I'm not a professional reviewer, but I've used iPhones and Android and I use them fairly extensively (podcasts, audiobooks, social media publishing, etc.)(^; Charges when plugged into Mac OSX via it's USB cable
)^; How do you find your own phone number? No idea. Googled it and the suggestions I found are not correct for this handset/service provider. Gave up and called another phone from the Lumia and looked at the caller-id to get it. Silly. This helpful chap showed me exactly where to go, but there's nothing there.
Keyboard
Better than the Android keyboard on the Samsung Galaxy S4. I've added the Swype one on my Android, but it's still not as good as Apple's IOS built in keyboard. This Lumina/Windows
Placement of the @ key and the Num key and Caps are pretty smart. The touch response is good too, giving a little vibration feedback so you know when it's realised you've pressed a key. So, it's as good as IOS, very good indeed.
Screen: The image quality is very good, bright clear images with good colors.
Icons
Had to learn a new icon, the logo for "send" or "apply" or "ok" which looks like an email icon with motion lines at the side to make it look like it's to send. Not too bad, mostly intuitive, but don't expect too many new icons to learn these days. I thought they used this for posting on BaseFook as well as sending emails, universal and all. But, no, there's another new icon to learn for "share". Social media and gadgets have been around long enough for them to avoid making new symbols for existing functions. It's companies ways to try to mark out their own influence but it's confusing and rarely works.
Screenshots are always important to me to be able to do quickly and easily. The Samsung Galaxy uses the swipe motion gimmick, which doesn't always work, but is ok mostly, while the IOS equivalent is similar to this Nokia Lumina--press and hold two physical buttons. On this Nokia it's the power button and the volume-up button.
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| send icon |
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| share icon |
Camera I'm not a photographer, but counted almost 8 seconds between pressing the button and the camera being loaded and ready to go. That's too slow to avoid missing those important shots!
Apps: When I switched from IOS to Android, I first made a list of my priority apps to see if I could swap them over. Runkeeper, iPlayer, Amazon Cloud Player, Amazon, Dropbox, SoundCloud, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Password Manager, Kindle, Audible. They were all there, even streaming Amazon Instant Video right there from my Android device. Here's my list including the Windows Phone:
| Apple IOS iPhone 4S | Google Android Samsung Galaxy S4 |
Windows 8.1 Lumia |
|
| no problems | no problems | crashes occasionally | |
| navigation | Google Maps works well | hangs GPS | works very well |
| Runkeeper | works well | works well | not available! |
| Skype | works well | ||
| Amazon | works well | does not include Amazon Instant Video Player |
|
| Amazon MP3 Player | not tested | works well | not available! |
| DropBox | works well | works well | Doesn't sync, this or anything else, until plugged into USB connection |
| Audible | works well | works well | buggy! doesn't work |
| SoundCloud | works well | works well | not available for recording/posting or streaming |
As an example, I downloaded Audible and signed in and downloaded a book. Started listening--so far so good. Then I stopped the app and when I came back to it later the eBook would not play. I restarted the handset, uninstalled the App, reinstalled the App and re-downloaded the eBook--no go. Downloaded a different book, listened to it then tried switching to my original eBook--no go again. I still haven't figured out how to get my eBook to play again.
In Short
In summary, the look and feel of the software interface is good. The glass face is solid and it feels well made. But the reliability and lack of choices and features of the Apps combines with other weaknesses to show that this phone is only to be recommended for the most basic smartphone user who is happy with all the drawbacks to get the reduced cost.
