The Nokia Lumia 1020 will be available in the UK in 2 weeks.
However, it is now available to buy SIM-free through Amazon Germany for €697 (£590) and other online German retailers and soon in China.
Category Archives: Windows
Windows Phone People App
Whether you have the cheapest Nokia Lumia 520 Windows Phone or the most expensive Nokia Lumia 925 or 1020, they all come with the People app.
First go into settings, applications, People and setup all your accounts. I have set mine up as follows.
But there are still options to add the following as shown below.
Once you have done, you can decide which contacts to hide. Hidden contacts can be found again when searching. Now exit settings and go to the People app. From within the People up you have access to all your contacts, what’s new and happening on all your accounts including any social media, recent calls and a screen for Rooms and Groups.
If you tap on Rooms, Family Room you can invite people and privately share calendars, photos, group chats, and notes all in one place. Really neat idea. Now of course this being a Windows Phone means you get a live tile.
If you size your tile as above you get a grid of 9 smaller tiles inside the large tile. You can of course resize the tile smaller or larger. As changes to your social scenes occur, the People tile will advise accordingly.
All in all a rather good app with a wide option of services and settings.
Less than 7 days to go for the next huge wave of new phone announcements
Get ready for the start of silly season. Within the next 7 days, the amount of new smartphone announcements is going to explode. Expect every manufacturer to reveal their lineup for the last quarter of the year, and then on 10th September, Apple will reveal all its new iPhones. Later on in September, Nokia and Google will reveal their hands too with new phones. And don’t forget Amazon. New Kindle tablets, but will they launch their first smartphone this year!
What I will try to do is consolidate the new phones releases into concise readable chunks, with my view on each new phone. Who knows, I might even review a few of them too.
Rumours of the new range of Nokia smartphones including a Phablet
Nokia is rumoured to be releasing a range of new handsets, that are quad core 1080p screens.
First up is a six-inch phablet with a 1080p display. Code name is Bandit but likely to be called Lumia 1520. This will be launched end of September and feature a 20mp camera to combat Sony’s new Z1 (Homami) which will also have a 20mp camera.
So apart from Bandit, Nokia is reportedly developing hardware bearing the names Lanai, Orion, Pegasus, Rivendell, Shorty, and Siruis.
Your guess is as good as mine as to what these other phones will feature.
Windows Phone 8 App screen
If you scroll back to yesterday, you will have read about the flexibility of the home screen live tiles on Windows Phone with my Nokia Lumia 925.
But how do you access all your applications.
Well from the home screen you swipe right to left to bring up the app list as shown above. Now if you are like me and have installed many apps, scrolling down to TuneIn Radio would be a lot of scrolling. But if you tap any letter prefix you get this view.
Now tap on the letter required to accelerate you down to that part of the scroll list. Non coloured tiles indicate you have no apps using that letter of the alphabet.
Decisions, decisions, decisions – which phone and operating system to choose from ?
So here I am one week later and really enjoying using the Lumia 925. And part of me now is thinking how could I move to using Windows Phone permanently over android or iOS.
In my house I have every operating system in use, including iOS, android, windows phone, Firefox, BlackBerry and Symbian. Symbian, BlackBerry and Firefox don’t cut it. Firefox shows a lot of promise, and future updates will be interesting to watch.
If anybody tells me that android is better than iOS or the other way around or windows phone is not as good, they are not being truthful. It is clear to me in my opinion , that the 3 main systems are just different. Except, windows phone is clearly very different. IOS and android are becoming so similar in some ways , there is nothing new about them. But there is a but.
Windows Phone does have more apps and games, the ones that matter. It does have services and Nokia makes some great hardware. In fact some apps are really good. But there are some apps that haven’t been released on the platform at the same level as on android or iOS. Apple still has the best made apps, android is close but has better sharing options. iOS 7 may help bridge the services and sharing situation.
So, what phone should be the next one. If I choose the Nokia Lumia 1020 I will have the best camera on a smartphone, Nokia music and a phone running WP8 that has some deficiencies in the apps I use and need daily. As a games device it doesn’t work with my games controllers. For a lot of people the apps won’t be a problem. Plus it does bring many extras like downloadable maps.
If I choose the next wave of android phones, they should have improved cameras, with all the apps, services and sharing along with a variety of shapes and sizes. My game controllers should work too.
And then there is the next iPhone. Will the software provide enough new extras to compensate for the slight improvement on the iPhone 5. At present no other company can provide a phone at its size, that is as powerful. With the iPhone the apps really are wonderfully designed.
On the tablet front, if you want variety of apps and games, just buy an iPad. Android on a large tablet screen lacks apps.
So then I had a thought. Why don’t I get a large Phablet. 5.6 to 6.5 inch screen? And then an iPod Touch so I can play my 700 iOS games and use some of my exclusive apps. But really a Phablet or larger is too big to carry around comfortably. So I’m back to square one with my thought process.
What would you do?
Live Tiles on a Windows Phone 8
I am currently using the Nokia Lumia 925, and the only screen customisation is on the home screen. You can tweak the theme colour from white or black background.
After that you can decide what live tile to pin to the home screen and the size from a small square, large square or a rectangular shape that takes up the whole width.
In fact it is possible to spend a good few hours messing around with the look, colour and size options.
The beauty of the Windows Phone home screen is you only need a quick glance to see what’s happening or active or what notifications you have received via social networks, apps or messages. It is a very simple and clear way of viewing activities. I started with the phone app, email, sms, tweets, app.net, WhatsApp, calendar, marketplace, settings, news feeds, blog, Nokia Here Navigation and Maps, Internet Explorer, Nokia PRO and Smart Cam apps, weather, photos, weather, sport, news, podcasts and more. Most of these tiles update constantly providing at a glance information.
It certainly makes the home screen more engaging, than say static icons on the iPhone.
The Notification Centre on Windows Phone is arriving
The one missing feature on Windows Phone is a collation of notifications.
The next software update, GDR3, to be released in October, will include this feature.
Good news.
Another day with the Nokia Lumia 925
After another day has passed with the Lumia 925, this is what has occurred.
I have installed the following apps – 6sec, Adobe Reader, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Mobile, App Social, BBC iPlayer, Bing News, Bing Sport, Bing Finance, Bing Weather, DotDot, eBay, Flickr, gMaps, Google, HD Photo Viewer, ITN News, LinkedIn, Metrotube, Natwest, Nextgen Reader, Paypal, Photosynth, Podcast Lounge, Podcatcher, Pro Points Calculator, Shopsavvy, Sky News, SkyDrive, Skype, SophieLens for Nokia, thetrainline.com, Topgear News, TripAdvisor, Tunein Radio, TV Guide, TV Catchup, twabbit, Vyclone, Whatsapp , WordPress and Zite. With regards games, I have only installed a few so far – Jetpack Joyride, Mirrors Edge, AE Bubble, CosmosConquest, Temple Run and Word Twist.
As you can see many familiar apps are present. Also don’t forget Nokia include their Pro Cam and Smart Cam camera apps, Nokia Cinemagraph, Nokia Glam Me (I used this for my twitter avatar and lost 10 years and became slimmer), Microsoft Office and OneNote, Panorama, People app that merges if required social networks, Nokia Music (free or paid £3.99pm) streaming service and a great photo editing app Creative Studio.
Over the last few days I have taken many photos and used Creative Studio to edit these. Have a look at the various options available with the camera apps and editing. All photos are in an album on my Flickr. Click here.
The time is displayed permanently on the lock screen when screen off. I really like this. What I did find installing all the apps, is that I eventually got a message that I had reached the maximum 15 background running apps and to allow another app to run in the background I would have to stop another.
I have been using Nokia Maps turn by turn and it works well. Once during the course of a day, it stopped working. I have no idea why either. I also have a live tile for my commute. Tapping on this takes you into commute assistance gps mode. You get turn by turn but without the voice. The live tile updates itself near the commute time to give you a live eta.
I like the live tiles showing me at a glance what’s going on. But I wish there was a notification tile to capture everything from all apps.
I had an issue with a screenshot emailed to myself from my iPad. It displayed as an embedded photo, so I couldn’t detach it. If you email a photo, it is compressed. There is no option either to override this. Apparently, this is for speed and smoothness. However, the workaround is using HD Photo Viewer.
I have turned off SkyDive auto photo upload as in auto mode it reduces file size if on a mobile network. The workaround is to manually select which photos and these stay full size even when using your mobile Internet.
Using Windows Phone is a different experience. In many ways it is far more enjoyable than other operating systems. At times it is too simplistic.
Latin America loves Windows Phone
Windows Phone is the number 2 operating system in Latin America. Android is first.
This traction is good news and hopefully with the new software improvements and hardware, the future looks rosy.
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 