Does the Lumia 630 fulfill my needs?

[Swoncen]

Hello Windows Phone users,

this is my first post and I want to buy my first WP. After a long history of the old Nokia phones in the early 2000's I bought my first Smartphone a few years ago: Samsung Galaxy S. I was happy with it until it got slower and slower - maybe also due to Cyanogenmod although it should be fast. However, I bought a LG P880 2 years ago and in the beginning I was happy with it. After a while and installing several apps it got ridiculously slow. I realized, that it is due to the high RAM usage. It has 1 Gig, 600 MB is taken from Android and with facebook, skype and a browser open, the phone is unuseable - with the stock ROM as well as with Cyanogenmod. I get very angry when I have to wait 10-20 seconds until facebook opens with such a phone.. this shouldn't be a problem at all.

So thats my history and my problems with smartphones. Due to the reason, that Android somehow seems to require more and more resources, I want to try other phones. I'm open to everything - in my work I have a BackBerry Z10, but I dont like the OS. I love the design and looks of iPhones, but it's too expensive, I like the possibilities of Android, but it requires to many resources. So I want to try Windows Phone now. I saw the 630 from a friend and really liked how fluent everything goes with this phone. He opens Facebook and it's almost immediately there - no big lag or whatever. I also like the design, although it could be a bit thinner. But what really concerns me is the 512 MB RAM in that phone. 1 GB on my P880 was clearly not enough and I want to exchange it with a phone with 512 MB. Is that really enough? Here are the things I'm going to make:

- I'm not playing games on my phone, so graphics performance is not first priority.
- I'm not taking selfies, so I dont need a front cam. The other camera should deliver acceptable snapshots.
+ I want bluetooth to work without a problem. I have a Sennheiser MM550-X and it should be no problem to connect.
+ I want to be able to open facebook, close it (or background), open skype, close it (or background), open youtube, close it, open a browser, close it and so on without big lag. If that is possible with the 630 I'm going to buy it.
+ I want a phone with good support. LG's support is crap!
+ I want a phone which is cheaper than the Nexus 6 will be. Otherwise I'm going to buy Nexus 6.
+ I want a phone with round corners. Thats why I dont like phones such as the 1020. 930's corners are ok, but the phone is too expensive.

I did a little research already for Nokia phones, but I dont have a clue about the performance. What are my options? Wait for 730, 830? I would immediately buy the Lumia 638 if it would be available here in Austria.

Sorry for the long post, I really want to get a good phone this time and wanted to tell you my needs

Best,
Swoncen

 

[AndyM72]

Yes, I would say wait for the midrange quad core 1GB devices. I think you'll find the "Resuming" messages on a 512MB device like the 630 annoying.

No one yet knows for sure if both the 730 and 830 are going to have 1GB RAM or not.

 

[AnestisL820]

hello,
First of all for the lumia 730 or 830 you will have to wait and it seems to me that you want a phone now... The 512 ram is a minus but only for some games and very few apps so you won't have a problem with the usual apps and no lag... i don't know much for the camera but i am sure you can find some threads to take an idea... you said you use skype but you don't want ffc so you propably makeonly calls and you will have no problem with that... As for the Nokia Care i haven't used it personally but someone else could tell you... According to your needs i think lumia 630 will be perfect...

 

[anon8959613]

unlike android (i still use) you dont even have to worry about ram consumption
i dont find 512mb ram as the crippling factor for this phone.
its too smooth ....and the resuming this is a slight delay of 1 or 2 seconds which doesnt happen all the time ....

 

[manus31]

The 630 is my first windows phone. I too was concerned about the 512mb of ram prior to purchase, but I was never going to spend big bucks for a decent android phone, so I wanted something cheaper that could meet my needs. After doing the research, I decided to go for the 630. Great phone, and only cost me a hundred euro. I've had it two weeks now and its been fantastic, am running cyan with windows 8.1 preview for developers update. The phone runs great, I don't notice any lag whatsoever.

I am mainly connected to wifi, and use social networking, email, and browser regularly, the battery lasts about two days with this regular use, but I have turned off a lot of background apps and try to make the phone energy efficient. I don't play games, at least not ones that rely on graphics. I imagine that's where lag might be noticed.

I would recommend the 630 for light use, if your like me, then you wont need that extra ram, I have cortana set up on mine, with folders and all on my start screen, and all works great,

 

[ndutznul]

If i see what you need
630 is good choice. RAM 512 in wp is good enough, there is no lag problem but resuming time there is .But not that long ( 10-20 second )

 

[neo158]

I bought a Lumia 630 as a birthday present for my mum to replace an aging Galaxy Nexus, seems to be a fantastic phone for the money and her needs aren't that far off yours, having helped her set it up the 512MB RAM doesn't seem to slow it down but app loading and resuming do take a little longer but the Quad Core processor should negate the lack of memory in most cases. Be aware that the camera lacks a flash and I'm not sure what the low light performance is like.

 

[Swoncen]

First of all, thanks for all the replies. Helped me alot already. It seems that windows phone really requires less resources compared to android. When I say something like that to someone I get laughter from them. However, it seems 512 MB seems to be enough at the moment. How fast will that change for WP? I dont want to experience the same thing as with Android: new version -> more resources required. If you look at the specs of the new phones, it's ridiculous. 3 GB RAM, Quad Core 2.2 GHz+. I want the phone to be nice for at least 2 years from now. I'm closer to buying the 630 now, but I want to check out upcoming phones from Nokia. Is there a timeline or so?

Thanks alot! =)

If i see what you need
630 is good choise. RAM 512 in wp is good enough, there is no lag problem but resuming time there is .But not that long ( 10-20 second )

What do you mean exactly with resuming time?

 

[neo158]

First of all, thanks for all the replies. Helped me alot already. It seems that windows phone really requires less resources compared to android. When I say something like that to someone I get laughter from them. However, it seems 512 MB seems to be enough at the moment. How fast will that change for WP? I dont want to experience the same thing as with Android: new version -> more resources required. If you look at the specs of the new phones, it's ridiculous. 3 GB RAM, Quad Core 2.2 GHz+. I want the phone to be nice for at least 2 years from now. I'm closer to buying the 630 now, but I want to check out upcoming phones from Nokia. Is there a timeline or so?

Thanks alot! =)



What do you mean exactly with resuming time?

While WP devices now have 2GB+ RAM in them it isn't required to get it running smoothly and I doubt that will change any time soon. As for a time line, there isn't one AFAIK, just keep an eye on WPCentral.

The resuming time is when an app resumes from a tombstoned state in the background, the more RAM you have the faster it resumes.

 

[Swoncen]

While WP devices now have 2GB+ RAM in them it isn't required to get it running smoothly and I doubt that will change any time soon. As for a time line, there isn't one AFAIK, just keep an eye on WPCentral.

The resuming time is when an app resumes from a tombstoned state in the background, the more RAM you have the faster it resumes.

Okay thanks! 10-20 seconds resuming time seems very long. :-/

 

[neo158]

Okay thanks! 10-20 seconds resuming time seems very long. :-/

True, but compare that to a Lumia 520 and 10-20 seconds is extremely fast. You also need to remember that it depends on the app you are using as to how fast it resumes. Games will, naturally, take long to resume than other apps.

 

[Swoncen]

True, but compare that to a Lumia 520 and 10-20 seconds is extremely fast. You also need to remember that it depends on the app you are using as to how fast it resumes. Games will, naturally, take long to resume than other apps.

Let's talk about the apps I'm using: Facebook, Skype, Browser, Spotify, Email, Maps, Youtube. Lets say I open all of them. How is the memory management done? Does it start to get slower, or are the background apps pushed out of RAM onto the flash memory and then restored from the flash memory? Is there a way to close any app completely, so that it's not in the RAM anymore? On Android some apps dont have an exit button or whatever and if you go back or to the home screen it remains in memory which reduces performance over time. What is the usual procedure with windows phones and app-memory management? If that convinces me, I'm going to buy it today

 

[manus31]

Resuming time !!! wtf ? If your gonna leave all your apps aps open all the time, maybe there's such a thing, your battery will also drain fast. For me, there is no resuming time. Simply close the apps your not using. Dont run any unnecessary apps in the background. The only apps I have running in the background are facebook, whatsapp, battery app, calender etc. I dont even need to run outlook in the background for it to notify me of new mail. Set up your notification settings properly and you can runyour apps fast only when you need them. There is no resuming time, no lag

 

[neo158]

Resuming time !!! wtf ? If your gonna leave all your apps aps open all the time, maybe there's such a thing, your battery will also drain fast. For me, there is no resuming time. Simply close the apps your not using. Dont run any unnecessary apps in the background. The only apps I have running in the background are facebook, whatsapp, battery app, calender etc. I dont even need to run outlook in the background for it to notify me of new mail. Set up your notification settings properly and you can runyour apps fast only when you need them. There is no resuming time, no lag

Tombstoned apps use no power or CPU time so no, it won't drain your battery fast. This isn't Android where ALL apps run in real time when in the background so resuming time IS applicable here as tombstoned apps reload in the last state they were in before switching away from them.

What you're thinking of is background TASKS, yes those do use CPU time and will drain the battery fast if you have every background task running, especially if they are poorly coded apps.

 

[neo158]

Let's talk about the apps I'm using: Facebook, Skype, Browser, Spotify, Email, Maps, Youtube. Lets say I open all of them. How is the memory management done? Does it start to get slower, or are the background apps pushed out of RAM onto the flash memory and then restored from the flash memory? Is there a way to close any app completely, so that it's not in the RAM anymore? On Android some apps dont have an exit button or whatever and if you go back or to the home screen it remains in memory which reduces performance over time. What is the usual procedure with windows phones and app-memory management? If that convinces me, I'm going to buy it today

Basically, WP automatically manages the tombstoned apps so it will close them if it needs the extra RAM. The multitasking area, accessed by pushing and holding the back button, allows you to manually close apps using the "X" in the top right hand corner or a swipe down on the app "card".

 

[Swoncen]

Basically, WP automatically manages the tombstoned apps so it will close them if it needs the extra RAM. The multitasking area, accessed by pushing and holding the back button, allows you to manually close apps using the "X" in the top right hand corner or a swipe down on the app "card".

Thank you very much! I'm going to buy it now. Seems good enough for me =)

 

[manus31]

Okay, fair enough, Ive just looked up a bit on tombstoning. Looks like this is basically muti tasking, how windows phone deals performs multi tasking. For an experiment Ive opened up six or seven apps, including outlook, facebook, whatsapp, windows store. now when I hold the back button I can see that all of them are open, I pressed the home key in windows store just as it was loading a page, I can see still that this page remains the same in the window when I view it, sure enough it picks up from where it left off when I open it again. I can switch between these apps with no noticeable lag. Dont notice any resume time at all. Maybe resuming time would only be noticeable with resource heavy apps. games etc ??

 

[neo158]

Okay, fair enough, Ive just looked up a bit on tombstoning. Looks like this is basically muti tasking, how windows phone deals performs multi tasking. For an experiment Ive opened up six or seven apps, including outlook, facebook, whatsapp, windows store. now when I hold the back button I can see that all of them are open, I pressed the home key in windows store just as it was loading a page, I can see still that this page remains the same in the window when I view it, sure enough it picks up from where it left off when I open it again. I can switch between these apps with no noticeable lag. Dont notice any resume time at all. Maybe resuming time would only be noticeable with resource heavy apps. games etc ??

That's exactly it and the more RAM you have the less time the resource heavy apps i.e. games take to resume. OP, you shouldn't need to worry about resume times with the apps you're going to be using unless they are all open at the same time.

 

[realwarder]

That's exactly it and the more RAM you have the less time the resource heavy apps i.e. games take to resume. OP, you shouldn't need to worry about resume times with the apps you're going to be using unless they are all open at the same time.

If you start a large game or browse a million pages you may then get to resume tombstoned apps. If you just flip between a few smaller memory apps it will be instant.

630 is a nice phone at a great price.

 

[ndutznul]

Okay thanks! 10-20 seconds resuming time seems very long. :-/

10-20 sec, i reffering to your android phone experience..
yeah 10-20 sec is ridiculously long.
if you switch between app, i think not took so long.