Initial Thoughts From New WP User

[PAC757]

Hello, I just wanted to pass on my findings / thoughts / opinions on my initial 2 days of use on a Nokia 925, after being a die hard Android user for years. I bought this phone for my wife as she wanted to try a Windows Phone, she hated it so I took it. I was able to find enough apps to make the phone comfortably familiar and usable to something much like I have had my Android phones set up for the past 4 years. Definitely not 100% but really close, I was very surprised that the stock email app worked out just fine for my 3 email accounts, 1 Outlook, 1 Yahoo, and 1 Gmail. I didn't see any reason to download a separate app for yahoo or gmail. The following items are all the type of apps that I used on Android on a daily basis and count on, that I was able to find either the same app or a useful equivalent: Weather, PDF reader, Office Suite, News, news feeds, reader, banking, eBay, Google search, maps, music player, you tube, note pad, file organization, Calendar/agenda, various tools ( conversion tools, network info) What I couldn't find was a familiar text messaging app (have been using Handcent and Chomp, really don't know how Whatsapp works, I believe it only works with people that have Whatsapp installed, I tried it couldn't send a text message to anyone) I found the stock messaging app works OK, I found something that works like Emoji. I really don't play a lot of games but the ones I would use are all not there on WP. I really miss having a swipe type keyboard, but I see it will be included with WP 8.1. Overall I really am pretty happy with WP 8, the phone itself, hardware wise, is just OK ,the battery life is really pretty bad, the camera is good enough for a phone, the screen is nice, I am going to really give this a fair amount of time using it, I guess I am going to have to wait for the AT&T to OTA 8.1 unless they wait to long after Microsoft releases it, then I guess I'll have t learn how to load OS's and whatever else it's called on WP, I assume it can not be any more difficult than rooting loading ROMs on android. I have been using larger screen phones (5" 5.5" screens) so I am wanting to get use to WP and get a Nokia 1520, but not ready to invest that much money yet. I am very happy that WPCentral is here as I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions as I get use to this phone system. So far I like it but still a lot of things to figure out.

 

[Guytronic]

What!




j/king :winktongue:
Thanks for the input!
Liking my 925 a lot...

 

[ExcaliburII]

With a dev account which is I believe about $10\ year you can load up window phone 8.1. Will bring the experience closer to what you had before. Much easier than routing a phone... What apps are you missing? Out of curiosity

Oh and welcome to the community.

 

[shykhan16]

With a dev account which is I believe about $10\ year you can load up window phone 8.1. Will bring the experience closer to what you had before. Much easier than routing a phone... What apps are you missing? Out of curiosity

Oh and welcome to the community.

The Dev account is actually free to get 8.1 and btw welcome to Windows Phone.


Sent from my iPad using WPCentral Forums

 

[Taigatrommel]

Actually you can install WP 8.1 right away, register for a dev account with your Outlook account is free and fast done. Installation is OTA and you can simply upgrade to official 8.1/Cyan once these updates hits. No need for any rooting, hard resetting and so on. There are tutorials here on WPC.

Battery life can be tricky, have a look at your mail syncing times and especially apps which are allowed to run and even sync in the background.

Regarding games I remember showing a coworker of mine my 1020 because he was interested in Windows Phone. However he was quite a gaming freak, the opposite of myself, and after browsing the gaming catalogue together he decided against buying a WP. It seems in terms of gaming there still is a large gap compared to the two major players.

 

[NokianWP]

If investing in another WP like the 1520, you may want to wait for a refresh to come out before buying. Regardless, all WP8 are future proof, especially the newer devices like the 1520 with the Q800 chipset.

 

[PAC757]

Thanks everyone, as for missing apps, really no big deal, some Zanga games, a few small apps I use for hobby forums but I can get to them from the browser. As far as wanting a 1520 I would want it unlocked not an AT&T version because of the missing Qi charging, better battery life, and bigger screen, and I believe that there is now an unlocked model (1520-938) with the correct LTE bands for AT&T but it's pretty expensive. Also you have a point, see what's coming out later this year.

 

[Praxius]

Well my wife had a Samsung Galaxy s4 for a while while I held onto my rusty Lumia 800 WP7.8.... I tried using her phone and we also have an android tablet. I dunno. I personally don't like the Android OS / interface.

Yes, it has a tonne of apps where you could spend half your life looking through them all, but a person would really only end up using 1% of the apps out there on their device anyways. And what I have seen were hundreds of apps that were the same as other apps that all do the same thing as one another.

Windows Marketplace is starting to get like that too, but for me, it's not about how many apps I have to choose from, but whether there's an app that does what I need and so far with the WP Marketplace, I've found what I needed always.

Anywho, I had nothing but bad experiences with Apple devices throughout the years and Android just doesn't "feel" right for my tastes. I remember when my Lumia 800 came out I went to the phone company and gave it a quick play around with and fell in love with the simplistic yet stylish layout. WP7 had a ways to go for being spectacular but it was all I wanted.

Now I too have a 925 and Windows Phone 8 has been a very good leap ahead from 7.5/7.8 but had a wee bit more to go.

I signed up for the free Dev account and currently have 8.1 installed and I must say, it's pretty damn spectacular. If this version of the OS doesn't turn more heads, I don't know what will. They've pretty much checked every box to the point that even my wife is picking this phone up at the end of the week when her old contract is up.

As for Battery Life?

At first it was draining pretty fast, but I went through all the settings and options I could find and even with playing videos for my son and playing games on work breaks + browsing the net often, my phone doesn't need charging until I'm ready for bed (active from 8am - 11:30pm and still above battery saver mode) some 15 or so hours.

Just using it for texting, phone calls, occasional GPS and web browsing I can get almost two days out of it.

There's a lot of resources being shown off right out of the box. Once you chop off the things you don't need, it saves a lot of battery.

 

[metalchick719]

Thanks everyone, as for missing apps, really no big deal, some Zanga games, a few small apps I use for hobby forums but I can get to them from the browser. As far as wanting a 1520 I would want it unlocked not an AT&T version because of the missing Qi charging, better battery life, and bigger screen, and I believe that there is now an unlocked model (1520-938) with the correct LTE bands for AT&T but it's pretty expensive. Also you have a point, see what's coming out later this year.

Did you mean Zynga games? For what it's worth, Words with Friends was just revamped for WP last week. It's free and awesome!

 

[mgerbasio]

I've been using Android since the original Droid on Verizon about five years ago; I also carried an iphone 4s as a second phone mainly for email access to a clients network for work for about a year and liked that phone the least of the three.

Picked up a Lumina 925 refurbished on ebay about a month ago. A bit disappointed with WP8 using but downloaded WP8.1 a day or two later and find it to be as good as Android for my use. The only apps I miss are Talking Caller ID, Starbucks, MyLifeOrganized and Google Maps - no show stoppers. HERE Drive+ is nice but it doesn't use traffic for the initial or re-routing so it is years behind Google Maps and virtually useless to me as 99% of my GPS usage it to avoid traffic, not find an address.

I don't root my Android phone (at least not lately) nor do I customize it other than what stock allows so it isn't an issue for me.

I find the 925 battery to be as good as what I was getting with my Nexus 5. Bluetooth seems to be much better with the interface with my car. No hardware complaints either. Added the Qi charger back to the 925, very nice.

I switched from Android because I decided on an Office365 account switching from Google Apps. Yesterday I switched back to Android and tried the Office OWA for Android trial which is a very nice app and it worked well. However, I'll probably go back to WP.

 

[trwrt]

Battery life is always bad on new phones because you're playing with it all the time. Once you get bored with it and leave it alone more it will improve.

Try Waze if you want traffic rerouting like how Google Maps does it.