The Windows Phone 7 Feature Request & Suggestion Thread

• Hello all! Welcome to the feature request thread for Windows Phone 7. It’s great to see many people sharing ideas and criticisms of the platform.
  

How can you help? Throw your support for the features listed here or suggest new ones. The more detail you add, the better other users can get behind you!

A couple of things to note:

• Please do not quote this post! This would make the thread unnecessarily long
• This is not an official Microsoft thread. I am only a WP7 enthusiast, a regular user who wants to see the platform succeed. This is my way of helping.

DISCLAIMER : This list is not my personal list of wanted features, nor do I personally agree with every request listed here. My role here is to simply compile an easy-to-read list of popular feature the users of the WP7 forum would like to see in future updates.

And here's the list! Bold/Italic means my own clarification or interpretation of the requested feature. I often make references to competitor's products, so approve/blast of my thoughts!
 
General use:

• custom hubs/folders to alleviate a long app list or jump letters similar to viewing lists in the People/Music + Videos Hubs JUMP LETTERS COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• phone keeps vibrating after second ring
• custom ringtones COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Save camera settings COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Option to turn off camera shutter sound COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Manual brightness controls
• view battery in percentage
• SkyDrive integrated into Office Mobile for more than just OneNote COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Allow those who's carrier has changed the search engine change it back to Bing (or something else)
• rotate pictures in the camera roll
• Enter URLs in Internet Explorer while in landscape COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• backup for apps’ isolated storage, not just cloud backups
• Resettable stats for minutes used/SMS messages sent/data used (This would be very helpful to those who have low limits in their minutes/SMS/data plan)
• option to disable haptic feedback on the hardware back/start/search buttons
• MAPS APP: Turn by turn directions COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• MAPS APP: Public transit
• MAPS APP: Download maps
• Landscape throughout the OS and MS apps
• Disable search button during games
• Customizable colours for the accent colour
• Call history in Phone app shows call lengths
• Eliminate the swipe up required to answer a call
• HTML5/Flash/Silveright support in Internet Explorer (we know Flash is coming, but we don't know when.) HTML5/SILVERLIGHT COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• When dialing a number manually, it searches your People Hub for matching numbers, ala Windows Mobile
• Ability to increase text size in places such as SMS messages and People Hub
• Parental controls such as browser filters, monitors, blocked app purchases, etc.
• For phones that have an LED, it blinks when there is a missed call, voicemail, waiting text message
• Open password-protected Office documents
• Facebook notifications COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Send to OneNote option in IE/Email
• Do not hide the paste button after the first paste (Doing this makes people think you can only paste once)
• Notification history list, so we can see notifications we received if we couldn't respond to them right away
• Pin individual settings directly to the Start screen
• Announce caller
• Windows Live Messenger app from Microsoft COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Facebook chat COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Visual voicemail COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• MAC CONNECTOR: Address Book. (A Mac user is more likely to have their contacts in the system Address Book than a Windows Live account. Perhaps a Connector could be embedded in the Connector software similar to what’s offered to Outlook on Windows? )

Zune & Media:

• editable Now playing playlist
• Ability to clear recently played
• Ability to create and save playlists on the phone COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Ability to download podcasts directly to the phone COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Show album art of last played song if artist picture cannot be found (This would also make the Music + Videos Hub look pretty for those of us who do not have the music store available since the artist picture depends on that)
• Allow dragging of the seek bar. COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Gapless playback on the phone
• App management on the Zune desktop client, similar to what iTunes does for iOS apps.
• Jump-to Now Playing list from the media controls overlay (There's enough room for another button next to ring/vibrate!)

People Hub:

• Search People Hub by more fields (by Company, Title, notes, etc.)
• Link to a contact’s significant other if it’s in the phone (Ex.: Manly Man and Girly Girl are both in your contact list. Manly has Girly listed as his significant other. Clicking this field in his contact card would open Girly’s contact card. Same concept could by applied to children )
• Turn off contacts from the primary Live account
• Favourite contacts (Argument was this is already implemented in Windows Live website/Messenger)
• support for contact groups COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Twitter integration akin to Facebook's integration COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• LinkedIn integration akin to Facebook's integration COMING IN MANGO UPDATE (Status updates only?)
• Ability to clear recent people
• Ability to have multiple numbers of the same type (e.g. mobile, mobile 2)
• Lync integration COMING IN MANGO UPDATE

E-mail, calendars & Exchange:

• Direct sync with Outlook (no need for Hotmail Connector)
• Add weekly view to calendar
• various snooze times on events/alarms
• vibration on events reminders/alarms
• Separate the alarm/reminder volume from the main volume (All other phones I've owned had the alarm and vibration of an alarm/event reminder separate from the ringer volume. Useful for not having to remember to max out your ringer or turn off vibrate every night for the alarm! )
• Sync more than the primary calendar of an account COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Turn off the calendar from the primary Live account
• Device encryption for those whose organizations require it
• unified email inbox COMING IN MANGO UPDATE (Read here for details)
• threaded conversations for e-mail COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Tasks sync from Exchange/Outlook COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Show multiple events on the lock screen
• Contact categories for Exchange lists
• Full Exchange policy support
• Ability to set a schedule of when e-mails arrive (ex.: Stop e-mail from arriving overnight)
• iCal event importing
• Facebook calendar automatically imported COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• Improve monthly view (maybe coloured markers on the day to signify that day has events rather than using tiny filler text on there? )

SMS/MMS messaging :

• more than one vibrate upon receiving an SMS message
• Ability to send contact data in a SMS/MMS/email
• Text message templates
• Save drafts of SMS/MMS
• More options than just pictures for MMS messages
• Batch deletion of conversations, not one conversation at a time
• Ability to back up messages to a computer or a cloud service
• voice-to-text app built-in COMING IN MANGO UPDATE
• text-to-voice built-in COMING IN MANGO UPDATE

Marketplace:

• cancel download of Marketplace/Zune content
• links to contact the app developer
• Password protect purchasing apps (similar to iTunes(?), who requires the primary account’s password to be entered before the transaction is completed)
• Option to use Microsoft Points for app purchases
• Open app Marketplace worldwide

Networking & Connectivity:

• Connect to hidden WiFi networks COMING IN MANGO UPDATE? (See blog for more details)
• WiFi stays connected a little longer after screen turns off
• Have a timeout before the screen locks after the screen turns off
• VPN support
• Bluetooth audio support for videos (and support for more Bluetooth profiles in general)
• An official Remote Desktop Connection client
• Bluetooth file transfer (at least if an app on the phone can recognize the filetype being sent. I know the iPhone’s filetype support can be reported to iTunes by the apps installed on the phone for file management)

USB & Sync:

• Tethering support
• USB mass storage
• WiFi sync on demand as opposed to "wait X minutes while plugged in battery is above y level"

Regional gripes:

• Enable voice find command in more locales
• Chinese/Arabic input
• Bing Maps improvement (Obviously this isn’t something that can be done overnight and hopefully will be done overtime. It’s listed because Europeans have been vocal about Bing Maps)

• “Adding friends on Facebook takes hours to be recognized on the phone!”Settings>email & accounts. Hold your finger down on the account and sync/delete options will appear to force a sync on that account or delete that account.
• “Audio recording!” this can currently be done through OneNote, but it’s not fun to play them back. I suppose you could make a single note for audio clips, but there’s no way to give names to the recorded clips.
• “A forward button in IE" This is done by tapping the … at the bottom of the screen to bring up more options in IE. One of them is a forward button. However, since you do not get any UI when the phone is in landscape in IE, this forces portrait mode to go forward. There is a request in the above list for UI in IE while the phone is in landscape mode.
• “Ability to turn off the camera button waking the phone while locked!”Settings>swipe left>Pictures + camera. There is a slider to control the camera button waking the phone while in lock
• “Zune opens when I connect my phone!” In Zune: Settings>Software>General. There’s an option to control this behaviour.
• “Arrow keys to move the cursor in text entry fields!” Hold your finger down on the field you’re entering text in. A cursor will pop up above your finger. Drag it down to the position you want to edit from.
• I can't paste my text more than once! When the keyboard is open, swipe right on the bar above the keyboard where word suggestions appear. The Paste icon will come back.
  

• Copy/Paste functionality

• Filter search results

• Easily find MAC address You can now find your MAC address in Settings>About and tapping "more info"