I want a small phone, is the Lumia 620 good?

[ET3D]

Didn't know whether to post this in the Phone Wars forum or Nokia 620 forum or here, but this looks more active. So I'll start with an introduction and hope you'll help with my decision.

A few months ago I was asked nicely by people to move from my Nokia 6120c phone to a smartphone, so I can have access to WhatsApp. I ended up buying a THL A3, a cheap Chinese Android phone. The main reason I bought it was that I wanted a small phone. It's still significantly larger than the 6120c, but it's smaller than the vast majority of smartphones. The main problem with it is a bad microphone, with people complaining that they don't hear me well.

So I'm thinking of moving to another phone. My two current candidates are the Nokia 208 and the Nokia Lumia 620. The first is a simple phone but comes with WhatsApp so will cover that aspect. The second is a little bigger than the THL A3 (and significantly heavier), but it's still one of the smaller smartphones around, and is more interesting and it would be easier to type text on it.

I don't use my phone much at all. All I do is take calls (I talk about 2 hours a month) on it and occasionally text. WhatsApp and camera are of occasional use, and I did use Skype once on my A3, and googled something a couple of times.

My main questions are: How is the 620 as a phone? How convenient is Windows Phone for just using basic phone functions? I just want something which works well and is reliable, preferably with a decently long battery life when not used much.

Thanks in advance!

(And by the way, I'm a pretty techy person, a software developer, and I use a Nexus 7 quite a bit. I just don't need to have all that complexity in a phone, since I'm already on a PC most of the day.)

 

[techiez]

Now you tell me.

While I'm tempted to go back to the 6120c to see how well that works, I already have the Lumia on the way, so I think I'll try that for a while. If I give up on modern smartphones, I now know that I can run WhatsApp on my old Nokia.

It will be battery hog but.

 

[heickelrrx]

Ended up ordering the 620. Hopefully I'll get it this week. Then I'll see for myself how good or bad it really is.

Thanks for all the comments.

As you're ordering 620 as 625 user I would like to recommend to update your software to cyan. Don't instal PFD or if you did don't put too much l live folder

And don't ever instal custom lock screen apps it still in beta and slow your phone maybe they make it into the OS later.

Anyway good luck for 620

 

[User788]

You can always use your 6120c as a backup phone. Anyway, do tell us how you find your 620 when you get it!

 

[ET3D]

Unfortunately the 6120c and 620 use different SIM sizes, so I'll have to use my THL A3 as the backup phone (it has both normal SIM and micro SIM slots).

All in all, once I got through the annoying OS updates (4 of them, with no way of telling when the phone will actually get to finish preparing and get on with installing), I find it a decent phone. I don't think it's amazing, and frankly I prefer the Android style desktop, but everything works fine and on the whole I'm satisfied. Only thing I don't like is the battery life. I need to charge it every day even if I hardly use it. The THL A3 could last up to 3 days (although that was borderline) if I didn't use it much, and it has a slightly smaller battery. The 620 is left with about 30% battery after a day.

 

[heickelrrx]

Unfortunately the 6120c and 620 use different SIM sizes, so I'll have to use my THL A3 as the backup phone (it has both normal SIM and micro SIM slots).

All in all, once I got through the annoying OS updates (4 of them, with no way of telling when the phone will actually get to finish preparing and get on with installing), I find it a decent phone. I don't think it's amazing, and frankly I prefer the Android style desktop, but everything works fine and on the whole I'm satisfied. Only thing I don't like is the battery life. I need to charge it every day even if I hardly use it. The THL A3 could last up to 3 days (although that was borderline) if I didn't use it much, and it has a slightly smaller battery. The 620 is left with about 30% battery after a day.

Use dark background. Disable glance and try to reconfigure battery saver.

 

[ET3D]

Glance screen is already off, background is dark and battery saver is set to "When battery is low". I suppose I could set it to "always", but I'm not sure what that would limit.

I have another niggle by now: contacts. First of all, I don't have all contact details. It looks like Windows Phone doesn't support custom contact fields, and therefore these weren't synced with my Google account. I don't like this loss of functionality. Also, phone numbers are shown in a small font coloured using the accent colour, so they're not all that easy to see. I find it baffling that the colour of this and the start screen background use the same colour. (I did set the start screen to an image, but I'm not sure what an "accent colour" is exactly, why it's used for the font, and where else it is used.)

 

[abhishake620]

Disable nfc ... Set brightness to manual then set it to low and then set it back to automatic ...... As far as you have told you can also disable location service ..... Open battery saver and disable everything( change to not allowed) from running in background except WhatsApp .... Especially here drive ..... Apart from that facebook is also a battery hog .... Disable it from running in background, all under 'battery sense'..... Also close apps by long pressing on the back button ... And battery will last for more than a day for your usage.... Lumia 620 is the best mid range phone out there still ....with of course a small screen .... # 1.5 years on still going strong...

 

[ET3D]

Thanks for the tips. I'll see how they improve battery life.

 

[heickelrrx]

Glance screen is already off, background is dark and battery saver is set to "When battery is low". I suppose I could set it to "always", but I'm not sure what that would limit.

I have another niggle by now: contacts. First of all, I don't have all contact details. It looks like Windows Phone doesn't support custom contact fields, and therefore these weren't synced with my Google account. I don't like this loss of functionality. Also, phone numbers are shown in a small font coloured using the accent colour, so they're not all that easy to see. I find it baffling that the colour of this and the start screen background use the same colour. (I did set the start screen to an image, but I'm not sure what an "accent colour" is exactly, why it's used for the font, and where else it is used.)

Try to Import your contact information to your live account. I think it's solve your problem

 

[Sakitumi]

I use thi NL620 since December 2012, great phone packed with all kinds of features you cannot find in newer Lumia phones as ffc, nfc, camera dedicated button, glance screen...

 

[ET3D]

I just tried to put on the 620 the ringtone I've been using for years on all my phones. It's a midi file, and it's not shown in the ringtone list, so I guess that the phone doesn't support midi ringtones. I'll have to convert it.

 

[SammyD97]

You'll have to convert that to mp3 if you want it as a ringtone.

 

[ET3D]

I just realised that the accent colour is used as a background for SMS messages, with white text on it, as well as for phone number text on the black background, so if you choose a lighter colour, the SMS text will be hard to see, if you choose darker, the phone numbers will be hard to see, and it's impossible to find a case where they will both be clear.

Who made that stupid design decision?

 

[SammyD97]

You'll find the accent colour in all the nooks and crannies of the OS.

 

[Nicholas Maguire]

I just realised that the accent colour is used as a background for SMS messages, with white text on it, as well as for phone number text on the black background, so if you choose a lighter colour, the SMS text will be hard to see, if you choose darker, the phone numbers will be hard to see, and it's impossible to find a case where they will both be clear.

Who made that stupid design
decision?

I've tried almost every accent color in the Os, it's always been easy to see. I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[SammyD97]

I've tried almost every accent color in the Os, it's always been easy to see. I don't know what you're talking about.

Maybe he's got bad eyesight. Or some form of colour blindness (hope I'm not being offensive).

 

[Nicholas Maguire]

Maybe he's got bad eyesight. Or some form of colour blindness (hope I'm not being offensive).

Well, my eyesight isn't exactly good. I wear glasses. And everything on Windows phone is easier to see than the super bright and colorful IOS and Android OS's.

 

[ET3D]

Middle aged eyes here. I switch between normal (farsighted) and reading glasses. I can read things well enough on the phone with reading glasses, but on my THL A3 I could also read them well enough with my normal glasses, even though it has a smaller (3.5") screen, and on the Lumia I can't, due to the font and colours used.

Edit: Found the ease of access controls. Enlarged the font and changed to high contrast. Interface is now black/white and not attractive, but I can see it much better. Android can give me a colourful background and still be readable, but I can live without colour.

 

[heickelrrx]

Middle aged eyes here. I switch between normal (farsighted) and reading glasses. I can read things well enough on the phone with reading glasses, but on my THL A3 I could also read them well enough with my normal glasses, even though it has a smaller (3.5") screen, and on the Lumia I can't, due to the font and colours used.

Edit: Found the ease of access controls. Enlarged the font and changed to high contrast. Interface is now black/white and not attractive, but I can see it much better. Android can give me a colourful background and still be readable, but I can live without colour.

So basically put you can't read white color font?

 

[ET3D]

If the contrast is low, I have a harder time reading. Black on white or white on black have the highest contrast, but white on dark blue is fine, etc. It's just that the colour choices on the phone (when not in "high contrast" mode) assure that the contrast of either phone numbers of text messages is low.