New to Lumia 635...Couple days....Couple observations.....Couple questions

[cawafuoshi]

Hi to everyone,

Coming from iOS and iPhone 5s, the 635 is just a stop-gap until I can make up my mind to either go for the iPhone 6 or another Lumia or WP device in the next couple of months. I trashed my 5s and the 6 wasn't available when needed. The cheapest LTE phone option to sign up for seemed to be the 635. Since I've had some playtime with a 521, I basically knew what to expect.

Now, to be honest, I can do most stuff I have been doing on the iPhone on this budget phone. This is a remarkable evolution in the cheap phone segment; it sucks a lot less being on a budget phone than it used to some 4 years ago. I am pretty sure the same is true for the low-end Android segment nowadays.

Nevertheless, there is one detail that stuns me: the internet (explorer) experience must be one of the worst mobile browser experiences. It not only crashes a lot while loading; it also seem sluggish and slow when it works otherwise fine. Since phones have become my major internet surfing device, it kind of is a reason to consider a different phone or platform depending on what causes this problem. Is it the limited memory? Is it the current WP built? Is it the current version of IE? Is it the processor? A combination?

Thanks for shedding some light on this. Otherwise, I do like WP's tile interface and some other niceties. The 635 seems otherwise to be a great device (design language, built quality).

 

[xandros9]

Can you add some detail regarding internet?
What are you doing? What websites crash? My 920's and my sister's 521 IE experience has been reasonably solid, so I imagine its an issue unique to your usage or device.

But nice to hear you're enjoying the other parts.

 

[Dave47]

I've had a 635 for about 2 months now and have never had IE crash or appear to be sluggish. I've not noticed the phone being memory starved but I also don't let stuff pile up in the background. When I'm done with something, I close it.

 

[Hi Fadia]

I have some problems with IE crashing sometimes too
I just save myself the trouble and use UC browser

 

[k72]

Internet Explorer had worked for me too, but now it crashes often, but it seems to be just on certain news websites (maybe too many ads? Not sure). These sites had never given me trouble before, though, so I'm not sure what the deal is. I really like maxthon, but it crashed every time.

 

[anon(5348756)]

IE on my 920 has never or extremely rarely crashed, but it's certainly not the speediest in 8.1.1... I'm hoping they'll really overhaul it with Windows 10 for phones.

 

[cawafuoshi]

Can you add some detail regarding internet?
What are you doing? What websites crash? My 920's and my sister's 521 IE experience has been reasonably solid, so I imagine its an issue unique to your usage or device.

But nice to hear you're enjoying the other parts.

Surfing mainly news outlets. guardian.co.uk, even wpcentral, tend to crash more than the odd moment. So far, I do not remember any website that hasn't displayed now and then some odd behavior (crash, lag, etc.)

 

[ams963]

Just install UC Browser. You'll love the internet experience. I don't use IE on PC nor on WP.

 

[sanjeet_deshwal]

download either UC browser or surfy ,they are faster than IE

 

[Fred Wilson2]

I have both of those and like Surfy much better.
Very nice, snappy, easy.


Fred

download either UC browser or surfy ,they are faster than IE

 

[cawafuoshi]

download either UC browser or surfy ,they are faster than IE

Not all pages render correctly with UC. Even tried Opera. All browsers do seem to have serious limitations. Let's put it like this: internet isn't this phone's strength. It's a great phone for everything else though (if video calls aren't a must). Like the clarity of phone calls and audio playback (Spotify Premium account, high bit rate).

 

[cawafuoshi]

Two months later and I can say the internet explorer experience has somewhat slightly improved. Not sure if it was due to an update that was pushed out some weeks ago. I don't feel now the immediate urge to replace it with a different make and model. Another observation that has surfaced is the fact that it seems to lose data connection every once in a while and only turning it off will re-establish LTE/4G/3G/2G.

 

[scanf]

Yea the IE experience on this phone is TERRIBLE. Crashes, force closes, no fit to screen, even big websites like the Verge don't render properly and are always forever refreshing.

I use Opera which itself is barely functional; those transcode errors are only fixed thru screwing around in server setup.

I just keep my S3 around for searches as when I'm playing Skyrim and need some console command for making a dragon appear or for dungeon walkthroughs. Completing such a task on my WP would be a tedious pain.

 

[Ten Four]

It's strange, but I tried the various browsers, found them all to be OK, but reverted to just using IE. For what I do I find it works great, seems just as fast or faster than the others, and I have very few problems loading pages. Once in awhile some page will not load up on the first try, but almost always will on the second try or a refresh. In other words, I'm not experiencing the IE hate I read here.