Lumia 630

I noticed the arrival of the Lumia 630 about six weeks ago, at reference 1, and it is now time for my considered opinion.

According to the contents of the 'Pictures' folder on this PC, I had bought the Lumia 520 around 6th September 2013, since when it had served well. I was particularly pleased with the camera. I had learned to use OneNote, which was proving to be a useful replacement to the Filofax which no longer fitted into the pocket of the jacket which I no longer much wore. There were some problems zoomng around maps. But the thing which pushed me into upgrade was the pay-as-you-go connection with Talkmobile which was a bother to keep topped up and did not do a very good job on the Internet.

First day

Not being too pleased with the service from Carphone Warehouse at Epsom, got the transfer number from Talkmobile and then off to O2 at Wimbledon where I bought the Lumia 630. The helpful assistant all smiles and yes sir no sir three bags full sir at this point. Except that I had 'sir should not have any problems with contacts at all' together with 'no sir, we can't do it for you'.

Home to try to back up the contacts on the 520 - this being all that needed backing up - before my number was to be transferred the following day. This proved troublesome with the contacts created in Canada (through Rogers Communications, the carrier for Talkmobile there) not appearing on my PC. Lots of chatter about backup on Google but nothing which seemed to help with the missing contacts. More chatter about Hotmail, which I think is a MS offering. But I was able to load up the rest of the contacts onto the 630 and put the missing ones back by hand. But not impressed that the one thing that I wanted to transfer had not transferred properly.

Microsoft's OneDrive, which I had started to use in Canada, was alive and well.

I eventually worked out how to fiddle about with the tiles, and got the ones that I want at the top.

I had a go with the camera, initially finding the touch screen shutter a pain, but now I have got used to it, and find it better than the button I had before. Pictures even better than those on the 520, this without learning how to use all the bells and whistles which seem to be available.

Around 1700 on the first day I got a couple of emails from O2 which caused some more confusion because my new O2 account appeared to be in some transitional state. O2 help desk pleasant enough but not very helpful, suggesting that I needed to take my SIM card out, something which I never do.

An hour or two later I found my missing temporary number and found that I could both make outgoing calls from the new telephone and make incoming calls to it using the temporary number.

Proper Internet access, so this part of the new purchase was good.

Loaded a Lumia flavoured map of Great Britain which occupied some 500Mb and worked fine, and subsequently grew to be a map of the world.

Second day

By the evening of the second day, my number had been transferred. I could also see the new telephone on the PC, had moved some files from the PC to the telephone and had moved some pictures from the telephone to the PC. So so far so good.

Subsequently

The battery seems to last much better than that on the 520 and keeping it sufficiently charged up is much less of a bother than it was.

The PC can see what I put into OneNote on the telephone without my having to do anything special.

Some worrying about viruses. Could a Windows 8 phone catch one? A bit of poking around on the internet suggests that the answer is no and I have left it at that. Oddly, my virus provider, Norton, was not very helpful on the point. But I am still a bit twitchy about using my google password on my microsoft telephone, despite google sites being of the secure sockets variety (the 's' after the 'http'). You never know who might be taking notes.

Some trouble with the phone not seeing all the files in a Dropbox folder. Maybe Dropbox does something tricky which Windows 8 can't keep up with. To be fair, the files concerned were large Excel workbooks which would probably be a bit of a nonsense on a telephone.

Some trouble with taking a picture of a picture which was hanging free, rather than, as is normal, hanging against the wall. I think that the auto-focus was so sensitive that it was confused by the slight movement of the picture, invisible to the naked eye.

Still having trouble with zooming in on maps, other than on the one which came with the telephone, as it were. Interestingly, an experiment revealed the same problem with a more google flavoured phone, doing fine with google flavoured maps, but not so hot with those from other people.

Still confused about how Hotmail fits into the picture. I don't think I have ever done business with them but the telephone seems to know all about them.

Don't visit the store and don't do apps.

But today, a New Year resolution to move from a Filofax calendar to a telephone calendar. The calendar feature of the latter is well enough, albeit with a few bits and bobs which I don't like and I dare say I will like it well enough going forward. Then getting my address book out of the Filofax will mark the end of their half century era with me.

I should perhaps add that Filofax scored a bit of an own goal for me, with their replacement of the soft black leather job which I had had for years not being up to scratch, despite having gone to the West End for it, and which even now, after several years of use, does not lie open & flat without being held. Another case of a Premier League supplier losing the plot, the other for me being Globetrotter, the people who used to make world beating suitcases, of which we were able to buy several second hand from Hook Road Arena at a time when the board from which the new ones were being made was not up to scratch at all. I might add that the Hook Road ones cost a very small fraction of what Globetrotter themselves were asking.

Summary

Entirely happy with O2 and with the Lumia 630.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/chips.html.