Reply to post: Re: Just looked at the price

Re: Just looked at the price

I have to say about a month ago I would totally agreed with you; For the past three years I've been using a Lumia 1020 running, successively, WP8, WP8.1 and W10P, and I have absolutely loved it. I actually bought it (well, got it included in a 2 year contract which has then been rolling over on a monthly basis for the past year) because I wanted the camera, which is fantastic, and saves me carrying around a P&S when I don't want to carry the DSLRs (especially as I bought the camera back for it). I had never used Windows Phone before, and I have to say I found 8, and its successors, the easiest phone UI to use of all the ones I've owned.

However over the summer the battery (another non-removable one) has progressively failed, to the point where it would barely last 4 hours under any kind of use. I did do a factory reset in case it was any kind of software problem but even in its vanilla state it wouldn't hold a charge for a full day. I went looking for a replacement and initially looked at the 950. The problem was it was a sunny day, and sat just inside the shop window I was having difficulty reading the display. Then I saw this nice shiny phone a couple of holders over, which I could clearly see the display on even though it was in, if anything, an even brighter patch of sunlight. I started playing with it and thought "this is pretty cool" so went online with mine and looked at a couple of reviews. It got such good reviews that I thought "got to be worth a try" and negotiated a new contract (which is actually giving me the same contract plus more data for less pm than I was paying on the 1020). The phone is the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, and I have to say it's easily the best smartphone I've ever owned.

It is difficult to put my finger on exactly why I find it better than 1020, especially as I had initial problems finding where all the settings were to fine tune things like lock screen notifications, but I do. Like you I didn't find the lack of Windows apps particularly bothersome, but I have discovered that if apps are there, I will use them in preference to a web page; for example the Sky app is far easier to use to set a remote record than going to the web page, particularly in low coverage areas. Also there are quite a few non-essential apps that are still nice to have - being interested in aviation I absolutely love the app version of FlightRadar24!

I still believe that Windows Phone has a future, particularly in business (although it is quite possible that by providing endpoint data protection and functional MDM within Office 365 and Office mobile apps MS will end up doing themselves out of a market) but for the moment I am sold on the S7 Edge, and all that comes with it. Oh, and BTW, early experimentation with the camera suggests that, although lower resolution (12MP) than the 1020, because it still shoots RAW and has manual override for just about everything, it suits me perfectly.