Category: Mobile

Wind Mobility

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve been with Bell for my mobile service since my first phone in the late 90’s.  That’s a long time and if I had to sum it up in just one word it would be; overpriced.

Let’s face it, there’s no real competition in the mobile space in Canada, the big three don’t even try to compete on price as each time one raises theirs, the other follow suit.

All you have to do is look at the massive profits they make to understand how uncompetitive the space really is.  Companies that have competition have lower profits as they must fight to keep customers happy.  Companies that don’t have competition can reap larger profits as customers don’t really have anywhere to go.

Having said that, there is hope that things will change and there have been several times I’ve almost jumped ship to Wind.  My biggest concern has always been the coverage.  My home and work are covered by the Wind network but there are a few area’s I spend time at that are not.

The recent reduction in their roaming rates finally pushed me over the edge, kind of at least, and I decided to pick up a SIM to use in one of my older phones.

It turns out though that Wind uses such an uncommon frequency (1700) that virtually no phones support it. I had my SIM for two months before I found a phone to use with it (see my Blu Win HD post for details).

Setup was easy (I of course had to manually set the APN’s) and once up and running everything was good.  I had reasonable signal strength everywhere I’ve been and overall the speed has been quite good as well.

I’m not going to switch from Bell quite yet, as much as the Blu Win HD is a fine phone, it doesn’t compare to my 925 and the 925 doesn’t support the 1700 spectrum.

To get me to switch one of two things will have to happen:

  • The next flagship Nokia phone supports 1700 band.
  • Wind upgrades their network with a more common band.

I expect Wind to be involved in the next spectrum auction so perhaps they will get the right spectrum to support future phones.

Overall I’d recommend Wind if you wanted one of the phones they support and lived inside their network.

Blu Win HD

Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]I was in a Microsoft store recently and was looking at the Blu Win HD, a phone that at $179 unlocked had caught my interest more for the price point than anything else.

I decided to pick one up to use as a secondary phone for a couple of reasons:

  • Dual SIM (this is kind of neat, though I don’t have a real use for it)
  • Micro SD Card slot
  • Support 1700 band, which Wind Mobile runs on
  • 5″ display

When I first pulled it out of the box my first impression was about how light it felt.  That turns out to be because the battery is removable and no installed 🙂

However even with the battery installed it’s a very light and thin phone.  Blu has been making android phones for a while and at first I thought the Win HD would be like the HTC M8, a simple software load of Windows Phone, which it is and isn’t.

They’ve gone with physical (though capacitive) buttons on the front of the phone, but no camera button.  The volume and power buttons are on opposite sides near the top of the phone which isn’t the best layout as several times now when powering down the phone I’ve watched the volume go up or down as I squeeze the volume rocker at the same time, which also takes a screen shot as well 🙂

The screen looks nice, though the capacitive screen feels a little “funny”, not bad but just not as responsive as my Nokia 925.

The camera is an 8MP shooter and seems serviceable, nothing great but it works.

Performance wise, it’s responsive, but does feel a slower than my Nokia, but if I didn’t have the 925 to compare against I doubt I’d notice it.  However if you really want to see it grind to a crawl, turn on the Internet sharing.  When active the phone is virtually unusable, missing touches and swipes all the time.  Clearly the CPU has enough power to run Windows Phone, but not much else.

It comes with everything you might need, screen protector, silicon case, charger, etc.

Overall I’m impressed with it and for $179 outright it’s a deal.

Nokia 930

Greg Leave a comment

[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve been using my Nokia 925 for just over a year now and I am very happy with it, however a friend has been using a BlackBerry Z10 since it came out and he’s recently converted to a Nokia 930.

The first thing you notice about the 930 is the significantly different design esthetic in comparison to the 925.  The 925 is round and subdued, where as the 930 is more square and bold.  I have to admit I like the 930 design, it looks good and sits in your hand nicely.

It is a larger phone, the 5″ display looks beautiful but does increase the overall dimensions of the phone.  It’s not nearly as large as I thought it would be and is virtually the same width as my 925, just a bit taller and thicker.

It is heavier though, the larger screen and battery do take their toll.  It’s still a pretty light phone, but after having the 925 for so long it is noticeable.

The camera is very impressive, the 20MP sensor really does a great job of capturing images.

There are a few other thoughts:

  • Miracast support is cool, projecting your phone on to a big screen may not be really all that useful but just doing it for the first time is neat!
  • 6 rows on the home screen looks good on the HD display, but unlike the 925 which has an option if you want 4 or 6, the 930 only supports 6 which seemed a little weird.
  • No support for glance mode.  That display looks great but doesn’t have the required mode to support glance and I have to admit I have really become accustomed to glance.
  • No SD card slot.  Really?  REALLY?
  • Wireless charging built-in… yea!

One of the other advantages to the 930 is that Microsoft pushed out WP 8.1.1 to it first.

It’s a great phone, I won’t be trading in my 925 for it but if I was buying a new phone right now for some reason the 930 would be a the top of my list.

 

Windows Phone 8.1 BBM Beta

Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]I have to admit that I have used a BlackBerry for work for a very long time and have NEVER used BBM.  Overall I’m not a big fan of instant messaging, but do use it a bit on my Windows Phone and at least one of my friends still has a BB so I thought I’d give the BBM beta a try.

First off, it is still a beta and I did have a few ‘weird’ moments with it hanging or not loading, but overall it’s pretty stable.  Getting connected to my friend was a little bit of a challenge as well.  At first I sent him an invite but he never received it.  Then he sent me one which I received the notification for but it didn’t appear in the app.  Finally after reloading BBM a couple of times it showed up and we connected.

The next day he disappeared from my contact list in BBM for a few hours and then came back.  Beta… definitely beta.

Otherwise it’s much like WhatsApp or Viber (or more aptly, they’re much like BBM).  There’s no compelling reason to use it over those apps.  Beyond the instability of the beta there is one big feature missing, Toast notifications do not contain any contact or message details, it just flash by a “BBM has a new notification” message and you have to go in to the app to see who has messaged you.  Presumably that will be fixed shortly, but it is amazing how annoying it really is right now to me 😉

I currently have 5 messaging apps on my phone (Kik, WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and BBM) and really would like to cut that down to one or two.  I don’t think BBM would make the cut.

Windows Phone 8.1 XBox Music

Greg

[sc:mobile-category ]I’ve been a proponent for splitting the apps out of the core OS on Windows Phone for a long time and I have to admit I was happy when I heard that the Music hub would become a standalone app.

I couldn’t have imagined how badly Microsoft would mess it up thought.

Xbox Music on Windows Phone is the replacement for the Music Hub (well, actually the Music Hub still exists but is hidden away) and gets just about everything wrong.  It’s slow, buggy and each update only seems to make it worse.

With the latest ‘performance’ update it now takes minutes to load assuming it ever does.  Once in to the app it goes to a completely useless screen.

For the longest time it didn’t really support pined playlists, though they finally added that a while ago.

A music app should be easy to make and it shouldn’t be a burden to its users.

I’ve actually completely replaced XBox Music with ModernMusic, a nice and simple local music player that actually works.  It replicates the look and feel of the old music hub without the XBox music integration that really seems to be causing problems for Microsoft.