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I became adventurous and spent $79 for a Windows 8 phone. I said to myself what can you lose, I spent similar money for a USB stick. But what I can gain is some experience - as if I needed that at my age, LOL.
My first impressions are mixed. There are really 3 parts to it.
1. The Nokia part - they make the hardware. It clearly shows that they once were the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. The phone is very well put together. It makes a solid impression.
The little Qualcom CPU does a decent job and operation is fluid. The screen is ok, not more. It has a bit of a reflection and it is certainly not high def at 800x480. But even with my bad eyes I can manage. The touch works well once I had peeled the protective foil off. The camera takes pictures - not more. You are not going to win a photo contest with those.
2. The Microsoft part - W8P is neatly organized and I had no problem with all the setups. It took me about two hours to 'tune' it my way. It feels a bit like a mini Android but it has a lot less options than Android. That is also the major weakness of W8P - compared to Android the whole infrastructure is pretty poor - e.g. few apps in the store. The best app is the navigation app, but that is from Nokia. I can now see why people prefer Android over W8P.
A little aside - I had a question and called Microsoft where I bought the phone. They told me that they do not support the device. The person literally said that they do like Walmart.
3. The T-Mobile part - although the phone is contract free, if you want a contract, you can only get it from T-Mobile. They want $30 minimum without data. I said thank you because for the two calls per month we would be making that is steep. Their mother company in Germany offers a minimum of E9.95. That is still too much for my purposes but more reasonable. I am now scouting the terrain for a reasonable VoIP - here again Android is a lot better. With GrooveIP the calls are free, even from Europe to the US.
Well, as I said at the beginning, it is to gain experience. I don't really need a cell phone.
My first impressions are mixed. There are really 3 parts to it.
1. The Nokia part - they make the hardware. It clearly shows that they once were the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world. The phone is very well put together. It makes a solid impression.
The little Qualcom CPU does a decent job and operation is fluid. The screen is ok, not more. It has a bit of a reflection and it is certainly not high def at 800x480. But even with my bad eyes I can manage. The touch works well once I had peeled the protective foil off. The camera takes pictures - not more. You are not going to win a photo contest with those.
2. The Microsoft part - W8P is neatly organized and I had no problem with all the setups. It took me about two hours to 'tune' it my way. It feels a bit like a mini Android but it has a lot less options than Android. That is also the major weakness of W8P - compared to Android the whole infrastructure is pretty poor - e.g. few apps in the store. The best app is the navigation app, but that is from Nokia. I can now see why people prefer Android over W8P.
A little aside - I had a question and called Microsoft where I bought the phone. They told me that they do not support the device. The person literally said that they do like Walmart.
3. The T-Mobile part - although the phone is contract free, if you want a contract, you can only get it from T-Mobile. They want $30 minimum without data. I said thank you because for the two calls per month we would be making that is steep. Their mother company in Germany offers a minimum of E9.95. That is still too much for my purposes but more reasonable. I am now scouting the terrain for a reasonable VoIP - here again Android is a lot better. With GrooveIP the calls are free, even from Europe to the US.
Well, as I said at the beginning, it is to gain experience. I don't really need a cell phone.
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My Computer
System One
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- OS
- Vista and Win7
- System Manufacturer/Model
- 2xHP, 2xGateway, 1xDell, 1xSony
- Hard Drives
- 5 SSDs and 12 HDs