[aravind.anand]

Touch wood! I dropped my L820 yet again! for the third time, from a height of about 6 feet ( was traveling in a truck, and dropped while opening the door! ) and thankfully despite this being the 3rd drop from an unsafe height, the screen survived! Phew! was shocked when it hit the hard tarmac. Switched it on and checked to find that it worked veryh normally even now. But only later i realized that the 3.5 mm jack now gives output only to the Right channel, tried AUX devices & various head phones. What should I do now?

[zenren]

Originally Posted by aravind.anand

Touch wood! I dropped my L820 yet again! for the third time, from a height of about 6 feet ( was traveling in a truck, and dropped while opening the door! ) and thankfully despite this being the 3rd drop from an unsafe height, the screen survived! Phew! was shocked when it hit the hard tarmac. Switched it on and checked to find that it worked veryh normally even now. But only later i realized that the 3.5 mm jack now gives output only to the Right channel, tried AUX devices & various head phones. What should I do now?

Looks like there is some damage inside from the fall.

I don't know about the parts inside the phone but in case there is a broken circuit board inside that is currently working, they may not be able to put it back once they open it. So be prepared to spend for repair if you take it to Nokia care irrespective of the repair cost.

Couple of options:
1. Bear with it and do nothing if it is not a big deal.
2. Take it to Nokia Care, get a quote for the repair and proceed with repair.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by aravind.anand

But only later i realized that the 3.5 mm jack now gives output only to the Right channel, tried AUX devices & various head phones. What should I do now?

Ignoring the source of the problem, let me mention that my jack had the exact same issue. The problem was resolved once I restarted the phone. Apparently it is a common bug. Hope you have tried the same.

[amikacin]

Originally Posted by aravind.anand

Touch wood! I dropped my L820 yet again! for the third time, from a height of about 6 feet ( was traveling in a truck, and dropped while opening the door! ) and thankfully despite this being the 3rd drop from an unsafe height, the screen survived! :

You are lucky mate. My phone had survived a couple of nasty falls but yesterday it landed flat on its screen from a height of two feet only. Now, cracks are visible and is giving weird colours on the display.

Somehow, the phone imported all of the contacts from sim card to phone memory. Now, my sim has no phone numbers stored in it.
I had to manually enter most used numbers into the cheap handset that is serving me now.

[aravind.anand]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

Ignoring the source of the problem, let me mention that my jack had the exact same issue. The problem was resolved once I restarted the phone. Apparently it is a common bug. Hope you have tried the same.

Fantastic morning! I had already re-started my phone after the fall, and this continued. But your post made me think - I am going to lose nothing anyway! So switched off, removed the battery and put it back after 5 mins. Tada! the Aux out is working perfectly now! Cant thank you enough Ninjatalli! I would have taken it to the service centre this weekend without thinking about this action. Thanks a ton!

[radek]

Nokia Care has quoted Rs 7500 for replacing screen of my Lumia 800. Probably time to go for new WP8 device.

Any feedback on Lumia 925?

[zenren]

Originally Posted by radek

Nokia Care has quoted Rs 7500 for replacing screen of my Lumia 800. Probably time to go for new WP8 device.

Any feedback on Lumia 925?

Depends on your usage pattern. Its not as premium as the 920 was.

920/925 doesn't support SD card and hence it wouldn't be a good choice if you want to store videos in the phone. 920 had a 32GB internal memory that compensated for the lack of SD card but 925 got the internal memory cut short to 16GB to differentiate from higher end 1020 which took over the flagship model tag from 920.

I would still prefer a 920 over 925, considering the temp/other storage issue is still not addressed completely by Microsoft. My HTC 8X is 16GB and I'm already deleting videos to free up space. I don't think I'll be able to install the next update without deleting all the videos to free up space.

[ninjatalli]

Originally Posted by vvrchandra

When can we expect a detailed review of the same? Eagerly waiting to finalize the deal.Thanks.

Originally Posted by radek

Nokia Care has quoted Rs 7500 for replacing screen of my Lumia 800. Probably time to go for new WP8 device.

Any feedback on Lumia 925?

Ok - this has been in the works for quite some time. Do reply if you need any specific area/feature based details that I haven't covered.

Disclaimer: I do quite a nagging comparison when it comes to reviews so I generally would take most of the negative factors listed below with a pinch of salt. I owned an Android phone (& a Samsung tablet), and the lady of the house has a iPhone 5. Plus I have access to Nexus 4 & 5, Note 2 & other brand android smartphones at my workplace. So most of the comparisons would be with these (even if I don't mention specifically)

Camera
Gorgeous camera. Both daytime & nightime. Especially the latter, in low lighting areas the Carl Zeiss lens shows its capabilities; beats the heck of the iPhone 5 (series) on this parameter.

W.r.t daytime photos, most expert reviews will tell you that the iPhone shows better color saturation, but I found both close enough. However the 925's pics had more clarity when zoomed in. Same was the case when I compared with Nexus 5.

The phone comes inbuilt with several camera apps with various settings, and the highly advertised Smart Cam - by which you could come up with motion pics and/or remove unwanted objects from the camera. 3 weeks of usage, and I'm yet to find a proper usage of this application.

The phone comes with a list of additional photography/tweaking applications (Camera360, Nokia Cinemagraph, Nokia Creative Studio, Nokia Panorama, Nokia Refocus, Photobeamer, SophieLens) - one can just spend loads of time playing with these applications. Except for the Panorama app, all of these applications are excellent with their own "improvements"/features to the basic camera application. Unfortunately the Panorama application is not exactly user-friendly, and the iPhone is miles ahead on this parameter.

Frankly if someone is strongly looking for a camera usage aspect in a smartphone, he should chuck every other option and go for this mobile (or the 1020/1520 if he has the moolah of course).

Usability
The Windows OS is highly refreshing for someone who's migrated from an Android phone. Frankly if you try to observe an imaginary heatmap on the various applications on one's phone, you'll see a clear 80-20 pattern : 80% of the usage would be on a set of core applications. The exact set of apps in this 80% will vary from person to person; for me it involves the core set (call/sms/whatsapp/musicplayer/camera/twitter/<xyz game>). The rest 20% involves everything else which I hardly use once or twice in a day. I enjoy installing & deleting random applications & games, but I do it max for 20-30 mins in a day.

IMO WP is based on that concept. Pin these core applications on your home page and you are done with quick access options. I hardly go into the main menu everyday, maximum 2-3 times. Every review I read online talks about the absence of a notification bar. But honestly I don't find a dying need of the same - the individual panes on the home page give me enough indications of what updates are available.

If one would ask me, WP should work on these live pane based notifications. For e.g. the message pane changes from a ":-)" smiley to ";-)" smiley if you have 1 or 2 messages; but then changes to ":-o" smiley if you have more than 5 un-read messages. To me, this tiny change is absolutely brilliant! It brings a smile to my face everytime I see it. I can think of so many notification alerts like this - say the bell image in the alarm live pane shows vibrations when put on snooze; or the calendar pane could show a different image if I have a up-coming meeting or a birthday reminder; or the battery pane could should a different color based on the battery strength; I could just go on.

There are a host of other WP-based features that are very useful (IMO)
- A separate "Me" area that combines notifications from fb/twitter/etc;
- An option to club specific contacts into a group on the phone - the OS then shows their live updates & photo albums as an additional feature
- Recent notifications & photo albums for each contact's profile if his fb profile is linked, and so on

Battery Life
The phone comes pre-loaded with the Amber update, and with it, the supposedly battery issues. On a basic 2G network, with location services off, and no games, the phone easily survives more than a complete day with full usage (wifi-on/full-on calls/sms/whatsapp/music). But any one of the above 3 is a clear drain on the battery. I haven't exactly mapped the complete duration with 3G on, but I guess it would last around 15-18 hours. Now I'm not sure if the upcoming GDR3 update improves this or not, but only time will tell.

Durability
The 925 is definitely a stunner in looks, whether you compare it to other Lumia phones or Android or Apple products. The display screen & the tile-based view is clearly view-able in bright sunlight. On the downside, the phone heats up a bit when you play games or heavy applications for sustained durations. This is clearly a common problem if one searches about it online; I am yet to find any plausible solution on the web but since the (heat) effect wears off within a few minutes, I don't see a major concern in it.

Navigation
This is actually a stronghold of all Lumia phones; the Here+ Maps. With strong offline connectivity options, and extremely detailed Nokia maps, I am yet to find a reason to use the alternate Google maps that is also available. The GPS location services works like a charm without any issues, and linkage of location services to all applications is flawless, for both inhouse and 3rd party applications. Yes, enabling the location services & using the navigation app is a battery drainer, but the impact is not that much. To what I have seen in the last one month, 3G is the biggest cause of battery drain.

Additional Features
In a Samsung-kinda way, the 925 has a few nice additional features that are nice to have, but not necessarily needed.
1. The "Glance" screen is probably WP's version of notifications tab, which works like a charm. Read more about it here.
2. A "double-tap" feature that allows one to wake up the phone by just tapping twice on the screen.
3. A sunlight readability option that improves screen readability in bright sunlight. It works quite well IMO.

App Store
Every online review would state the same thing - all the core application one needs are available on the WP app store. Clearly the Windows PR team has been working hard on this. But that shouldn't be the status quo for Windows, they should be pushing 3rd party developers to come up with copy-cat applications atleast to match the better Apple & Android stores.

I can see a strong lack of worthy 3rd party applications that are available on iOS & Android (e.g. Swiftkey, Poweramp, moboplayer, VLC, Opera/Dolphin/Chrome browsers, etc) - some of these application developers have openly stated that they aren't coming up with a WP version. Even in the games section, there are so many amazing free/paid games that need to be made available on WP (do note some of the high end games are available, but ludicrously costlier than what they cost on Apple/Android)

The Smaller Details

• WP lacks a good solid music player. The default app is ok-ok with good music output, however it is nowhere close to applications like Poweramp (Android) or the default Apple music player
• Absence of text-wrap. Seriously this is a big gap. None of the browser applications support this. IE I can understand, but don't know why 3rd party browsers don't have this feature enabled.
• A 30k+ phone that doesn't have an one-stop search feature. All android phones have it, so do Apple phones, this is clearly a strong miss-out in WP
• Absence of smart-dial. From the looks of it, the upcoming GDR3 update also doesn't fulfill this gap.
• No file explorer. There are a few 3rd party apps, but hardly useful. When connected to the PC, one is able to access the photos, videos, documents & a few other folders; but the end-to-end system folder access is not available.
• Microsoft's ongoing spat with Google. There is no official Youtube app, only 3rd party applications (thankfully they do the job well). Even the official Facebook & Google Maps applications aren't from FB or Google. No Chrome browser too.

Edit:

Originally Posted by zenren

Its not as premium as the 920 was.

ROTFL!!! What exactly do you mean by this statement?

920/925 doesn't support SD card and hence it wouldn't be a good choice if you want to store videos in the phone. 920 had a 32GB internal memory that compensated for the lack of SD card but 925 got the internal memory cut short to 16GB to differentiate from higher end 1020 which took over the flagship model tag from 920.

I would still prefer a 920 over 925, considering the temp/other storage issue is still not addressed completely by Microsoft. My HTC 8X is 16GB and I'm already deleting videos to free up space. I don't think I'll be able to install the next update without deleting all the videos to free up space.

Two of my colleagues bought the 920 within days of my buying the 925, that too at the dirt-cheap price of 20k (flipkart sale + SBI credit card discount). Currently the phone's price has gone up to 30k (more than 925!!!) and all websites state that it has been discontinued.

On a one-on-one comparison, the phone looks extremely bulky, the camera pictures are clearly not that good as 925's. Yes, the additional 16gb is extremely helpful, but IMO it isn't a deal-breaker. But that's a personal opinion. Yes, a SD card slot in the 925 should have been mandatory, a clear miss by Windows/Nokia.

[radek]

Thanks Zenren, Ninjatalli. I was quite happy with my Lumia 800. So 925 looks logical upgrade. I am not too worried about 16GB space. I could not fill this in my 2 years of usage of L800. I am not too much into video and heavy games. But it always helps to have SD Card slot.

Though I was happy with L800, slowly I started finding apps that support only WP8 platform. One of my major problem with WP7 was inability to increase default font size. This is addressed in WP8.

925 price have recently dipped to less that 30K with some sites offering at 26K. Next few days I will check prices in local stores as well.

[zenren]

Originally Posted by radek

Thanks Zenren, Ninjatalli. I was quite happy with my Lumia 800. So 925 looks logical upgrade. I am not too worried about 16GB space. I could not fill this in my 2 years of usage of L800. I am not too much into video and heavy games. But it always helps to have SD Card slot.

Though I was happy with L800, slowly I started finding apps that support only WP8 platform. One of my major problem with WP7 was inability to increase default font size. This is addressed in WP8.

925 price have recently dipped to less that 30K with some sites offering at 26K. Next few days I will check prices in local stores as well.

In that case, 925 should work out just fine.

Do check out 720 too. It might be a very good option considering a longer battery life, SD card support and price that's ~10k lower. Downsides of 720 like 512MB RAM and 8GB internal memory might not be missed if you are not much into heavy games.

[msdivy]

Thats is very detailed review, thanks !

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

[*]A 30k+ phone that doesn't have an one-stop search feature. All android phones have it, so do Apple phones, this is clearly a strong miss-out in WP

Doesn't all windows phone have a dedicated hardware search button, which is tied to bing?

[vikram_d]

Originally Posted by msdivy

Doesn't all windows phone have a dedicated hardware search button, which is tied to bing?

I think what he means is an integrated search that can look for stuff on the phone also like what Windows 8.1 does.

[sachinayak]

My 2c to this discussion. Switched from iPhone 4 to Nokia Lumia 925 a month back and some points.

1. As everyone knows, the 925 Camera just is unbeatable (unless you get the 1020/1025 into the equation).

2. Device feels very premium. Wifey (who got the iPhone 4) complained that i got a high end phone and she got a stupid old phone. Now she is an iPhone fan but just that in comparison to the 925, it just seems so ordinary. Very light, very sleek. The 920 in comparison is very bulky (and the primary reason why i opted for the 925).

3. Hardly any decent cases available for the 925. Have a back case currently, but would have preferred a decent flip cover. There are quite a few cheap ones available, but wish Nokia had something for this like Samsung does for the galaxy phones.

4. The OS has left mixed feelings. It does things right, is very fluid, but does not leave a solid feel. No specific grouses but definitely not as user friendly as Apple. That said i found IOS7 too not as solid and found too many bugs in the short time i had it on my iPhone.

5. I am not a major user of apps so do not miss the Apple Store much, but am sure a typical smartphone user (e.g. most of my friends/colleagues) would feel the pinch. I had hardly any third party apps on my iPhone to begin with.

6. There are small things that Apple does very well e.g. if you have a space in the name field, the next character is automatically capitalized. Small but thoughtful. Microsoft does the job, just not as well as it could. My typical analogy is that 925 is a Tata Manza (of which i am a satisfied owner of) and iPhone is a Honda City. The later does its job brilliantly, but is a petrol and does not need my requirement of something that does its job well but is also a diesel, which the former is.

7. This could be a very personal view, but the iPhone size is perfect to fit in the palm for a single handed use. For 925, if you need to call you need to reach the top left, which is a stretch for a left handed person. The least they could do was to offer a left/right handed customization or at least keep the call button in the bottom half (as in iPhone).


8. How did i miss this - the voice recognition in 925 is incredibly good. This is after i installed the Indian English language pack. The default phone dialling app is pathetic and voice recognition just solves this problem. It understands voice commands perfectly (my BT device got it right 10% times). It also reads out SMS's perfectly if you ask it to. When i am driving, with my device connected to my car's BT, i just ask the phone to dial someone and the look on my co-passenger's face is just incredible when they hear a "hello" on the car speaker. Just seem they have been transported instantly into a sci-fiction movie.


Even more difficult for them to believe that i drive a Manza and carry a Nokia phone, and not a Honda with an iPhone.

[zenren]

Originally Posted by sachinayak

8. How did i miss this - the voice recognition in 925 is incredibly good. This is after i installed the Indian English language pack. The default phone dialling app is pathetic and voice recognition just solves this problem.

Can you elaborate on this one? Are you referring to the "English (India)" option in the Browser & Search language setting or is this a different app?

EDIT: Got the speech setting. Never tried it till now. Lech meh shee if dish foan understands whaat I saay.

[Marley]

When can we expect a Team bhp application for the Windows phone??