A week with the Nokia Lumia 520, or a simple Windows user review of Windows Phone 8

Exactly a week ago, I acquired this miracle of the Finnish-American smartphone industry, and now I am ready to share my first impressions of both the smartphone and the new mobile OS from Microsoft. Anyone who is thinking about buying phones on Windows Phone or just interested - please, under cat.

Also, who are not very interested in the article, several polls on Windows Phone may be of interest. Do not pass by;)



To review the phone, stupidly listing its technical characteristics - it’s a very stupid thing, as for me, because first I’d better tell you how I moved to buy this device.

Initially, I really wanted myself a 720th model. But, one day, leaving the store with my family in the evening, I once again went to the mobile phone salon to see if my long-awaited lumiya had arrived. Unfortunately, I didn’t come, but another one arrived - the 520th. In yellow. Since I am very interested in VinFon, I immediately asked the manager to get it from the window and let it twist-touch-touch. Frankly, I did not find the slightest sense of budget in the phone. A couple of photos on a modest camera - and in my head the question clearly arose: why pay more? 520 costs 1800 UAH. ($ 225), while the 720th costs an average of 3000 UAH. ($ 370). I really liked the phone, and I immediately picked it up (by the way, the phone was the only one in this color, and one of the two available in the cabin in general).

Externally, the phone looks very stylish and fresh. Bring a cloud of pictures I do not see the point.
They are here . Examples of photos and videos taken on camera here . With the Qualcomm Snap processor .................. and other technical specifications that mean absolutely nothing to me as a user, I won’t bother you either, but rather tell about my impressions of using the system on a smartphone, the price of which can’t even be called average. I will only say about the screen size: 4 inches, 800x480, and a few screenshots:



First of all, the phone impresses with the smoothness and speed of its work. And the truth - 512 MB of RAM for Windows is not a problem. Everything flies, and everything that does not fly takes off after a few seconds of loading. The desktop, tiles - it's all cool, but it was the speed of work that struck me in the first place. At the same time, a small amount of memory does not affect heavy applications. The lightweight browser opens almost any page (and it works very well through ours, to put it mildly, absolutely no GPRS / EDGE), and on Wi-Fi it will give odds to my chrome on a very weak laptop. Asphalt 7 (the last time I stuck to racing back in the days of the second NFS: Underground) does not experience any problems with graphics performance. What difference then does it make to me - how much is that memory and gigahertz in the processor?

So yes, Windows turned out to be incredibly fast. Later, I joined the tiles, brought all 4 mailboxes (GMail works fine) to the main screen and began to contemplate how fun headers of letters, SMS juice and other things appeared right on the main screen without opening a single application. It’s a pity that Gismeteo doesn’t plow living tiles. And it would be nice (if there are representatives here - please hear!). And I also found a cool program for monitoring the battery charge. The tile shows the current charge, how much time has passed since the last charge and an estimate of the remaining time in the current use mode. It was under the current regime - and not just extrapolation - that skokaproshlo-skokabateri-skokosta. When chopping to Asphalt, it shows 3 hours, after 10 minutes in standby mode - 2 days. Everything is as it should :)

Speaking of applications. Of course, you can’t call the Windows Phone Marketplace empty, but if you open Google Play nearby, you immediately realize that the store is still growing and growing. I found almost all the main software (so far only the normal reader FB2 / PDF / Djvu is in question). True, there is often no special choice, and for my purposes, there is often only one program, but for the most part these programs turn out to be pretty good, so the smartphone will not remain completely without software in any case.

Bluetooth - is. It works perfectly in my headset. File Transfer - I have not tried it. In 2013 - why? I on Android used bluetooth only for a headset.

There is a light sensor and proximity (well, as without it). Moreover, the light sensor works just amazing - the reaction speed is higher than the Iphone 4s. And most importantly - for sure. The sensations are very pleasant. The display in the sun, of course, flashes, but the brightness is enough to read the basic information. PPI? What is it? Some garbage, no more. To be exact - 233. Subjectively - with the head. Any small text reads perfectly. Washed off to measure body parts - zero. Why do I need 500 PPI, if enough? Only in vain will we eat the battery, torment the poor mobile video and accumulate brakes.

The file system is 200% closed. Even at 300. When you connect the phone to a computer, it is defined as a flash drive, but only a few folders are available a la "Music", "Video", etc. There can be no talk of any full-fledged surfing on the file system - not even third-party no software. Apparently, this functionality is simply locked at the system level. On the one hand, it’s kind of like security, but on the other, it’s all too much.

The camera is like a camera. Takes off. For memory, you can take a picture of something fast. The text, by the way, is excellent. For everything else, I have a DSLR. I do not like cheap pictures - until they invented the phones for which I am ready to overpay for the camera. Live photos here too. In general, the pictures are obtained normally - if only the lighting was good. I won’t give examples of photographs — I almost didn’t do them, and on the Internet I’ve probably written a bunch of reviews.

Office. The great and powerful modest mobile office is here out of the box. What he does great is opening documents. Fast and beautiful. More is not required of him (except perhaps to fix a trifle - on a 4-inch screen and this is quickly annoying). OneNote deserves special praise. Together with the free metro version for Windows 8, you get a killer bundle. Shopping - right on my laptop I scribbled a list with checkmarks - and went to the store - everything is already on the phone. The insurance number and every little thing is perfectly stored - an ideal notebook with backup in the cloud. Why do you need Evernote at all?

Naturally, the phone has integration with all the great social services - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn ... All birthdays are now on the calendar, contacts are united by themselves - if the names are the same. In general, lyapota. True, I personally do not really sit in social networks, but for a tick I stuck - let it be.

Another real feature of the phone is HERE Maps and HERE Drive. Maps of Ukraine are simply of unreal quality. Plus, everything easily loads from the crust and works offline - just download them via Wi-Fi (the full map of Ukraine - 375 Mb). The car navigator is notified of speed limits and warns of speeding - and he knows when you are driving in the city (limit 60), and when between houses, in the residential area (limit 10). Squeaks immediately if exceeded by 5-7 kilometers or within 10 seconds if exceeded by a couple. If you recall the Yandex navigator, which squeaks only when “cops with a hairdryer” are in front, it’s immediately clear where the program comes from. I, as a person who is used to driving in compliance with traffic rules, prefer Nokia's navigator. But there is another killer feature in this phone and navigator. The time spent by satellites is 2-3 seconds. I don’t know how he does it, but after 2-3 seconds my location is determined with an accuracy of 10 meters and even with the right direction (but this is generally a mystery - there is no compass on the phone - because of this, Nokia City Lens does not work, by the way ) Moreover, it determines even when I stand still, and not going. In general, these are such miracles.

Memory in the phone - 8 gigabytes (in fact - 7.2). It’s not clear where they’ve divided 800 meters. Perhaps it’s the image of restoring the system in the event of a nuclear war (I can’t imagine other options - the system, in my opinion, is not killed at all). Plus a memory card. You can add music, video to the card, but you can’t install applications. And the internal memory is eating very fast. It’s not clear where. 3.9 gigabytes (out of 8 !!!) were available upon purchase. Now there are 2 gigs. 1.9 GB is occupied by the system, 1.7 - applications, 380 MB cards, 451 MB temporary files (can be deleted), and the mystical "Other" for half a gig. What other - I have no idea. 2 free gigs - it seems not a little, but still somehow it is not at ease.



The battery lasts for 1 day of intensive use (we call, have mail, toys, the Internet, a pack of live tiles, Skype forever in the background and turn on the screen 10 times an hour to enjoy). If you use the phone in full without stopping - 5-6 hours is its limit.

A separate conversation is the holistic topic of multitasking. I always said that full-fledged multitasking on a smartphone is an evil, tormenting the already poor resources of mobile chipsets, but in Windows there is a bias in the opposite direction - multitasking in the system is provided, but it is blocked abruptly by the file system. Background processes can work quietly - downloading mail, music, downloading and installing applications (!) - and not a bit slows down the system, background services ... But if you want the application to work in the background, please. Even my native skype. His tile regularly broadcasts about new messages, but Skype itself, when minimized, becomes dead, like a mammoth. And the process of resurrection takes a few seconds - and it's annoying. Of course, this provides unrealistic responsiveness of the system, but, as it seems to me, in this case, Microsoft has been a little too smart - and we hope that this "feature" is recognized as insolvent and will be done as it should. Let them take an example from the same iOS - the bun with freezing is the same there, but the applications will not die after folding for good.

Just a few words about the phone itself: with external style, they still saved on everything we could. I already spoke about the compass. So, the camera doesn’t have a flash (like a flash - it’s not needed, but like a flashlight - it’s not enough :), cheap ... no, very, very-super-cheap headphones-headset and the same charge (the wire is thin and all the time twists), and also a data cable 20 centimeters long ... 20! Centimeters! That's really - the phone is like a flash drive :) Not the most powerful battery (count on the day of work, no more). But if you recall the price - you can not forgive this phone as well - its silicon and iron filling are first-class. And the sound in the headphones is good. Then believe me - I have headphones at the cost of this phone, and my ears grow where I need to (and heard a lot) - they all told me.

Now to summarize. I think I could tell enough so that everyone can understand for themselves whether he should contact Windows Phone or not. Personally, I will answer: yes, it’s worth it. Although the system still has some shortcomings, even though not everything is finished, and some features of the OS are bewildering, but, nevertheless, Nokia and Microsoft managed to create a great product that has its undeniable advantages. Although not everyone likes the new tiled design, a big and bold plus should be set only for what it is - for the first time in almost 30 years, someone had the courage to invent something really new in the interface design. And whoever doesn’t like it, no one forces them to use it.

Personally, I wish good luck to Nokia and Microsoft, and let there be competition! We, users, are only better from her :)

PS A convincing request to avoid holivarov in the style of Android VS Windows Phone and Nokia, why are you not on Android . It’s better to vote quietly.

And at the end a few polls.