Nokia Lumia 625: Quality budget 4G phone ... but where's UK's budget 4G? Nokia's latest Lumia, a budget 4G smartphone, alights on an odd perch in the marketplace, where it finds itself all alone. 4G voice contracts in the UK are currently a luxury good - with luxury price tags attached. For most Britons, LTE is only practically available at not-so-budget prices from one network, EE, with a 2GB …
at least the LTE icon pops up occasionally on my phone, and webtraffic does load quickly - the cost is the same 3euros per week that I paid for my pay-as-you-go voda contract. The only 2 places that I've noticed (& used) the LTE however is in the auditorium at La Scala, Milan and weirdly the breakfast bar (underground/lower basement!) of a hotel in Verona.
As 2G & 3G is comprehensively stuffed for privacy & security (tho' the network ops are doing just about the minimum they can to update security) I'd like to see more LTE, especially refarmed down to 900MHz, please.
Three is definitely the way to go because of the free upgrade to 4G when it becomes available.
I've just ordered my 1020 and shopped around but the rigid 24 month plans are of no use when 4G hits my area between beginning of 2014 and end of 2015.
I could get the phone for "free" on a 4G contract but I'd be paying a higher monthly fee for a service I may nit see at all during the contract or I could go 3G and pay a higher upfront cost and then possibly move up to 4G in six months time but I'd be paying the higher monthly rate that would have netted me the phone for possibly 3/4s of the contract.
Paid £80 upfront at Three and £32 a month for 500 minutes, 5000 texts and more importantly all you can eat 3G that becomes 4G at no additional cost when its available at some point over the next 27 months. That's ideally where the 625 should sit, free on a £20-25 contract with an automatic update to 4G when uts available.
The point of 4G is that it's not significantly faster than 3G, but it is designed to cope with more subscribers per cell. So although it will slow down when over-subscribed, it should do better than 3G, by the time everyone's migrated to it.
Also, there's a counter to Andrew's point about 4G and 3G speeds being comparable, which they undoubtedly are. In my limited experience of 4G, latency is lower. And also upstream speed is higher. So when you start downloading data, you get no significant speed advantage, but your request to start downloading should get through much quicker. Certainly I've noticed that on 4G web pages don't load much faster, from when the first element appears, but it usually appears much more rapidly.
I wouldn't have paid for it myself, but the company did. The company also took me the iPhone 5 route, and away from my previous Lumia 710. The iPhone is a premium product, which the £120 Lumia wasn't, but the ergonomics of the nice rubbery back on the Nokia were better. It was more comfortable in the hand (without the slidey metal and slab-like sides) - and the address book and phone functions were better, easier to read, and coped with work's 4,000 contacts properly. In a way the iPhone simply fails at.
The only all metal phone I've used that fitted well in the hand, without sliding, was the old V3 RAZR (my favourite - for feeling so good to use). The nicest iPhone was the plastic backed 3 (or was it the 3GS?). But my favourite of all was the HTC Desire/Wildfire design, being all metal, but half coated in rubber. Even if it was a weird browny-gold colour...
Technically Kindle is not Android, it's based on Android but its different enough not to be allowed to use the name.
Microsoft also allows the Chinese to not use all the Microsoft products, Xbox Live for example is completely removed from the OS.
Also unless it's forked out like the Kindle the Google Play Services ensures Android does not run without Google and you never have the option of opting out because Google will just opt you back in
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/09/balky-carriers-and-slow-oems-step-aside-google-is-defragging-android/
This is how competition works, it's a good thing that there is a hardware manufacturer who is not sticking to Android, it forces the Android manufacturers to up their game. I really don't understand the people who seem to think that mobile phones will be great if they're all running Android and all competition is eliminated. A monoculture is a bad thing, it would allow Google to cease development and rest on their laurels.
Most of us like the idea of competition, but dislike the idea of anything from microsoft.. As you pointed out competition is good and monoculture is bad, yet the biggest example of how a monoculture is bad is microsoft and the risk that they could do the same to the phone/tablet market is one that cannot be ignored.
A monoculture of android is undoubtedly a bad thing, but they are not there yet... There is still plenty of viable competition from apple and i would rather support blackberry/webos/jolla/firefox/etc than microsoft.
That said, a monoculture of android is nowhere near as bad as a monoculture of microsoft... If google stagnate, then third parties can continue development, just look at the recent announcement from cyanogen.
Yes, Apple and Google are good, while MS is bad... a monoculture of devices designed to reap as much data as possible about you is better?
You may like it or not, but it was Microsoft to bring computers to most users. If it was for Apple you would have had only expensive high-end machine for the wealthy ones with very limited expansion capacity, and if was for Google you would have had only Internet terminals so it could extract any little piece of information from you.
So if you don't like Microsoft phones and fear they can dominate the market (something I believe won't happen) don't buy them. But use your brain, not your guts. I don't like MS, but I do not like also nor Apple nor Google.
IHateWearingATie,
I'm sure Nokia could produce perfectly fine Android phones. Especially with their snazzy cameras at the top end, where I assume the camera has its own chippery, and so is just a driver away from working with anything.
However, at the lower and mid-priced ends, Nokia couldn't do this with Android. The hardware requirements are higher. You can't run the up-to-date versions of Droid with less than a gig of RAM and extra battery. Even the dual core 1 Ghz chips are probably a bit low for Android 4.2 aren't they?
That's the price you pay for 'proper' multi-tasking. Even if it isn't true that Android is less efficient. Personally I've found I don't need or want it on a phone, as multiple apps are less important to me than phone, email, navigation and internet (in that order). Competition is good, and allows people to pick horses for courses. If I was paying with my own money, it would be a budget Lumia (what I bought before the work iPhone). Unless I was convinced of the shinyness of the camera on the new Lumia 1020.
There are openings shortly in the 4G market so I believe, hence EEs [Orange] push to sell it to as many customers as possible before rivals launch similar services.As for 3G for me it looks like it might have been dialed down a tad since its inception, much like HD quality the reception seems to me anyway to have suffered.
Nick Ryan,
There's nothing wrong with plastic. I prefer it, especially if rubbery. That's nothing to do with my rubber fetish (much), but more because I'm always scared of dropping these horribly slidey metal and glass things. Shitty design over ergonomics bullshit, if you ask me.
Apple got abuse for their plastic phone, because all they did was release an iPhone 5 coated in plastic, at the same price they would have continued selling the iPhone 5 at this year anyway. So they've actually raised their profit margin on their 1 year old handset, from when that was the 4S last year. Assuming they sell enough to cover the costs of re-tooling the production lines anyway.
Which is no problem, except that the markets were worried about Apple's market share dropping, and hoped they'd go cheaper to counter this. Also their marketing BS is wearing rather thin. When you claim to be innovative, magical and revolutionary when all you're doing is putting out a slightly better iteration of an already good product - you're bound to cop some abuse...
Didn't see one below 250 at Amazon but that is still an amazing price for that phone; would buy it immediately if I hadn't bought one immediately they were released.
Still, could always spend more on a 1020 and pass the 920 to a deserving offspring. Would have to pry the 800 out of his hands first though - nice, nice phone in the hand that one.
Battery life was outstanding, lasting into a third day on light use, even on 4G. It should see you through the best part of two days of normal use
What? That's about what I get out of my S4 Mini and I would hardly call that "outstanding". Outstanding would be a week.
Nice to see Nokia still trying to find their niche but I do worry that there are plenty of Android phones out there with comparable specs and prices (and battery life).
True for the moment but soon when 3 start rolling 4G out it won't be expensive and as it might even give them decent indoor coverage it might even be worthwhile using them. So you would ideally want a 4G handset ready for it or at least I would. 3 are essentially the budget Operator so they need budget phones too.
What's wrong with these people?
I don't give a 5hit about swappable Chad Valley coloured backs, but if you've got a removeable back, at least that's the chance to replace the battery when it's ****ed, after about eighteen months. Well, it used to be.
I suppose it's like the motor industry - the people who design and build the things never have to live with them for more than a few months, so serviceability and durability are completely alien concepts. Either that, or a cynical and concerted approach by the whole industry to try and ramp up the replacement cycle by making the whole phone only as durable as a ten quid battery.
looks from the pics i found that the battery is under the next bit of the shell. that bit is screwed in place but the battery is glued to the next bit of the phone.
so it seems the removeable shell is more for changing colour and replacing the headphone socket when it wears out than anything else.
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