Sold my Lumia 930 and bought a Nexus 5

[Phillip Deackes]

I had a Lumia 920, and recently bought a Lumia 930. I have now sold it and bought a Nexus 5.

On holiday this summer the 930 annoyed and frustrated me. Lots of reasons.

I'm not keen on the direction WP is going. Each update seems to take WP increasingly away from the original WP paradigm. The reasons for choosing WP over iOS or Android are just not there any more.

Battery life is poor. On holiday I left my hotel in the morning and returned at bedtime. The 930 battery lasted until lunchtime and even with a Nokia portable chrager I had a hard job keeping some juice into the late evening. GPS is simply not accurate enough. I used Here Maps and frequently looked up at the street sign to see a different street to the one in front of me on the map. I also find the Here Maps presentation harder for my brain to process - Google Maps suits me much better, even though they are online only. Facebook check-ins often had the location I was actually at quite a way down the list and took ages to lock on in the first place - and often I had to search for the location. I was forever having to do the figure of eight thing where you have to wave the phone around in the air to fix the compass - I couldn't do that in public, it just looks stupid. The app-gap really hit home. Everywhere there were apps which would have really added something to my holiday - train apps, tourist guides, bike hire app, you name it. They were all available for iOS and Android but never for WP.

After a few beers, lol, I put my Lumia 930 on Amazon Marketplace and ordered a new red Nexus 5. I LOVE this phone. All my WP gripes are gone, even battery life - though I didn't expect that one. GPS is spot on and Facebook check-in is near instant and very accurate. I love the widgets - all the info live tiles offers and more. The eye candy is really nice. Bluetooth connects much more quickly and I don't have the annoying WP thing where the Bluetooth volume defaults to very low each time it connects. I love the look of the phone - being firmly plastic I'm not always feeling like it's going to slip out of my hand, probably because I'm not as concerned about it getting damaged. The LED notifications - configurable by colour - is icing on the cake.

Then there's the price - the Nexus 5 is one hell of a bargain. Amazing given the spec and the quality of that screen. I also notice that the display seems closer to the surface than on other phones making touch more accurate. I also love the way the touch buttons are part of the display - fire up a movie or an ebook and they disappear and the viewing area increases to cover nearly all of the front surface of the phone.

Can't wait for the Nexus 6 now :grin:

 

[Pranshul Sood]

u will return to windows phone in just a matter of weeks. I guarantee it

 

[Mavee Shah]

You did the right thing...hope you may enjoy...I'm gonna follow you soon if things with WP go the way they are going

 

[Phillip Deackes]

I have kept my old Lumia 920 so I always have that option. At the moment I can't see that happening - the Nexus 5 offers everything WP does and more.

TBH, I'm not a fanboy of any platform - have had every iPhone apart from the latest 5S, I know WP inside out and now Android. At the end of the day my phone has to be an adjunct to my daily routine, not get in the way of what I want to do. WP gets in the way far too often.

 

[Ian Too]

I'm glad you're pleased with your new device and hope it serves you well. I'm also sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction and problems with the Lumia 930, a candidate for my next one since I currently use a Lumia 920.

I think some of the problems, like the low battery life, are down to the 930 being a newly released device. It's quite reasonable to expect that future firmware updates will improve this and also that the device will in fact get better naturally with use as the calibration of the battery meter improves.(How is the device supposed to know how long it spent on the shelf with it's battery quietly discharging?)

You criticism of the GPS, while clearly true and inconvenient, I actually take as a positive. The fact that the GPS has to start and takes time to acquire a lock on is my cast iron guarantee that my device is not transmitting my location to Microsoft and inadvertently to the NSA or GCHQ. Whether that has changed now that I run Cortana I do not know. Cortana now knows where I live and work, but as I understand it, personal information is stored on the device and not uploaded to MS. The simple point here is that information which is not transmitted cannot be intercepted and it is a well known fact that Google and Apple track the movements of these devices: Apple in order to improve their services and Google to build the profile of their users and target them with advertising.

This is not rampant Google-bashing, but the natural extension of good sense into the electronic realm. If an acquaintance asks me where I live, I give the locale but not the location - South London, not Lambeth Palace. (Note: I lie, I am not the Archbishop of Canterbury, because you do not need to know where I live) Now, unless you're expecting Sergi Brin to tea, there is no reason for Google to know where you live, so why did you let them track your movements?

This is why there is no innovation or standard which Android can attain which will make me allow one in my home. I would rather have a technically inferior device over one run by a company which doesn't respect my privacy. And I do not accept that Windows Phone is technically inferior since it will soon be available on the HTC W8, the same hardware as the One M8, one of the most highly regarded Android phones.

So good luck with your new device and be careful when you're done with it, to actively purge your data, because the reset will only delete the directory tree. Your data will still be on the device recoverable by the new owner using a PC.

 

[DimitarStanev]

Wow, you must not understand how touchscreens work if you think the display being "closer" to the surface might actually affect how touches are recognized.
Battery life depends on what you're running... If you have, say, 10 apps running in the background, constantly using GPS/Data, no wonder the battery drains in hours...
On the other hand, sell me that 930 for 300$ plz

 

[Rick_Air]

I've been thinking of switching to Android too. Just don't know enough to know if I'll miss WP or not. I like the tiles and not sure if widgets will give me what I personally require.
As said WP is loosing some of what made it different so the leap isn't so big now.

 

[realwarder]

I just don't get these threads. When I moved from iPhone to Windows Phone I didn't go back and unload on it.

Glad you're liking your new phone and that it suits you. Phones are a personal choice.

 

[tropolite]

Well thankfully that is why there is a choice and everyone is allowed to choose.

Personally with a 1520 and 8.1 as well as the update I'm excited to see where WP is going now that all the crap has been dealt with over the last 2yrs.
Enjoy your choice. You have the right too, and also the ability to try out all the other alternatives too. That's what I did and that's why I continue with WP.

 

[Timbre70]

You should have bought a L1520 instead.😃

 

[prasath1234]

Hope you enjoy your nexus 5 and all the appşss.

Sent from my C2305 using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[bryanibuan]

Nexus 5? Beautiful?

 

[Phillip Deackes]

Lol! I understand perfectly well how digitisers work. If the touch sensitive layer is further down the stack touching smaller areas is very slightly less precise because of things like refraction. I also like the look of a display which appears nearer to the surface of the screen.

I'm also well aware of issues which can affect battery life - I just found the 930 drains the battery faster than many other phones even when I'm not acctually using it.

 

[Phillip Deackes]

Do you actually like the cursor on WP? I could rarely hit the little circle to move it. 9 times out of 10 I couldn't hit it precisely enough. Android is much better in this regard. Try it and see.

 

[Ian Too]

I just don't get these threads. When I moved from iPhone to Windows Phone I didn't go back and unload on it.

Generally I have to agree with you, but this poster has raised legitimate concerns. He's clearly no troll.

So how do we explain what happened?

One possibility is he got a faulty unit. It can happen to anyone, but I tend to think Nokias are well made.

Another possibility is that the specifications are different from the 920 in important ways. The display will take more more power because not only is it bigger than on the 920, but it is also HD and OLED. I would never use the white background on an OLED device because lighting up all those pixels would chew mightily into the battery in a way that the 920's IPS display would not. If the OP still had the device, he could have checked what functions or apps were using power with the built in Battery Sense app.

Another source of battery drain would be if he switched from 3G to 4G. I have recently switched myself and found that it uses more battery without much change in usage. Add extra video and podcast streaming and your battery is going to be hit big time. Holiday usage is also higher, so if the device will have more drain than normal, so can be added to why the device is seeming to under perform.

I am concerned that the OP hasn't given the 930 enough time for his experience to be representative of daily use. That he's now transmitting his personal information to a for profit company with a dubious record of respecting personal privacy. That he's now trusting a system with serious security flaws.

If someone were to put a gun to my head and said I had to have an Android device, I would choose a Nexus, but I'd be miserable about it.

 

[Phillip Deackes]

I just don't get these threads. When I moved from iPhone to Windows Phone I didn't go back and unload on it..

I thought that's what this particular forum was all about . . I'm always happy to read what others who have actually used the devices concerned have to say. It helps educate us. I hate fanboys, especially those who have never tried anything else - I have colleagues at work, firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem who criticise WP and Android and have never even used either. They're not worth listening to!

 

[Rick_Air]

Yeah I've never used IOS or Android so like reading the comparisons and opinions.
@Ian Too transmitting his info to a for profit company? Microsoft isn't doing this out the goodness of their hearts you know

 

[Chriscom78]

Thanks to the OP for posting this. I've been a big Windows Phone evangelist in my circles and think I can take credit for a few sales. But I'm beginning to have my doubts and the OP raises some reasons why. The crazy exclusivity agreements are another, and after being with WP since 7x., I no longer care why. Just stop.

But the reason I'm posting is a statement above about Nokia quality. I know everyone has different experiences, but I have a generally low opinion in this area, the main exception being I've been amazed at some of the abuse (like, dropping on concrete floors) my Nokia phones have taken and kept working.

But I've had the 520x, whatever T-Mobile sold; a 630 and 635, and have been unimpressed. I know these are all budget phones, but the battery performance has been dreadful. They all go crazy with reboots and browser crashes when I hit certain websites that other phones in my possession handle just fine. The 8.1 developer update made the battery life of my 630 such that the phone is unusable during the course of a normal day (I recognized problems were part of the risk of doing it, so I wasn't outraged or anything, but it was another strike against the device). My new 635 has poor battery endurance as well, and has a bunch of other crazy behaviors I won't go into. And yes, I'm a battery-endurance fanatic so I'm always making sure apps are closed and everything else is optimized.,

So I'm not a big fan of Nokia "quality" but I recognize others have had better experiences and I may have had a better time of it with their flagships. Had I been willing to change carriers every time I want a new phone.

My first phone was an HTC Trophy running 7.x. I loved that phone and it was a big reason I was running around telling everyone how great Windows Phone was. Never had any trouble with it, the system ran smooth as silk and oh, remember the days of Zune.... For that reason, I'm looking forward to HTC's latest effort, plus that phone hits most of the sweet spots in terms of higher specs--and it looks handsome. (Insert rant about exclusives here).

What am I running now? A Blackberry Q10. The phone audio quality is unreal -- it's better than my Vonage VOIP sometimes. Email, texts etc run well; browser is really fast and reliable. Probably not a long-term option though for all the obvious reasons.

I bought a Moto G to play with and so I understand where the OP is coming from. The battery outperforms any of my Nokias, it's a beautiful device, everything works, and the world is your oyster with apps. For the money (when bought), performance and versatility it blows any same-class WP out of the water.

I love Windows Phone but I think this next round, whether the HTC or something else, is the last chance for me.

 

[salmanahmad]

My first smartphone was an Android, HTC Explorer to be specific and I eventually bought the Sony flagship Xperia S in 2012, I dropped it badly a few times and it never worked again.

Had to go back to the low-end HTC Explorer(Pico) and I flashed Custom ROMs and kernels on it, overclocked it and finally went and got a Lumia 520.

Since I had been using an ancient low end device for so long Lumia 520 was a beast and I immediately thought that WP the best out there.

I switched to Nexus 5 just a month ago and finally rediscovered the beauty, smoothness and functionality of Android once again.

Windows Phone is pretty good but the app gap for me was too huge to fully enjoy a Windows Phone, moving back to Android I've gotten all the apps I need.

The Nexus 5's only problem could be speaker quality or battery life both of which vary for different people but this device is still amazing.

Did you enable ART btw? If you ever wanna talk about your experiences with Nexus 5, do leave me a message. 😃

 

[Diniy Moktar]

I also have been thinking lately to switch to either Iphone or Android. I am a big fan of WP. It is my first smartphone even though at that time when I bought it Android is famous. Lets see how long can I maintain this. Been waiting for the Cyan for L920. I dont know how long I can last. -.-'