Going all-Microsoft - UPDATE: Got a Lumia 930; tis brilliant

ProjectPuma

Help Support ProjectPuma:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
And so it begins...

Nokia Lumia 920 in White ordered from Tesco for a bargainous £230:
http://www.tesco.com/direct/sim-free-unlocked-nokia-lumia-920-white/712-3151.prd?skuId=712-3151

nokia-lumia-920-turkey-white-480-2.jpg


A Nokia DT-900 Wireless Charging Plate for electric toothbrush-style no-need-to-plug-anything-into-the-phone charging:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009WKGN9G/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item

dt-900_Large.jpg


A few official Nokia CC-1043 "back and sides" skins in various colours:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb...rds=nokia+cc-1043&sprefix=nokia+cc-10,aps,187

th.jpeg


And a cheap "total coverage" neoprene sleeve:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B009AT78RU/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item

31QBkWgWbJL.jpg


I also bought a LAYEN i-DOCK dock-to-bluetooth-3.0 adaptor to replicate the AirPlay functionality to my iPod Hi-Fi dock which I currently enjoy:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CMBKR58/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item

4603880_500_i-Dock-bluetooth-music-receiver-layen-7.jpg


Should all be here on Friday - I'll let you know first impressions etc. then next month will be time to get a Surface 2. :thumbs:
 
oo, goody :)

one question, why did you deside to go for the surface 2 rather then 1?

I¨we been looking into it, and as far as I can tel, the only difference is a few mm in thiknes, and 2 more hours of battery, as the internal specs seem to be identical.. but it costs about 100£ more, atleast in norway :) (the wife said I could have one for christmas you se :))
 
Problem with the original xbox 360 was actually the disc drive, there was some cheap glue that melted in the heat and shagged the circuits or something, a lot of people i know installed a metal disc drive and it worked fine :?:
 
Cartman said:
oo, goody :)

one question, why did you deside to go for the surface 2 rather then 1?

I¨we been looking into it, and as far as I can tel, the only difference is a few mm in thiknes, and 2 more hours of battery, as the internal specs seem to be identical.. but it costs about 100£ more, atleast in norway :) (the wife said I could have one for christmas you se :))
Click to expand...
Just for the Tegra 4 processor and 1080P screen; it's about £90 more expensive here too but I reckon it's worth it as it should address the occasional sluggishness complaints of the original. Preferred the black colour of the original and tasteful windows logo instead of having the word "SURFACE" in huge letters across the back, but I can live with those downsides.
 
So there is a different cpu... Hmmm. The spec sheet on microsoft.com said it had the same internals when i read them a few weeks a go.. Maybe it was a typo :) wil have a notter lock..

Yea, I prefered the old windows logo to.. But eh.. That's the last thing I would care about to :)

Edit: I see it now, 1 has the t3 2 has the t4 2 also has usb 3.0 hmmm. :)
 
CherryVimto said:
.......I think someone gets paid too much!! ;p
Click to expand...
Not really; as set out in the first post, I'm selling all my Apple stuff - which even at second hand prices tends to go for more than brand new stuff from other brands; technically it's not costing me anything.
 
Good choice on the 920. My OH has the 520 - even for a budget model the OS is seriously slick.
 
Neil said:
Good choice on the 920. My OH has the 520 - even for a budget model the OS is seriously slick.
Click to expand...
I've heard nothing but good things about Lumias or Windows Phone in general, except the age-old "doesn't have enough apps" complaint, which isn't a problem for me.
 
Yep. 90% of the apps in both Google Play and the App Store are gimmicky anyway - I'd say there's only five or six that I use daily. Apps really aren't the be all and end all of everything anyway.
 
First impressions:

  • Looks and feels lovely
  • Not as heavy as the reviews made it sound - it is about 50% heavier than my iPhone 5 but I quite like that; I was disappointed when I moved from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5 at how light the 5 was - heavier feels more premium in my opinion. I also won't have the "shitwheresmyphone" panic with the 920!
  • Not as big as the reviews made it sound - I like the bigger screen a lot
  • Screen, while not "retina"/1080P is beautiful - resolution is more than adequate, viewing angles excellent, colours are lovely
  • OS is *really* slick and responsive
  • Setup was a piece of piss - all connected up to SkyDrive, Outlook e-mail etc in minutes

So far - very positive. :thumbs:
 
As I sit here on my surface having run a Lumina 820 for a year, have no real complaints, having said that my wife is on the iPad with an iPhone 4s. Both do the job but access to flash based sites on the surface is a bonus.
 
24hrs in - I've updated it to the latest Firmware 3047.0000.1326.2007 and OS 8.0.10328.78.

Annoyances so far:
  • One volume setting applies to everything - I will miss the "Do Not Disturb" physical switch of the iPhone 5 to silence all notifications (calls, texts, emails etc). Also, if you're listening to music quietly, for instance - and don't remember to crank the volume back up before bed, the alarm will sound at the same volume you were playing your music at. Alternatively, if you crank your volume up for alarm purposes, if anyone rings you or you get a notification at stupid o'clock, you'll know about it! (Unless you manually go into settings and silence those notifications manually, or leave your notification settings alone and simply put the phone in Airplane Mode to prevent notifications from occurring in the first place).
  • YouTube app is borked (can't really blame MS for this) - a shortcut to the website works fine, though so no biggie.
  • Facebook app (latest version 5.1) is pants - but the built-in People hub satisfies most of my Facebook requirements (of just having a peek to see what people are talking about recently) nicely. Laggy as fuck and can't opt out of Chat. Again, visiting the actual website is the better option. In fairness, the iPhone Facebook app, whilst better than the WP8 one, is still pants.
  • No way to close individual apps - you can repeatedly hit the back button to shut down everything that's running, or hold down the back button to see what's running but you can't choose a specific app to shut.
  • No built-in way of having battery percentage shown anywhere either in the status bar at the top, on a live tile or on the lock screen. There are bonky third-party apps, but they can only update every 30 minutes (WP8 limitation) so not massively useful.
  • No way of choosing which people you want to see updates from on the People hub - you can choose to get everything from all your Facebook/Twitter connections, or none at all. I'd like to be able to select a handful of people I actually want to be kept up to date with and filter out some of the noise.

Likes:
  • Live Tiles - much more useful than static icons, although they can only update every 30 minutes; I imagine this is for battery conservation reasons. Realistically, half-hourly 'pull' updates is adequate for everything except battery which really needs to be realtime. 'Push' updates are instantaneous obviously (e-mail, for example).
  • OneNote is all kinds of awesome if you like to get stuff out of your head and into a digital notebook of some sort, which is then accessible from anything with an internet connection.
  • SkyDrive is genuinely brilliant; although I wish you could link directly to photos for embedding in forums rather than having to link through to the SkyDrive site or via a bonky <iframe> tag.
  • Web browser is fast and responsive; lack of native apps is not a problem as the full websites are brilliant on the large screen.
  • Built-in basic Office is a nice touch - can bosh up a quick Excel spreadsheet with graphs and all sorts, then pick up where you left off via SkyDrive on your PC.
  • Daily Bing photo on lock screen - I use Bing Desktop on Windows to update my desktop wallpaper every day automatically; I like the synergy between WP8 and Windows 8 on the PC.
  • Double-tap screen to wake phone.
  • Flip to silence - you can silence an incoming call by placing the phone face down.

I prefer the web browsing experience in WP8 over iPhone Safari; the application itself opens instantaneously, pages load and render extremely quickly, scrolling is silky smooth, and I prefer the 'look and feel'.

It doesn't do Flash, ActiveX or Silverlight plugin content, but it's all about HTML5/AJAX standards now. There's really no need for these wonky plugins these days.

I ran SunSpider Javascript benchmark, and the iPhone 5 was *slightly* faster, but there was only 80ms in it overall (720ms vs. 800ms); you're just not going to notice that in the real world!

Benchmarks aside, I've got to say that the WP8 browser feels faster than Safari; there's no discernible lag when you click on links, and no hanging while pages render. It's all very slick.

So, 24hours in - still loving it overall. :)
 
OK, having spent the weekend with Windows Phone, I have to say I chuffing love it.

Likes:

  • Wireless charging - not sure how I lived without this. Plonk the phone down on a Qi-standard wireless charging pad and it charges up, no faffing about. The official Nokia wireless charging pad is also NFC enabled so you can choose to perform a specific action or open a specific app when the phone detects it's been put on the charging mat.
  • Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn deep integration across the OS - really no need for separate apps. If you want to share a photo, including tagging people, you can do that straight from the built-in camera/photos app. If you want to update your status across multiple services, you can do so from the People hub in one hit. You can comment/like on other people's updates. The people hub is brilliant, all in all.
  • Built-in camera app lets you do some pretty cool stuff like taking multiple shots in quick succession and choosing the best one, or swapping faces/picking the best smiles from multiple exposures, or even funky time-lapse effects and removing unwanted objects:

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sI7nV-QCsk[/youtube]
  • So easy to get stuff on and off the phone. I've pulled my hair out trying to get stuff on/off iOS devices before - no such worries with Windows Phone; it's all drag and drop or boshed over via the cloud. You can even install apps remotely via the Windows App store. Find the app you want, push it to your device - sorted.
  • Built-in free-of-charge practically-Global Sat Nav is more than enough for most; could do with speed camera alerts, traffic alerts and lane control - but it will get you from A to B pleasantly. I opted to download the UK maps to the device - around 230mb; not sure if this is mandatory - I got the impression it would work without downloading the whole map if you have a decent data connection (would definitely need to download beforehand if going abroad obviously). Seems pretty up-to-date. Works.
  • ALL apps from the Windows Phone App store are free to try for a period of time (typically 7-10 days) so you can try them out before deciding whether it's worth that quid or whatever.
  • Insider Pro app - this addresses some of my previous niggles; allows you to put tile shortcuts on your home screen to display battery % or things like turn the LED flash on/off, bluetooth on/off, airplane mode, location services etc, and also has some really cool battery usage tracking and other geeky stuff, which you can also display on a tile:
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/store/app/insider-pro/4cd69917-a022-40ce-8272-d258998746aa
  • MetroTube app is fantastic - as well as actually working, unlike the 'official' YouTube app, you can also queue/download videos for offline viewing; pretty cool:
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/store/app/metrotube/8d93224f-2808-e011-9264-00237de2db9e
  • 2Day app is also fantastic - if you're into GTD, this is for you:
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/store/app/2day/b4440e3b-85b7-493e-93bf-6d512671818a
  • NextGen RSS feed reader (via Feedly) does the job nicely:
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/store/app/nextgen-reader/643381de-4724-e011-854c-00237de2db9e
  • 'Back' button from wherever you are in the OS - bit difficult to describe, this; but it's like the back button on your web browser but for the entire mobile OS. So if I open my e-mail, then drop back to the main screen and open the web browser then go into settings - I can hit the back button and it will take me back to the web browser, then if I hit back again it will take me back to the e-mail app, exactly where I was when I closed it. Very cool.
  • 'Search' button from wherever you are in the OS - it's pretty awesome being able to do a web search from wherever you are in the OS. The information returned from Bing (you can choose other search engines) is pretty cool too.
  • Call quality is excellent - both in normal and speakerphone mode. People sound beautifully clear and they can hear me well too.
  • Nokia Music app is a nice touch - free music; you can't really choose what gets played, but you can download predefined 'mixes' for offline playing, free of charge. I imagine if you pay the £3.99 a month to upgrade, you get a bit more control.
  • Nokia 'Transfer My Data' app - pulled in all my contact information from the iPhone via bluetooth quickly, and spot-on first time.

App availability/alternatives:

  • Skype - official
  • WhatsApp - official
  • Facebook - official
  • Twitter - official
  • Foursquare - official
  • LinkedIn - official
  • Netflix - official
  • Spotify - official
  • TV Catchup - official
  • BBC Radio - official
  • BBC iPlayer - official
  • Amazon Kindle - official
  • Amazon Mobile - official
  • eBay - official
  • Tapatalk - official
  • TripAdvisor - official
  • YouTube - official but borked; MetroTube trounces all other YouTube apps I've seen
  • Instagram - no official app, 6tag is supposedly the best; seems to work nicely:
    http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/store/app/6tag/7d795cdf-fb1b-4bdf-8f5e-76eb19f7079e

Dislikes:

  • Built-in speaker doesn't sound as refined as the iPhone for music, but works marvellously for speakerphone. It's clearly been tuned for typical speech frequencies rather than bangin' choons. Not really an issue for me, but thought I'd mention it.
  • Having become accustomed to and spoilt by the iPhone 5 lightning connector, actually having to look at the orientation of the micro-USB cable before plugging it in to transfer files over or whatever seems a bit of a faff. Of course, it's not a faff at all - I've just become lazy. Wireless charging/ability to get stuff on/off the phone via SkyDrive means I won't have to plug anything in very often anyway. Just as well, because the Micro-USB socket doesn't feel all that sturdy, certainly not as satisfying as the lightning connector, probably won't stand the test of time.
  • No built-in countdown timer - I often used Siri on the iPhone to set a countdown timer for, say 5 minutes or whatever. I've found a workable solution with Insider Pro, which can put a countdown timer tile on your home screen - works fine. Better than what I was using before, actually - as you can have voice prompts every minute of the countdown while the phone is locked and the screen is off, which is handy.
  • Xbox Music service is horrific; it's got a great selection, looks pretty, plays music fine - but its playlist implementation is completely fucked. You can make playlists on the Win8 Music app, or via the Xbox Music website, but they don't get synced between each other (well, the playlist name appears, but the songs don't make it across) - it's just hugely frustrating. Luckily, there's a native Spotify app, so it's not the end of the world. Does kind of break my 'all Microsoft' experiment - but Xbox Music is broken such that I can't use it at this time.
  • There are some gems on the app store, but trying to find them is a chore on the phone itself. Much easier via the Windows Phone App Store website. Slightly redeemed by the fact that when you find something that fits the bill you can push it to your phone via the website, and everything is free to try for a period of time meaning it doesn't cost you to try out and discard the lemons.
  • People who use Windows Phones seem to be dickheads, typically (present company excepted, obviously) - lots of total wank on Windows Phone forums and the app reviews on the app store are a joke; it's practically impossible to find some objective, sensible opinions on things. This guy* almost certainly has a Windows Phone:

    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2Z23SAFVA[/youtube]

*being parodied, not the creator of the vid
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top