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Windows Phone Central's app support inbox has been flooded recently, by users complaining that news does not load correctly in the app. We've been kind of stumped on this one frankly because it's only been affecting certain users, so we've been digging.

It turns out that other apps were also running into problems (WeatherFlow is one example), and as we dug further we identified that most of the affected users were Italian, and that the issue had started on March 1st. Now, thanks to twitter user @SergioPedri and others in our forums, we've finally been able to replicate the problem. The good news is there's a workaround.

Today we saw an update arrive for Xbox Live title Cut The Rope, this update looks to have cured the graphical bug seen when launching the game from a dedicated tile on the Start screen.

The otherwise excellent app has exhibited a bug whereby pinning the game to the start screen and launching it would display an odd multi-colour screen and a progress bar. That same thing wouldn’t happen if the app was launched from within the Games Hub.

Marketplace fix has been applied but it may take a day or two deploy

As expected, Microsoft has begun deploying the digital certificate fix for the Marketplace that has resulted in some Windows Phone users unable to either install or update a select few apps (notably WhatsApp, NY Times and Translator). In a recent change to the Windows Phone Developer Blog, Todd Brix notes:

“We fixed the digital certificate problem and last evening resumed publishing new apps. It will take a day or two for the repair to fully deploy and newly-published apps to begin appearing in Marketplace again.  If your app was in the process of being published, you don’t need to take any action.  We have applied the fix and the app will continue through the certification and publishing workflow as normal.”

Of course as mentioned above that does not mean you can now instantly re-install or update those apps with issues as it can take time for the changes to rollout across their servers. Still, users should be begin to see updates by the end of the weekend.

Let us know in comments if you have had any success. Thanks, ThisIsMetro, for the heads up

The official Six Flags app from Nokia is a wild ride

The Six Flags app from Nokia for their Lumia line of Windows Phones received a small update today. Now at version 1.19 the update looks to be some minor bug fixes and under the hood optimizations that usually follow an initial public release. In other words, we’ve found no observable new features but presumably it will run a little faster now.

The official Six Flags app from Nokia is a companion app for the park which provides park info (location, hours), maps within the park (with augmented reality), videos, food and shop information (including descriptions) and park events (with a calendar). The deal between Nokia and Six Flags is mutual as the parks reportedly are heavily advertising the flagship Lumia 900.

Interestingly, neither Android or iOS have a Six Flags app making Lumia Windows Phones the first.

Pick up the exclusive Six Flags app from Nokia here in the Nokia Collection. Check out our hands on video after the break with the QR code. Thanks, Jose, for the heads up

Dear phone, we're not in Akron!

Update: Nokia just pinged us to let us know they are "...aware of the issue and it has been addressed, but users may need to restart their phones to see the fix take effect." Moreover, this does not seem to be a Lumia 900 issue per se but rather related to AT&T's LTE towers. Evidently some Android users have had this problem too.

It looks like the Nokia Lumia 900 on AT&T is experiencing yet another odd and seemingly random bug these days. For some users, when they fire up a GPS application such as Maps, Local Scout, Foursquare (for checkins) or Yelp, they show up as being in Akron, Ohio despite not actually being there.

The issue first popped up in Nokia's support forums with two threads and a handful of users noting the problem. Another thread appeared here in the Windows Phone Central Forums as well. But to be honest, we had only received one email complaint on the matter from reader Alex T. and we had not seen this bug ourselves to verify--so off it went into the "quirks" pile for further investigation.

This week though as we're paling around with Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott in sunny San Francisco, both of their devices suddenly had this happen. First up was Thurrott who's phone just would not budge from the great state of Ohio. Despite soft-resets, some toggling and a boatload of swearing, there it stayed.

Later that night, Rivera's phone did the exact same thing when we were at Denny's. What was curious though was how both phones, even when placed next to each other, did not have the bug at the same time. Both Lumia 900s, both on AT&T, yet one worked and the other did not. (Our 900 was in tow but we were using the Focus 2 as our primary device this week).

We're not sure if this is related to AT&Ts network for aGPS, an issue with full GPS or maybe something in between. We have noticed that more folks seem to experience it on the West coast but that could just be sampling error. 

So we figured we would crowdsource this a bit and ask you if you've experienced this on your Lumia 900. And if so, what state are you in? Hit the poll below. (And for our international users, have you had something similar?).

The official eBay app for Windows Phone has been out for some time and while the Marketplace reviews aren't stellar, they don't really call for you to run for the hills either. Yet we received a tip from a German reader that there could be a potentially disastrous bug in the app.

It appears that while bidding on a Nokia Lumia 800 a bid was entered as 211.69€ and appeared that way in the confirmation screen. However, when the bid was submitted it registered as 21169.00€. Luckily the ending bid didn't make it that far, ending at 270 Euros.

According to the tipster, eBay Germany was contacted and recommended contacting the seller to request a cancelation. While we first thought this could easily be pilot error, in scanning through the Marketplace reviews on the eBay app (found here at the Windows Phone Marketplace), other Windows Phone users report similar instances where the confirmed bid is higher than the submitted bid.

We aren't sure if this is a wide spread issue and hopefully if this is a bug, the quirk can be resolved easily with an update to the app. Still, bug or not, you might want to be extra careful to review your eBay bids when submitting via the Windows Phone app. If my recollection of eBay is correct, an incorrectly submitted bid can be canceled before the auction closes.

Thanks, aerone, for the tip!

From purple screens to rattles to unresponsive buttons, the Nokia Lumia 900 still has a couple of nagging problems for a few of us. Here's what people are complaining about most.

The Nokia Lumia 900 seems to be doing well for AT&T and for some reason we can't leave our glossy-white one out of reach for long but there are still plenty of bugs and issues rolling in to our inbox at WPCentral. Although that data-bug is now history thanks to a quick response from Nokia these few, seemingly random issues are plaguing numerous Lumia 900 users. We'll go over a few:

• Purple screen - Grays appear with a purple hue when the display brightness is set to low (or automatic and goes to low). Although it could be a software calibration issue it doesn't affect all Lumia 900s, in fact it's just a subset that are out there. Our own glossy-white Lumia 900 has this and it's quite obvious when on the low-setting. You can commiserate with others in our forum who are having this problem. Nokia seems to be trying to isolate which builds it may be and you can submit your device information in this Nokia help thread.
• Camera button won't wake the phone - This issue is caused when the device is powered off/standby and you hold the camera button to launch into the camera app. It's actually easy to replicate: Run any app and leave it on screen then power off the phone. Now try to hold-n-launch the camera via the shutter button. It won't work. Turn the device back on, exit the app, go to stand by and now try it and it will launch. We've had it happen even without an app running under lockscreen. (Thanks, Sepatown for the replication trick)
• Vibrate feature rattles - We complained about this in our 900 review and even have a video of it compared to the Lumia 800. In short, the vibration feature rattles to different degrees on many Lumia 900s often sounding like an electric razor. Once again, the problem is on some phones while not on others. You can follow the threads here at WPCentral and Nokia Support for more info.
• Inline remote on headset issue - The Nokia Monster Purity headphones sometimes won't forward/pause a track. Also, volume rockers when the device is a sleep won't respond and/or require multiple pushes
• Low volume is high - Even on "1" the volume is quite loud and doesn't start to vary till "7".

Nokia sure has a lot on their plate and we know they are actively looking to address these but the question is how much of this is firmware and how much is it Quality Control (QC) with the hardware? We should caution that not all Lumia 900 users are having problems but even Rafael and I both have Lumia 900's with "purple grays" and my vibration rattles a bit too.

We'll be paying attention but for now, you may want to read up in our "Official Lumia 900 Bugs List" to see what others are saying.

Update: Take our poll to see if others are having the same problems or not

Image Credit: tewmgd (XDA forums); See the vibrate-rattle issue demonstrated on video after the break...

Dialing numbers listed on websites is supposed to be an easy task on Windows Phone. The OS basically highlights the numbers (like a hyperlink) and when you tap them, you get the standard "Edit phone number" screen and the option to call said number. The system is based on detecting sets of 7,10 or 11 numbers with their appropriate hyphens, periods, etc.

Interestingly, some folks at XDA have discovered that this seemingly only works for US devices. More specifically, devices who's 'Region format' settings under 'Region + language' are set for English (United States). Even folks in Canada evidently have this issue which is odd, to say the least.

We tried the list of numbers found in this post at XDA with our US region settings and they all worked fine except for the last number--just as expected. When we switched to Estonia (and rebooted) those numbers were now un-clickable just as others are reporting.

We're hesitant to call this a 'bug' because for all we know Microsoft did this on purpose for some strange reason. Still, if you want this function, you can head to Settings --> Region + Language --> Region Format and change that to English (United States) to get it to work for now as a workaround. And Microsoft, if this isn't on purpose then you may want to fix it for future updates, kthxbai!  As noted in comments, this is actually advertised as a US-only feature by Microsoft so if you want it, you'll have to use the above trick to get it.

Source: XDA; Thanks, James, for the tip!