This is my first review so It won't be the most detailed, but I will do my best. I have had the phone for two days now.
Build Quality: For being a plastic phone it is very sturdy. No creaking from the back cover. I was amazed at how thin and lightweight it is after having used a 920 for most of the past year. Speaker is loud, but is tinny sounding. Its not a bad speaker just nothing to write home about.
Performance: This is what everybody is wondering about with only a Snapdragon 200 and a 720p screen. As expected there is some frame drops when playing games and scrolling can be stuttery at times. I don't notice any issues with scrolling when on the start screen, but when scrolling through the full list of apps there is definitely some choppiness to it. None of this makes for a bad experience, but it is noticeable when coming from a 920. The quad core 1.2ghz processor does make for faster load times of apps than with my 920 though. Switching between apps is fast. Subway Surfers which seems to be very taxing on many phones loads fast. The biggest plus for me is that Xbox Music seems to actually work great on this phone. Scrolling through the app is fast and there isn't resume issues like there was on my 920. For me it is like night and day between the 920 and this phone when using Xbox Music, but that may have something to do with me not having the Cyan update on the 920 when I was using it on developer preview.
Camera:Nothing special here. In fact this is probably my biggest disappointment. There isn't any zoom when using the camera and the maximum video recording is 864x480. Pictures tend to be washed out. Its not a terrible camera though. I've used a 520, 820, and 920. It falls in between the 520 and 820 for me in terms of picture quality. It does have a flash which allows for taking night shots unlike the 520. It also has a front facing camera which is a plus. I don't use the ffc much, but it is nice to have.
Battery: Haven't gotten a good read on this yet with only having it for two days, but it seems to be performing pretty well. It easily blows my 920 out of the water and I'm pretty sure I could get two days of moderate use out of it. I think not having LTE has a sizable effect on battery life.
Other: It is nice to have an unlocked dual sim phone. Data can only be used off of sim slot #1 though so I don't think this has much use for me here in the U.S. One plus of it being unlocked though is I can use internet sharing though without having it blocked by ATT.
Overall I would say it is a good buy for $179. I really like the size of the phone and wish there was more 5 inch Windows phones out there. It is also a great bonus that it comes with a case, headphones, charger, and 2 screen protectors. If you are looking for a good camera this probably isn't the phone for you though.
Build Quality: For being a plastic phone it is very sturdy. No creaking from the back cover. I was amazed at how thin and lightweight it is after having used a 920 for most of the past year. Speaker is loud, but is tinny sounding. Its not a bad speaker just nothing to write home about.
Performance: This is what everybody is wondering about with only a Snapdragon 200 and a 720p screen. As expected there is some frame drops when playing games and scrolling can be stuttery at times. I don't notice any issues with scrolling when on the start screen, but when scrolling through the full list of apps there is definitely some choppiness to it. None of this makes for a bad experience, but it is noticeable when coming from a 920. The quad core 1.2ghz processor does make for faster load times of apps than with my 920 though. Switching between apps is fast. Subway Surfers which seems to be very taxing on many phones loads fast. The biggest plus for me is that Xbox Music seems to actually work great on this phone. Scrolling through the app is fast and there isn't resume issues like there was on my 920. For me it is like night and day between the 920 and this phone when using Xbox Music, but that may have something to do with me not having the Cyan update on the 920 when I was using it on developer preview.
Camera:Nothing special here. In fact this is probably my biggest disappointment. There isn't any zoom when using the camera and the maximum video recording is 864x480. Pictures tend to be washed out. Its not a terrible camera though. I've used a 520, 820, and 920. It falls in between the 520 and 820 for me in terms of picture quality. It does have a flash which allows for taking night shots unlike the 520. It also has a front facing camera which is a plus. I don't use the ffc much, but it is nice to have.
Battery: Haven't gotten a good read on this yet with only having it for two days, but it seems to be performing pretty well. It easily blows my 920 out of the water and I'm pretty sure I could get two days of moderate use out of it. I think not having LTE has a sizable effect on battery life.
Other: It is nice to have an unlocked dual sim phone. Data can only be used off of sim slot #1 though so I don't think this has much use for me here in the U.S. One plus of it being unlocked though is I can use internet sharing though without having it blocked by ATT.
Overall I would say it is a good buy for $179. I really like the size of the phone and wish there was more 5 inch Windows phones out there. It is also a great bonus that it comes with a case, headphones, charger, and 2 screen protectors. If you are looking for a good camera this probably isn't the phone for you though.
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