gamingeek said:

iphones are rip offs.

With a contract which you need you can get them for like $200 - $300 and selling you last phone gets you over $100. For like $150 you get one of the best phones. Not a ripoff.

Contracts are rip offs. A phone shouldn't cost the same price as a great laptop.

SupremeAC said:

gamingeek said:

iphones are rip offs.

And for an OS that's lauded for being so intuitive and user friendly, I can never manage to find/do what I need when I use one.  It's all so cluttered.

Yup. Software has never been a strong suit for Apple. I remember (leading the team that was) developing for it when X first came out. It was abhorent.

Ravenprose said:

+1.

My $200 phone is paid for in full, and I pay $100 per year for a prepaid text/calls and free wifi data.  T-Moble is now offering $40 per month (no contract) for unlimited text/calls and 1GB 4G LTE data.

I'm with Three network, PAYG and they charge 1 pence for a text and 3 pence a minute for a call. Insanely low prices. And now they offer foreign calls when you are abroad at no extra charge over UK prices.

Get a lumia, google lumia comparison and you can see the Microsoft comparison page. The 930 is cool, 20mp camera, takes 1080p 30fps video, 2gb ram, 32gb storage. If you wabt something cheaper with a large screen the 640 xl is good too.

I was going to get a Lumia last time I renewed my phone contract, but I always wanted to try an Xperia. Well, they're kind of shit. And I have vowed to not buy any Samsung device ever again after having two samsung TVs crap out on me in increasingly infuriating circumstances so the Galaxy phones are out of the question. I guess it's time for me to try a Lumia out.

My phone has jumped from "wonky piece of shit" to proper "possessed status". It opens up message screens and types out random gibberish, or tries to call to non existant phone numbers. What am I going to do if it starts to send my stash of nudes to my parents?

SteelAttack said:

I was going to get a Lumia last time I renewed my phone contract, but I always wanted to try an Xperia. Well, they're kind of shit. And I have vowed to not buy any Samsung device ever again after having two samsung TVs crap out on me in increasingly infuriating circumstances so the Galaxy phones are out of the question. I guess it's time for me to try a Lumia out.

My Dad got an Xperia Z Ultra, it's on Android and neither of us find it particularly easy or intuitive to use. The 930 is the flagship Lumia, there is only one model above it but it's more expensive and you're mostly paying for the insane 40 megapixel built in camera. But the 930 has a 20 mp camera so it's still great and has better specs.

SupremeAC said:

Eh, so far I've had a 520, a 630 and now a 635.  I always get the cheaper ones because I tend to drop my phone a lot.  And because MS dictates minimum specs, you'll be certain you won't end up with something with the speed of a snail carrying a particularly heavy brick.  They also all come with a lot of usefull apps like a GPS and whatnot.  The more expensive ones come with a magnetometer, if knowing where north is is your sort of thing.  I also feel that the Metro UI doesn't require a huge dpi to look nice.

So yeah, the 930 looks nice, but does it look 4 times as nice ad my brand new 635?  Not to me at least.

My 930 has 2gb RAM compared to 512mb on my 620 and it has 4 Snapdragon 2.2Ghz CPUs, compared to dual core 1.2 gz on the 620. 32gb HDD compared to 8 gb on the 620.

But the great thing about Windows 8 phones are that it runs swell, even on lower spec models. I have noticed that since I updated with the 8.1 update my old phone is slightly slower than it used to be. The good thing about getting a phone which is about more powerful than my Tablet is that it is future proofed.

Also, Steel Here GPS Maps and Drive GPS is free with free maps for life. There is also Bing Translator which you can point at foreign language signs and it translates it for you.

Here is the chart I made to decide what was the best Lumia for me.

Fullsized

Looking again, I chose the 930 because it has 4 CPUs compare to 2 slower ones in the 1020 and a bigger screen too. It's also one of the only Lumias with 2 GB RAM, the others have 1 gb.

It was between the cheaper 640 or 640 XL and the 930. The 1520 has the same specs as the 930 with a bigger screen and better battery but it's a huge 6" phone.

The battery life is broken down into hours of use, then standby time in days.

What I did was look at the specs and prices and elminated ones which were too similar and went for the best model at the best price. But shop on ebay and you can get these phones a lot cheaper than retail.

Also, I wanted a battery that was at least 17 hrs or more. As they can be quite power hungry device when using the wireless services.

This is the difference between my old phone and new one.

Being able to have 3 fully sized icons on one row is great, makes it so much easier to use. It also has micro-icons and folders.

The interface is so easy to use.

So the main screen is like above and you can easily scroll up and down and rearrange icons.

Then there is only one other screen, by swiping to the left, you have an easy, alphabetical list of apps on the phone.

^Good choice. I love my Winphone.