Look. I was never attracted to the windows phone. Talk about the app gap, CPU and RAM specs that didn't seem aggressive on paper. It never felt like an option to look at.
Until my cheap doogee android phone died for the last time.
I needed a phone quick for a job interview. A friend came out with his old 930.
I got hooked. Simple solid design. Intuitive OS. Sleek fast interface. First time I grabbed a phone and just felt... Well.. Wowed.
With that I went out and found a used 920 for myself and loaded windows 10 on it. It's my primary phone
Before I returned the 930 I lent it to my wife. Same thing. It just worked. And as someone who relies on it for the job, it was perfect.
So what is it about these phones?
Let's take a look.
We've got protective covers on both.
For two reasons.
One - it dampens energy when droped, adding a bit of protection
Two - These phones a super smooth, especially the 920, it just wants to slide out of your hand. But I guess it's to be expected, seems like most phones are
The screen itself is a 4.5inch IPS LCD screen for the 920, nice clear vibrant colours. Pureview tech drops LCD response time down below 9ms reducing motion blur and great contrast. It's a great screen
but the 930 is where it's at, with the inclredibly high contrast super crisp full HD AMOLED 5 inchscreen. The technology shines with windows phones vibrant colours and an incredibly highcontrast interface.
The phone itself It's a bit thicker than today's phones. But at 9.8mm and 10.7mm. It's a comfortable size.
The 920 is in a nice vibrant red colour, while the 930 is a standars black
Both have the standard four button layout on the right hand side.
Volume, on/off button, and a dedicated camera button that can be pressed halfway to focus.
And that's were lumia's had always shined.
Nokia's floating lens hardware, along with the addition of software based stabilization makes for the recording of incredibly smooth footage.
The 920 has an 8mp camera that has excellent optics taking clear crisp photos.
The dual LED flash gives adequate lighting.
While recording video at 1080p - most of the video on this channel are recorded with this lumia.
The 930 ups quite a bit with its 20Mp camera and ability to shoot 4k video
(my adventures of RAMCPU are recorded at 4k with this camera)
It also allows to record up to 120fps at a lower resolution of 720p
As a note, in this video, video of the 920 is recorded with the 930, and vice versa.
Except when both are on screen, then that's with an older camera at 720p.
The camera app on both phones allows for manual control of white balance, iso sensitivity, shutter speed, and exposure compensation. This allows for a lot of control in your photos, while also allowing for nice control in videos for what is a smart phone.
I don't get that on the windows phone. Not on the 930. not on the 920.
And this is what changed my mind on specs. It doesn't matter if you have the best hardware in town.... If it doesn't FEEEEL fast
It's why apple gets away with less.
Yeah. Side by side. The 930 outperforms the 920. a phone release in 2014 vs 2012. but. For a five year old phone, the 920 still holds its own.
And that's what amazes me. The consistant experience.
Now. Everything I read says it wasn't always this way. In its infancy the OS was buggy. But now? Look. The 920 isn't even suppose to support windows 10... And its solid.
But the apps. The app gap. What keeps people away. I thought it would bother me... Until I realized I just didn't use that many apps. Any microsoft app works fast, and really a great experience. Most other apps seem fine as well. Google not only didn't port their apps to the platform, they actively sought to prevent it, so you won't find hangouts or maps. Outlook works fine with gmail. And alternatives for chat like whatsapp and skype exist. Facebook and messenger.... Well. They are slow to load, which is pretty crummy.but here's the thing. We might not even need apps in the future, as there is a recent trend towards webapps. The industry must be noticing that not everyone is upgrading their phones to the latest hardware with supported version of iOS or android. Today. If an app doesn't exist in the store, most apps are beginning to have web support.
Continuum has the promise of reeling in developers back into the mobile platform.
So as an app is developed for the xbox, hololens, or desktop, it's not a stretch to make it available for the windows phone.
But! Take the app gap for what it is. I know for some it might be an impossible hurdle. For me. It turned out to be a non issue. I mean. Who needs 100 calculator apps?
photos: Samsung Galaxy S5 by Maurizio Pesce
Shown back cover of Asus Zenfone 2 Deluxe by Nathanferdinand
ASUS Zenfone 2 by Kārlis Dambrāns
Samsung Galaxy S5 by Kārlis Dambrāns
(other photos should be public domain)
