Most of this post was in response to someone asking about slow shutter on the 521, but since it veered off into other directions, I thought I'd alter it a bit and make it a new post..
2-3 months into the 521 and I am LOVING it!!!
In all, while the 521 has its limitations, I think it's functionality goes way beyond a typical entry level phone. I don't know if I'd put it on the same level as the 900 (although the camera and other features are an improvement) and I miss having a nice AMOLED screen, but I think the 521 excepting the screen goes way beyond the older Lumia 800 in pretty much all other respects..
My Nokia phones to date:
Lumia 800:
Great physical build - probably my favorite of any phone I have owned to date. .
Horrid camera quality..
Good music player
Very poor Bluetooth interface.
Except for the look and feel of the design, I have to say that the problems with the Bluetooth and camera made my transition to the 900 a welcome one with no regrets. Looking back, I wish I had skipped this one..
Lumia 900:
Great overall phone!
Camera mediocre, but everything else including Bluetooth and Wifi worked very well.
Only gave it up since the 808 came to Amazon ( I REALLY wanted that camera) and it was concurrently announced the 900 wouldn't go to WP8.
PureView 808:
FANTASTIC camera; beautiful hardware, ok overall phone quality.
As a media generator/player you can't beat this. Audio is Dolby, and the damned thing records in Dolby as well! Great camera, great recorder. The audio and phone connection to my 2013 Honda work better than my current WP8 phone!
Unfortunately the Symbian is just too outdated now. My GMail would arrive in true HTML format, but I could never make the Outlook do the same; very annoying.
As good as the camera is, no one is making new camera apps in Symbian (except Harold Mayer), and nothing in Symbian comes close to Creative Studio or Fhotoroom. Social media and photo sharing functions work, but not as nicely as on WP8. Office functions worked ok - little difference.
So once the honeymoon with the camera was over, (took a while!), I found that I had a great camera phone for weekends, but a very mediocre phone the rest of the week, and I started missing WP more and more in spite of the better camera.
Nokia 6010:
Through this period, I was reading about how fond people had been of their first Nokia's - something I didn't share. So.. found an old but working Nokia 6010 unlocked on eBay. Stripped it down, the parts that were left - the blue side - I took an electric toothbrush to; and otherwise replaced the battery, back cover, LCD screen, front cover and keyboard. So ended up with a brand-new-looking 6010! Bought and activated a T-Mobile prepaid SIM card and handsfree earbud.
So this one's increadibly basic - No Camera - no Wifi, no Bluetooth or anything wireless, and no music player. Basic games, couldn't get into them all that much. It had web capability once, but since T-Mobile's web structure has changed so radically since 2003, this phone can't access it at all.
That said, I am amazed with the call quality and reception! SMS texting is pretty fun to use on it as well.. I used the phone for about 2 weeks straight before relegating it to backup status.
In that mode it does splendidly. Sometimes I have to call T-Mobile service for either the 808 or now - the 521, and when they ask me to use a different phone - out comes the 6010!
Battery life is fantastic - I had forgotten how much better pre-smartphone battery life was. At last count, my 6010 had been in my attache unused for 2-1/2 mos. I pulled it out and turned it on - FULL battery.
Lumia 521:
Going back to the 808 - I still love the camera, but tired more and more of Symbian. So this is my interim Window Phone until the EOS hits, and I decide whether to go for that or the 925..
For days where I wanted to use the 808 for the camera (usually weekends), I used to transfer the microSIM to the 808 and then back to the 521 before the work week, and that worked ok. However, since discovering the 521 on T-Mobile does tethering, now I bring both phones, shoot with the 808, then upload to Flickr tethering to the 521, which works great since the 521 does 4G and I have the $70/mo unlimited-everything plan. Also, now I don't have to call to have my network reset after the card transfers - which really interfered with MMS messaging for some reason.
One thing about editing hi-res shots taken with the 808. Uploading via Wifi Tether works well even with the large file sizes. Wtih regard to editing, I noticed that - the 521 has some amazing photo edit software; but the phone can't handle the 38-MP file sizes, so if I want to use the newer software, I have to reduce my shots to 8 or 5 MP before transferring the photos to the 521 via bluetooth for editing - and then everything works pretty well. I know I can dumb the 808 down to 5 or 8 while shooting, but I love taking advantage of the full res capability in many situations even though most of the time I don't need to..
One last thought..
I like downloading podcasts for offline use, and use podcast lounge. The most annoying thing about WindowsPhone 8 is not being able to have 3rd party apps access my 32GB card for storage, so I end up running out of room on the phone's internal storage! Hopefully 8.1 will rectify this. If not, the larger RAM and internal storage of the 925 or EOS will solve this problem regardless!
Cheers..
2-3 months into the 521 and I am LOVING it!!!
In all, while the 521 has its limitations, I think it's functionality goes way beyond a typical entry level phone. I don't know if I'd put it on the same level as the 900 (although the camera and other features are an improvement) and I miss having a nice AMOLED screen, but I think the 521 excepting the screen goes way beyond the older Lumia 800 in pretty much all other respects..
My Nokia phones to date:
Lumia 800:
Great physical build - probably my favorite of any phone I have owned to date. .
Horrid camera quality..
Good music player
Very poor Bluetooth interface.
Except for the look and feel of the design, I have to say that the problems with the Bluetooth and camera made my transition to the 900 a welcome one with no regrets. Looking back, I wish I had skipped this one..
Lumia 900:
Great overall phone!
Camera mediocre, but everything else including Bluetooth and Wifi worked very well.
Only gave it up since the 808 came to Amazon ( I REALLY wanted that camera) and it was concurrently announced the 900 wouldn't go to WP8.
PureView 808:
FANTASTIC camera; beautiful hardware, ok overall phone quality.
As a media generator/player you can't beat this. Audio is Dolby, and the damned thing records in Dolby as well! Great camera, great recorder. The audio and phone connection to my 2013 Honda work better than my current WP8 phone!
Unfortunately the Symbian is just too outdated now. My GMail would arrive in true HTML format, but I could never make the Outlook do the same; very annoying.
As good as the camera is, no one is making new camera apps in Symbian (except Harold Mayer), and nothing in Symbian comes close to Creative Studio or Fhotoroom. Social media and photo sharing functions work, but not as nicely as on WP8. Office functions worked ok - little difference.
So once the honeymoon with the camera was over, (took a while!), I found that I had a great camera phone for weekends, but a very mediocre phone the rest of the week, and I started missing WP more and more in spite of the better camera.
Nokia 6010:
Through this period, I was reading about how fond people had been of their first Nokia's - something I didn't share. So.. found an old but working Nokia 6010 unlocked on eBay. Stripped it down, the parts that were left - the blue side - I took an electric toothbrush to; and otherwise replaced the battery, back cover, LCD screen, front cover and keyboard. So ended up with a brand-new-looking 6010! Bought and activated a T-Mobile prepaid SIM card and handsfree earbud.
So this one's increadibly basic - No Camera - no Wifi, no Bluetooth or anything wireless, and no music player. Basic games, couldn't get into them all that much. It had web capability once, but since T-Mobile's web structure has changed so radically since 2003, this phone can't access it at all.
That said, I am amazed with the call quality and reception! SMS texting is pretty fun to use on it as well.. I used the phone for about 2 weeks straight before relegating it to backup status.
In that mode it does splendidly. Sometimes I have to call T-Mobile service for either the 808 or now - the 521, and when they ask me to use a different phone - out comes the 6010!
Battery life is fantastic - I had forgotten how much better pre-smartphone battery life was. At last count, my 6010 had been in my attache unused for 2-1/2 mos. I pulled it out and turned it on - FULL battery.
Lumia 521:
Going back to the 808 - I still love the camera, but tired more and more of Symbian. So this is my interim Window Phone until the EOS hits, and I decide whether to go for that or the 925..
For days where I wanted to use the 808 for the camera (usually weekends), I used to transfer the microSIM to the 808 and then back to the 521 before the work week, and that worked ok. However, since discovering the 521 on T-Mobile does tethering, now I bring both phones, shoot with the 808, then upload to Flickr tethering to the 521, which works great since the 521 does 4G and I have the $70/mo unlimited-everything plan. Also, now I don't have to call to have my network reset after the card transfers - which really interfered with MMS messaging for some reason.
One thing about editing hi-res shots taken with the 808. Uploading via Wifi Tether works well even with the large file sizes. Wtih regard to editing, I noticed that - the 521 has some amazing photo edit software; but the phone can't handle the 38-MP file sizes, so if I want to use the newer software, I have to reduce my shots to 8 or 5 MP before transferring the photos to the 521 via bluetooth for editing - and then everything works pretty well. I know I can dumb the 808 down to 5 or 8 while shooting, but I love taking advantage of the full res capability in many situations even though most of the time I don't need to..
One last thought..
I like downloading podcasts for offline use, and use podcast lounge. The most annoying thing about WindowsPhone 8 is not being able to have 3rd party apps access my 32GB card for storage, so I end up running out of room on the phone's internal storage! Hopefully 8.1 will rectify this. If not, the larger RAM and internal storage of the 925 or EOS will solve this problem regardless!
Cheers..
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