Lumia phones?

Hi,

Long time android user(mostly on low/mid hardware) but now I'm considering a Lumia phone, probably the 640 DS.

What I'm looking for is inexpensive 4,5-5" device with decent camera, snappy performance with optimized OS, apps and navigation. My usage is mostly call, type, work, take photos and reading ebooks. I don't care about OS customization or gaming and I don't care about the significantly lower choice of apps MS has compared to Android as long the most essential ones are available.
From what I read the Lumia phone fulfill this requirements, any feedback from Lumia users on this?

 

I've been quite happy with various WP's i've owned since Samsung galaxy S2, they offer good performance in lower budget models. The included Here maps are good for navigation and i've grown to like the new swype-keyboard which offers similar typing experience than android's popular custom keyboards (can't recall the name for that one which is most common). I'm not shure if 640 XL is available where you live but that offers quite nice battery times. Also the integration to other MS services is excellent.

 

Have you tried an Windows Mobile phone before, I have the Lumia 1020 with v8.1 Denim the same as the 640 DS comes with and i just don't like it at all, I much prefer android, so i suggest if you have not use WM before try it out in store and see what you think, before buying it, unless can return it.

The 640 DS seems like a low end smart phone according to the specs below.

http://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_lumia_640_dual_sim-7082.php

John.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

The 640XL is available and the better camera and battery is really tempting however its size is a dealbreaker for me. I can't stand big phones, 5" is the absolute maximum I can tolerate and even that is big.
Due to my issue with size I'm also considering the 730/735 though its an older(Nokia brand) model but I guess thats not an issue because these would also get the W10 update.

I haven't used a WP in a long time but I checked out the 535 a friend of mine has and its fine. I also own a Windows tablet which is quite similar.
Yeah the hw specs are quite low but thats the thing, Android on those specs is sluggish while W8.1 is fine according to the info I see online..

 

You right Win8 mobile runs better on low spec hardware than Android does, But Win8 mobile is just boring and so limited, it`s still better than iOS though so you have not turned fully to the Dark Side.

John.

 

Lol I don't mind boring and limited as long its not sluggish and crashing like my current Android phone. I've never owned an iOS phone but in tablets I have experience with iOS, Android and Windows and frankly I'm sticking with Windows at this point - more stable than Android but not so limited as iOS.

Back to the phones - you said you have a 1020 but you'd prefer going back to Android. Could you tell me why exactly? Give me some examples.

 

Just today, NBR's sister site Brighthand published its review of the Lumia 735. With a 4.7" 720p screen, it might be your cup of tea.

http://www.brighthand.com/phonereview/microsoft-lumia-735-review/

 

Thanks, yeah, I'm considering the 730/735, the problem is I can't find it in any local store to check it out, I can find it and buy it only online..

 

I feel that is another big issue with entry/mid range phones. Not all carriers will have a display one so you can poke around with, especially if in the cons section it points to build quality/construction/poor materials or if it feels chunky/big to hold comfortably.

As for the 735, I think it's sort of embarrassing that they are selling a Snapdragon 400 phone for above 200 dollars. And to add aggravation to that, it only has 8 GB of internal storage. Sure the camera is good and it has a good OLED 720p display, but honestly the Moto G LTE can be had around 200 (and even less if you don't have/need LTE). The S400 is considered aged for even mid range buyers. If this phone was 250, I would say it's an excellent buy, but for 300...eh.

 

I find the 735 for around $240, its quite surprising it costs less in Europe than in the US. Too bad I can't find it locally to check it out, its great on paper for my needs and preference anyway.
By the way the 730/735 is highly advertised as a "selfie phone" with a 5-megapixel front camera, its weird that Brightland's review doesn't even mention it.. Personally I don't care about this but its supposed to be one of the highlights of the phone.

Anyway, since I got sick of wondering. thinking it over and researching this morning I went for the 640 DS non LTE model. The the device seem nice though it feels a bit cheap(expected) and it looks huge(also expected, I'm coming from MotoG 1st gen). The OS is snappy though if you mess around too much it becomes a bit sluggish. The apps seem nice and all the apps I need are available.

Overall so far the phone seem nice for the money, I like it. Looking forward to the W10 upgrade though I hope Microsoft tune the OS up a bit before releasing it their phones lol.
I'll try to remember and report back here after a month of usage or so.

 

Well 240 isn't too bad as that is in the price range of other Snapdragon 400 phones, though having a Carl Zeiss lens is pretty nice and an OLED HD display.

I was reading up on alot of Nokia phone specs...they are nearly all the same, thus I could see why one would be totally confused on trying to decide a model. TBH 4.5" to 5" isn't a HUGE difference, I went from my 4" iPhone 5 to my 5.2" Sony Xperia Z3V with an Otterbox, that is a HUGE difference. AFAIK WP suspends apps in memory when not active like iOS, so it should be ALOT more memory efficient than Android. The biggest issue is 1 GB is barely enough room for Android phones if you do anything sort of multi-tasking.

 

Lol first stupid decision of MS in WP found. Apparently the "quiet hours" function is tied to Cortana service...which is not available for every region. Idiots.

 

Other than that they don't read eBooks on their phones, my parents have a substantially similar use pattern to what you describe, and have been happy with their Lumias (520 and a 600-series, don't remember the exact model but not high-end). The camera's surprisingly decent for the low price, the phone is responsive even with the 512 MB of RAM on the 520, the battery life is better than the one-day-battery Androids, and I haven't heard anything about them crashing or being slow (although I've only personally used them for taking pictures and a few configuration tasks). With regards to the camera, it hasn't completely replaced their point-and-shoots like my high-end Symbian Nokia has for me, but I'd estimate they use it for 75-80% of their photography needs, the main exceptions being when a better flash is needed, on vacations where my dad will often still bring his Sony camera. Internal storage isn't unlimited, but every couple months they upload pictures to the computer, and that works out fine.

Hopefully it works out just as well for you, and hopefully the Win10 upgrade goes smoothly as well!

 

I really would've liked to have started a new thread on the issue im about to mention, cos i think it deserves a thread of it's own. having said that it appears cos i only joined about 15 mins ago new threads are not yet within my realm

so i guess will post here and hope to warn of an issue that might have you banging your head against a wall

I purchased a 2 month old lumia 640XL recently. When i bought it, it came with no paperwork or guidebook, seller stated it had 10 months to run on its warranty but when i asked "so where is the paperwork or whatever" they said none was required. I didnt think much of it, since i once purchased a T60 that was still under warranty but came with no papers or the like.It soon failed in the ram memory area but i was able to have it fixed via the 3 year extended warranty the orniginal buyer had sorted. So buying th lumia i really didnt think much of it, and didnt think much of the vast number of names in the contacts section. However after a day or 2 i began to wonder. I had sen it advertised on a local buy and sell website but when garriving at the adress of the seller immediately realised it was a pawn shop. Almost got back on my bike and buggered off as pawn shops in vietnam will buy and sell anything regardless, and the chances of being ripped off are more than if you were to buy at a reputable shop.

Anyway, cut a long story short, After a day or 2 i started thnking that the phone had either been stolen and hawked to the pawn shop, or the ownder had some sort of gambling issue and needed cash immediately. The latter i guessed purely due to the amount of online gambling apps and programs the owner had ammassed in just 2 months. So the likelihood was one or the other....been here a while and so i know while on the road loads of mobile phones are snatched by thieves, because there are barely any cars here everyone uses a scooter to run around, and everyone ignores the warnings and continues to talk while riding their bike.
So like an idiot i began to feel sorry for whoever the phone used to belong to because there were hundreds of contacts left in the phone and to lose such a massive amount of info must have been a nightmare if they hadnt backed them up. Its happened to me in the past and i lost contact with 3 or 4 people that I considered good friends (to this day never seen them again.... usually with stolen gear a factory reset is the first thing people do but this 640XL was left "as is". I think I realize why this was so. I dumbly took the phone to a NOKIA service center, because my previous phone was a nokia lumia 820, not realizing nokia had sold the entire mobile phone thing to microsoft....The nokia guy took the phone...looked online, told me the phone hadnt ben reported as stolen so just forget about it, then handed me back the phone. He was just being helpful but this wasnt a nokia product.... this was a microsoft lumia...and his online tinkering, whatever he did, seemed to kickstart a majorissue with the phone. It became unusable basically and the reason as to why is this....

After ages and ages searching online i came across the fact that ONLY in the 640 and 640XL lumias, there is an anti theft function bult into the phone. Basically, if you are unable to access the microsoft account that the previous owner had created, because you obviously dont know the account password, then the phone will keep trashing whatever it is you are doing at any given time by kicking in with a page that says there is some doubts as to whether this phone has been the reult of theft and is still in the hands of the correct person, aka, they guy who bought it and subsequently made the microsoft account. This page just keeps on appearing...again and again without letting up...you could e inthe middle of editing photos or texting someone or basically anything and this page will just blindly kick in trashing whatever you are doing...approx every 30 seconds or so, sometimes might get 2 minutes until it kicks in...but in general it renders the phone as a source of grief and tension and hair pulling out to the point you can handle it any longer and end up smashing the thing (came very close tothis when i took it to the microsoft service center and for the 15 minutes i was there trying to explain what the problem was, that page didnt kick in even one time. I really piised at this...foran entire month i had not ben able to use the phone for longer than 2 minutes yet here i am looking like an idiot at microsofts service center trying to explain an issue that just wouldnt show itself. On the way home i calmed down and joked to myself that maybe, maybe, the act of connecting to the official microsoft service center wifi had somehow fixed the problem, cos you can never tell with hi tech stuff what quirks may appear for the slightest reason...but within a few minutes of arriving home that darn page began kicking in each minute or so. I felt deflated and couldnt help thinking what a dumb feature to put in a phone.....the number of acounts windowsphone requires you to have, which looks to be 2 accounts and maybe more if you intend using it longer than 2 minutes. I began to think of various scenarios in which this phone would become completely useless even in the most innocent situations.YOur grandmother buys you a 640XL, and asks her son to make it all working and smooth so there would be no farting around after unboxing it, but the son had just taken 2 huge hits froma new gasmask weed bong and, not being accustomed to the sheer strength of the hits, thought up some obscure password to the microsoft account that the next day he simply couldnt remember...a friend gives you the ohone cos thier boyfriend just bought theman iphone 6 and so they simply gifted you the phooe, saying they are late for work and they will hook out all the mundane details as to accounts and passwords that evening, but gets hit by a bus whose driver wasnt wearing his seat belt and so after driving over a large pot hole on a roundabout, his 50 year old bus with atrocious spring suspension meant that that the massive bounce completely lifts him out of his chair, which coupled with the sideways force from the sharp angle of the roundabout means he is thrown down into the stairway of the bus and being 50 years old the bus isnt equipped with sweet FA regarding safety and so ploughs into the front window of a boutique sellung used hats, where your friend is killed instantly along with her all important knowledge of microsofts stupid password, and so you have to throw the phone away.

im being sarcastic and rambling somewhat now...might give you an idea as to how peeved i am at how stupid this function is and how easily someone can be left with an unusable phone. Sedpite the phone still having 5 months of its warranty remaining and 3 trips to microsofts service center in vietnam all i know is they are unable to help.

The thing is though, i know they could help if they wanted to. They are microsoft, they can do anything they want,period. Just erase that guys account and i make a new one using my own password. But they dont care is the botom line. Imnot saying dont buy lumia phones but all i have writen above is the absolute truth

Yes i have tried factory resetting...doesnt make any difference. Cant upgrade to windows 10 due to requiiring an app from windows phone shop, and everytime i attempt this that darn page crops up everytime. So just bear the above in mind as its not funny. I really used to like lumias as my last phone was an 820 but the half-day battery was really annoying....... but in general have lumias become annoying in general past few years? The functionality of my Nokia lumia 820 wasnt based on a bunch of online accounts....is this a microsoft thing maybe? come to think of it,it smacks of the way big corps tend to manipulate things in general....nokia doesnt seem to do it....but the way microsoft links you up to this and that "online account" it really does have an "apple" vibe to it......and apple is a bit like wearing an electronic straighjacket..the way the try to control your music and who u can share it with.....cant change the battery unlessits dine by someone who works for apple......hard to imagine microsoft can render your phone useless if they so desire...based on nothing but assumptions....."oh well clearly if they dont know the password then they must have stolen the phone".....the sheer amount of varying permutations leading to one having aphone and notknowing the password for an online account are huge...what if u founf the thing on a train or at a bus stop? if a phone company can sellme a phone and at anytime based on mere whims render the ohone useless, to my mind, means the phone will never be "mine" in the true sense of the word.

Will be buying another phone soon but one that does not leave you at the mercy of half baked anti theft functions. All I want is for microsoft to sort me out..they may have tracd a phone that is stolen but in the process made an innocentguy become the victim....half baked-ness.....

sorry for the length of this message......i wanted to open a thread cos i thought maybe if a lot of people saw this one of you guys would know a way round this...i guess hardly anyone will see it linked to this old thread....anyway..thanks for reading if you made it this far

actually....reading it over again.. it definitely became a personal "rant" halfway through... so maybe its best down here out of the way,,,apologies for the spelling too....im crap at spelling when i spiral into rant mode LOL

all the best.

 

Fyi this anti-theft is expected to be included on all phones running W10, not just Lumia. Its not a bad feature imo though one must know about it prior to purchasing a second hand Lumia or any W10 phone and check if the feature is turned off otherwise one would end up with a useless handset like you did..

 

yeah i see what you mean....but im in vietnam....hate to say bad things but people selling stuff here often lie to sell stuff...il learned today that the warranty isnt internationl after all, and in fact the phone was bought in the usa AND BROUGHT TO VIETNAM AND THEN SOLD ON...SO AT LEAST IT WASNT ....SORRY IGNORE CAPS////// so i mean at least it wasnt the result of a snatch thief on the street.....iive been royally shafted and will never buy another windows phone....not that they really give a sh$%%% ..Its a half baked poorly thought out anti theft function....cos i mean it doesnt actually prevent the thing eing stolen does it? at worst people can break it down to sell as spares.......really is useless and i would contact microsoft if i really thought they gave a hoot

cheers for reading my rant though.....nice one

 

i suppose i will likely break it down and sell it like that.....pain in the bum really though cos i wanted it for the camera....i think i will just buy a xioami next time along with one of their great bluetooth speakers and piston 2 headphones.their box bluetooth speaker is apparently the biz and is 22 bucks in vietnam

i have an almost new lumia 820 too but the screen is completely useless after being dropped....a replacement screen for the 820 is 80 bucks...the ohone itself is only 120 nowadays and i think it might not even be available anymore

Lumia seemed to be a bit better while they were owned by nokia.....if i had known microsoft had bought the franchise i likely wouldnt have bought that 640 XL... IM a bit anti-global monopoly....wont go near apple despite their phones being the status symbol of the rich and wealthy out here...microsoft are likely a bit worse cos appple is built on a foundation of a hippy sort of character whereas microsoft is built by a guy going round the world n pushing vaccines on poor countries......supposedly part of a long term population control agenda but i will get abused if i start talking about bad stuff big business and government are up to

LOL.....i think im still gutted

 

My 12 year old son comes out with things like this sometimes - I keep telling him that given a few years, he'll look back at these conspiracy theories he repeats from the internet and blush a little at having believed them.

Back on topic: My wife and I both had Lumia 620's and while the Windows Phone OS was a big hit with both of us, the hardware was appalling. It took my phone one year for: the power button to come off of the circuit board, the earspeaker to stop working (Thus always needing speakerphone), bi-daily crashes and a touschscreen that was only intermittently responsive. My wife teased me for having bought a cursed phone but 6 months later, the same things happened to hers and she has had the same issues; except for the earspeaker, which does work, for now. Looking online, it seems a number of people had the same issues. I'm sure that quality standards have been raised since then but I thought I'd add my experience.

 

yeah.....looks like ive turned this thread into a lumia bashing free for all. They bloody well deserve it though...mind you you and the wife did buy the really cheapone as faras i can remember....they have cheaper now like the 435 or whatever....i think they went headfirst into the high end market, failed, and so now are looking at seizing a sizable chunk of the budget market. To be honest i think buying a smallish tablet like the galxy tab with 7 inch screen, and then just having some crappy 30 dollar nokia phone for calls and mesages might be the way to go. I had way less issues when i used to have those 30 dollar nokia black and white tiny screen thingss

ive ben hunting and xiiiaomi sem to have built a fine reputation....100% chinese company....hardly ideal but then where did all the high end I phones come from? its all a matter of investment and having quality machines to make quality machines....defo check out xiaomi....they get RAVE rviews everywhere and they are extremely cheap

and as my side topic....your 12 year old kid might not be barking up the wrong tree entirely. You seem pretty intelligent...able to convey an idea and spell correctly etc...so i guess you consider yourself as man with his own mind and opinions. But did you ever wonder why you immediately used the term conspiracy theory? immediately creating a negative air concerning the subject matter....u think it was a product of your own mind? or maybe it was cleverly put there while you wrent looking, the entire globe using the same terminology, which just so happens to automatically give a negative connotation whenever someone is saying such and such about a government or a large corp? Bit convenient that, dont you think?

what i dont get it is this...if you stop 100 people in the street, 5 might tell you to get the Fu&* out of my face dude....maybe 5 more will just ignore you....maybe 10 will say not now mate im in a hury...so lets say that of the 100 you asked, 50 were a bunch of assholes and only 50 bothered to actually stop..


that is far too dumb a joke to leave it there....what im trying to say is if you asked 10 people "do u trust your government"...8 or 9 would say hell no...if you asked the same people "do u trust big business?..again 8 or 9 would say "no way|...before thy tell you to get out of their face you quickly ask...|"do you think that government is in cohoots iwith each other in certain fields and that there appears to be a r"evolving door" between people going from semi to very high ranking government positions while their gaggle is in office, to then move to equally high positions within large corps once the other guy gets into ofice? I reckon anyone who has done a bit of homework would have to say yes, because to say no would be showing a degree of ignorance as to how things work.

So...that said....most people dont trust authority in general, and most people distrust big busines, and some will agre that the people involved in these fields sem to glide between one to the other almost effortlessly....which points to some kind of "elite club, or structure", so to speak. so while these people agre on thiese points....the minute anyone actually picks out particular incidents and occurances or government or business foul play, the guy in the stret instantly thinks "conspiracy theory" ...its all a bunch of crap.....but it makes no sense cos he has just basically admitted as much in his previous 2 answers.....yeah yeah of course i dont rust government and big business...but i mean would they actually perform specific acts or follow cartain agendas that forward an ideal or future scenario....why of course not!!. its almost like people are contradicting themselves....imnot having a diig at you personally...its just a general thing i have noticed

if u got time maybe you could ask yourself a few questions similar to the examples i wrote above...and see what you think of your conclusion

your kid, if he is only 12, is to be commended for even showing an interest in such affairs. Most kids i meet last 15 years are borderline retards....but even they are starting to ask same questions as your 12 year old kid

kudos from me to him..and to you for rearing such a mindful lad

apologies for crap spelling...keyboard is on its way out (gotta blame something eh lol)

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there isn't reason to mistrust governments or 'big businesses'. I'm also not saying that introducing vaccines into impoverished countries doesn't have ulterior and selfish motives but it seems too much to suggest that it is done to control their population. In the interest of good publicity? Sure. To further relationships with pharmaceutical companies? Maybe. Out of altruism? Why not. To control population? Meh... I suppose and you never know but it seems unlikely. I have devoted some study to 'Marxist' and power-relations criticism from Lukes/Weber/Eagleton et al. criticism in my time and I'm also acquainted with the idea of cognitive dissonance and the similar concept of 'double-think', as George Orwell astutely terms it, in 1984 (Which I recommend you read if you haven't already done so - as well as everything else he wrote). I generally feel I can trust big companies and governments to act a certain way - generally by asking where is the money and who has or stands to gain power. When ideology comes into it, it becomes harder. He's a good lad and I am proud of him - he has a good head for science, which will take him far, I feel.

I can't knock Chinese phones - I bought a Cubot X9 and it has far exceeded my expectations for the relatively small amount that I paid for it. It was intended as a one-month interim phone but I enjoy using it and I've decided to keep it. Time will tell how durable it proves to be but it has so far (six months) been fine and I may well buy a new model from Cubot if this one lasts well enough.

 

I have a coworker that is a fan of Windows Phone and has a Lumia. He has nothing but great things to say about it and loves the phone specific features that Lumia puts in.