My Experience with Windows Phone & Nokia Lumia 710

[ilovetech]

I had to buy a new smartphone & there were lots of options to choose Omnia? HTC One? Galaxy? Lumia? 3GS? in my budget. I did not have love for Android due to its fragmentation, malware issues, bad UI etc. I had been a Microsoft & windows fan since long & wanted to buy WP7 device when I saw its unveiling back in Oct? 10. My friends & family never approved for same as it do not have very good reputation & lacks basic features (Bluetooth OBEX, files & document sync from PC, Music download from web, poor app store, additional storage, No upgrade to WP8 etc.?) but I still decided to go for it & go with Nokia once again.

Good:

From Day 1, its UI & fluid experience won my heart & mind. It's a clean and simple interface. The way in which my mails, contacts, social networks blends is simply amazing. It keeps me connected always & up to date with online world. The Live tiles always tells that something is happening & force me to keep playing with the phone. The Web experience is fast, fluid & engaging, the best I ever had. The app & games sections is satisfying with almost all apps I need being there. The apps feels much lighter & faster as compared to other platform. The camera quality is mediocre but satisfactory for the price tag. The SkyDrive experience is awesome with all my personal files already on cloud with my PC & now easily accessible on run. Almost everyone who used my phone was ?smoked? & responded with a ?wow?. The Outlook & Lync helps me remain connected to my corporate life as well which is pretty neat. Nokia Maps, Music, Drive apps always tells me that I made a right choice.

Bad:

From Day 1, as much as I loved my Lumia I hated it too. It had the most disgusting battery life of ~7 hours, no ability to download files from PC, no songs from web & no Bluetooth OBEX, no ability to send pdf as attachments, no additional storage etc. I had settled for most of these primitive things a phone must do (forget ?smartphone?) with some workarounds or other. One thing that made my life horrible was its battery, I had to charge phone up to 4 times a day & that leave my mobility for the toss. I had stopped almost all live tiles, background tasks, and brightness etc. but no improvement. The website boast standby of 400 hours but for me it was impossible to achieve 20 hours of standby too (yes standby). The dealer very reluctantly offered to replace battery for my device on complaining but still device showed no improvement & now I knew it is going to be tough fight.

Past:

I had a very rough history with Nokia starting with 6610i, 6110 Navigator, 5800 XpressMusic. Almost every device went to service centre within 2 months of purchase & all of them had to be get replaced after tough fight. They would harass customers, tell lies & take weeks to replace. They will replace phone with either different colour as asked, broken/scratched body or with other defects. For instance touch screen of 5800 got bad, they replaced it with ?new? one after week & now it had warm colours. On complaining again they lie & say that Nokia had updated its ?codec? & now it will remain as is, what a disgusting argument. On further negotiations & fight they agreed to finally get it repaired again. I had to keep my phone with Nokia for almost 1 month.

Frustrating:

With reluctance, I finally submitted my device on 10^th Aug with a promise to get it fixed within 5 days. I followed the case daily & only after 8 days I was called to take my replaced device yet again. I had already told them on call about the colour of the device but yet again I was offered the different one. Immediately my past experience came live in front of my eyes. Now they again need 5 more days to get the colour of my choice. It seems that the history is repeating itself. I am worried about the new problems that will come along with new device. I am totally frustrated & feels i have hit the roadblock. :(

[Detection]

I have the Lumia 710 and originally I had the exact same issues with the battery, from 100% to low battery warning after only an hour or so playing a game

I did a bit of investigating and read a few people saying the same thing but after a couple of weeks that the battery seemed to improve, so I waited a couple of weeks and to my amazement it is true, I can now easily see 2 days with light > medium use of the phone

I was at 2 days 8 hours with over 20% battery left a couple of days ago, I think a combination of the battery maybe taking a while to start providing its full charge capacity combined with not playing with it as much as I did the first few weeks

The latest 12121 update has also improved the battery life quite well too

You can check the current discharge rate of the phone by entering ##634# into the dialer which will enable the diagnostics app, inside which you can enter the battery status and see the current mAh drain your phone is pulling

I generally have only the weather app live tile and turn the others off, brightness at medium auto (Yes the brightness levels are relevant to the auto setting too) :)

You can buy a 1500mAh battery from here too if you want the extra 200mAh

http://www.mugen-pow...-lumia-710.html

Also the BP-4L 1650mAh Nokia battery is said to fit if you remove the padding foam from inside the back cover of the the phone

[Max Norris]

Just as a side comment to ILoveTech, there are a couple cloud-based music players in the market. Using Gooroovster myself; not great, but not bad, but I primarily use my phone as, well, a phone, my tablets get the bulk of the "real" work, so didn't really look all that hard.

I did a bit of investigating and read a few people saying the same thing but after a couple of weeks that the battery seemed to improve, so I waited a couple of weeks and to my amazement it is true, I can now easily see 2 days with light > medium use of the phone

My wife has the 710, she usually gets about two to three days or so with average use as well.

[ilovetech]

one important point worth re-iterating here is the attitude of nokia people towards consumers, while other believe in consumer delight, they believe in consumer harassment.

[ACTIONpack]

I own an Lumia 710 and my issues are low storage (8GB is not enough), AUX jack gets mess up with the power input. 3.7inch screen is just too small. 4inch should be the minium for all Windows Phones or all smart phones. The back led comes off too easy once you open it a few times. I lost my HTC HD7 and needed to get an other one real quick on craigslist.