iOS & Eco-System ... To ... WM7.5Mango handset Review

Ok so I have been an avid iphone user since 2007 when I bought an jailbroken and unlocked handset in Bangkok as it hadn’t been released in the UK yet.

This has been interspersed with a series of Blackberry and HTC handsets as I am a big emailer and this has been dwindling since better email integration into iOS and a faster keyboard, I am one of the lucky few O2 customers who still get a 6mthly upgrade due to a historic tariff that is quite simply outstanding lol … so I renew my handset regularly and sell on the old to top up the kitty!!

Anyway, my upgrade came around again at the beginning of July and I was using a White 4S 32gb but opted for a Black 4s 64gb as everyone seems to have a white handset these days, and got the upgrade for free as normal, and sold the 32gb on for £350.

Long story short the 64gb went through the washing machine by accident (left in a dressing gown pocket) last weekend. I looked at getting an OOW replacement but decided as the new iphone is out soon, and I only have till December to wait I would try something different, so popped along to a local CarPhoneWarehouse, and picked up a Nokia Lumia 710 running WM7.5Mango for all of £99.99 (I did have to pay for £10 topup as well as it was bought on PAYG but I sold that on and got the £10 back straight away lol)!

I was sceptical as the last nokia I had was a n73 and to be quite fair I got it for the camera which at the time was excellent, but hated Symbian with a passion but figured this was worth a punt for the money!

Now it does need to be said I am one of the people in the apple eco-system, I have a 2011 MBA which is my main computer and an iPad for all my general usage and travel usage etc… and extensively use icloud for contacts/notes/calendar etc… but this is mainly for phone handset usage rather than ipad, and do not use imessage at all.

My initial impression was how fluid the screen is and how nice the OS works, I love the live tiles and have missed the customisation aspect somewhat, but soon realised I had an issue with not being able to sync contacts or calendars with the mac, bugger … however the Windows sync assistant provides pretty full itunes integration which is good. I soon realised that by simply exporting my contacts and calendar to my google mail account (I use gmail exclusively personally) this solved all those issues, and I never look at my calendar or contacts on either my MBA or iPad so not having them isn’t an issue.

The next niggle was the app store, but this is simply due to the newness of the store and slow growth it is experiencing being a relatively new platform, all the apps I have used so far (mainly travel and travel booking) have been excellent, I rarely use games but in the interests of discovery I have found the selection good, and they are just as playable as iphone or android games.

I don’t really use the xbox live integration as I am a playstation boy and always have been and have never even used and xbox and have no wish to so that irrelevant to me.

Now for the most important bit … one of the main uses my iphone got was for the Sat Nav function, I tried many paid and free apps for this and found for my needs that NavFree was the best and least battery intensive application, this was my major worry, but Nokia’s own built in Nokia Drive is simply AMAZING!! The maps are all available to download for free for most areas of the world, and the accuracy is spot on, I have made 3 journeys totally 1300 miles this week and wasn’t lead astray once, and purposefully took some wrong turns in confusing one way system environments in Birmingham this week to find out about the re-routing and it all worked perfectly!

Now I may be a traditional person here but I do use my phone a lot for calls, and the reception is clear and consistent, and for calls the battery is barely impacted, its easy to use for sms, mms and email and have no complaints here, but in the latter respect most phones handle this in a very similar manner.

I do like the fact that I have the option in the box for either a black of blue back for the handset for which I opted for the blue, I am not missing have 64gb on tap as the handset has 8gb built in of which about 7gb is free, as I don’t really have music on my phone that much as I use my ipad for music when travelling (normally trains and planes), and if in the car I use the radio).

Build quality is good, yes its plastic and definitely feels like plastic, but it doesn’t scratch easily, and I don’t have to worry that if it slides off the sofa onto my granite floor that its going to shatter, as it will more than likely just pop the back off and bounce. It has a nice shape to the contours of the rear which is pleasant to hold and still rests on a surface nicely without rocking. And the handset comes with a full face screen protector (not just the standard thin plastic film) pre-installed which is a really nice touch.

The camera is decent and for the odd point and shoot snap more than adequate, but again I have a dedicated digi cam for pics as the quality on all handsets is still pretty poor.

So what do I miss … tough question, honestly at the minute, nothing at all, it’s a great handset which is nice and fluid to use, very intuitive and if this is the direction and quality MS are now building for their software then great things can be expected in my opinion. I know my needs are more simple than many, and I don’t have a FB or Twitter account as I actually have a life in the ‘real world’ but for a simple-smart-phone that ticks all the boxes and is a joy to use, for the money its definitely worth at the very least a second look! Time will tell whether or not these views are sustained and am happy to report back a month in with an update

Happy Apple’ing Everyone

 

the nav is excellent compared to my old TomTom, it uses IQ routes as a default from the volume of people routing and using the application.

In relation to the live traffic, this is a feature yet to roll out so unfort I cant comment on that yet.

To be honest I use a snooper with a radar detector for front and rear protection rather than proximity sites in a database so i dont really know but can certainly get them turned on and give it a whirl and see how it compares.