Thursday, July 10, 2014

Windows in your pocket?!

I bought a Nokia Lumia 1520, when I found out it has a six-inch display!

It's like a Kindle Fire you can hold in one hand! 

(OK, you can hold a KF 7-inch in one hand, but not comfortably, and it's the rare pocket which will take it. The size difference in screen is small, but the size different on the whole is large.)

And the Kindle app seems to work fine on it, though the interface (phone based) is a bit confusing, at least at first (you click to download a book from your archive, it downloads... and disappears! Where did it go? How do I get at it?! So far I have been rebooting the app to find the local archive, but there must be a better way).

Sadly it is not just rumors that apps are really lacking in the Windows (Phone) OS 8. There doesn't even seem to be versions or equivalents of Flipboard, or worse, no versions of the Read-Later apps, Instapaper and my current fave, Pocket (oh, I found a compatible app, $2, called Read Later). These are important apps if you want to use your 'phablet' for what it is so incredibly well fitted: a pocket ereader.
(I'm still astounded that Amazon has never yet made a pocket-sized ereader, either in e-ink or in color. Such a huge missed opportunity.)



This 6-inch screen is colossal. It makes an iPhone look like a toy.
A perception I'm sure many share, and which I hope will soon shame Apple into action.

Oh, by the way, of course it's great for video also. But so far I've found no way to buy video and download it to to keep for offline viewing. Netflix does not seem to support that, and there does not seem to be any Amazon Video player, nor, of course, iTunes for Windows Phone 8 (different from Windows 8). Any tips?

I still haven't found out why phones are that much more expensive than tablets. But at least the Lumia 1520 is cheaper than most, possibly because of their small market share.

Sadly, but predictably, Windows Phone is not significantly less buggy or easy to use than Android. Sigh. I'm almost beginning to see merit in Steve Jobs' dictator mentality.

I found this cheap and (I think) beautiful faux-leather case for it:
(Link leads to Amazon UK. I've been banned on Am US for dirty pictures, oddly.)

3 comments:

Marcelo Metayer said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Marcelo Metayer said...

That's a beatiful device! But if you want something this big, but with more apps to choose, you can try the Samsung Galaxy Mega, running the last version of Android. There are two models: 5.8" y 6.3". Anyway, they lack screen resolution compared to the Lumia 1520. The Nokia has a 1920x1080px screen, and the Samsung 1280x720px.
And last but not least, the Samsung phones are cheaper. Here in Argentina the Nokia Lumia 1520 costs $ 10.000 (US$ 1.200 at the current official change) when you can buy the Samsung Galaxy Mega 5.8" for $ 6.000 (US$ 730).

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Thanks for info.

Wow, phones are even more expensive in Argentina. I paid less than half that here in the UK.