Bought a Lumia 928, currently using it on Vodafone in Australia. Bought it to hopefully replace a Razr HD XT926. Both are Verizon LTE devices, and both work on 3G over here (I have an Unlimited 4G plan on Verizon that I have to keep suspending while in Australia; when we are in the US it's awesome to have). I updated it to 8.1, and did a reset before setting it up. So, here's some questions and comments from a newbie to the Lumia 928 and Windows Phone in general.
Battery life seems poor. Maybe I need a new battery, or maybe I'm actually getting exceptional battery life for this model phone. With screen on auto (and indoors, so it's dim) and using Internet Explorer most of the time, it's draining between 25%-30% per hour. This is with a decent-ish mobile signal, wifi on, bluetooth off. Is this good, bad, average?
I did the general battery-life extending stuff. Delete/reinstall the Gmail account, set it to only update every 15 minutes, disable some stuff in the Music app (forgot what), disabled a lot of background stuff that was going on, etc. Here's a screenshot of the battery page:
Edit: I can't post a link yet, but I attached the screenshot to the post.
Internet Explorer was sucking even more battery before I disabled running in the background. Perhaps an alternative browser would help?
Is there an extended battery case for this phone? I see one for the 920, doubt that would fit. Doubling the battery life would make it a bit better than the Droid Razr HD (not the Maxx, btw).
It would randomly lock up once or so a day. That's one of the reasons I wanted to replace the Razr, as it would lock-up and reboot once or twice a day. The Lumia wouldn't even reboot, just stay locked up until I did a hard power down (power button and volume up or down, maybe it was both). Disabling the Glance screen fixed this, though I did rather like that (I could glance over at night and see the time, and it wasn't bright enough to interrupt sleep).
Apps! As in, missing a bunch. No Citibank AU app (this is needed to generate one-time-passcodes, luckily SMS is a backup). Wife and I use Goodbudget (Envelope budgeting) and Our Groceries (grocery list) apps on Android quite extensively. Is there anything like this that works on both Windows Phone and Android? It has to be something that can sync pretty reliably (we can divide and conquer our grocery shopping, as she gets items she crosses it off the Our Groceries list and I immediately see it's no longer needed).
Calendar app works ok. If you shrink it to mid-size, it cuts off the information in a way that shows inaccurate information. As in, it'll show the next day's event as happening Today (at least, that's how it reads). Full-size it shows the info correctly. Also, adding an event in the Calendar app does not seem to sync back to my Google Calendar (though it displays my Google Calendar events).
Bluetooth headphones work fine, though if the phone's in my pocket and I'm moving the music will cut out a few times per song (it's brief, fraction of a second, but annoying nonetheless).
Camera seems decent enough. I was really impressed with action shots. Took a picture of a ceiling fan on full speed, looks like it's not moving at all (no blur). Tried again in total darkness with the flash, same. Daughter swinging, foot was a bit blurry plus you can't take a shot right away (have to wait until the person is right where you want them to be for the pic, let the camera focus, then wait until the person is back in that position to actually take the picture; i.e. on the swing forward do the focusing, wait for the swing back, and take the picture on the next swing forward). It won't replace our Canon Powershot, but I think it's the best smartphone camera we've had.
Oh, I had to install an app (called Access Point or something) to get mobile data working. Even though there were settings for the sim that indicated it should work (I could manually change the APN), but it just didn't. I couldn't find the app in the Store. I had to google the link, then type the link manually on the phone. That brought up the app in the Store, where I installed it and everything magically worked. I'm curious, could I uninstall the app and have everything still work (even changing sims and putting in a different APN?)?
Thanks!
Battery life seems poor. Maybe I need a new battery, or maybe I'm actually getting exceptional battery life for this model phone. With screen on auto (and indoors, so it's dim) and using Internet Explorer most of the time, it's draining between 25%-30% per hour. This is with a decent-ish mobile signal, wifi on, bluetooth off. Is this good, bad, average?
I did the general battery-life extending stuff. Delete/reinstall the Gmail account, set it to only update every 15 minutes, disable some stuff in the Music app (forgot what), disabled a lot of background stuff that was going on, etc. Here's a screenshot of the battery page:
Edit: I can't post a link yet, but I attached the screenshot to the post.
Internet Explorer was sucking even more battery before I disabled running in the background. Perhaps an alternative browser would help?
Is there an extended battery case for this phone? I see one for the 920, doubt that would fit. Doubling the battery life would make it a bit better than the Droid Razr HD (not the Maxx, btw).
It would randomly lock up once or so a day. That's one of the reasons I wanted to replace the Razr, as it would lock-up and reboot once or twice a day. The Lumia wouldn't even reboot, just stay locked up until I did a hard power down (power button and volume up or down, maybe it was both). Disabling the Glance screen fixed this, though I did rather like that (I could glance over at night and see the time, and it wasn't bright enough to interrupt sleep).
Apps! As in, missing a bunch. No Citibank AU app (this is needed to generate one-time-passcodes, luckily SMS is a backup). Wife and I use Goodbudget (Envelope budgeting) and Our Groceries (grocery list) apps on Android quite extensively. Is there anything like this that works on both Windows Phone and Android? It has to be something that can sync pretty reliably (we can divide and conquer our grocery shopping, as she gets items she crosses it off the Our Groceries list and I immediately see it's no longer needed).
Calendar app works ok. If you shrink it to mid-size, it cuts off the information in a way that shows inaccurate information. As in, it'll show the next day's event as happening Today (at least, that's how it reads). Full-size it shows the info correctly. Also, adding an event in the Calendar app does not seem to sync back to my Google Calendar (though it displays my Google Calendar events).
Bluetooth headphones work fine, though if the phone's in my pocket and I'm moving the music will cut out a few times per song (it's brief, fraction of a second, but annoying nonetheless).
Camera seems decent enough. I was really impressed with action shots. Took a picture of a ceiling fan on full speed, looks like it's not moving at all (no blur). Tried again in total darkness with the flash, same. Daughter swinging, foot was a bit blurry plus you can't take a shot right away (have to wait until the person is right where you want them to be for the pic, let the camera focus, then wait until the person is back in that position to actually take the picture; i.e. on the swing forward do the focusing, wait for the swing back, and take the picture on the next swing forward). It won't replace our Canon Powershot, but I think it's the best smartphone camera we've had.
Oh, I had to install an app (called Access Point or something) to get mobile data working. Even though there were settings for the sim that indicated it should work (I could manually change the APN), but it just didn't. I couldn't find the app in the Store. I had to google the link, then type the link manually on the phone. That brought up the app in the Store, where I installed it and everything magically worked. I'm curious, could I uninstall the app and have everything still work (even changing sims and putting in a different APN?)?
Thanks!
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