I am thinking of switching back to a windows phone from a Samsung Android Phone after a long absence (Samsung Omina) Is the Lumia range good and how is windows mobile 8 to use.
Thank you
I've owned the HTC 8x, lumia 920, and the lumia 1020 within a year of each other before getting a nexus 5. Wp 8 was extremely smooth and snappy on Nokia devices. The modern ui works perfectly as a phone os. It's still my favorite is so far. I'm not sure how it is now but half a year ago the lack of apps was pretty jarring sometimes but usually there's a pretty good alternative for the most popular apps. The Nokia windows phones were much better in almost every way to the htc. I had a 920 which I dropped and had it replaced under insurance with the HTC which froze up on me in about a month at which point I called up Att and demanded a lumia 920 instead whicb they didn't have in stock so they upgraded me to the 1020 for free. The Nokiaswere built better, faster, and over heated less than the HTC. If the 930 is as good as the 920 and 1020 were I'd wholeheartedly recommend it if you were looking for a windows phone. A word of warning I've learn never let a windows phone battery get low enough where it shuts off. I don't know if it's been fixed yet but it's been known to brick some windows phones and was the reason why I had my HTC replaced. I've read somewhere that it has something to do with the battery level being so low that it doesn't have enough power to recognize that's it's charging if that even makes sense.
I have a Lumia 800 which was one of the very first Lumia Windows Phones and doesn't actually run WP8.0 or 8.1 but rather WP7.8 which is inherently different than WP8.x. I would still recommend a Windows Phone as even years later, my Lumia 800 with a single-core CPU and 512 MB of RAM still runs like it's brand new. The optimization of the OS is fantastic.
The app gap now is not bad in my own opinion as I find the large majority of apps to just be distractions and a waste of time. Although for the most part, any popular/mainstream app is on WP by now. The exceptions being primarily games.
I have never experienced the bricking from battery dying and my phone has gone completely dead a few times in the 2 years I've been using it. I myself am looking to upgrade to the 930 or 1520.
The battery problem only seemed to affect a few of the phones. A quick google search for windows phone recharge loop pulls up a few articles and forums about it. It never happened with my 920 only my HTC 8x and there were a few times with my 1020 where it would take hours to get enough charge to turn on the phone.
I'd like to get the 1030 to replace my nexus 5 if it ever came out forT-Mobile.
I'm running on a dev unlocked 928 (verizon... ), and I have to admit that WP has really made some strides in the last year or so. However, if they don't open up the platform more, I'm going to probably take an android next time!
I have a Lumia 920 and am a pretty big fan. The so-called app gap still exists, but it is not nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and the situation gets better and better every month (check sites like WP Central for news on the topic).
On the support side things are pretty awesome. While a lot of WP/WinMo users got screwed from the 7.x to 8.x transition (old hardware was deemed incompatible, which may or may not have been entirely true), MS has been pretty good about their promise to support devices with updates for at least 18 months on WP8 devices. Microsoft has cannot provide firmware updates for everything because that is up to the device manufacturer and carrier, but MS has set up the Developer Preview program in order to provide OS updates for devices outside of the carrier and manufacturer approval process. This is great on 2 fronts; For devices like the Lumia 822 on TMo, which oddly lost support from Nokia and TMo, this is a great way to keep the OS updated with the latest features. For users who are on carriers that take their dear sweet time rolling out updates, this is a great way to get the latest build of the OS, without worry about dealing with beta software. For users doing this, we have had WP8.1 for a little over 2 months now, and are expecting to see 8.1 update 1 in the next week or two, which will be a long time before most carriers start rolling out 8.1 to mass consumers. This is certainly something to look into if you move to the WP platform.
Now as for Lumia devices I would put out a word of caution: Microsoft just bought Nokia (hardware division) last month, so there is still a bit of dust settling, and nobody really knows what to expect going forward. Traditionally, Microsoft likes to build hardware that is a little different and not mainstream (see Surface laptops), and let manufacturer partners take care of more mass-consumer devices.
That said, the current crop of WP devices seem pretty good. The Icon/930 is certainly not for me, and with the lack of Glance (which is awesome), and SD card support (when SD card support was such a huge part of WP8.1) it lacks the Flagship look/feel/features that you would expect for the replacement of the 920. But it is still a good device, and if you are not accustomed to the Glance feature, then you may not miss it.
Another thing to look out for is that Microsoft has really refreshed its relationships with hardware partners, so there is a literal flood of devices from a lot of manufacturers coming to WP. Most of these devices are low-end devices, but on the higher end of the spectrum we already have confirmed that HTC is releasing a One (M8) variant with WP8.1 on it. There are also rumors that Sammy may be releasing a higher end WP device. Typically they have released their previous mainstream device as their current WP device (so when the SGS4 came out they released SGS3 hardware on their Ativ brand WP device). But with WP8.1 (and now that WP is free) we may see more parody between their mainstream and WP offerings which would be pretty cool. All that to say that devices like the Lumia 930 or 1520 are great devices, but over the next few months there may be a much better selection to work with.
if you are in a modern Windows based environment (which many homes and businesses still use) WP is a great choice. At my work we use Windows Server Essentials backed up with Office 365 for Business (not to be confused with Office 365 which is something else entirely) and it is pretty cool. Just enter in your User and Password information to your phone and you have all of your email and Office 365 cloud services synced to your phone (like OneDrive).
If you use Windows 8 you can also sync things like IE bookmarks and browsing history between your phone and Win8 devices which is pretty nice (granted hardly a unique experience). Other things like system preferences, wifi passwords, and other things can sync as well, but with seemingly limited success. With WP9/win9 (or One, or 8.2 or whatever they are going to call it) we should expect a lot more crossover between features and settings across devices. Also, when you take a picture on your phone it will automatically upload to OneDrive, and OneDrive on your computer will automatically download it for you, so you never need to fiddle with things like data transfers. They certainly got a lot right in this department.
Another handy thing we are starting to see is more interplay between WP8 and windows8 apps. For example if you buy some games (like Halo Spartain Assault) then you purchase it once and can play it across all devices. If you play a game like Mahjong or Minesweeper then you game (and stats) will follow you between devices. If you install a piece of software on one device, and it is available on another device, then if you go into the app store and go to 'my apps' then it will show up as being available for that device. This is something that we should see a lot more of going forward as WP, winRT, and win8 have more and more API unification. It is certainly a feature still in its infancy, but it seems like MS is committed to this which is good for consumers on the platform. That said... the number of useful apps in the store (outside of the phone space) is limited at best, though they may be more useful once we can use them on the desktop and mix their use better with traditional programs.
Oh, and Cortana is awesome. I am not big on talking to my phone, but when taking and responding to text messages in the car it is a huge life saver, and works almost flawlessly. It is US only for the moment, but if you live outside of the US then you may get it soon in other English speaking countries, and China as well.
At the end of the day the WP platform has come a long way in the last 2 years, and has largely met parody with Android and iOS on many fronts, but still has a ways to go. However, the thing that I like about WP is that they know that they are behind, and are putting in the effort that is needed to fix things. The WP team is now part of the main Windows team (actually the WP leadership took over the Windows platform, which is good because we all saw how bad the Windows team did with Metro implementation), which means that we should expect a huge convergence between the two platforms going forward. Compare this to Android which has typically taken the 'Italian cooking method' to features where they throw a bunch of stuff at a wall until something sticks, and the iOS method of just doing whatever they want and expecting instant worship for their followers. WP is not perfect, but if you moved to it I doubt you would regret it, and if there is something that you don't like about the platform, there is a good chance that it will be fixed or changed every 6 months or so.
Hope that helps! Sorry for the long rant,
Caeden
Thank to all for help, I will be heading back to Windows phone and perhaps a Surface 3 for a complete ecosystem.
I believe you mean Parity not Parody, otherwise a lot of piss will be taken.
I love my Lumia 920, I don't know how the windows phone experience would be without the Nokia apps, so personally I'd be inclined to stick to the Nokias. I liked my phone before amber and black launched but the improvements made, I couldn't see myself going to IOS or android.
I don't really do the app thing so the smaller market isn't a huge detriment to me. the stuff I do use works pretty well, there was a ride tracker that in the beginning was nothing but problems but as the updates roll though it gets better and faster. Had a similar issue with Skype, would take an age to load or switch from and to, irritatingly long especially since Microsoft owns Skype, but it too got far better after a few updates.
If you are on the fence definitely would recommend the phone, I rarely run battery life issues even when I end up out of reception coverage (which I do fairly often) and can get 2 days on a charge.
Ya... Parity would be the right word there :P
The only Nokia apps that I use directly are the Nokia Maps and Nokia's Camera which are both awesome. Outside of that however I don't generally use any of the rest of them. I do however love the modifications that Nokia brings to the table. Things like the Glance Screen and other little touches are pretty awesome and I would not want to live without.