Some questions for Windows phone users

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
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Im actually pondering a Windows phone as my next phone.

I still think the best phone Samsung ever built (in its time) was the S2. I am so let down by the S4. I understand Android does everything and the kitchen sink and I find it very useful on my tablet. Im very happy with my Samsung android tablet. I dont need to do as much on my phone.

I want my phone to be very stable, do several core functions easily kujs clear phone calls, check things like twitter and facebook, check mail, basic browsing and very importantly... have an amazing camera.

What is the best windows phone with the best camera? How stable are windows phones? Does the battery fail quickly like the S4?
 
I only have experience with Nokia's Lumia range (720 and 620), not sure about other WP manufacturers.

Best camera I'd imagine is still the Lumia 1020. Not sure if the 20MP camera on the new 930 (when available) or 1520 would suffice. I have the 720, and the 6.7MP camera is pretty average in terms of quality even if the software is pretty good. The 720 is getting a little old now though.

Stability is decent. Since I've had the phone, it's only crashed about two or three times in one or two different apps (been just under a year now). Not sure if it was the OS or the app at the time of the crash.

The only niggly that's got me, is that once in a while (every month or two) i'll look at the phone and see that I have no GSM signal. Wifi will still works, but no calls come through. It looks like the cellular chip has turned off (same icon as when you have no sim card). I reboot the phone and it's all fine again. Not sure what causes it, but a mate at work had the same with his S2, so it might just be something that happens with cellphones from time to time. Doubt it's specific to WP. Not sure if other WP users experience the same.
It happens infrequently enough for it not to be a problem for me, but it does happen.

Battery... on the 720 is awesome. It's 14:00 in the afternoon and my 720 is reading 100% charge with 1 day 17 hours estimated remaining time.

I can go about two days normal use without a charge. Not that I do that often as I use the wireless charger next to my bed and don't really think about charging... it just happens. As far as failing goes, after just under a year it still seems solid, which I imagine is about normal for a battery these days. It's had some degradation from when I first got it. I could go just under 3 days no charge back then.

It hasn't got anything that Android doesn't have, and there are perhaps a few things missing that are still coming in the 8.1 update. That being said I use my phone all day, every day.

My most popular tasks (in no order):
- Taking photos and video (which sync with my pc using onedrive... just like dropbox on android)
- Reading books (4 in the last year so far)
- Listening to podcasts (all day pretty much)
- Vehicle navigation (the live traffic works really well)
- Emailing & whatsapping
- Facebook and twitter a bit
- Reading word and excel documents sent to me or making a quick excel document when planning something and my pc is not around
- The odd phone call

It really hasn't let me down and I'd buy it again in a heartbeat. If I had to upgrade soon though, I'd personally look at the Lumia 930 as an option, not sure when it's out though.
 
Ghoti, just to endorse Shogun's comments. WP is solid and stable. It runs smoothly on puny/cheaper hardware. For everyday use I don't notice any real-world diffs between the entry-level Lumia 520 (I have two) and my everyday 1520 (6" screen on quad core CPU). My wife is smartphone-averse, but she loves her Lumia 720. On the higher-end Nokias the cam is truly a marvel, and has effectively replaced my p&s Canons. All shots go straight to the cloud.

Of course everyone's needs are different. I use three Office365 accounts on all my PCs and devices, and the WP phones handle this beautifully. My LinkedIn and Twitter accounts sync with the MSFT account, so everything just happens smoothly. I also use Lync, Skype and WhatsApp, all without issue.

A few things frustrate me about WP in its current form:

- Other than OneDrive, no direct access to the file system (except when connected by USB to the PC). I'm still stuck in a file-centric world, and sometimes I just want to browse the file system directly. Antiquated, I know. It's a conscious decision by WP for security reasons, and I need to get into the 21st Century.

- No VPN support at present. But it's coming in the Blue update, announced last week

- Lack of a decent SIP client for generic VoIP systems.

That said, I have a decent Remote Desktop client, and use PC Monitor (really cool app) to remotely manage PCs and servers from any device, and the WP client is very nifty indeed.

I have two 'droid tablets, one just a few months old. Since getting the 1520 in November 2013, I haven't had the need for them at all. Last week I fired up the PhonePad just to update the apps and clean out the cobwebs. It felt positively primitive compared to WP on the 1520.
 
Oh, another thing. It took me about two weeks to adjust to WP. Because the whole design philosophy is people-centric not app-centric, it takes a bit of reorientation. But once you twig the new paradigm, it's marvellous. Going back to anything else would be a real step backwards for me.
 
Ghoti, try Cyanogenmod on the S4. My Note 2 feels like a new phone after loading it. Hated all that Samsung bloat. It's much more like the experience I get from my Nexus 7.
 
So, which WP phone would you recommend?

Nokia? If so, which one?

I'm also looking at WP as an alternative.

What apps do you get?
 
The_Librarian said:
So, which WP phone would you recommend?

Nokia? If so, which one?

I'm also looking at WP as an alternative.

What apps do you get?
Click to expand...


I really don't know enough about the other manufacturers, but the way I see it, Nokia is to WP what Samsung is to Android.

I couldn't tell you which one to get (they differ so much on price v specs), but i'd love a 930 when available. I think the 1020 is just a bit much for a phone. I'd get the 1520 if I was looking for a bigger screen... but I don't like large displays on a phone. The biggest thing that drew me to the 720 (apart from the price) was the smaller screen.

As for the apps, I'm not missing anything yet. Perhaps check out the store here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-za/store
 
The 720 looks better than the 930 - LCD instead of AMOLED, and have a SD card slot whereas the 930 doesn't have an SD card slot.

But the 930 have more RAM than the 720...

decisions, decisions...

bah, humbug and fol de rol...
 
Owned a LG G2, Samsung S4, Note 3 and a HTC One. All great phones and the best of the 4 imho was the LG G2.
Bought a Nokia 1520 and just love this phone. Large brilliant sharp screen, great camera and battery life. Still 65% battery left after a working day.
 
Samsung is bringing out the Ativ SE I believe which is like a S4 with WP8.1

Nokia's 930 is what I'm getting next if we can manage to get it in June like Europe will.

Alternatively I'll have to settle for the 1020, which is not bad at all but I'm annoyed with the bump at the back caused by that epic camera.
Lumia 1520 is just too big for me. But damn... dat screen!

Also here's a comparision between the Lumia 930 and 720.
http://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=6227&idPhone2=5321

I do agree that the 720 has the one up of a SD Card but thats about it hey.
If you don't mind spending a little more(I'm not sure how much more) the 820 also has the option of SD Card but atleast has 1GB Ram.
 
why do cellc only have the 520, 820, 920, 925 and 1520?

and telkom mobile only have the 520...

Is the 520 a good phone, or can I forget about it? Seeing that it only have 512Mb of RAM...
 
Having grown up in a memory- and storage-constrained world, I also prefer systems with an SD card option.

But over the past few years I must confess it's become far less of an issue. With the cloud, and long-established habits of dumping device pix to the PC/server, if the truth be told, I really don't need it.

I bought a 64GB card for the Lumia 1520, and promptly filled it up with media (about 25GB equally in photo albums and music), but I'd readily admit under torture that I haven't once accessed these, so it's pretty pointless carrying it around in the phone.

I do use the phone as another storage point for critical home and work files, but that easily fits into 4-5GB (encrypted). And in any case, I have at least 5 backups of everything.

I resisted the cloud at first. But without a doubt it's the way to go, especially if you use one of the mega global players like Microsoft or Google. This month I'll be migrating about 200GB of offline personal files to the cloud, and the same again next month. And it's all available 24/7 should I need it.

So, though in the past I'd never seriously consider a device without decent add-in/removable storage, in fact it's become quite unnecessary. I could just as easily work with 4GB or 8GB of storage, to be frank. The main stuff is in the cloud.
 
The 520 is probably the best value smartphone on the market. Period. I recently bought two for R1799 cash at Truworths (list is R1899). These are backup/loan devices for the kids when they're visiting from abroad.

Look, it's small. And compared to the 1520 it's miniscule. But works superbly well. Basic cam. Phone is fine. Full GPS with turn-by-turn navigation using offline maps. Plays media. And WP is smooth, jitter-free, and stable on it. Don't forget, the 520 is an entry-level smartphone.
 
WiFi at home and office. 3G anywhere else. It's transparent. Just tap the OneDrive tile and it brings up the file system.

Cam shots are automatically uploaded to the cloud, and therefore accessible to anything else. OneDrive is just another storage location that happens to be off-device.

Any PC or device can access the stuff anytime. And you can easily share with others using a public folder, or folder- or file-specific creds.
 
Last edited:
Arthur said:
The 520 is probably the best value smartphone on the market. Period. I recently bought two for R1799 cash at Truworths (list is R1899). These are backup/loan devices for the kids when they're visiting from abroad.

Look, it's small. And compared to the 1520 it's miniscule. But works superbly well. Basic cam. Phone is fine. Full GPS with turn-by-turn navigation using offline maps. Plays media. And WP is smooth, jitter-free, and stable on it. Don't forget, the 520 is an entry-level smartphone.
Click to expand...

What is call quality like?

Can you do the usual - reject calls, cancel calls while speaking, have a numeric keypad to dial numbers, SMS from numeric keypad?
 
To be honest I haven't put SIMs into the 520s yet, so can't comment on call quality.

I assume the dial, keyboard/pad functions are the same as in other WP8 systems ... if so, then yes, reject calls, flip to silence, cancel while speaking, numeric dialpad. Don't think you can SMS from phone dialpad, but you can say "Text Librarian" and then dictate your SMS by voice. Or SMS from People or Messaging tiles. WP8 has voice commands as standard (not Cortana).

BTW, I did notice no cam flash on the 520.
 
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1020 is basically the top Lumia available at the moment if you don't count the Lumia 1520.
It's what I will get if I can't get the 930 in time.
 
Dr@g0nic said:
1020 is basically the top Lumia available at the moment if you don't count the Lumia 1520.
It's what I will get if I can't get the 930 in time.
Click to expand...

I can get a Nokia Lumia 1520 but the camera looks better on the 1020.
 
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