Worded Wonders

This is not an exit.

WP7

As you may be aware, I’ve been using Nokia phones for a number of years and have so far resisted moving to Android, iOS, Blackberry or indeed anything else. However with Symbian dying a slow death I’ve been eyeing up what to get when my current phone contract ends in September. I’ve experienced iOS with the now departed iPad. I’ve seen BB OS6 with my ex wife’s BB Torch. I’ve tried out Android (2.3 I think) with a T-Mobile…erm…”thing” so all that was left for me to play with was Windows Phone.

I spied that Carphone Warehouse were doing the Nokia Lumia 710 on PAYG for £99 the other week so thought I’d give it a punt. If worst came to the worst I could sell the phone on for £80 or so and not be much out of pocket I reasoned.

So, the good things:

  • The UI is fast and slick and works very smoothly indeed.
  • All the major apps I want are available and work well.
  • The phone itself seems very quick, apps open quickly, switching between apps is fast.
  • Just like iOS, “it just works”.
  • Facebook and Twitter are integrated straight into the OS.
  • The Live Tile concept is very good.

Bad things:

  • Multitasking is a bit erratic. If you open up an app from the home screen it launches a new instance of the app rather than returning you to where you left off.
  • No Bluetooth file transfer capability. I only use this sometimes on the N8 but it’ll annoying not having it when I want it.
  • You can’t take screenshots, again, I don’t use this much but it would be useful.
  • No memory card support - 8GB isn’t enough storage for all the music I want on there!

Bad things about the phone itself:

  • The camera leaves a lot to be desired. I’m used to the 12MP camera on the N8 that does a fantastic job so the 5MP hobby on the Lumia is not up to the same standards at all.

September is still a few months away: iOS 6 has just been announced (albeit with nothing that really impresses me); a new iPhone may well be announced; Windows Phone 8 is due to be announced in detail next week; a very nice Android handset with guaranteed future-proof updates might be also come out.

What will I do? At the moment I’m unsure. I am very tempted to switch from the N8 to the Lumia. The two things holding me back are the camera and the poor battery life but both of these are specific to the phone, not the OS…..