I love getting a new piece of tech. I'm a bit of a geek at heart and ever since I got my very first phone aged 11, I've loved the first day or two where you set something up and spend time discovering all it has to offer. That first phone in question? The Nokia 3410. Perfectly retro, it holds a special place in my heart. When I was contacted by Lumia Voices to trial a phone, I was pretty damn excited. I've not had a Nokia phone since my 3410, so I was particularly intrigued to see how their technology had evolved over the years.
Lumia Voices (previously Nokia Connects) is a community programme that works with fans and influencers to offer trials of their latest phones. Lumia Voices also shares the amazing ways people use their tech, such as blogging, teaching and helping others.
Lumia Voices set me the challenge of switching my iPhone 5c for the Nokia Lumia 830 for 2 whole weeks, so back at the start of October, I locked my beloved iPhone away and swapped my SIM into the Lumia. My contract runs out in February, so I thought this would be a great way to see whether there were other brands worth having besides the iPhone. I'm only on my first iPhone, but I'm 100% hooked, so I was intrigued to see how the Lumia compared.
On first impressions, the Lumia 830 is one stylish looking phone. It boasts a 5" HD screen, with sturdy metal hardware and a green brushed plastic back. I probably wouldn't have chosen green but the phone is also available in orange, black and white, with the latter being my personal preference. It is also worth noting that the Lumia is a lot bigger in size than my iPhone 5c. For some, this may not be a problem, but I have abnormally small hands, so it was ever so slightly too large for me. By the end of the trial, I had gotten used to the size, and found it great for watching videos on, but I struggled to fit it in most of my pockets.
The Lumia 830 has touch sensitive buttons to the bottom of the screen, which are (perhaps a little too) responsive, as well as utilising the Windows Phone tile interface. This is simple to use, and I liked that you could personalise the colours of the tiles. The phone has a respectable 16GB internal memory, with the capacity to expand with a MicroSD up to 128GB. This is brilliant if like me, you use your phone as an MP3 player.
The best of the bunch were Twitter and Facebook, which were pretty seamless, however Instagram lacked a lot of the filters and editing functions that I usually rely on. There was also no dedicated YouTube or Blogger apps, redirecting to the websites instead. The store completely lacked Pinterest and Bloglovin' apps, which I use on a daily basis.
The Nokia Lumia 830 boasts both front and back cameras at 0.9MP and 10MP respectively, with Carl Zeiss technology. The large screen makes it ideal for capturing photos, and there are even manual functions such as variable ISO and shutter speed, to maximise the quality of your images in even the lowest of lights. There is also a dedicated Selfie mode, which works with the front camera to smooth out your photos, making them all the more Instagram-worthy.
As you can see from the image below, the back camera manages to capture the detail and vibrancy of the flowers. Whilst the photo is a little dark compared to the edited images from my Olympus PEN EPL-7, the image isn't half bad for a mobile phone. I only really use my phone camera for on-the-go Instagram snaps so I don't need anything too fancy, but as a manual camera user, there were times that I really appreciated the extra settings.
One of the features that I was particularly impressed with was Cortana. I'd previously dismissed this as being the inferior cousin of Apple's Siri, but the voice recognition is a million times better. It will even write your texts for you, which I thought was a really handy feature. Cortana also gives you easy access to the weather, internet searches, calenders and more. Because of it's effectiveness, this makes the Nokia Lumia 830 a phone that I would recommend without a doubt to the less technologically inclined, like my parents.
The phone has some other platform-specific apps which were well thought out. These included a health & fitness app, which linked to a load of fab fitness videos and also had a step counter. There was a Spotify-esque music app called MixRadio which I particularly liked. Much like it's well-known competitor, it has tons of playlists, and I enjoyed listening to the genre-specific ones when I wanted a bit of music inspiration.
The big question is, would I switch from my iphone? There were some aspects that I loved about the Nokia Lumia 830, like Cortana, the large screen, sturdy hardware, and the Health & Fitness app. However other apps really lack the functionality that I'm used to on the iPhone. Unfortunately for me that's a bit of a deal breaker. For someone that isn't a blogger and perhaps uses apps like Facebook and Twitter for personal use, the Lumia 830 would be perfect. Annoyingly throughout the whole trial I felt like I was constantly comparing the Nokia to my iPhone rather than considering it on it's own. That's the Apple effect for you...
Any recommendations on what phone I should upgrade to?
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