Windows Phone 8 - Almost There

I switched to Windows Phone 8 a few months ago, and so far it has been an OK experience. There are definitely things I love about the phone, but there are some issues with a few key, simple tasks that can make for a very frustrating experience, especially when you spend half of every day using the device.

First, the things I love. As silly as this sounds, being able to pin a live tile of my wife is great. I can see all the updates she shares, get a glimpse of how her day is going and have a bit of involvement in my kids lives through this simple connection. Could I live without this? Sure, but it is a definite feature that makes this device great. Alright, so not everyone wants to see status updates from a favorite friend, so what else is there?
Office. Yes, Office as in Microsoft Office. I can view and edit Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, etc all from my phone. Since I don't have a tethering plan, nor a hotspot, this makes sending data to colleagues and customers very easy while on the go. Also, this means I don't have to jump through hokey hoops of using half featured apps that I think find obscure ways to synchronize into the apps I use everyday to get real work done. I just open Word and there is my list of recent documents ready to go. Did I mention Lync 2013 for the Phone? Single button to launch a conference and share data, presentations, chat, conference calls, etc?!!! Saweeeet!
Voice recognition. Microsoft simply kicks butt when it comes to voice recognition. I remember my old Windows Mobile device had a voice search feature that worked flawlessly. When I switched to the iPhone and it couldn't do this I found myself missing it every day. Along came Siri and I thought Apple had finally figured out how to do search. Boy was I wrong. Siri was about as useful as talking to a cat. She would politely tell me she was useless and couldn't find what I was looking for, or wasn't able to take requests right now. Microsoft got this right and I can simply tell my phone what I want and up it comes, the first time.

Ok, now second for the bad. While voice recognition is great, search leaves me scratching my head. When I hit the search button that is conveniently built into the bottom right side of the phone, it searches the web, but totally ignores all of the contacts, documents, music, etc that I have stored locally on the device. So how do I search those things? Oh, I have to open the individual application, say Music, and then click a different search button that appears on the screen to search my library. Wait?! You sent it out like this? I'm sorry but even Apple got this right (even if the results are useless) they at least search the device.
Then there is the lack of support for comma's in phone numbers. This kills me. Nine times out of ten, I am in my car when making calls. This means I need to be able to click a number that shows up in those terribly long conference invites and just let the phone do the dialing. If I have to switch back to the invite, try to memorize the ever increasing number of digits for the conference ID, hit #, *, and whatever else these conference systems make you do, I am going to crash. And yes, Microsoft, if the number is in the location field it is still a phone number, so you can't just ignore it because it doesn't look like an address. This has to be a simple fix since they can detect numbers, so please add support for commas, and the location field (like Microsoft is going to read this).
This leads to my final issue, although unfortunately there are more but this covers the big ones. When I am in a call and switch to another app, the screen goes black and then locks the phone. Yes, I did update to the latest firmware, apps, etc and the issue persists. Not as bad as it was, but it still goes black and takes a second or two to let me unlock the phone and go back to the app.