XAP has very little to do with the runtime requirements of the app (RAM and CPU). I have written apps of only a few kilobytes that required over 10 gigs of RAM to run (not a phone app, obviously). To avoid people with low-end phones getting annoying with the platform and thinking it's the fault of either Microsoft or the app developer when an app crashes from running out of RAM, they've prohibited installing high-RAM apps on low-RAM devices.
You mean T-Mobile's Lumia 521 right? There's no other ROM you can flash to it that might have the update.

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