Usually in the morning, I wake up and check for podcasts I expect to be released. If they are, I’ll download them for my commute. When I did this one morning this week, I was in for an unpleasant surprise. Out of one bloodshot eye, I was seeing what I thought to be a problem with my wifi, as the podcast I selected wouldn’t download. Finally, I saw that it said this:

I navigated to the settings and discovered an unfortunate pitfall of having a Windows Phone: there is a ridiculous, archaic, sadistic file size download limit imposed on the user. What. The. Fuck?

If you want to download a file larger that 100MB, you must be on wifi as well as plugged into a power source. This is baffling. I can almost understand imposing a large file download on wifi only, almost. Perhaps it pleases service providers and there’s a little bit of palm-greasing happening. Whatever. But I’m a grown up, I delivered all the papers on my route and pinched my pennies until they screamed to buy this phone and pay for my home internet and mobile internet. If I want to download gigantic files, don’t tell me [Microsft and Nokia] that I am not allowed to do it. And certainly don’t tell me I have to be plugged into power to do this. It’s 2014, sometimes files are larger than 100MB, it isn’t an absurd concept. I’m not always in a position to plug my phone into power.

I just came from the land of Android, where I govern my phone as I see fit. I’m trying to give the Windows Phone experience a fair shake here. Don’t send me desperately running back to land of Android by making up dumb rules like this. I’m not trying to run a movie piracy ring from my phone, I’m trying to download an audio file to listen to geeks geek out about a topic I enjoy as much as they do. I paid for the mobile plan, my home internet, and the phone. Don’t tell me that files over 100MB are off limits, because I’m not plugged into a wall.