My Nokia 520/WP8 Review

[Little n00b]

K. In my opinion I love WP8 but I hate the Lumia 520. The sound quality is torture and it's got an uglyplastic curved back with a thick bezel.

It's £99 in UK but I decided to buy a HTC Windows Phone 8S because It's only £30 more and it has Beats Audio, a really solid comfortable matt backing. HTC is obviously a better brand and you have more sensors.

The internals are identical but when you pick up a HTC 8S you feel awesome.

I love the cold feel in the morning too

 

[bpt8056]

My wife has a Nokia 620 - a small step up from the 520 - because she wanted a front-facing camera for Skype. She generally likes it. She likes the small size of the 620 (it's actually a bit smaller than the 520), and took an immediate liking to the tile format of Windows 8. It takes good pictures, gets decent battery life, and she's generally happy. She doesn't like the editing method of Win8 (like if you have a typo, how you fix it) and says iOS and Android do that better, and she says the keyboard is too small and she makes a lot of mistakes (but then the phone itself is small...) but beyond these two quibbles and the fact that a couple of apps that she wants aren't available, she's a big fan of her new Nokia 620.

I'm not sure if you know this, but there are two ways you can fix a typo in WP8:

1) Single-click on a word and it will be highlighted. From there, you can edit the word or the word suggestions will appear above.

2) If you want to change a single letter in a word, tap and hold on the screen. A cursor will appear above the point of contact and you can move it to wherever you want the cursor to be.

I learned these tips from the videos here: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how-to/wp8/start/videos

 

[Kneedragger]

Cons

• Web browser is not that great. It's passable, yes, but lacks some really obvious features. A software back/forward button is sorely lacking and needed as sometimes the hardware back button doesn't work correctly. Also I've noticed a lot of websites that are only Webkit compatible don't really render that well on WP8. This is not Microsoft's problem, but rather the web developers who chose not to abide by basic standards.
• App library is poor. Most of the major apps are there, yes, but some of them don't work as good as they do on other OS's. You can get by with 3rd party solutions for now for most things, but if you're coming from iOS you will be somewhat disappointed.
• Lack of notifications. This is really inexcusable to me. The fact that I can get an email alert, but not have any idea who it's from to give me context if I should bother reading it. The lack of a unified center for notifications means you will have to have those relevant tiles at the top to be aware of what is going on. It's a really poor solution, WP8.1 can't come soon enough.

That's all I can think of for now. Overall I feel the OS has a lot of potential but is missing some really key/basic features that it needs to have as well as an app library that can compete with the big boys. 2014 will likely be the make or break year for MSFT. If they can't deliver feature parity by 8.1 I don't think they will ever be able to make a dent.

I still have a HTC running 7.5/ 7.10 but I don't use it anymore. I see a lot of the same things you mention that bother you I seen when this phone came out even after a couple software up dates. The speed of the phone still runs smooth though.

The web browser sucked and seemed slow. Apps weren't available then and it seems like not much has changed since and live tiles working correctly still hasn't been improved. I love the WP on a core level but needs a lot of work. Seeing some of these issues still haven't been resolved sort of upsets me since I've been wanting to jump for iOS and avoid Android at the same time.

 

[darkewaffle]

I'm not an app person but so far I've found good ones for both emulation and NBA scores - so it's 2/2 for me at least in the few months I've had it.

Ah, also got my battle.net authenticator on it.

 

[quest55720]

I ended up getting one over the weekend. Was out of town on a road trip and my phone died my guess on board flash storage died. I was in a pinch and did not want to sign a contract right now with ATT for upgrade no phones I want. Did not want to drive alone in a very large city alone at night with no GPS/phone to be honest. I had a focus S before and I am very impressed with my 520 for 100 dollars with no signature needed. I really don't have any complaints right now solid phone. Will serve as the family back up phone once I get something else. If you are in a bind I highly recommend this phone the best will find at a B&M store for 100 bucks. Very fast and liking the improvements from WP7 to WP8.

 

[Chrono]

I ended up getting one over the weekend. Was out of town on a road trip and my phone died my guess on board flash storage died. I was in a pinch and did not want to sign a contract right now with ATT for upgrade no phones I want. Did not want to drive alone in a very large city alone at night with no GPS/phone to be honest. I had a focus S before and I am very impressed with my 520 for 100 dollars with no signature needed. I really don't have any complaints right now solid phone. Will serve as the family back up phone once I get something else. If you are in a bind I highly recommend this phone the best will find at a B&M store for 100 bucks. Very fast and liking the improvements from WP7 to WP8.

What impressed me a lot was Nokia HERE Navigation or whatever it is. Both my gf and I bought a Lumia 521 but she's been using it as her main phone and when she used the navigation on the phone I was shocked by how decent it was.

The gaming performance also impressed me on this phone. I don't know any sub $100 android phones that can play games at a decent speed. Hell, my TF101T EEEpad Transformer Tablet can't even play that stupid game Jetpack without framerate issues.

I can find most applications but since I'm fairly invested in the google ecosystem I find not having access to certain google apps kind of annoying. Of course I have MS/Nokia alternatives... just have to play around a bit. Wish there was the official starbucks app too.

 

[bamx2]

I tried one and just couldn't deal with the not so great browser and limited WP apps catalog. I hope that WP improves soon but in the meantime, it's not for me. I gave it to a family member whose main needs are for talk and text

 

[Claudius-07]

Thank you for this. I just picked up a 520 here in Canada at a local Futureshop. It was on sale but locked to Rogers, but there was one other locked to Telus. Anyhow $20 later, unlocked and for a second phone for my dad. I've been playing with it for a few days and love win8 on the mobile side. I did not like Win 8 on this new laptop, more to do with just not wanting to customize the laptop really -- lazy, but I can really see how well the Win 8 mobile truly works on phones. Good job.