Moving from Android 4.1.1 to Windows Phone 8.1 (Lumia 635), what should I expect?

[chris722]

I purchased a Lumia 635 ATT no contract from the Microsoft Store. Will be taking my Cricket SIM out of the phone and using it. Is it a difficult process, or will I have to call Cricket. In the past I have popped out one sim and installed another on a GSM without issues, but both were ATT GoPhone I have yet to try it across carriers. I realize that GoPhone offers better bandwidth on LTE, but I get unlimited access via Cricket and cannot in good conscious go back to GoPhone.

I am coming from a low end ZTE. There are more than a few things I do not care for in Android. One of these is the keyboard. Stock keyboard works well, but third party keyboards, including Google Keyboard, will not pop up if you have an app in RAM that consumes a lot of memory, such as Google Chrome or Google Now. I cannot recommend an Android with 512 MB or less to anyone, at least not a single core device multi-core may be better. Personally I think that keyboards should take priority over everything else. This seems to be the way it works on iOS. Is Windows Phone the same, or will I have issues with the keyboard on the 635, considering the low end specs?

I've heard a lot about how Windows Phone is smoother than Android on low end devices. Is this a Windows Phone 8.1 thing, or can the same be said about Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 7?

 

[Satyendra Nair]

Windows phone for me, having used it since the Lumia 710 has always been snappier that An(lag?)droid. The keyboard here, is the the best one I have used so far, having used both, an Android and iOS device stock keyboards. The swipe gesture is awesome, and accurate. Most apps coming in for Windows Phone are optimized, meaning the apps available run smooth, or with very little lag if at all. If you don't want to use the Internet Explorer, you have UC Browser. Oh, and not to forget Cortana..that's some neat stuff. Having used a Lumia 620 in the past, all I can recommend is that you leave atleast 1-1.2 gb of free space on the phone, and put all music/pictures onto a good sd card that you'll use in this phone.

 

[irtiza_fayaz]

And in case you didn't know, Windows Phone doesn't allow third party keyboards, but the vanilla one is great and better than its ios and android counterparts. And because it's baked into the OS, low end specs shouldn't be a problem.
Regarding the performance of 7, 8 and 8.1 on low end devices, I'd go with a close 8 >7/7.5 > 8.1. Although the "critical update" for the dev preview has worked wonders.

 

[chris722]

I wasn't aware of this. From what I can gather, Windows Phone and iOS allow enough chicanery to be dangerous, but nothing to the extent that you would brick your phone. I haven't heard of the need to root your phone on Windows Phone, for example.

What about preinstalled apps? I would expect Facebook and Skype, for obvious reasons, but what about Twitter or apps like Evernote, etc. I am looking forward to Nokia MixRadio.

One last question. I've heard that Windows Phone 8.1 is like Windows NT, just on mobile. Can I just pull the battery out like I do on Android or does this phone need to be shut down properly? How long does it take to start up, etc.

 

[estabien]

I just bought the Lumia 635 last night. I'm coming from an HTC One M7 (Not low end in the slightest), and I quite love the WP8.1 OS. The 512 megabytes of ram is... scary, at first, however the Windows Phone OS is really snappy with that little ram (As it's more efficient than let's say, Android, IMO). As far as preinstalled apps go, there are quite a few, however you can uninstall them all (unlike Android). The keyboard is really nice imo, it has the swipe feature and it's not laggy at all.

When you get the phone, you'll have about 4 gigs of free space for music, etc. However I can recommend a 16+ gigabyte microSD card if you're into music and whatnot.

All around the 635 is a good, low-cost option (MUCH better than low-cost Androids, IMO), and you can sign up for the Developer Preview to get the newest updates straight from Microsoft.

EDIT: And yes, the battery is removable and replaceable.

 

[EBUK]

I came from Moto G 4G running Android 4.4.4. There is nothing about the phone I miss other than the notifications LED, and there is nothing about Android that I miss.

Windows Phone made it easy to transfer all my data, and even moving from Google Calendar to the Outlook Calendar was easyc
As others have said, with WP you can't use 3rd party keyboards, but the MS keyboard is superb. Way better than the Google Keyboard, and better even than Swipe, Flecksy, or SwiftKey. I find it much more accurate and better with the autocorrect. In fact, it is now the fastest keyboard in the world according to the Guiness Book of Records.

 

[chris722]

I came from Moto G 4G running Android 4.4.4. There is nothing about the phone I miss other than the notifications LED, and there is nothing about Android that I miss.

Windows Phone made it easy to transfer all my data, and even moving from Google Calendar to the Outlook Calendar was easyc
As others have said, with WP you can't use 3rd party keyboards, but the MS keyboard is superb. Way better than the Google Keyboard, and better even than Swipe, Flecksy, or SwiftKey. I find it much more accurate and better with the autocorrect. In fact, it is now the fastest keyboard in the world according to the Guiness Book of Records.

I was wondering about transferring my Google Contacts over to WP, good to know.

 

[estabien]

Yep, you can seamlessly move your contacts- I've done it many times on 8.1.

Just go to Settings > Email + Accounts > Add an account > Google
They should automatically sync.

 

[MicrosoftRulesAll]

You can easily just pop in your sim, and everything should work great!
Welcome to Windows Phone!

 

[EBUK]

I was wondering about transferring my Google Contacts over to WP, good to know.

As mentioned about, you can add a google account, and all your contacts and calendar events will be syncd on the phone. However, they will still be stored with Google. I wanted to move my calendar events and contacts FROM Google TO Outlook. No problem! You can export contacts as a CSV and calendars as iCal file, and Outlook seamlessly imports them.

I am now happily Google free. I trust MS to use my data in a less aggressive way than Google.

 

[prasath1234]

If you don't worry about apps windows phone is a heaven in low end phones compared to androids.Low end means less than 100$.
From Windows phone