Phablet for the biz fleet with easy typing: Microsoft Lumia 640 XL One of my surprising reviews last year was Nokia’s huge, budget phablet, the Lumia 1320. It's fairly similar to the most recent Lumia 640 XL. Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Microsoft's Lumia 640 XL: available in 3G and 4G versions The previous Lumia 1320 was hard to find in the retail catalogues and even Nokia didn’t seem to care …
I use a Sony Xperia Z Ultra as a tablet when travelling. It has a better screen (1080p) and is available at a similar price, but if this had been around at the time I would probably have bought it based on the removable battery and the known durability of Nokias. The Sony always gives me the feeling it is a bit fragile.
A small tablet with a PAYG SIM is the best of both worlds as it can be used out of range of wifi. I was on a site a couple of weeks ago where Three was giving me 20 down and 3 up and BT was struggling to maintain 13 down and 1.5 up.
All true. I wonder if it would be possible to put Android on it? :)
Actually that raises an interesting question, which maybe someone here can help answer for me. Phones now are much more powerful, with more RAM, more disk space and faster processors than computers of 10 years ago were. However, installing a new operating system is still much more arduous than it ever has been for a proper PC. Since there is a fairly small selection of components in modern phones, why is it so hard to install across different hardware (a trick that live Linux CDs have had for 12 or 15 years now)? Why do I need to download a ROM developed specifically for my exact phone?
If I want to run Ubuntu, I download a generic installation CD image, which will work with virtually any hardware. If I want to run Lollipop, I need to find an image exactly matched to the precise version of the phone I'm using. Why the difference?
I think that phones are actually more complicated. For one thing, the OS and the hardware need to be tightly integrated to minimise power consumption. For another, I'm not sure there is a small selection of components - there are a lot of SOCs, some custom. A generic laptop doesn't have a magnetometer, a complex camera, GPS, a variety of wireless transceivers with different frequency bands for different regions, brightness sensors and multiple microphones. Although a Ubuntu install will work with a lot of fairly generic laptops, it won't work with a lot of the more unusual components, and in my experience the best compatibility is with older machines - everything works on my 7 year old Lenovo but the speaker doesn't work on a 5 year old netbook.
^This!
Why the downvote? I agree with this, after major pain in reinstalling a different firmware on a Samsung phone that took several hours to find the correct version with the correct baseband and set up, install, etc etc etc, or just the absolute PITA to get root access on some android tablets... especially as a complete OS install or live CD boot takes less than half an hour and works off the bat...
Because.
The longer answer is, whilst each individual model has a relatively small array of components, they are complex and often custom built.
An ARM processor is not an ARM processor, most have custom extensions. Likewise there are different modem chips etc.
Until the S6, the Galaxy used a Xeneos processor in most of the world, but had to use a Snapdragon in the USA, because the LTE chipset for the Xeneos wasn't compatible with the LTE implementation in the USA. If you used an international Galaxy in the USA, it wouldn't get 4G - the same is true of the Lumia 930, it is an LTE device, yet all the reviews on American sites claim it is only 3G; because it suffers from the same problem, the Lumia Icon works with Verizon LTE, but the 930 is stuck on UMTS in the USA.
Different memory controllers, different cameras, different sensor packages, different fingerprint sensors etc. All "common" features on many modern phones, but all different, so they need their own drivers. That means the manufacturers need to create custom driver packages - and test that everything works together.
The AOSP based ROMs then need to reverse engineer many of those drivers in order to get them working.
That is why you need a custom ROM.
Have an upvote, even though I loathe Android and Ubuntu. Nokia actually had a few decent OSes, but alas... Microsoft.
The reason switching mobile OSes is such a pain: too much locked-down proprietary hardware, and douchebag manufacturers and carriers. OSdevers have better things to do.
> If I want to run Ubuntu, I download a generic installation CD image, which will work with virtually any hardware.
No, it won't work with *any* hardware, it will only work with an x86-64 (a different version will work with x86) CPU, an IBM-PC clone BIOS (or UEFI) with PCI interfacing, a range of graphics cards and some other things. You seem to think that is what _every_ computer is. It happens that many are like that because they have become a commodity.
Some years ago it seemed that there would be greater variety with PPC, Alpha, MIPS, Itanium and others vying for top spot. There was also ACE as a spec. But AMD brought out x86-64 as a cheaper high performance chip and the others were forgotten.
ARM does not have a unified (ie like IBM-PC) BIOS to hide the implementation details yet so each ROM has to cater for the SoC differences.
I like WP generally, but unfortunately I have found it unsuitable for enterprise use (and personal) for one simple reason: It is incapable of exporting SMS messages. There is no way, short of selecting each one individually, hitting copy and pasting it into a text editor, of getting them out. And even then it would just be raw text with no timestamps or sender information.
This is basic functionality available on even simple phones for well over a decade and easily possible on rival systems. But it cannot be done by WP. It's been raised with MS by many people but has not been addressed and the reply keeps coming back that you can "backup" your txt messages which misses the point by a staggering degree. We're not talking about restoring them to your next phone, we're talking about export. I know of one case where someone had to individually copy some thousand or so messages because they had to hand over records as part of a court case. And even without such cases, you still want to be able to have a searchable record of your messages or be sure that they are safe.
We can save emails, keep letters but as far as MS are concerned, txt messages are designed to be thrown away. It is a dumbfounding lack that basically excludes WP from consideration for many.
Losing all my text messages when moving between Android and Windows Phone (and back again!) was a bit painful. Anyway,sounds like this might have been resolved quite recently - MS have released a message backup app.
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-releases-contactsmessage-sd-card-backup
I hadn't looked this up for a long time but had reason to want to back up my SMS archive the other week. Imagine my surprise when I found this (just released 2 weeks ago):
http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-releases-contactsmessage-sd-card-backup
Does exactly what it says on the tin. XML output files for texts and contacts. Sadly it needs a micro SD card to export them to - but my new HTC One for Windows has a slot... (purchased in the US, why oh why did they never release it in Europe??? Very capable handset indeed).
Thank you, hugely, to both you and Fungi. This has been a huge lack on WP for a long time. You've just made my day if this works as promised. I'm downloading to try it out now. And XML export format is fine by me. Obviously wont be ideal for the less technical users, but there are people around to help with that and ultimately it's actually even better as XML.
THANK YOU! :D
Well as standard my Nexus loses all my SMS messages if I do a reset. It doesn't back them up as standard.
Doesn't even do that greater job of backing up all my contacts even if I check to make sure they are in the list of contacts in Gmail. I always seem to lose around 10-15%.
Not the end of the world though. Just one of those things.
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But obviously the poster who wishes to export text messages for legal reasons can disagree.
If that were a likely happenstance in the business I worked in, I would ensure all communication were carried out within a corporate account on a data-connection based messaging system.
This would be for multiple reasons:
1. Texts do text. This is rarely sufficient to cope with everything so therefore there are multiple communication paths required if files need to be transferred etc.
2. Data connections can ensure that the message is delivered, that you know it is delivered and that you even know they have seen it perhaps.
3. Data messaging systems allow multiple users in multiple groups with individual communications perhaps.
4. Data allows one to switch to any number of devices to continue the same conversation thread.
5. Backing up a data system is trivial, the server can do it as part of the overall system. Restoration is automatic and trivial.
6. Any number of suitable systems are available to run on anything and are free.
I am sure there are more reasons but the above seems sufficient to avoid a text-based system.
Obviously, I see no reason NOT to have an export mechanism, especially as the messages are stored on the OneDrive if enabled. Well, apart from the extra coding and testing etc. - the selection mechanism is already there after all, albeit only a basic one.
> Microsoft sell more Windows Phones in a quarter than Google do all Chrome devices in a year....
And Google (and others) sell twice as many Androids in a week than WP in a quarter.
Also Microsoft phones went from 40% market share (US) in 2007 to less than 3% worldwide currently while Chrome devices are still growing at 80% or so per year.
I must say I'm pretty happy with my Lumia myself.
The Metro UI is really good for this format and general usability is awesome.
Alas as often with MS, the last major update introduced some bugs, like the sms app hanging (no longer typing), and occasional OS crashes.
I must agree on your last sentence Android really sucks big juicy donkey c**ks.
- Sent from my FreeBSD computer
Same here, my previous phone to the 920 that I have now was android (HTC one), like the HTC, got a little slow in the end. When i switched to the 920, first i thought, what have i done, cant find anything, didnt really like it as it was different. Then after a few weeks that changed, the interface is very good, generally quick, except currently ( after the latest update) having some problems with browsing being a little slow and battery usage.
But when I go back and use other android phones, my wife has a galaxy s5, and some work friends have nexus, I find them a mess and not really that user friendly like i used to think they were. I would not want to go back to an android phone.
I was abroad in Asia for two months, needed a Dual Sim mobile phone. As the 640 XL just came out, I bought one for approximately 150 Pounds. It is the dual Sim 3G version ( both Sims are 3G ), used it for nearly two months. I am very satisfied with it, the quality of the camera surprised me ( I have used Nokia Pureview 808 in the past and still have it ). This relatively 'cheap' phone produces excellent pictures, you will be surprised. On the dual sim phone only one Sim can use data for browsing, BBM , whatsapp etc., you choose which one. Call quality is good. One minus point is I think the radio ( reception / antenna) is not as good a my wife's Blackberry Z30. There are places where signal was poor, this phone did not function at all even for text message but the BB Z30 works for BBM, Text and calls. we used sim cards from the same carrier. Z30 is superior in this respect. I was surprised as usually 'Nokia' phones are good as far as radio is concerned. I am back using the Blackberry Passport in the UK. I have used Nokia Pureview 808, Nokia 620, Nokia E71, so I am not biased hopefully in my assessment. I always use windows phone when I am abroad as I like using the Nokia Here Map. By the way for some reason Waze app does not work on the 640
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