The first time I saw an iPhone was on a train in France in 2007. They had just come out and a man across from me was scrolling through his photos on his touch screen.
I had a Motorola Razr and was amazed.
I didn’t get my own iPhone until 2010. But since then, it’s all I’ve ever owned.
I’ve slowly Appletised myself (okay, I totally made that word up but I’m just going to go with it).
I bought an iPad, too. Ireplaced my desktop PC with a Mac. Then I decided I NEEDED an iPad Mini and I replaced my windows laptop with a MacBook Pro. I bet Steve Jobs get’s all smug when he looks down from the sky at people like me.
All my life is perfectly synced. Every iMessage, e-mail and Twitter notification goes to every single device. At the same time. It’s actually a bit ridiculous and sometimes makes me feel like I’m going to have a fit.
When I asked to try a Nokia Windows phone for a few weeks, my first thought was, ‘Can I ever be converted to something not Apple?’.
I’ve not owned a Nokia since I had a 3110 that you could play snake on and change the covers.
There’s no doubt that Nokia was the most popular handset on the market back in the early 2000’s but now they have to compete with Samsung and Apple. I wasn’t sure if I could find my way around a Windows OS after 4 years with the iPhone.
But what the heck – challenge accepted.
First impressions.
My first thoughts of the phone was WOW IT’S ORANGE. I love the orange back panel. Also, the screen is lovely size. It’s about the same width as the iPhone 6 but about half a CM longer.
The first thing I did was download my favourite apps:
- Whatssap
- Instagram (BETA)
- MapMyRun
- Audiable
- CandyCrush.
What I was missing most was Google Chrome and iMessage. One of my favourite things about having all Mac products is being able to text from my computer as well as my phone and also having all my bookmarks and favourite sites across all my devices.
After the initial annoyance the comes with new devices, such as installing apps, remember passwords and trying to make sure you don’t allow push notifications by mistake, I started to have a play about.
EMOJIS EXIST IN WINDOWS, GUYS! I was terrified I’d be deprived of sending out my favourite waaahhhhhh face over text.
Getting used to the keyboard was difficult. Let’s just say that I never realised how good the autocorrect on the iPhone was until I used this phone. I guess I’m a bit lazy after the iPhone automatically spells out words even if you’re a letter off. I was making errors all over place and I kept pressing enter by mistake!
One of my favourite features that I discovered straight away was making lists with OneNote. I like simple lists that I can tick off during my day. OneNote makes that easy – it includes a satisfying tick box and you can pin each unique list to your home screen.
All you do is unlock your phone, click your list and you can review or tick it off.
You can also pin individual websites to your home screen. I pinned my e-mail login and my Bloglovin home page so I could quickly get to the sites I use the most on my phone without having to open the browser and enter the URL.
Again: Quick, easy. I love these features.
A few days later.
I was worried about how complicated the Windows phone looks. But it’s simpler than it seems.
You can drag any app to your main screen and scroll down to find it. You can move it around your main screen, too. You just swipe left to view each app, including the ones not on your home screen, in alphabetical order.
Double tapping and swiping up to unlock the device became second nature, as did locking the screen on the side button and using the back button.
The Windows OS looks a lot cooler than the iPhone. The iPhone’s style has pretty much stayed the same over the past few years, whereas the Windows OS looks modern and up to date. The apps flash, showing updates to social media and swapping between photos and features on apps.
I have so many apps on my iPhone so as I only downloaded my most used onto the Nokia, it felt like I had just de-junked my life.
The app store is dead easy to use, there are various ways to search for apps either by their name, category, popularity, free or new.
The build of the phone is impressive, it’s very sturdy and when I picked up the iPhone after using this for a few days, the iPhone felt a bit like a plastic toy.
The screen is bigger than the iPhone which is great for streaming videos and viewing pictures. I watched YouTube on it quite a bit while on the treadmill.
The Battery Issue
Let’s face it, the iPhone’s battery life is proper pants.
I’ve been going to the gym after work, which means I need my battery to get me through an 11 hour working day then the gym. I had no issues with the battery on the Nokia and I always had over half left on an evening. When I switched back to the iPhone, by the time I had got to the gym I was on 20% battery life and worrying if it would last with the heavy use I put my phone through at the gym!
There’s not many things in life worse than the fear of your phone dying, thus being disconnected from the world as you know it. And not being able to play Candy Crush on the exercise bike.
Yes. I am that girl.
The Camera
So, how would the Nokia 830’s 10MP camera match up against the iPhone’s 8MP one?
I wasn’t a massive fan of the camera app, mainly because it seemed to take about 10 seconds to load the camera, whereas the iPhone loads up almost instantly. I found this frustrating when trying to sneak selfies at the gym or take photos of the machines to track my time/distance.
Even if you’re quite happy to put selfies on social media, taking then with other humans around is REALLY AWKWARD. I need to process to be quick and sneaky.
While the photos look pretty standard on the phone, when you upload them to your computer, they’re pretty impressive. I took the same photo with both phones and think the Lumia 830 takes much sharper images with better quality. The iPhone’s image looks a bit washed out compared to this.
Here are some more on the go type photos I took with the phone:
Specs:
Some quick specs for you, I’m not going to go through them all as I’m more focused on how easy the phone is to use in my daily life than the technical aspects, but some of the key features:
- 16GB internal memory
- MicroSD slot so you can expand memory to 128GB
- Runs Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1
- 10MP camera, 0.9MP front facing camera
- 150g
- 5 inch screen.
Final thoughts.
After two weeks with this phone, I became fond of it and was sad to see it go. The best features for me were the battery life, photo quality and being able to easily pin things to your home page.
I wasn’t a fan of the load time of the camera and some apps did seem to lag a bit, but not enough to be unusable.
If you’re looking for a new phone that will aid you in blogging, then you might want to give this a go. It’s packed with features and I’ve happily used many of the photos I’ve taken with it over on my instagram account and my fitness blog. The features within OneNote also make it the perfect aid for keeping your life and blog organised!
What phone do you use?
I have a terrible HTC. It was okay in the beginning, but it’s now more smashed up than the base of a cheesecake. AND my earphone socket stopping working. I’m thinking of upgrading, but shelling out on phones isn’t my thing at all. I usually splurge on makeup and scrimp everywhere else!
I used to want a HTC when they first came out. They looked pretty cool! Sounds like you need to upgrade ASAP!
I have friends that have Nokia and they love it especially for music. Great detail review.
I’m glad you had a good experience overall with the phone! 🙂 I had a windows phone way back when..when PDAs were all the rage, before blackberries and iphones and when I used to be responsible for corporate mobile devices at work. I kept them for a few years, even with the new smartphones but after some really quite bad experiences of being stranded and having the phone capability fail, I swore off windows phones, ha! the new OS does look fancy and sleek, but I still have that fear from when I was stuck in a storm unable to reach anyone because my phone wouldn’t work….not game to take a risk again! I’ve had a few samsung phones now, I’m quite happy with them.
Haha! I remember those first windows phones. They were great. And when Blackberry’s were just for business people!
great review dear, so many details:)
K MEETS STYLE
Love this phone! Great review Corinne!
Have a nice day!
It’s great that you appreciate this Nokia product despite of being a loyal Apple user. I love the camera quality of this phone <3
Have a nice day, Corinne!
xoxo,
SHAIRA
http://www.missdream-girl.blogspot.com
I wanted to buy a Lumia for my mom but she’s gone with another phone for a while so this plan has been delayed for a while unless I could tell you how our experience went. I am personally an Apple phone, I’ll be switching to an iPhone 5S in future but if I were tight on budget, I’d probably get a Lumia. As Nokia was a BIG deal back when I was a kid.
Yeah, Nokia, and ONLY NOKIA, was the phone to have!
I much like you could not imagine myself with other then the iphone. The windows phones always made me nervous that they would be so utterly complicated! I’m glad you discovered it wasn’t hard to get used it. It does seem really cool!! 🙂 but I again like you have the mac and the ipad and just loveeee how everything syncs. maybe someday when im in the market for something new though! I laughed out loud about you made up apple word by the way :p too funny!
Haha! Well in a few years Mac and Apple might be totally out. You never know what’s going to dominate the market next!
All of my Microsoft Devices syncs! I got a Surface Pro 3, a Lumia 920 and an Xbox One. They’re syncing across each other and everything is in my OneDrive! This experience would be much better With Windows 10 too where you can Write an SMS on Your PC and Your phone is sending it! (Works With phone Calls too!)
My blog post “How To Reach 2000 Instagram Followers” is up. Love the post about the Nokia phone. I just received the ZTE ZMAX for Christmas. It’s big, but I like it.
http://www.dressdynamic.blogspot.com
http://www.instagram.com/dressdynamicdallas
Thanks for reminding me 🙂
I have the original Nokia Lumia and I love it. I have an upgrade coming in the next few months and I didn’t want to trade it in but my battery seems to be going lately. It’s been two years but this phone is still in perfect condition and works perfectly except for a quick draining battery that just started happening a few weeks ago. I’d love to upgrade to the most recent lumia.
Although I am curious, how did you get to use Bloglovin on there? The site just doesn’t work for me.
I didn’t donwload the app, I never use it even on my iPhone. I just use it in the browser and had the home page pinned to the front of the phone.
If you can Christine hold out for a few months then upgrade to a win10 for mobile handset, those will have alot more features and work better with your desktop (that is if your running win10)
It’s no secret Microsoft have been waiting to release there next high spec handset’s to co-inside with this release.
(i personally am rocking the 1020, which i’ve had for years, the 41mega pixel camera is still the bets on the market even after so long 😉
Great review, thanks for sharing!!! <3 – http://www.domesticgeekgirl.com
this sounds like a really good phone. No one really talks about this phone but it looks promising
check out my newest post
xx
Tyana
theluxedition.blogspot.com
I have a Nokia Lumia 520 and I quite like it apart from some apps aren’t suitable for windows, which is annoying. Other than that I really like the phone as it looks good and is very easy to use. It’s not very well known because people seem to automatically turn to apple but really it’s just as good.
Emily
Yeah, Apple tends to be the most popular, samsung are pretty popular, too.
I have an iphone 5s and I don’t know that I would ever switch away from using an iphone. I use to have an Android and it was so glitchy it was almost completely unusable! The photo quality on this Nokia is really good though!
I’ve never tried Android, but the quality of Nokia is fab!
I am like you, Corinne, Apple all the way. I have iPhone 6, MacBook Pro, iPad, iPod and the last time I used Nokia was donkey years ago.
I’ve seen this phone and glad to know that it worked well for you.
Shireen | Reflection of Sanity
I have to say that in addition to this, as a clumsy person, I drop my Nokia 2-3 times a day and it still works.
Lizzie Dripping
Hahaha! I always drop my phone!
A great review, I am an Iphone fan and swapping for something else has never appealed. However recently I have been thinking of swapping it for the Google Nexus Lucy x
Such a lovely post – it’s quite nice seeing reviews like this as its quite refreshing due to the market being dominated by two big brands!
Hope you’re well!!
Layla xx
http://www.sprinklesofstyle.co.uk
What a great review! I went to Paris today and my iPhone had a full battery going out but died half way through which was pretty inconvenient. OneNote sounds good too
My iPhone 5S used to just drain randomly. It would be full and then lose 50% in like half an hour!
hey this phone is sleek and love the color orange
even im an apple addict
haha at steve job must happy soul looking down so many ppl who are a pure convert 😛
I have a Nokia 710 which is a smaller and older version of this. The camera is rather rubbish except in perfect light, which is basically never!
There are several big apps missing from the app store but then I don’t live my life on my phone so I don’t mind so much.
You’ll have to tell me how to get emoticons (yes emoticons) though as I don’t know that? xx
The emoticons were already on there, maybe it’s just in later versions?
I didn’t miss any apps so they must have the ones that I use!
Then you got WIndows Phone 7 on it and you can’t get these emojis… Try a New Lumia now With Windows Phone 8.1 and I’ll think you will like it so much that you’re going to throw Your 710 out of the window… I’m recomending the Lumia 640 😉
i’ve had a lumia (two of them actually) for a few years now and i really like them! it can be a bit annoying when you can’t get all the apps, but other than that i’ve never thought about changing my phone, haha:-) xx
I’m sure they’ll have better apps soon!
They will With Windows 10 and Project Astoria 😉 Just Bing it and you’ll find some information 😉
I genuinely laughed when you said how good the iPhone autocorrect is. You’ve never used my iPhone! The camera on this is definitely better than he iPhone. My Nokia Lumia had that 41mp camera, was really good but at the time the tech wasn’t great. Sounds like it’s really improved!
India / Touchscreens & Beautyqueens | UK Lifestyle Blog
Haha, I think that’s just you. A 41MP camera???
Yes, the 1020 has. As you know, iPhone users do not know about so high specs because they’re totally hypnotized into the apple world… Just Bing “Lumia 1020 and you will find it’s specs…
I think the autocorrect on Windows Phone is a lot better. Sometimes when I write a word, and not get a single letter right, it still knows what word i mean.
Also love when you type a name, let’s say Michael, it comes up with the last names of people in your contacts named Michael, or suggestions like Jackson, Schumacher or Jordan.
Or when you type words like heart, house, smile, happy, it automatically comes up with suitable emoji.
It might have changed on the iPhone since I last tested, but I don’t think so….
I feel your pain in that I have an 8.1 Windows laptop and an Android LG G2 phone (that I LOVE) but then I have Google Drive on the Laptop and I installed Chrome asap.
My friends and family all have Iphones and I find the camera’s pictures are pants – all grainy and don’t even try taking a picture at night!
My phone is a 13 MP camera and I never bother to take a digital camera out anymore as my phone does it all. I guess it’s just whatever you get used to. Maybe it’s time to move on from the Apple?? #cheeky
Maybe it is! There have a 41MP camera phone that looks amazing! Apple should up their camera game, by the looks of things.
First I was an Apple user, then I switched to Android. Something happened in the middle that I wanted to be bold and move to Windows Phone. So I got myself a Lumia 1020 because of the 41MP camera. But that is big 41x lie. In fact I learned later on that it isn’t megapixels that really count for a great photo but the sensor – and the Nokia’s isn’t all that great despite the fact that it takes ages to take a single shot. (the phone is not good at all). My husband then got me a Lumia 930 and we thought the software would be improved but that day never came. It was just getting worse every passing day – software is unstable, they don’t have apps (or they appear years later), battery was being drained every 6 hours, microphones not working. A junk piece of hardware. I could not recommend Windows Phone to anyone – and I feel relieved that I got rid of that thing. I am happily back to iPhone and would accept an Android phone again but a Windows Phone, not even for free.
Then you don’t know about photographic and you’re such a dumb**** person…. You have to try it Out a little bit and not just few days and then come With a bad review… You have to learn the OS! My grandma is smarter than you! She got a WIndows Phone and just loves it. Se’s a pro user after just a month!
Pretty much sums up why i switched from an iPhone 4 to a lumia 820 and now Lumia 930.
Except the mostlikely BIGGEST pro of WP over iOS is that you don’t need a dreadful sync software like iTunes. Just plugin in the USB! cable and begin loading stuff on and off the phones internal storage.
And lets not forget that many Lumias also allow to use micro SD-Cards!
Try a Lumia 640XL. You will like it more.
My family and I have always used androids. My 21st old had a windows phone see ND hated it. He finally came over to the other side with us!