Right it's almost that time to replace both my phone contracts and I need some help on deciding/finding a suitable phone for the wife. She currently has a HTC Wildfire S and while it is knackered it has survived a pretty rough life. As such I'm looking for a mid range phone that is well built and can take a few knocks but one that is not going to lag out every time it's used. Price wise she does not want to spend much and being a Virgin employee I do get a discount (but even then it will most likely be cheaper to go elsewhere). Any suggestions?
I have really liked my move over to the Lumia 920 on Windows 8. There are a huge variety of Lumias and since they are built by Nokia, they are extremely rugged even at the lower price points. Think the 820 would be the sweet spot, but if you can get a good deal on the 920, I cant recommend it highly enough, the screen is awesome and bullet proof, and its a proper chunky solid phone, as opposed to some of the more featherweight tat being produced these days. Just my two penneth, hope it helps
The nexus 4 is a good option as if you want to buy it from google, I think its still under £300. Its an absolutely amazing phone for the money.
Yeah I was thinking about a nokia windows phone, but cant see the 820 on sale anywhere. Whats the 620 like?
The 620 is the budget model I think, it has a lesser camera and a few other bits lopped off as it were, not 100% sure exactly what but its still a nice phone. 820's were available last time I checked?
We are doing BYOD testing at work with some devices. The Nokia's are quite heavy and feel very sturdy so they fit the bill for your take a few knocks. Also win8 phone is not that bad, im a andoird man but I would recommend the 820. Or as suggested above a nexus 4, great phone at great price.
There's a Lumia 920 on the marketplace going for £280. An absolute steal! I love my 920, i'd go as far as to say it's the best phone i've ever owned.
620 is the budget model with less RAM (512MB RAM as WP7.x phones had, compared to 1GB for top WP8 phones) and of course it has "only" 800x480 display, lower clocked dual core CPU and no highend stuff like picture stabilization etc. Compared to HTC 8S it is a better choice due one simple fact - it has 8GB storage compared to 4GB in 8S. That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you take in the account that system stuff will take away 2,5GB from that, you are at 1.5GB with 8S and 6.5GB with 620. And that is not much space with 8S, especially with the Other storage bug. There will be some apps and games which won't run on 512MB RAM, but for most apps, it should be fine.
The 8S had a microSD slot for storage if you want it. The 620 seems to be very highly rated as a budget phone due to WP being quite a light OS on hardware, compared to android/google. Also with the tile interface I doubt you'd notice the lower res screen. Engadget seems to like it: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/07/nokia-lumia-620-review/
Except that doesn't help you much, as you can't use the SD card for anything else but Audio/Video/Pictures. Application data and applications are only on the internal memory - and as i said, that is a very limited resource on HTC 8S and that is why Lumia 620 is miles better than 8S. A lot worse than 820/920, but a lot better than the crippled HTC 8S (8S would be a nice phone otherwise, but the internal memory kills the usability of the phone - especially with the yet unfixed "other storage" bug).
Just to throw a spanner in the works there's also the Samsung Ativ thing, seen a few deals on that floating about. I still prefer a Nokia any day just for the feel, but it may be worth a look?
I'm using a Nexus 4 and it's an amazing phone. Cost more than a contract phone up front but over the next 2 years I'm gonna save almost $2,000 by going off-contract! Sent from Bittech Android app
I'm leaning towards the Nexus 4 but the wife has a Galaxy Tab 10 so she's not really after such a high spec phone. By the WP8 phone are tempting...
Whilst not a W8 phone user, I currently have W7.8 device and I'm loving it, a W8 device will definitely be my next phone, my brother also switched to Windows after seeing mine for a bit etc. One of the good things about the Windows phones is that you don't need some uber quad core to be able to run things without issue. As others have said, the Lumia range in general are pretty highly rated, with good reason due to their good build quality etc The 620 is a good phone for the money, has tempted me to upgrade to it even though I've no need to at the moment
620 is an excellent suggestion, feels really solid and a lot more premium than £150 would suggest. I also very much enjoyed the Lumia 920 for its wonderful build quality, camera, fluidity and design (stuff like the high-sensitivity screen shows they were thinking about what to add and why, not just throwing marketable numbers at it - Samsung...).
Surely that should count more in favor for the Nexus? Already familiar with the android ecosystem and would be able to sync apps across the two?
I am quite happy with my nokia lumia 920, £37 a month for unlimited calls and texts and a gig of data from my service provider
We are now using Lumia 820's at work, currently got around 60 or so in the organization. They are great phones in the main, had a few issues to begin with like DOA and freezing and locking up until you remove the battery. But got these swapped out and there is only one issue that remains..... we seem to get really poor audio quality while in calls. 40 of the phones are in various parts of the country, so this isn't a network/signal issue and it seems quite wide spread ie carriers in the US are having the same issues. I found a forum somewhere that suggested the F/W update and S/W update that has recently been pushed out to our phones 'should' sort this, but haven't really tested this yet.
I currently have a lumia 800 (wp 7.8), and have persuaded friends to get the 820 920 and htc 8x. All of them are lovely phones and the os is far easier to get used to than android and ios IMO but the 820 or 920 are the best for me, better build quality and nokia have designed some pretty good apps for windows phone. Also my phone survived the washing machine (don't ask) therefore it is a nokia at heart. Edit: Rumour is there is a new launch of phones to coincide with windows blue around June/July (microsoft year end) so it might be worth waiting!
Samsung galaxy S3's are going on contract for £20 p/m and are very fast phones/very customisable. Pebble white / blue / pink ones going if your wife is a pink sort of gal.