Windows Phones in 2020

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

Got my mother up and going on a t-mobile Alcatel idol 4s windows 6071w. Put her on a prepay $15.00 month plan with 2gig data.

Only problem so far is whenever wifi is on it enables wifi calling. When I go into the setting to toggle it on or off, that option is not there.

I am wondering if that is due to me setting up phone without the sim card installed?

 

[naddy6969]

Topics like this just make me laugh. “How do I get by/make do/hang on with an old Windows phone?”

I bailed 4 years ago. Even then, the decision was easy. I can’t imagine still trying to use my Icon or 1520 daily. Both are antiques at this point.

“I am wondering if that is due to me setting up phone without the sim card installed?”

No. It is due to trying to use an old, crappy phone with an unsupported OS. If you must give your 76 year old mother a 4 year old phone, give her an iPhone 7 Plus. It is still supported by the current versions of iOS. She will have no problems with it.

BTW, the Alcatel 4s was a POS the day it was released. I would never give MY mother one to use in 2020. You are asking for problems.

 

[anthonyng]

BTW, the Alcatel 4s was a POS the day it was released. I would never give MY mother one to use in 2020. You are asking for problems.

My mom was fine with other windows phones I gave her until the Alcatel 4s, seemed like she had to reach out to me quite often to help her with phone

I gave her a lumia 950 when that one freed up and was stable again

Now I have her on iPhone. We needed Whatsapp!

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

My Mother, the Alcatel Idol 4s and T-Mobile are getting along just fine. I just shut off the wifi. She has 2gig of data and will never come close to using it up. She calls, text messages and checks weather and email. That is it.. I have every thing set up just like her Lumia 635 was and she is happy. I was very surprised to see that T-mobile service is better where she lives than ATT. I do have a spare 950 if she breaks the Idol. I have a daughter using and Idol 4s windows on Crickett and all is good for her too.

 

[tgp]

Topics like this just make me laugh. “How do I get by/make do/hang on with an old Windows phone?”

I bailed 4 years ago. Even then, the decision was easy. I can’t imagine still trying to use my Icon or 1520 daily. Both are antiques at this point.

To be fair, I don't think that many people ever did argue that Windows phones' feature set beat iPhone or Android. People preferred them for a couple different reasons.

1. Windows phones excelled in a specific area that was important to the user.
2. The user was Microsoft fan.
3. Along with #2, the user did not like or trust Apple and/or Google.

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

To be fair, I don't think that many people ever did argue that Windows phones' feature set beat iPhone or Android. People preferred them for a couple different reasons.

1. Windows phones excelled in a specific area that was important to the user.
2. The user was Microsoft fan.
3. Along with #2, the user did not like or trust Apple and/or Google.

Bingo.. I have used Microsoft windows and office products since 1995. Business runs on Windows! Whether you like it or not. Is it perfect ? No.

I don't like the communist dictator ship of Apple take our way or leave.

I do not trust Google and there listening to every thing said whether on an android phone, smart speaker etc. I have an old Google Nexus phone of my son's. I have played with it and put all Microsoft programs on it. It does not work the same. It will not let you have contacts other than email address's in outlook. You must put them in the Google account. No Thank You!

I don't need an app to wipe my butt. I am self employed so I don't have an employer forcing me to use something my phone won't do.

Using my windows phones until they don't work any more.

 

[DUCA NERO]

Windows Phone forever ! It is Always the best !

 

[RTGent]

My Mother, the Alcatel Idol 4s and T-Mobile are getting along just fine. I just shut off the wifi. She has 2gig of data and will never come close to using it up. She calls, text messages and checks weather and email. That is it.. I have every thing set up just like her Lumia 635 was and she is happy. I was very surprised to see that T-mobile service is better where she lives than ATT. I do have a spare 950 if she breaks the Idol. I have a daughter using and Idol 4s windows on Crickett and all is good for her too.

Did your mother also get the VR goggles packaged "originally"? with the Idol 4S? I have a never-used set in its original Idol 4S packaging, if not, and if you/she like... (I purchased the 4S package, but dropped and ruined the phone the first week.) (I am careless, and on my third 950 :winktongue

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

RTGent, No the phone only. My daughter also has a Idol 4s she may enjoy playing with them.

 

[RTGent]

RTGent, No the phone only. My daughter also has a Idol 4s she may enjoy playing with them.

Where in the world are you ...I should have asked? You can PM this (I presume), if you prefer.

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

For all its warts, and there are too many to mention, it still has one feature that's head and shoulders above the rest and that's Continuum - particularly the wireless variety. From my personal experience, only Huawei's Easy Projection works in wireless desktop mode but it is a lagfest and not really usable.

Other than that, WM10 is good for calls, text and Outlook.

Can we still do a clean install and set up our Microsoft account? Cricket is trying to kill off my two daughters phones. A cricket branded Lumia 650 and a unlocked Alcatel idol 4s. I know the Alcatel is supported if they will provision, not sure on the 650. I have a spare Lumia 950 but don't want to hard reset if it can't be set up on one of our accounts. Thanks

 

[RTGent]

Can we still do a clean install and set up our Microsoft account? Cricket is trying to kill off my two daughters phones. A cricket branded Lumia 650 and a unlocked Alcatel idol 4s. I know the Alcatel is supported if they will provision, not sure on the 650. I have a spare Lumia 950 but don't want to hard reset if it can't be set up on one of our accounts. Thanks

I'd guess yes, but have no experience doing it; probably carrier-dependent. My 950 is still running reliably on T-Mobile, thankfully. I can report that all apps may not be available to re-install. I've installed a couple of trivial ones recently, but I also uninstalled Accuweather this spring, and couldn't find it again to re-install. I'd guess/FEAR that other apps and maybe functionalities would not be recovered.

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

I am not concerned with "apps" just the ability to do a clean install and set up the Microsoft account. I found out the hard way last year when I hard reset my mothers win 8 phone and couldn't set up her account.
Thanks Dan

 

[Davinity]

Here's a little story about my current life as a Daily WP User. Some guy robbed me, took my Android phone from me... It really hurt because I saved up for a long time to afford it (Barely $150), also didn't have Google Photos backed up because I relied too heavily on my 128GBs of Internal Storage and my 64GB SD Card (that was really, really Foolish NGL). Gave up on trying to recover it/ find it.

Long story short, I picked up an old Lumia someone gave to me last year, didn't think it could still work okay. I updated it to W10M (offline method, Google it) and found a Telegram Channel with a treasure trove of Archived Apps from WP8.1. I'm still using it as a daily Driver (although it's locked to a carrier, that I can't use. So there's only Wi-Fi) along with a Nokia C1-01 that handles Calls and Text Messaging like a Classic. I'm currently Satisfied with my Lumia 640 LTE as a daily driver mainly because I have access to almost all the apps I used to rely on for communication. Currently saving up for a new Android Phone (But I guess I'll enjoy my time with the Lumia while it lasts... )

 

[jplusip]

To all of you still hanging on to your Windows Phone, all I have to say is enjoy it while you can!

My first smartphone was a Windows Phone (some kind of Lumia), and I got Lumias up until a few years ago when I discovered the HP Elite X3 (October 2018, to be precise!) and that had been my phone up until this past Monday (though I actually had two of them; the first one fell out of my pocket so I had to buy another).

Despite my efforts to turn my new Google Pixel Pro 6 into a pseudo-Windows phone (see: SquareHome launcher, Edge, Bing widget, etc.), it really doesn't even come close. Windows 10 (and hell, Windows 8 even) Mobile was just so much more efficient, and now that I'm using an Android phone, it's really making me appreciate a lot of the small things that WP did with the live tiles (displaying how many missed calls on the Phone tile; displaying how many unread messages on the Text Messages tile, being more efficient with automatically switching between characters/punctuation keyboards while typing, Groove Music being worlds better than any music player I've found so far on the Google Play Store, etc.).

Honestly, if a combination of AT&T and my work (needed the Duo app for 2FA, but it was removed from the Windows Store, so I wouldn't be able to move to a different WP) didn't drive me away from my WP, I'd still be happily holding out with my Elite X3, despite the version of Edge on there getting more and more outdated, and MS not bothering to fix any of their broken apps (e.g. the Sports app). Ah well, c'est la vie. If only the general public had better taste...

 

[kwarner]

I sadly shut down my Lumia 735 this week. With Verizon turning off support for 3G, I figured it was time to move on. My 735 does 4G but not 4G LTE voice. Pulled out the SIM and SD cards and put the 735 in my phone museum where I have a Win8 Nokia Lumia 822 and an assortment of Palm phones dating back to the Palm Treo.

My true love was the UI on the Palm Pre and all the other Pre's that followed, especially the Pre 3. When forced to move on by technology changes, I went with whatever UI resembled the UI of Palm's WebOS. For a long time Windows was it, even though I had to toss cards down instead of up. And Windows with its tiles actually worked quite well. I've got multiple email accounts and I could easily put them on tiles in my home screen and notifications alerted me to incoming mails on all my accounts. It all worked so smoothly. I only used a few apps so it was the smooth email operation that kept me hanging on for so long. I've switched to Android on a Moto X4 and Outlook on Android is already losing emails. I have to constantly reset my account to resync my emails. And I haven't figured out how to get alerts on emails sorted to subfolders in Outlook. I just created a tile for the subfolder with my Windows phone. Man, this sucks. I'm missing my Window phone already.

So rest in peace, my dear Lumia 735. *sniff*:crying:

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

ATT has my Lumia 950 on whitelist, unfortunately I am on Cricket. A few weeks ago, I received a call before noon. This was to be the last. Text and Data work fine, HD Voice is turned on, but all incoming calls go straight to voicemail, and I cannot make an outgoing call. After much time on phone support with Cricket they said we cannot guarantee your Lumia will work again. They implied that system changes were not complete, so they said we will send you a free phone. I donot use Gmail so an android is out, due to needing a Gmail account to put your contacts into. My only other choice was i-phone. I am very disappointed. Things so simple like typing on dial pad 729 (ray) brought up who I wanted to call and hit dial, cannot be done on i-phone. You have to search contacts or recent calls or dial complete phone number. The built in applications are horrible. Email forces you back to top message in list after reading or deleting. I had my Lumia set to return to inbox. Every thing is just so different than android or Windows. I am not happy and just use the i-phone for voice calls, text and web. I will continue to put my sim card into my Lumia from time to time to see if I can make calls and times I just don't want to be bothered with phone knowing Text and Data still work.

 

[RTGent]

ATT has my Lumia 950 on whitelist, unfortunately I am on Cricket. A few weeks ago, I received a call before noon. This was to be the last. Text and Data work fine, HD Voice is turned on, but all incoming calls go straight to voicemail, and I cannot make an outgoing call. After much time on phone support with Cricket they said we cannot guarantee your Lumia will work again. They implied that system changes were not complete, so they said we will send you a free phone. I donot use Gmail so an android is out, due to needing a Gmail account to put your contacts into. My only other choice was i-phone. I am very disappointed. Things so simple like typing on dial pad 729 (ray) brought up who I wanted to call and hit dial, cannot be done on i-phone. You have to search contacts or recent calls or dial complete phone number. The built in applications are horrible. Email forces you back to top message in list after reading or deleting. I had my Lumia set to return to inbox. Every thing is just so different than android or Windows. I am not happy and just use the i-phone for voice calls, text and web. I will continue to put my sim card into my Lumia from time to time to see if I can make calls and times I just don't want to be bothered with phone knowing Text and Data still work.

I'm still using my 950 daily, but I do have 2 angroids as backup to use ad hoc with a few apps, in case you may still want to consider that OS. I still barely know angroid, and I don't use gmail either, so I can only suggest a lead or a clue. I use a bunch of Microsoft apps on the two phones, including Outlook. I must have synced the native Contacts app with my Outlook/950 account contacts at some point, but I don't use it enough to claim that it is superior to your reported iOS experience. I chose the LG purely for its DAC, and the Sony for its compact size, and they both have non-current OS versions, in case that matters.

Good luck re-enabling your 950: I have a long list of everyday features I still don't want -nor need yet- to do without, thanks to Microsoft and T-Mobile.

 

[EFats]

.... I donot use Gmail so an android is out, due to needing a Gmail account to put your contacts into.

This is not true. I have a bunch of Android waiting in the wings just in case, no Gmail account needed. You do not even need one to set up the phone. You only need one to get at the Play Store, but that can be worked around with F-droid, Yalp or sites like Apkpure.
If you use Outlook app, your other email accounts aren't even visible to the system.
F-droid has plenty of Google free options for Contacts, Calendar and everything else.

Sorry about your Lumia, mine is still chugging away so far.

 

[Palm_forlackofchoice]

This is not true. I have a bunch of Android waiting in the wings just in case, no Gmail account needed. You do not even need one to set up the phone. You only need one to get at the Play Store, but that can be worked around with F-droid, Yalp or sites like Apkpure.
If you use Outlook app, your other email accounts aren't even visible to the system.
F-droid has plenty of Google free options for Contacts, Calendar and everything else.



Sorry about your Lumia, mine is still chugging away so far.

Ok, so if i hear you right. I can take a native android phone and get my contacts into outlook with out first putting them into the gmail contacts app on the phone?