Joe Belfiore: WiFi sleep issue in Windows Phone will be fixed

One rather annoying Windows Phone “feature” is that it turns off WiFi when the screen is locked, which means that push notifications and other background tasks have to use mobile data even when a WiFi network would be available. This is especially problematic if you don’t have mobile data – when you’re abroad, or run over your data plan, for example – as you don’t get any background updates in that case.

However, that is set to change, as Joe Belfiore, VP of Windows Phone, has tweeted in response to a user complaining about this issue that a “fix is coming”. He doesn’t say when the fix is going to come, nor if it will apply to Windows Phone 7 as well as 8, but nonetheless it’s good to see Microsoft taking user complaints seriously. His quote in full:

Someone is gonna yell at me for saying this, but… fix is coming. 🙂 Sshh. Just promise me a little patience though.

Source: @joebelfiore (Twitter), via wendoman (comments)