After Verizon finally wised up and started charging me $20 extra for unlimited data, it was time to jump to Cricket. I wasn't willing to pay for a phone just for the privilege, so of their three free phone choices (two crummy Android phones and a W10M device), I went with the Lumia 650, having previously used a Lumia 928 for a couple of years on VZW.
First off, my device particulars...it was running a version of 10586 out of the box (can't remember the exact version)...updated to 14393.321 immediately...factory restored after the update...then did all remaining app and software updates.
Firmware version is 01078.00036.16035.40009
Hardware thoughts:
--Simple, elegant and expensive-looking design
--Unnaturally light, which I actually appreciate despite the fact that a stiff wind might knock it out of my hand
--Beautiful screen, very close in quality to my old Lumia 928 which to this day I regard as the best screen I've ever seen on a mobile phone
--Decent front-facing speaker, loud and crisp
--Charging and headphone ports are tighter than on any phone I've used...not sure if that means they'll hold up well, or break sooner than usual
--Camera takes nice pictures
--Phone calling works well
--Battery life is surprisingly good given the size of the cell
OS thoughts:
--Windows 10 Mobile is still a mess. Used it as an Insider on my 928 before the door was slammed on it, and things are surprisingly--disappointingly--status quo here. Live tiles, in particular, are garbage--Microsoft's own news and sports app tiles frequently take a cab, requiring launching or resizing to refresh them back to life. I tried three of my favorite weather apps--WeatherBug, AccuWeather and Amazing Weather HD--and none of the tiles worked right. The AccuWeather and AWHD tiles simply wouldn't update after reasonable amounts of time had passed, or location had changed. The WeatherBug tile showed promise, updating frequently and perceiving location changes...but switching from WiFi to cellular, or vice versa, put it in the dumper...so much so, in fact, that the app itself wouldn't pick up on my location when launched. (I wound up deleting the app on this account) Oddly, the MSN weather app and tile perform well...but the app data comes from a dubious source (Foreca) and I don't have much faith in it. Mail and calendar tiles also don't update/refresh properly. I employed a workaround found here on the forums to get the mail tile to behave (I pinned my Gmail inbox, rather than the entire Outlook Mail app, to Start and so far it's behaving properly). I simply cannot believe, at this stage in the game, and given the supposed design and aesthetic advantages of live tiles, that they still don't work right. And I think it (mostly) has nothing to do with the apps, because so many of them have malfunctioning or misbehaving live tiles. A frustratingly stupid situation, really.
And there's other nonsense going on: (1) Disconnecting from a secure WiFi network requiring login via browser, by leaving its area, then trying to reconnect upon return to its area results in connection failure that requires a reboot of the phone to correct, (2) moron developers removed the ability to turn Glance screen off while charging the phone, (3) YouTube *still* will not play in the background when I navigate out of Microsoft Edge, despite claims in the past that this was possible, (4) apps that appear to be very lightweight from a resource standpoint (Chess By Post) behave sluggishly, while apps I perceive to be resource hogs do OK, (5) disconnection from Bluetooth devices takes an excessive amount of time, and on more than one occasion I've had to reboot the phone to be able to connect to a different BT device.
I really was expecting more from the OS at this point in its development, but instead I have been disappointed. This is a production release, and it's nearly-unforgivably buggy. I think I'm going to jump on the fast ring Insider build. The way I see it, if I'm going to have to deal with a buggy OS mess, I might as well deal with the latest buggy OS mess.
UPDATE: Eff that...just reviewed the thread regarding the last fast ring release. Seems that's more of a s---show than either my current OS version or the 2016 US presidential election
Performance thoughts:
--Very decent given the hardware. I've not run into any ridiculous slowdowns that would compel me to hurl the phone across the room, as I'm wont to do with Anrdoid devices. I heard horror stories about Facebook performance, but luckily the pre-installed version is the Microsoft-developed version and it works well. (I am periodically nagged to update it, but I've refused) For fun, I installed the FB-developed beta version of their app, and it actually works rather well. Takes about 8-10 seconds to launch, moving around once launched is adequately snappy, and it's feature set is competitive with iOS and Android versions. That said, I wound up deleting it due to its excessive storage footprint (100 MB on initial install, and sure to bloat from there), but may install it again. Other apps work satisfactorily--again, taking into account the hardware on hand. On a phone with beefier specs, it would be unacceptable, but in this regard I'm trying to keep things in perspective.
(You may ask why I'm not keeping the OS bugs in perspective, but I have a lower tolerance for that given the fact MS has been working on it for a long time and it still has too many rough edges that would drive off users less devoted to Windows Phone than I am)
I'm very happy I didn't pay anything for this phone. To be perfectly honest, moving from a very reliable carrier to a new one, in my opinion, carries risks that I didn't want to exaggerate by spending meaningful money on a phone locked to it. Happily, Cricket's service seems to be very good so far, and having not spent any dough on the phone, I'm now free to look around for an unlocked device to bring over should the 650 prove to be too frustrating over the next few weeks. I'll post further thoughts in the review sticky in a week or two...thanks for reading.
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