How Important is Tasks Support in Windows Phone 7?
The issue of Tasks is a funny one: people tend to either use them heavily, wish they were disciplined enough to use them heavily, or not care at all about them. The complete lack of Tasks support in Windows Phone 7 causes some people immense frustration, while others could care less. I'm trying to get a handle on how damaging the lack of Tasks support is to the Windows Phone 7 platform, so do me a favour and vote in this survey.
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Definitely fall on the "Important" side, especially if we could get some reminders going and upcoming or even overdue tasks displayed somewhere. While I don't think it's necessarily critical to the success of the platform, it would be useful for those of us who want a GTD-type system with notifications on next actions. Short of calendar events, we don't really have much right now.
Agree with last poster that having tasks for me is somewhat important. I have found apps that can work but I missed the tasks feature. What really was the deal breaker for me though was the missing voice command 6.5 has. I drive too much to not have my phone announce calls and texts so I gave up on WP7 and went back to my old 6.5 which is much more a work phone, even for a retired person, than a toy to play games and music on.
I was a loyal supporter of PPC & Windows Mobile user for years and migrated to iOS before I went back to WP7 simply because of the Task integration. Unfortunately I bought WP7 phone assuming Task will be a standard for Windows smartphones. Unfortunately I was hugely disappointed.
Task is a very important function for my daily work and the absent of it is something which I deeply missed. So for me, it is critical and I don't want to pay money for it!
I rarely use tasks. Instead I put deadlines in calendar events. Outlook does a better job of showing calendar events. Tasks get part of a line and a red flag that does nothing to indicate urgency.
I've used tasks for years and depend on audible reminders appearing on the screen of my device. With WP7 I have to use the calendar and make a task into an appointment in order to get a audible popup reminder. Even with that I can only "snooze" it for 5 minutes which is totally useless. I also started using ToodleDo online and To-Do List on the WP7. They provide a nice listing of tasks but all I get is an email each day listing outstanding tasks. Cute but not even close to the old Windows Mobile tasks with reminders that got me off my ass to complete them or to remind me again in an hour if I was busy.
Thanks for posting this, Jason. This was one of the many reasons I ditched WP7 after less than a month (and went to Blackberry). "What in the world were the programmers thinking?" is all I can ask. SLICK, fast interface, but too dumbed-down to use as a "smartphone", compared to Windows Mobile 6 and earlier.
Unrelated to this specific issue, but also on my long list of complaints about WP7:
Reminder snooze options - 5 minutes ONLY is ridiculous
NO category support (even Blackberry has this. This is very important to me as well, but guess Microsoft doesn't think people need this feature any more)
Inability to add more than one upcoming calendar appointment on the Home screen. Drove me nuts not being able to see a quick glance of (most of) day from the home screen.
Address book entries don't appear in the dialer as you dial--in other words, if you start to dial (702) 895.....and a contact entry with that number is already exist in the phone, it doesn't appear. You must now type the entire number to dial it. Even BASIC phones today have the feature that allow you to simply select an address book entry that's already in the phone after typing in the first 2+ numbers.
No tethering support
Hidden signal meter
No unified Inbox
Jason, I'm sure you've heard from me enough about the lack of dedicated hardware buttons With Microsoft's new strict rules about physical buttons on WP7 devices, not being able to quickly end a phone call (or get to the home screen quickly) without staring at screen for "End Call" button drove me nuts as well.
These along with lack of basic Task support was enough to drive me away from Windows Phone. And I doubt Microsoft will ever get it enough to re-introduce these features.
Last edited by Eriq Cook; 05-12-2011 at 03:04 AM..
Unrelated to this specific issue, but also on my long list of complaints about WP7...
That's quite a list - but all very valid missing features that I'm sure impact a lot of people. I hope at least a few of them will get crossed off the list with the Mango update!
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How Important is Tasks Support in Windows Phone 7?
With Microsoft's new strict rules about physical buttons on WP7 devices, not being able to quickly end a phone call (or get to the home screen quickly) without staring at screen for "End Call" button drove me nuts as well.
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