More disillusioned every day.

[Andrea988]

Having always had android phones I went in to Phones4U to look at the LG G3 but P4U don't sell LG phones any more - I know some years ago from working in phone sales that LG were notoriously unreliable, so I don't know if they still have above average problems or not but anyway...I had been fancying the idea of a Windows phone for a while and was completely won over by the 930.

I ordered from O2 as I'm still under contract with them.

3 days now with the Lumia 930 and the initial excitement has been tempered with apparent bugs and actual issues with the phone itself, "free accessory kit" charade aside.

First of all the phone has that much-reported pink-purple hue emanating from the bottom right corner that has been well documented. It's only faint, and tinkering with the colour settings helps, but it is not what I expect from a premium device. If I set the colour profile to Standard it's pink, there is no getting away from it and only by setting it to cool and the tint well towards green does it really help.

Not only that, it might be my imagination but I was impressed at how bright the screen was initially, yet now it doesn't seem as bright as it first was. I currently have it set on full brightness, it's a dull day so my room is rather dimly lit yet the phone doesn't look very bright. I've just compared it to my ?100 MOTO G and the G is noticably brighter, both on full brightness and with the same white-background app open.

Secondly the battery life is terrible. I can't get through a full day even on light use. This morning, after two hours of internet surfing via wi-fi at home, with the brightness on medium setting the battery dropped 50%. I used it more extensively, but not continuously, on the first couple of days, no video playing, no gaming, and I'm sat 6 foot away from my wi-fi hub and still could not get anywhere near a full day out of it.

I've found a few things buggy but the music player is a mess. I couldn't figure out how to transfer my music to the phone and when I did, the Xbox music app on the PC uploaded most of it to the cloud and nothing directly to the phone. To me, it seems that most people are likely to need a good selection of their music on their phone when there is no wi-fi connection. The vast majority of people listening to their music are not doing so via wi-fi when they are out and about.

I did it eventually by dumping everything into OneDrive. The music player can now read and play the files but not show the artwork. Not a big deal but not a premium phone experience either. Incidentally it seems to be incapable of playing anything that was uploaded to the cloud anyway, it says "Opening...." but just hangs.

My only other real gripe is I can't find a decent pull-case. I don't like the flips, I like those where I can just pull my phone out of the top, with or without a pull tab. It's either the cheap crap on ebay or the expensive Puhama stuff which is the dog's doodahs and worth it for an expensive phone IMO but could take over a month to arrive.

Overall though I'm now beginning to have my doubts about it. I guess all I can do is report the issue and see what happens.

 

[Great deal]

Can i ask, if you knew about these issues (they are well documented) why did you buy it? We know its old tech and Nokia stopped working on stuff due to the takeover and with MS focussing on new tech that works with the new OS for next year they will probably discontinue this in 6 months.

 

[Andrea988]

I haven't read every single forum and comment but I bought it because I know it's a minority of buyers which have had the battery and brightness/colour issues, which are the main issues. I don't know that Nokia "stopped working on stuff", they're still Nokia, they just have new owners and I doubt that known issues are simply going to be ignored.

I do not subscribe to the usual moronic posts by short sighted idiots which go so something like "mine is faulty so therefore they must all be crap so don't buy one".

I expect Nokia/Microsoft might issue a fix in due course but I have asked for it to be replaced in case it is a deeper fault. Having sold mobile phones and batteries for many years I can tell you that THE single biggest cause of "faulty" phones being returned, by a huge margin, is faulty batteries.

As for old tech, tried and trusted stuff is usually more reliable that new stuff because the problems have usually been ironed, and I'm not a fan of these companies changing and tweaking operating systems every five minutes which is done primarily just to make us all want to buy a new phone. After all, there's nothing new in the functionality which we haven't had for years now and I don't predict that changing anytime soon.

 

[steppyhen]

I've a feeling you may have a faulty device. I got my original device replaced after two weeks of overheating and horrendous battery drain. The second device is *almost* perfect. I say almost because there is a marginal purple tint in low brightness (only really noticeable when reading a book).

Aside from that, this new device is great. Device stays cool (gets a little warm with intensive browsing, but then so did my 920), and I can easily make it from 7.30am to when I go to bed (around 10.30pm) with 35-40% battery remaining.

Don't write the 930 off just yet if you do have a faulty device. Hopefully you can get a replacement unit and it will be so much better.

 

[Great deal]

I haven't read every single forum and comment but I bought it because I know it's a minority of buyers which have had the battery and brightness/colour issues, which are the main issues. I don't know that Nokia "stopped working on stuff", they're still Nokia, they just have new owners and I doubt that known issues are simply going to be ignored.

I do not subscribe to the usual moronic posts by short sighted idiots which go so something like "mine is faulty so therefore they must all be crap so don't buy one".

I expect Nokia/Microsoft might issue a fix in due course but I have asked for it to be replaced in case it is a deeper fault. Having sold mobile phones and batteries for many years I can tell you that THE single biggest cause of "faulty" phones being returned, by a huge margin, is faulty batteries.

As for old tech, tried and trusted stuff is usually more reliable that new stuff because the problems have usually been ironed, and I'm not a fan of these companies changing and tweaking operating systems every five minutes which is done primarily just to make us all want to buy a new phone. After all, there's nothing new in the functionality which we haven't had for years now and I don't predict that changing anytime soon.

Hopefully all the issues will be sorted out with updates, however with the issues they have had with pretty much all of the phones in terms of battery issues its pretty unforgivable that there are issues today. As for Nokia its not a simple rebadge, of the 30,000 or so 12,000 or so have been made redundant and many that remain have been shifted. They have new systems that have been introduced and with the closing and shifting of manufacturing and development teams a lot of things have been put on hold. Nokia (not the mobile division) did not invest much into the business when MS announced they are buying and Nokia selling, why would they? and MS didn't develop as they were waiting for the sale to go through and could restructure until it was done. I doubt it all came to a sudden grinding halt but for sure slowed right down due to uncertainty from all corners.

Hope MS build phones with removable batteries as battery life becomes a non issue and 3rd parties can develop longer life ones.

 

[Andrea988]

Fair comment re. the Nokia sellout. The non-removable battery issue annoys me, just a way of getting people to buy a new phone once the battery has gone by making it difficult to replace the original, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Andrea988]

I've a feeling you may have a faulty device. I got my original device replaced after two weeks of overheating and horrendous battery drain. The second device is *almost* perfect. I say almost because there is a marginal purple tint in low brightness (only really noticeable when reading a book).

Aside from that, this new device is great. Device stays cool (gets a little warm with intensive browsing, but then so did my 920), and I can easily make it from 7.30am to when I go to bed (around 10.30pm) with 35-40% battery remaining.

Don't write the 930 off just yet if you do have a faulty device. Hopefully you can get a replacement unit and it will be so much better.

That's the sort of battery life from experience that I would expect. My husband runs a mobile phone site and has a lot of experience with phones and says the battery should easily be getting me through the day with what I use, and that these Windows phones use less than average. In fact my main gripe with these top-end smartphones is nobody really does low-user tariffs. My contract has 500 mins/500MB a month and I will never use half of that but it's the lowest they offered. The deal just marginally worked out better than a simo contract and buying the phone outright, but I still feel I'm paying for more than I really need.

Anyway after getting past the zombie customer service assistant that tried to tell me that "batteries will drain after 2 hours surfing" - yeah, in 2004 maybe, love - the tech people agreed that it is faulty and are exchanging it on Monday.

Overall, apart from it's few little foibles that every phone has, you know, you wish they had done this or that a little differently, if I get one which works as it should I will be more than happy (even with a slight tint) - in fact had I not read about it I might not have even noticed that much. Reviews are tricky to judge anyway because android/iOS ****** journos traditionally slag off Windows phones but I think it's a decent phone that hasn't necessarily supposed to be directly compared with anything else. I guess I'm a lot happier now it's going to be replaced.

 

[SymoClod]

Hope the replacement gives you a better experience.

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

"after two hours of internet surfing"

There's a HUGE usage, not moderate. Browsing have the same CPU/GPU than games.

But 50% in 2 hours for a 2500mah it's too much.

About screen brightness, 930 have a OLED screen, so don't expect too much from it. Brightness it's not the best of this technology. Anyway, the 930 screen in maximum have a huge amount of bright. More than enough for sure, but maybe less than others devices.

 

[Andrea988]

"after two hours of internet surfing"

There's a HUGE usage, not moderate. Browsing have the same CPU/GPU than games.

But 50% in 2 hours for a 2500mah it's too much.

About screen brightness, 930 have a OLED screen, so don't expect too much from it. Brightness it's not the best of this technology. Anyway, the 930 screen in maximum have a huge amount of bright. More than enough for sure, but maybe less than others devices.

Yes the battery could have done with being a little bigger, especially a non-swappable one, but I can get 3+ hours of surfing on my Moto G and use less than 30% battery. Yes, 10% smaller screen but a 20% smaller battery too. I spend a lot of idle time browsing and I can't remember when I experienced that much battery drain in two hours.

I'm pretty sure the screen is less brighter now than when I got it and it is definitely a lot less brighter than the demo model in the shop which was extremely bright and clear under bright lighting conditions. It's one of the key points which swung me towards the 930. At the moment the brightness is on full and is lower than the brightness of my laptop, at which the level is set at 55%. I know every device is different but that can't be right.

 

[Rodrigo Mendes]

Yes the battery could have done with being a little bigger, especially a non-swappable one, but I can get 3+ hours of surfing on my Moto G and use less than 30% battery. Yes, 10% smaller screen but a 20% smaller battery too. I spend a lot of idle time browsing and I can't remember when I experienced that much battery drain in two hours.

I'm pretty sure the screen is less brighter now than when I got it and it is definitely a lot less brighter than the demo model in the shop which was extremely bright and clear under bright lighting conditions. It's one of the key points which swung me towards the 930. At the moment the brightness is on full and is lower than the brightness of my laptop, at which the level is set at 55%. I know every device is different but that can't be right.

Hmm, looks like a faulty device indeed. Try to contact Nokia Care for fix it (or change).

 

[falconrap]

I have an Icon (really the same phone) and the battery life was a little poor initially, especially the first couple of days when the phone will do a lot of background stuff off and on. After the first couple of days it settled down. But I don't recall the battery being that bad except for some of the bugginess from 8.1 Dev Preview that can cause sudden battery drains when a process gets stuck on and rebooting is required. So I think your phone is possibly defective, especially from a display perspective. I've seen some people having issues with the displays on the 930, but haven't really seen anything like that with the Icon's, which is kind of odd.

As far as music syncing goes, I always fire up Windows Media Player and use the sync feature there. Just drag and drop albums and songs you want on your phone and let it sync. Works perfect. Used this for my Palm phones (Pre+ and Pre2) as well as my BB Curve. The XBox app is known to have a ton of issues, and playlist syncing is the only thing that WMP can't really handle, but I do those on the phone. You can also just open the phone's music folder in Windows Explorer and manually drag and drop your music onto the phone, but WMP is still the better way to do it.

 

[rdubmu]

2 hours of web searching is not light use. Light use would be having your phone in your pocket, you get a text, respond to it and then put it back into your pocket. With your screen on for 2 hours, it will drain your battery.

 

[Andrea988]

2 hours of web searching is not light use. Light use would be having your phone in your pocket, you get a text, respond to it and then put it back into your pocket. With your screen on for 2 hours, it will drain your battery.

Well whatever you want to call it, the fact remains that it's a LOT less use than I have got in similar circumstances than any other phone I have had and that's the point.

The Sony Xperia P I had a couple of years ago was used for four hours a day in the car using sat nav, several calls and texts and a good hour's browsing most evenings as well as a while host of other things - I am forever adding and trying out new apps for example - and it was usually approaching midnight before the battery gave out.

I will see how it goes over the weekend but since they are replacing it on Monday it will be interesting to compare the replacement.

 

[Moiz Mian]

Yes the battery could have done with being a little bigger, especially a non-swappable one, but I can get 3+ hours of surfing on my Moto G and use less than 30% battery. Yes, 10% smaller screen but a 20% smaller battery too. I spend a lot of idle time browsing and I can't remember when I experienced that much battery drain in two hours.

I'm pretty sure the screen is less brighter now than when I got it and it is definitely a lot less brighter than the demo model in the shop which was extremely bright and clear under bright lighting conditions. It's one of the key points which swung me towards the 930. At the moment the brightness is on full and is lower than the brightness of my laptop, at which the level is set at 55%. I know every device is different but that can't be right.

Coming from someone who has had 3 Nokia Lumias in the past 2 years (900, 920, 1020), there is definitely a large percentage of devices with build quality issues. I have had issues with all of my Nokia devices. I think since Nokia started building their phones in China, the Build Quality died alongside it. My 900 used to have a rattley vibrate motor, and light used to leak into the screen from the capacitive buttons. My 920 would develop dust in the cameras, and I went through 4 replacements and they all developed the same issue. My 1020 is significantly better but it does freeze from time to time.

The only problem is, if you like Windows Phone, there is really no other option except Nokia, so at least for me, I have learned to live with the issues and use my warranty as much as I can. I hope when Microsoft starts building phones, they use better factories like what they use for the Surface line.

 

[rdubmu]

I would live to see a phone that is as skinny and light as the Surface Pro 3, (of course smaller and to scale)

 

[TechFreak1]

One thing to note, pretty much all demo units are plugged in so whilst charging or on AC the screen will be sufficiently brighter. My 920 exhibits this behaviour, has been since the day I got it and still does it after Portico (GDR1), Amber + GDR2, Lumia Black + GDR3 and the update to 8.1 DP (current build 8.10.12400.899).

Hopefully your replacement device will fair much better than its predecessor and in regards to battery life, my 920 had way better battery life on 8.0 compared to 8.1 however since I don't have the firmware update that is understandable.

 

[Andrea988]

Mine isn't any brighter when plugged in regardless of what settings are used.

All I can do is see what the replacement brings to the table.

Incidentally, rather than start another thread does anybody know how to sync my calendar entries with, well with anything really so that I have a copy? I have an older copy of Outlook on my desktop with Office Pro 2010 on it but can't figure out how to sync the calendar.

I love the style of the calendar, I think it's brilliant but the main problem I'm finding with the OS is there seems to be very little functionality in many apps and the calendar is a classic example. I can't find any way of saving, syncing or copying anything. Tasks seems a bit odd too, no way of displaying them except by going into the tasks menu. A tile would be handy so I can see what tasks I have without having to put them on the calendar. I'm using a 3rd party app for now.

 

[Paul Lindqvist]

I required the Lumia 930 last week and had no problems with it.

Set it up and had no issues with purple tint. Some minor bleeding does occur when i put the brightness to max (it's uniform over the screen) and view it in a dark room.

The battery life last a day without any problems. (lock screen 1min) it did get warm (not hot so you can't touch it) the first day or two, but no more then my Iphone, ipad 4, ipad mini retina. Now it seems to have settled and only get's warm when it's pushed hard by a game/app (again not hot)

In all i'm very satisfied with how the Lumia 930 performs.

With that said, there are certainly issues with some of the 930 screens, judging by photos. Also phone becoming to hot to handle is obviously not right either.

Hopefully people get their phones replaced by working units or their money back.

 

[vlad0]

Hope MS build phones with removable batteries as battery life becomes a non issue and 3rd parties can develop longer life ones.

Everything up until the N9 had a removable battery, and then they went with the "plank" design and it was all over. The N9 design language has been around for too long I think.. I hope we can something different soon. The Icon/930 are the first phones since then to have a slightly different design, but they still resemble the original design to a certain extend.

So maybe once they go in a different direction we can get back the back cover designs, or even something like the N8 where you could pull the battery from the bottom.

Considering how obsessed they are with following what Apple do, I doubt that they will buil a phone with a removable back cover anytime soon. Maybe if we get an iPhone like that they might consider the idea...

I think the last smartphone from Nokia to have a removable battery was the 808...