The gloves are on: Nokia emits super-sensitive £99 Windows Phone Nokia's sub-£100 Lumia 520 has rolled out in the UK this week, alongside a keenly priced and attractive unibody sibling, the Lumia 720. Both were announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. The Lumia 620 put a modern Nokia at a price point under £150, but now the slightly larger size has made it even cheaper. …
Microsoft would be a good enough reason if your memory goes any further back than a couple of months.
What with their abortive product changes, they look like an out-of-control car playing ping-pong with the guide rails.
Add them screwing all their Music customers who PURCHASED DRM music, by simply turning off their DRM servers after a few years without compensation.
A company that pulls off a theft like that once, you know what their view on their customers is.
As for the OS, for me, its enough that I can't customize it, cause Microsoft insists on forcing their garish tile look on me.
I still think Elop is a trojan horse, responsible for the destruction of Nokia.
Win Pho seems to run on worse hardware then Android. The problem with cheaper 'Droids is that they're often sluggish and stuttery. That's been my experience. Whereas the Lumia 710 I had for a while did less, and was less flexible, but did most of it very well. Phone, contacts, email, messaging, navigation all good to great - browsing and search via Bing mediocre to OK. Apps were mostly dire. I was happy with that, as I'm not a big app user on phones.
I don't think Windows Phone can compete too well at the top end. It's not rubbish, but apps are more important there, and the only things it's much better at are contact management and camera. But at the bottom end there aren't any iPhones and a lot of the 'Droids are disappointing.
Local opinion on these new Nokia's is that they're great phones, everyone seems surprised on how well Winpho 8 works on a Snapdragon, and speed and ease of use is universally lauded. In most USER reviews one of the most common phrases is 'I didn't expect'. What is however mentioned in nearly every case is that the battery charge does not perform anywhere near the numbers cited by Nokia.
Let's hope Nokia finds a way claw themselves back from the abyss, preferably with some fine phones.
That's got to be a bugger for anyone trying to sell a mid-market phone. The Google Nexus 4. Not nice to try to compete against that.
I wonder if Google should do a low-end Nexus device, where there'd be a real benefit to the processor from not having to run crapware, trialware and operator/manufacturer skins? Say a £150 from one of the Chinese companies?
That would properly screw Nokia and MS - assuming they aren't already...
By reviewers, you know, those people who are supposed to make their living quantifying how good something is.
Most Fandroids on here have never even seen a Windows Phone in use, so they are just joining in with the mindless sheeple-like attacks on it.
It's been obvious for over a year that the world consists of three mobile markets - the US, Japan and everywhere else. The US is distorted by the de facto carrier cartel - for a supposedly business friendly country the US is very good at cartels that work against end users and new business entrants - which push expensive phones on expensive contracts. Japan is Japan. But everywhere else there is a more or less "normal" market with a range of everything from very cheap to Vertu. It isn't hard to see that in such a market, since the cost of features is now so low, even cheap phones will sell on features. And for the great majoity of people, cheap phones are more than good enough.
Blackberry is trying to stay relevant with their 9320, and are believed to be trying to get out a midrange phone with their new OS. Apple is rumoured to be planning mid-range iPhones. But neither of them exactly has a reputation for underpricing their products. (Though the 9320 is better than some of Blackberry's more expensive offerings - a straw in the wind?)
The difference is that both Nokia and Samsung have a reputation for doing cheap rather well.
I guess that every night the directors of Nokia face East, fall to their knees, and implore God to make little Kim launch off everything he's got at South Korea.
Nuke, because one well placed one would save Nokia.
OK so I'm obviously very wrong about something - perhaps some of the people who downvoted would like to say why? I wasn't trolling, I just thought that the Reg might be somewhere you could put forward a point of view and, you know, have other people argue with it.
If the "nuke" comment was in poor taste, say so.
"for a supposedly business friendly country the US is very good at cartels that work against end users and new business entrants "
Because our lobbyists and politicians are very good at "plausible dediability" when cash flows and are very good at sneaking in items in important bills that no politician would dare vote against. There was a joke/rumor going around that the reason the relief for Hurricane Katrina took so long to be released was that they needed to figure out the path a new interstate in West Virginia first.
"It's been obvious for over a year that the world consists of three mobile markets - the US, Japan and everywhere else"
It is obvious that you are rather clueless then. Nokia were #1 manufacturer for years without even selling in the USA. The US and Japan are actually quite a small and insignificant mobile markets. Europe (500 million mobile subscribers), China, India, South America, rest of Asia are all much larger markets.
"The US and Japan are actually quite a small and insignificant mobile markets"
Yeah, compared to Bhutan and Guyana, the #1 and #3 economies in the world are "insignificant" markets... You do know that 450 million very rich people live in those two countries, right?
... it's almost as if they've decided that it's better to make a loss on a sold cheap phone than it is to make a loss on an unsold middle-range or expensive phone.
And do they actually have any designers left or have they decided to recycle the N9 forever?
Look back over the number of people they've got rid of in recent times.
The answer is, no, they don't have any designers. So you get a fondle slab like every other company, nothing exciting, new or intelligent. What about those of us that like to use a phone while we walk? Can't do that with a damned touch screen. - I want buttons, those old fashioned things with good tactile feedback that worked!
This isn't just a Nokia problem, all phone companies have got a single track mind with the single exception of Blackberry.
OK fair enough Nokia are moving to a full range of phones on one platform but their choice of releases just looks like the Nokia of old with variations of previous handsets with slight variations of features. Any other manufacturer you can normally he safe in the knowledge that newer is better on a particular price range but Nokia just makes it difficult for their customers.
Erm, Samsung? HTC? they're all the same. Slight variations.
What you do is reduce costs gradually on each item to create a range. There will be someone who wants expandability, someone who wants the better camera, someone who wants the better screen. For the person who wants it all they go for a higher up phone.
I picked up a 520 last night from Carphone Warehouse (£99 unlocked) to replace broken Samsung Galaxy.
Within 5 minutes I had 2 email accounts synced, Facebook integration sorted, contacts copied from old phone, Skype working. All without even a slight hitch, or speed issue. All the basics of a phone on the WP8 devices just work, seamlessly.
I understand that the above experience is not for everyone, a number of my Friends won’t touch the device unless you can root it / install free apps / get it infested with Malware etc, but for the rest that just want a phone that just works, and works first time, it’s the perfect phone. And for £99, and thing more is just a waste.
Could you comment on how slick it is at switching between apps, loading web-pages, etc? I have the 610 and like it but it doesn't support Skype (too little memory) and can be slow - if the 520 is better than the 610 I'm very interested.
Oh and also... does it work with iPlayer? Windows Phone 7 apparently does not but perhaps IE10 fixes that?
I can't answer about the 520 ( I have an 920) , but regarding the iPlayer it's "coming soon" http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Microsoft_mobile
but seeing the bad job the BBC have done at bringing the iPlayer to Android ( implementation and timescales ) as opposed to the slick IOS offerings I wouldn't hold my breath at it a. coming soon and b. being up to much more than just a streaming service.
Performance is very quick, and unlike the 610 the 520 runs the vast majority of apps, and has full background service and live tile features.
The app loading speed is not quite up to the 920 I also have (my work phone) but it’s not far off. A very rough speed test was 2 seconds to load the Facebook app on the 920 and 3 seconds on the 520. That’s probably due to the 920 having a 50% faster CPU.
The app availability is a little sore point, but of my three most used apps I am missing, iplayer and Barclays banking have confirmed that are releasing shortly, just Runkeeper and I have all the apps I had on my Samsung.
Was your family murdered by Steve Ballmer et al forcing you to go into full Steven Segal mode? Saying that "These are amongst the ugliest phones I've ever seen" means that you're either blind or trying to BS us all.
Seriously, criticism of companies, products, OSs, whatever, is welcome as long as it's reasonably balanced and based on fact. Your visceral hatred for MS and related products just weakens your position. Please, get over it.
My 12 year old son has a Lumia 620 and he loves it. He could have got a cheap Android like most of his friends but he chose this instead. At the low end, WP8 is a good choice. The selection of apps smaller than iOS or Android, but it's getting there. I would wholeheartedly recommend WP8 to someone looking for a cheap smartphone.
"Didn't they just burn a platform to get out of the low end?"
Yes, but that was a crappy, already dying and very limited OS. A burning platform as Nokia famously said.
With WP they have a product based on a unified kernel that scales from a couple of hundred MB of RAM and single core low power CPUs all the way up to hundreds of cores and many TB of RAM if ever required, and is more efficient and secure than rival platforms in doing so.
To have a single platform and App store all the way across low end to high end, and then to share the same kernel with desktops, tablets and laptops obviously has many advantages...
This is tempting. My current phone is Android, and I like Android. But,I've just thought about what I actually use it for, and, to be honest the OS is fairly irrelevant.
A couple of games to kill time, email, calendar, make phone calls, check my bank balance and a bit of web browsing. All this can be done on WinPhone. My bank has an app on the Windows market, so, this ticks all the boxes.
I find I use my phone far less now I have a tablet, so, a limited number of apps doesn't bother me. Seems all the ones I do use on my phone are available on Windows Phone.
Oh, and less than £100 really appeals too.
I have a Nokia N8, what is considered a dinosaur in terms of phones, being 3 years old, yet I am only now having to think about changing, due to many drunken gig related issues.
So, why have I stuck with this phone? It’s odd but I see a phone as something to make phone calls and send texts, occasionally I look at Facebook etc but I really don’t feel the need to constantly be checking it, and the same with email I have a computer at work and a laptop at home, other than using them I spend my time either driving, eating, sleeping or choosing to not be at a computer, why would I need to use my phone for things I can do much better using items I already own? I have better things to do with a phone, like take pictures.
The N8 has a great camera, that’s the reason I went for it in the first place, seeing as I can’t have an SLR on me all the time, I haven’t bought a new digital camera since owning the N8 as it is just as good, and I have been hard pushed to find a newer phone with a camera as good, let alone better. I have tried.
So, dear Reg readers, any suggestions? I would like a phone that I can call people on, and it has a camera that is as better than my N8, (Not the 808 as its on Symbian, and I want to be able to use this for another couple of years, and please don’t say any type of iPhone, I am constantly told by people at work until I get them to compare a picture of the same thing, and watch them change to subject to how quickly the can get on facebook, the cameras suck)
Beware... when you move away from N8 as you'll be paying for your modern swish UI by saying goodbye to some wonderful features.
I still use my N8 (alongside my Windows Phone for which I develop apps) because I love (in no particular order)
* the amazing camera
* the wonderful TRULY offline maps and navigation
* the FM transmitter (it's great when pumping MP3s through my car's sound system... and the music is automatically lowered in volume while the above-mention nav is speaking to me)
* being able to plug in a portable hard drive or memory stick via USB on the Go
* being able to browse the file system
* being able to Bluetooth almost any file (inc MP3s) from my phone my computer
* the versatility of the clunky UI
I do however like my Lumia, it's a nice piece of kit with a UI that makes iOS look like an old maid.
But when I eventually retire my N8 I'm going to be nostalgic for pre-walled garden mobile computing.
What is wrong with the 808/ It has the phone calls, text, browser (for facebook etc), games etc etc etc and a camera that is better than any that anyone else has ever put on a smartphone. Not only is the camera superb but the microphones are as well... you really can go to one of your gigs and record it, come home and be able to recognise the sound and the band from the video - something no other phone will offer you. (yup its better even than your n8).
Try one, they will last more than a few years (they're built like a proper Nokia). If you are feeling a bit risk averse then buy a couple of spare batteries - they are the only thing that eventually fails on all phones.
Revel in being different to the herd :)
As another N8-owner, I know where you're coming from... Only Nokia and Apple make phones that are as well made, and neither of them can match the camera quality of the N8. I really do not like iOS or Apple's always-on over-saturated colour processing, so that leaves Nokia. I just wish they'd get their camera stuff fully ported to WP...
None of the Androids have a good camera by N8 standards. The HTC One is closest, but it's not as good as N8. If you can take the drop in image quality, it's a nicely made phone, with enough features to keep you up to date for a couple of years. But, being Android, you will have to completely wipe and restore it at some point to recover lost performance. (It's a quick job, though). The Galaxy S 3 and 4 are mediocre as cameras, and the 3 flimsily built. Not a good combination for gigs.
Right now, the (hard to get) 808 is the only thing that is better as a camera. It would also be faster, as it has a CPU that's nearly twice the speed of the N8's, and a better GPU. I considered it, but as you say, it's a lot to pay for a dead-end device.
The 920 (and upcoming 928, most likely) is good in the dark, but it can't beat the N8 in well-lit scenes, although the optical stabilisation for video is exceptional (and the audio quality is also top-notch, if not quite as good as the 808's stunning audio capture).
However, there is a new camera-centric WindowsPhone device rumoured to be coming this summer from Nokia, but no details about it have emerged yet. I'm waiting to see what that one is like: the 920 was close, but a little to big for me, and the 720 produces some stunning results for its price-range. In any case, the N8 will continue for another year...
Personally I would recommend the Lumia 920 as a replacement. It has a great camera, especially in low light, very fast and easy to use. I don't use a ton of apps but the ones I need are available either as official apps or ones created by good 3rd party devs. I know there are a lot more apps for iphone/android but tbh at some point in the very near future that gap is going to be closed enough where it can no longer be used as a selling point. Once that happens your then down to aesthetics, usability and performance which I believe windows phone does better than the competition having used all except the new bb10.
Go try a WP8 for a couple of weeks and see, I think like many others who try it you will be surprised at how much you like it.
out of curiosity, I had a look at O2s offers on this phone.
24 Months cheapest is pay £60 and £11/month
18 Months cheapest is pay nothing and £19/month - there's no option to have a lower tarriff cost and pay more for the phone, I guess you're expected to buy it outright - in fact you'd get more for less money (certainly in data) on buying the phone and spending £10/month pay-and-go.
When you say they reuse the same internals of the 620 for the 720, does that include the battery? Presumably using a small phone battery in a larger phone will have a higher battery drain. And from what I've read elsewhere these Nokia phones are already not the start performer in the battery department.
Or don't people care about things like battery life anymore these days?
The Nokia 510 is available on Tesco Mobile for 80 pounds. Ok it's locked but Tesco Mobile is a decent network.
Personally, I prefer to wait for the new Nokia Asha range. They will be even cheaper and built just as well.
There are 130,000 on the Nokia S40 platform and the battery lasts for 5 days.
Windows8phone has failed to get any traction in the market place (yes I know about Poland and Ukraine), and those devices are too little, too late, whatever the price of the handset, and/or the amount of advertising money and/or product placement they throw at it.
Firefox OS will probably be the nail in MS Phone coffin.
It seems shortsighted to say a market cannot turn around. How many years did Apple languish at 1% of the laptop market? How dominant were Sony for cool personal audio?
As for FF OS... please, you're joking right?
I saw quite a lot of modern Nokias in Finland too, and advertised in pride-of-place in shop windows. Not that this makes Nokia less of an also-ran, but there are probably more places where it's doing better than the UK. It's not to be underestimated how much things differ between countries so basing it on the UK/US is not accurate.
I didn't say that Market couldn't be turned around, I said that WindowsPhone failed to do so.
WindowsMobile always had far more marketshare than WindowsPhone ever reached.
We're now into the third year of the platform and they're still at 2% marketshare worldwide with no instagram or BBC iPlayer app in sight.
That's what is known as a failure.
Regarding FirefoxOS, it is pushed by Operators as well as manufacturers, meaning it will succeed where others BB or WP have failed.
The operators have no interest in pushing a platform which they can't control or modify, and developers don't want to learn new tools and language to develop Apps. (especially for one with 2% market share)
Btw, your Apple Market share comment is totally irrelevant.
One buys a computer every 5 years versus a 2 years upgrade cycle on phones.
Besides there is no operator and or subsidize to consider when looking at PCs.
"We're now into the third year of the platform and they're still at 2% marketshare worldwide with no instagram or BBC iPlayer app in sight."
See: http://blog.laptopmag.com/windows-phone-sales-see-global-gains-while-blackberry-falters
Windows Phone has 4.1% market share in the US, 6.7% in the UK.
100% growth in 3 months is by most definitions a success.
Iplayer is already announced - Instagram is about the only hold out now, and a third party app was released for that on WP this week..
Developers don't have to learn new tools - they can use the most common IDE on the planet - Visual Studio....
Since when have operators been able to customise iPhones or Blackberry devices? Those have sold plenty historically.
Btw, your Apple Market share comment is totally irrelevant.
One buys a computer every 5 years versus a 2 years upgrade cycle on phones.
Um, that makes it TOTALLY irrelevant? You buy a phone 3X as often as a PC, but the fact it took Apple DECADES to even get to 10% of the laptop market isn't relevant?
I wish Nokia would end this fragmentation
I was about to buy this phone but noticed it only has 512Mb RAM so it wont run temple run lol
so thats a deal breaker for me
I went onto Nokia's website to see their latest phones, and liked the Lumia 510, but then I saw it runs WP 7.8, which does not support WP8 apps
In the end I gave up and went to the less fragmented Android and got a beautiful LG Nexus for, and at 239 quid, what a bargain !!!!!!!!
Now I have a butter smooth phone and don't have to worry about missing apps :)
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