Lumia 521; general nerd gripes

[Humantorchy]

Overall not a bad phone. I'm a metal fabricator so my phones generally get banged up very quickly so I like to stick to cheap/free stuff. I've been a Google ****** since vanilla android and never considered switching until yada yada yada.

The only faults with the lumia 521 (not wp8 in general mind you) are this.

RAM: running more than one app at a time causes me to get spammed with the "allocating memory" animation; deal breaker. I'm not even going to say annoying, this is a flat out deal breaker for me. You can be sure that you will never see any games beyond the basic flash poopoo in the app store because there simply isn't enough ram to run anything else.

I.E.: It boggles my mind that this device somehow got past conceptual design phase without an in app back button? If while derping around the internet you decide the information you need is on the page you just left -- tough noogies.

Here/bing maps: clunky etc. Decades behind (exaggerating) Android, iPhone. But still generally sucky.

Um... No seeking in the video player is pretty silly. But this is akin to the type of carelessness that led the WP8 scientists to leave a back button out of the browser.

So yeah. Those are my main gripes. I'll agree with what everyone else says about how "zomg so budget friendly" because all that is true. I just feel MS missed a few key spots that could have made this phone a slam dunk in WP8 history.

Pros: such shiny. so value. much windows. wow

Also the distinct lack of commercials in Pandora vis-a-vis the Microsoft license is pretty effing 1337.

I'm done. Thanks.

 

[raccoon210]

I have a 520 and I agree with all your points except I don't understand the first one. I believe you,and I've heard other people talk about it but its never happened to me no matter what I have open. So is it just like the resume screen except says allocating memory or what?
Overall though are you happy with your phone?

 

[Humantorchy]

I have a 520 and I agree with all your points except I don't understand the first one. I believe you,and I've heard other people talk about it but its never happened to me no matter what I have open. So is it just like the resume screen except says allocating memory or what?
Overall though are you happy with your phone?

Yes it's a pretty cute little phone. WP8 is an extremely polished o.s. but for me personally it's just so locked down and uncustomizable that it may as well be iPhones younger, slightly retarded half sister.

I'm not entirely sure if I can look past the web browsing hang ups and ram problems because I'm a pretty hardcore phone user ( I commute 3 hours a day on the train) so I spend A LOT of time glued to whatever phone I have.

I'll keep it until it breaks I guess.

Edit: yeah you have to be multi tasking pretty hard (I guess?) To get the allocating memory animation but I literally get spammed with it. I'll typically have Pandora playing, while browsing the web and shooting texts to a hot babe. Not an extremely unreasonable workload for a phone IMHO but too much for the 521s half gig of ram apparently.

 

[xandros9]

the back button is the hardware one, I don't know if a software one makes a difference, but it works for me at least.

Also, try the third party Gmaps app if you miss google maps, its quite good

I approve of your pros

 

[cckgz4]

Yes the ram really upsets me at times

 

[Humantorchy]

the back button is the hardware one, I don't know if a software one makes a difference, but it works for me at least.

The hardware back button has limited functionality as a dedicated browser back button. Example:

You open the browser, Google Facebook, open Facebook then open messages and click on the persons name to view their page. Hitting the hardware back button will take you back to the message string; functional.

Now let's assume that you get a text before getting to the persons page. You hit the home button check the text, then re open the broswer. If you hit the hardware back button it will take you back to the home screen because it is the last action in your recent apps history.

It's "functional", kinda. Yet still clunky and unintuitive. I honestly can't believe all WP8 browsers are missing this function but I've never used another windows phone so I can't say. I assume they just overlooked it when compiling the app to fit the 521 version of windows. Hopefully this gets fixed with a software update or something because it seems like it would be a simple fix and definitely a huge quality of life improvement for 521 consumers.

Also UC browser is a clunky resource hog.

 

[jms_209]

Maxthon browser might fix some of your issues with the browser.
It sort of saves what you have been doing. It lets you go back a couple of pages......

Kinda hard to explain it,just look at the screenshots -_-
Also surfy browser is good aswell.

 

[ag1986]

I honestly can't believe all WP8 browsers are missing this function but I've never used another windows phone so I can't say. I assume they just overlooked it when compiling the app to fit the 521 version of windows.

Also UC browser is a clunky resource hog.

All WP8 phones have basically the same OS and the same browser. The issue you describe persists across all WP8 hardware, not just for the 521.