Am I right to move to a Microsoft Phone?

PGlynn

PGlynn

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Pete
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I currently have a Samsung Galaxy S5, my contract is up for renewal early 2017, I'm seriously considering going to an MS Windows 10 phone, specifically the Lumia 950, primarily as I'm a heavy user of MS Office.

Yes I know there are Android versions of Excel, Word etc, but in my experience they just don't work easily and seamlessly.

I am also aware there are far fewer apps available than Android, but I'm not really a game player, the important ones to me I've checked and are available.

One or two people have said to me "Avoid MS phones like the plague, they're a pile of c**p" But having read online reviews they dont come up too badly.

Any thoughts from "Real World" users of MS phones (Or those,who considered and didn't go down that route) would be very much appreciated.

Pete
 
I woudnt. Had a Lumia 900, biggest POS Ive ever used. Bought myself out of the contract and been an Apple boy ever since....
 
had to have one for work. Awful experience.
 
Couple of quick "Very negative" replies, thanks Mark and Kev.

Pete
 
I recently bought a Lumia 640 after nearly 6 years with Android (HTC Desire, the Motorola RAZRi).

The good.
The interface is as fluid and smooth as the better Android phones, battery life excellent, call quality is pretty much at landline level, screen great, camera OK. Sometimes it's hard to find certain settings compared to Android because the interface is more complex than it needs to be

This is what I blogged 22nd November:
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So I've had the phone just over 5 weeks, and as promised, here's a mini-review of an obsolete phone that nobody wanted:

Strengths
Battery life - 4 days is easy, 5 days not unusual, with a few calls, texting, a bit of internet or routefinding. I don't live on my phone, and just use it as a tool.

Call quality - is generally landline quality, often in places where I'd struggle to even get a phone signal with the other 2 phones (iPhones seem at least as bad for reception here).

Screen - clear, clean, bright enough and crisp.

Windows applications - generally perform well once I got used to where to find things.

Windows maps - GPS locks in a couple of seconds, then generally chooses a good route with accurate ETA.

Ambivalent
Keyboard layout - makes it easy to hit the bar at the bottom & return to the home screen.

Screen/phone size - I'd prefer it to be smaller and slimmer, but it's not unmanageable - glad I didn't get a 5.5" phone.

Lack of apps in general - I mostly don't care that I can't play candy crush. :)


Dislike
Firefox isn't available for this version of Windows 10.

The need to perform 2 actions when answering a call from a locked screen - swipe to open, then touch to answer. It should be a single swipe or tap.

The way my google address book has been scrambled when importing, so that names & pictures don't always match the telephone number/email address.

Wish the mapping app could do real-time traffic conditions.


It's a better mobile phone than any of my previous devices including candybar phones, but I just wish it was smaller and slimmer.
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No idea if it's right for you, but the 950 was a well-spec'd device with a good screen and supposedly that legendary Nokia call quality.

I tried an iPhone 6S before I bought this - it was OK, but worth £250 absolute tops and certainly didn't feel better to use.
 
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Using one right now as my S6 has a broken charge port. I'm hating it so far.

Don't like the interface and it doesn't seem fluid at all.

Prefer word on my Samsung!
 
I like mine but only really use it as a phone rather than to anything close to its full capabilities. Fewer apps available but plenty for all important tasks. Mine's now relatively elderly (must be nearly 2 years old...) but still holds plenty pf charge (for my needs, heavy users' MMV!) Been dropped a couple of times and survived, although the drops weren't from a great height onto concrete. Gets a signal where iThings can't.
 
HP Elite X3 is touted as a PC replacement. It comes with a docking station to connect to a screen, keyboard and mouse. My belief is that that is the way mobile devices will go as they get more powerful and there is no phone operating system that lends itself to that role as well as Windows 10. I'm a Linux user for desktop and hoped that the Ubuntu efforts at the same idea would come to fruition but to my mind this HP gadget trumps it. Beware though that there are some who believe that Windows for phones is dead and this will be the first and last example. You can temper that fear though with the knowledge that Windows tablets and PCs aren't likely to go anywhere soon and the operating system is well unified now so it'll not become actually defunct, at least not in the short term.
 
Used one for work for a while, was really bad for battery life, however I thought the interface was great and that was WP8 on one of the original Lumia's, can't comment on WP10 but a couple of my friends really like it.
 
I actually quite like mine, it's my work phone and a fairly lowly model. Nowt really wrong with it and the integration with Windows 10 and the cloud is rather useful - much more like an Apple ecosystem experience.

Personal phone is an iPhone 6s.
 
My parents both have them, Dad's has been fine Mum's has had no end of trouble.

But haven't Microsoft stopped developing their phone software?
 
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Eloise said:
But haven't Microsoft stopped developing their phone software?
Click to expand...

I was wondering about that before I got mine, but TBH as long as they keep up with security updates I don't mind at all.
 
ancient_mariner said:
I was wondering about that before I got mine, but TBH as long as they keep up with security updates I don't mind at all.
Click to expand...
I think I may be wrong as after writing that have seen some talk of Surface Phones coming in 2017...
 
They're still making them for business but they've given up on the home user.
 
I got my Lumia 930 a little over a year ago as it was said to have a fantastic camera. I can certainly agree with reports as it's the best I've ever had on a phone. I also find the Windows Mobile interface not only easier to use than Android (I don't touch iOS), I prefer the look as well. I get at least a couple of days' out of the battery (I usually go to bed with it at around 80%), and have all the apps I need, which is a bone of contention for some people, I know. I don't use it for navigation while driving but Bing Maps (based on Here maps) hasn't yet let me down while on foot.

For web stuff, Edge is fast and reliable, and Opera Mobile is fast enough and saves a lot of data downloads (it currently reports 71% data savings). The Instagram app is now as good as the Android version; Word and Excel are usable even on the small screen (and yours would be bigger if you go for the 950); and watching video works fine using VLC. Notifications coming up on my phone also come up on my PC while I'm at home and logged into the same network. Getting stuff on and off the phone is as simple as plugging it into the PC via a USB cable and opening an Explorer Window (it usually opens itself) and using drag and drop. The only drawback for me compared to my old Android phone is that there aren't any apps like ES Explorer to let you connect to your home network at the filesystem level; MS have locked you in to a virtual file system in the same way that Apple do with the iPhone. But it's no problem using a USB cable instead. Oh, and it's convenient using wireless charging, too.

The Lumia 930 is a good, fast, well-built phone. The 950 is even better.
 
I have an iPhone 7 plus which has dreadful call quality but everything else is great. For work I have a win 10 phone and it's seem less and great to have calendar and emails on my phone, call quality is great too.
 
Thank you all very much for your contributions, seem more positives than negatives.

Pete
 
You should certainly try one before you buy, just to make sure you can bear the interface.

I'm just amazed at the battery life of my 640: had a couple of phone calls on it since Sunday morning, plus did 15min rooting around in menus and it's got 77% battery left. The screen is the biggest battery drain on this phone, and reading will use 5-7% per hour.
 
I had windows phone and found it good apart from not being able to get some apps for it, if you are ok wth apps available don`t see any problem
 
I've got a Lumia 640 . It's the second windows phone I've owned, (after previously using Android) which is an endorsement in itself. I like the interface with live tiles - very much a smaller version of a Windows 10 PC and syncs well other Microsoft products and services. Has pretty much all the main apps that I need - but recently, one or two have started to become withdrawn from the app store - so this may change for the worse over time. Clearly no developer is going to be making (or even continuing to support) apps in the future for a moribund platform.

The update from WinPhone8 to WinPhone10 was mostly positive, although the replacement for the Nokia Here Drive satnav is not as good as the original - but still allows you to store offline maps (for anywhere in the world) which is pretty amazing. The ability to expand storage with a cheap 128mb micro SD card is another bonus, that is still alien to Apple users if not Android! The ability to drag and drop files and media between PC and phone is again something that I take for granted with a windows phone, and that would frustrate me with an Apple device and it's reliance on iTunes.

They are also now cheap as chips. Try one out and see if you like it!

I'm pretty much resigned to my next phone being an Android device - but if MS were to do a U-turn and continuing development I would consider staying loyal.
 
Thanks for your feedback Deadpandodo, I didn't know that Microsoft were discontinuing support, a definite reason to consider giving Windows Phones a swerve.

Thanks again,

Pete
 
I personally wouldn't invest anything into Windows based phones these days. You can have the best hardware in the world, without a software ecosystem though (of which theirs is relatively dire), it's just some microchips.
If its for personal use and you're just surfing the net and taking a few photos though, then it doesn't really matter!
 
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