Windows phone / nokia 625 review
windows phone
People I am a convert, I really am. After years and years with an iPhone I finally switched to a real one. Android I hear you say, pah. I mean windows phone 8 of course, the real deal.
os
And tell you what, it is not the thing for me. The os is something completely new, something that took more that a week to get used to and still has me guessing.
That it is new is a good thing, I love to see people try out different things. In fact one of the things I disliked about android is that it started out as a lesser copy of iOS. It has progressed now and has some things that iOS should have, but that took years. Windows phone at least starts fresh out of the box and that is a good thing.
Sad thing is that Nokia felt like they should add some things too. And those things don't exactly follow the windows guidelines.
Tiles and customising
The set up with tiles is nice and clean, what is also nice is that you can customise it with different colours. The colours, twenty in all, and if it's got a white or a black background is all of the customising you can do. Sure you can rearrange the tiles, make 'm smaller (only two sizes) and leave spaces between them, but a photo as a background, no sir, no can do.
If you set up a theme, as it's called, the notification bar at the top also changed to this colour. Sad thing it, it changes to an ugly shade of that colour.
Cons
There were some things that I missed on this phone, which is a nokia 625. I can't control the volume of the sound with my headphone thingamajig, like I could with my iPhone. Android also won't let me do that. But maybe this is just my nokia and the samsung galaxy s2 that don't have this.
The UI is not consistent, there are windows apps, nokia apps and stuff I downloaded from the windows app store. And all of these things do different things with the back button for instance. Some take you back within the application, some back to the home screen, some do both at different points. I know that this is not a fault from windows, but I think that the apps should all follow the same UI guidelines and that that should be watched.
It's too big. It fits into my pocket, but only just. The screen has a decent resolution, but even I have trouble reaching everything with my big hands. (this is a phone thing, not a windows thing.)
Pros
It has the ability to extend it's memory with an sd card. So you can expand the memory easily and transfer your data to a different phone.
The battery is great, I have had times that I didn't need to charge it for two days. This is super for a modern phone.
The phone is way cheaper than an iPhone or a decent android phone.
You can pay for apps without a credit card, by adding it to your phone bill. This is a good thing I think, my payment details I won't give to everyone...
Internet Explorer 10 is a decent browser.
Nokia still knows how to build phones, it feels better to me than the average samsung phone, sturdier.
conclusion
Folks, it looks like I'm no real convert, the ui glitches are the things that irk me the most.
That and the fact that I lived in an all apple universe for years and am used to the fact that my music, photos and all just appear on every device. I like it that the UI guidelines are followed more strictly, that apps work better and crash less often. These things bothered me too in my brief time on android phones, so maybe it's me.
But for now I will stay with it, as the fingerprint sensor of the iphone 5s has me wondering about privacy. And even if I give it up, to return to the apple universe, I picked up a decent windows phone for testing which surely is worth it's money...