Time to jump on the 8.1 Wagon

[FdMM]

Dear All,

it is a week I got my Lumia 1020. It was highly discounted so I could not resist. This is my first windows phone (if you exclude the windows mobile ones ;-)) and I am very very impressed.
Couple of things still bother me like absence of quick settings (I found them very useful in iOs and Android) and other couple of things (Battery is not great, but I would wait a week to see if it gets better)..
Now I see that 8.1 is already out, and I was wondering it is stable enough to upgrade. What is your experience?

Also, I read conflicting things on the downgrade path. Somebody says it is possible, other says it is not...

 

[erda0]

I have Lumia 1020 too.
I think the update is stable and absolutely better then 8.0 version.

 

[jojoe42]

Dear All,

it is a week I got my Lumia 1020. It was highly discounted so I could not resist. This is my first windows phone (if you exclude the windows mobile ones ;-)) and I am very very impressed.
Couple of things still bother me like absence of quick settings (I found them very useful in iOs and Android) and other couple of things (Battery is not great, but I would wait a week to see if it gets better)..
Now I see that 8.1 is already out, and I was wondering it is stable enough to upgrade. What is your experience?

Also, I read conflicting things on the downgrade path. Somebody says it is possible, other says it is not...

Hi there! Welcome to the WPCentral forums and also to Windows Phone!!! I also have a 1020 (and also on WP8.1) so I guess I can answer your questions

1. Battery will improve over the next couple of weeks. When I first got my 1020 the battery life was pretty terrible, but after two or so weeks of usage (and of course draining the phone down to 5% once and trying to get it to 20% before charging it) my battery was averaging about 1-2 days of medium usage. My advice is to wait a couple of weeks until your battery/phone settles down before considering updating to WP8.1, as this will drain your battery further if the battery/OS hasn't been conditioned priorly (some also have theories that the OS optimises itself as time goes along, who knows )
2. I seem to have been quite lucky in terms of upgrading onto the dev preview for 8.1 - I haven't ever done it before, and I have read about some issues, but from my POV most of the 1020 owners haven't been experiencing as many issues as owners of the Icon and 1520(by chance?); a little patience is required. The first week obviously your battery life is terrible (cause you're using it much more like when you first bought the phone), but it's settled down to what I got on Nokia Black, or maybe slightly less. Personally worth the trade of ridiculous battery life for more features cause I plug my phone in every night pretty much
3. As far as I've had it there have been a few bugs and wait times here and there throughout the OS (like for example, when I changed region to get Cortana my battery level dropped to 20%, but after a soft reset it went back up to 100% like it was before) but for the most part it's pretty stable, but it's always safer not to upgrade....but also....I wouldn't live without the new features
4. Downgrading is possible - Nokia released their own software for enthusiasts to 'flash back' to old software. I think it's called Nokia Care Suite?? (I haven't used it before)

Hope you're enjoying the fantastic camera on that thing - just remember to tweak around with the manual settings!!! I took my 1020 with me on holiday to the US and it captured shots the rest of my family with iPhones couldn't even get

 

[Anantha RamaKrishnan]

Actually Windows phone 8.1 is an impressive update!!! its got several new features like Cortana(voice assistant), Notification center in major, But have big time battery issue in 8.1. My opinion is you better wait for official 8.1 update.Its on june 24

 

[hotphil]

Where's the June 24 date come from?

 

[Emmad Umar]

Actually Windows phone 8.1 is an impressive update!!! its got several new features like Cortana(voice assistant), Notification center in major, But have big time battery issue in 8.1. My opinion is you better wait for official 8.1 update.Its on june 24

how do you know that its coming on june 24. microsoft didn't give any specific release date

 

[buxz777]

battery drain here flashed back to 8.0 but there was an update yesterday that was supposed to help battery life in 8.1 ;-) I am waiting for official release with cyan firmware from nokia ;-)

 

[chezm]

I have Lumia 1020 too.
I think the update is stable and absolutely better then 8.0 version.

This, update is running great...totally worth it.

 

[christenmartin]

I flashed back twice! Just go to Nokia.com and do through support until you get to the software. It takes all of 10 minutes you reboot. Since the update this week I might try 8.1 again. My 920 took it like a champ, my 1520 did not like it. The battery settles out in a week or 2 so you should see some real good battery life.

 

[buxz777]

I flashed back twice! Just go to Nokia.com and do through support until you get to the software. It takes all of 10 minutes you reboot. Since the update this week I might try 8.1 again. My 920 took it like a champ, my 1520 did not like it. The battery settles out in a week or 2 so you should see some real good battery life.

wasn't the case with me , clean install , didn't restore back up , battery life was ok at 1st , then boom it went crazy using like 5% or more an hour in idle with all battery saving tips enabled and all types of settings changed and background apps blocked ;-)

steve from aaw also noticed big drain in his 1020 , so much so he even wrote an article and tested several phones and ios7 seemed to drink less battery then others in idle with windows 8.1 on his 1020 even worse then android and Symbian , in fact 8.1 was the biggest battery ***** out of all of them :-/ hoping this update fixes it up big time :-/
Charting the hill that WP 8.1 has to climb to get decent battery life (vs Symbian/iOS/Android)

he does say 36 hours after he wrote it , the update was released and it seems much better ;-)

 

[jojoe42]

We do have to keep in mind that 8.1 is a DEV preview, and so any bugs like bad battery life should be fixed before the final release. Save your judgments!!

 

[Guytronic]

Dear All,

it is a week I got my Lumia 1020. It was highly discounted so I could not resist. This is my first windows phone (if you exclude the windows mobile ones ;-)) and I am very very impressed.
Couple of things still bother me like absence of quick settings (I found them very useful in iOs and Android) and other couple of things (Battery is not great, but I would wait a week to see if it gets better)..
Now I see that 8.1 is already out, and I was wondering it is stable enough to upgrade. What is your experience?

Also, I read conflicting things on the downgrade path. Somebody says it is possible, other says it is not...

I'm quite sure you will be happy with the preview and the latest update to it.
The public release will come to all users shortly if you can wait for that however.

Wishing you all the best with the 1020.
Welcome to WPC FdMM!

 

[JamesPTao]

Dear All,

it is a week I got my Lumia 1020. It was highly discounted so I could not resist. This is my first windows phone (if you exclude the windows mobile ones ;-)) and I am very very impressed.
Couple of things still bother me like absence of quick settings (I found them very useful in iOs and Android) and other couple of things (Battery is not great, but I would wait a week to see if it gets better)..
Now I see that 8.1 is already out, and I was wondering it is stable enough to upgrade. What is your experience?

Also, I read conflicting things on the downgrade path. Somebody says it is possible, other says it is not...

Have had 0 issues with the dev wp8.1 update. It is awesome and love the added features. Even though its beta very stable and worth downloading! Have been running it for several weeks on my Lumia 920 with 0 issues, well except OneDrive under photos hub thumbnail got stuck before update. Hard reset 1 day before 8.1 update fixed it. Make the leap, you'll love it.

 

[OHardy]

The battery drain issues were resolved on the NL521, 920 & 925 which I updated (WP 8.1 Update 1) yesterday.

 

[o_OAndys]

sorry to hijack thread, didn't i see claims of the picture quality getting worse with 8.1? i also want to go 8.1, but have not yet solely because of the camera comments.

 

[blue1k]

There is no degradation of picture quality. These were all taken with 8.1 using the Nokia Beta Camera.

In fact, I'm finding my photos have better white balance with Beta app. 8.1 seems to have no difference on photo quality. It shouldn't, as compression and jpeg algorithms are firmware specific.

Posted via the WPC App for Android!

 

[christenmartin]

wasn't the case with me , clean install , didn't restore back up , battery life was ok at 1st , then boom it went crazy using like 5% or more an hour in idle with all battery saving tips enabled and all types of settings changed and background apps blocked ;-)

steve from aaw also noticed big drain in his 1020 , so much so he even wrote an article and tested several phones and ios7 seemed to drink less battery then others in idle with windows 8.1 on his 1020 even worse then android and Symbian , in fact 8.1 was the biggest battery ***** out of all of them :-/ hoping this update fixes it up big time :-/
Charting the hill that WP 8.1 has to climb to get decent battery life (vs Symbian/iOS/Android)

he does say 36 hours after he wrote it , the update was released and it seems much better ;-)

I was talking about the ops battery life. 8.1 had terrible battery life for my 1520. Also the camera didn't work at all. I reverted it back to 8.0.

 

[o_OAndys]

There is no degradation of picture quality. These were all taken with 8.1 using the Nokia Beta Camera.

In fact, I'm finding my photos have better white balance with Beta app. 8.1 seems to have no difference on photo quality. It shouldn't, as compression and jpeg algorithms are firmware specific.

Posted via the WPC App for Android!

just worries me cause several people said they noticed noise and lesser picture quality.

 

[blue1k]

just worries me cause several people said they noticed noise and lesser picture quality.

Nope. Noise seems less. I take a lot of photos.

Posted via the WPC App for Android!

 

[FdMM]

Dear All, thanks a lot for the answers. I think I will definitely upgrade to 8.1 after reading your comments, but I will probably wait another week to have the battery life settle down.
Btw I came from an HTC One X and I cannot believe how much better this phone is, seriously WP needs much more love than what it got up to now...