Windows Phone 8.1 on Lumia 930 - the first pancake is lumpy?

The release of the desktop version of Windows 10 is coming, and this among other things means that very soon Microsoft will transfer some of its resources to develop and prepare for the imminent release of the mobile version of Windows 10. I personally expect the release of Windows Phone 10 with both hope and anxiety Did Microsoft work on the bugs, would they fix the flaws that Windows Phone 8.1 users now have to put up with? It is about them that I would like to talk.

The fact is that I have long been a fan and user of smartphones and phones under the Nokia brand and by this time I have gone from Nokia 3310 to Lumia 930, using such models as 3510i, 6230i, N95, N8, 808 PureView at different times. Just before the change of the 808th to the 930th, I was faced with a difficult choice - whether to wait another year for a new cameraphone, which, like, should replace the Lumia 1020, or wait for a new general-purpose flagship in the face of Lumia 940/950, take what is on the market now. After weighing all the pros and cons, I decided not to wait another year and a half, and chose the last of the flagships under the Nokia brand.

If we talk about the characteristics of the Lumia 930, they are quite decent:
Screen : 5 "OLED with a resolution of 1920x1080 and glass Gorilla Glass 3
Processor : 4-core Snapdragon 800 with a frequency of 2200 Mhz
Memory : 2 GB RAM and 32 GB for different files
Camera : 20 Mpx, maximum photo resolution 5376x3744px, video recording at 4k @ 30fps, dual LED flash
Battery : 2420 mAh, non-removable

As practice shows, Windows Phone 8.1 can work pretty well on a much weaker hardware, for example, on a Lumia 520 with 512 MB of RAM and a 2-core processor with a frequency of 1000 Mhz, so I did not worry about the smooth operation of the interface and the entire OS . The devil, as you know, is in the details, and you need to spend more than one day on studying them, so I made my impression about the device and OS a couple of months after the purchase. So, first about the good:
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1. Live tiles and integrated services


After 4 years with Symbian ^ 3, Windows Phone 8.1 live tiles look more attractive and functional. They can act not only as icons, but also as informers, allowing you to get the necessary information from the application without expanding it.
Synchronization of contacts and files with Outlook and Skydrive is also quite convenient if you spend a little time on setting up.
Applications from the store are updated automatically (if it is allowed in the settings) and there is no need to periodically manually check for updates.

2. Responsiveness of the interface and screen
Everything works very smoothly, does not slow down and does not freeze, the smartphone clearly reacts to the touch of the screen even with gloves on.

3. Camera
Despite the fact that the Lumia 930 is in fact not a camera phone, the quality of photos and videos is quite decent.


There is some oversaturation of green in photos with vegetation, in poor lighting and without flash there is a bit too much noise in photos, aberrations are noticeable in the corners of photos. On the other hand, everything is natural, it is not a “SLR”, that would wait for perfect photos in any conditions. The video quality is also good, especially when recording sound in noisy rooms or at concerts - everything is recorded clearly and without distortion.

4. Browser
Despite a lot of prejudice, Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8.1 works well - pages load quickly, there are no problems with displaying content (except for content with Flash blocks — it is not supported).

Now let's talk about sad things ...
1. The disadvantages of "iron"
The Lumia 930 does not have a memory card slot - this is illogical and does not fit in my head. Why is it in the most budget models and why it is not in the flagship? 32 gigabytes of internal memory is a lot, but when it comes to shooting in 4k or a long trip without access to a PC and the Internet, I want to have at least 64GB on hand.
Another disadvantage is the relative low capacity of the battery - if in a mode of gentle use the smartphone can still last for two days, then the frequent long use of the camera or games puts the battery in a matter of hours ...



It is for Lumia 930 that another problem is characteristic - serious heating of the right upper part of the smartphone when using demanding applications. After 5-7 minutes, the heating becomes uncomfortable to hold the smartphone in your hand, and in some cases may even lead to a reboot of the device.

2. The impossibility of flexible volume control
Alas, this is so - you will not be able to create several modes with a different ring volume for each of them. What was possible in the Nokia 3310 15 years ago is not available on the flagship smartphone in 2015. In addition, if the adjustment keys on the device case break down, you will not be able to change the current volume settings in any way - it is impossible to call this scrollbar from the OS settings menu ...

3. Reset minimized application status
If you like to read books on the screen of your smartphone or just leave several open links in the browser, or pause and minimize the audio player, be prepared for turning back, you have a chance to see them in a freshly launched state. I will explain that the book will be opened from the first page, the pages of the sites will be reloaded, and the player will display a list of the tracks on the device instead of a specific open song or playlist. I do not know where the legs grow from this problem, there may be unused applications for a while incorrectly freeing the occupied system resources, but there was nothing like this in Symbian ^ 3.

4. Limited functionality of camera applications
I mean the Lumia Camera application - the most balanced in its functionality available.
Firstly, Lumia Camera does not support creating profiles with settings and resets some of the settings after exiting the application - this is very inconvenient. In the camera application on the Nokia 808 Pureview, I could create several profiles adapted to different shooting conditions - with fixed focus, different resolutions and aspect ratios of pictures, the exposure compensation and exposure settings, the timer value were remembered. Yes, in Lumia Camera the basic settings are in fairly comfortable sliders, but the other settings are extremely scarce - there are no 2 Mpx and 8 Mpx among the available resolutions of the photos to be taken for later use in 1080p and 4k timelapse, you cannot take photos only at maximum 16 Mpx (for each photo will still be attached "trailer" in 5Mpx).



In addition, the timer can not set the number of photographs taken, the time between photos is limited to 3 fixed values, and the timer itself with large series of photos works disgustingly - the time taken to save the taken photo is not taken into account, and since it varies from ~ 0.5 to ~ 4 seconds, timelapse video from the captured frames is obtained jerky. Citing the example of the same Symbian ^ 3 - there was no such thing in it, the timer spent on saving the photo went, and the 5 Mpx photos themselves were saved for no longer than 2-3 seconds, even taking into account the much weaker “iron” stuffing smartphone, and the timer can be configured using two sliders in the range from 2 to 1500 photos at intervals of from 5 to 30 seconds.

The situation with the settings for shooting video is even more sad - there is no possibility to quickly set the focus to infinity or hyperfocal mode, there is no possibility to pause the video (sic! It was even in 6230i 10 years ago), you cannot use the volume keys for zooming (Nokia N95 sends “hello” from 2007), and at all resolutions available for shooting except for 1440p, artifacts from insufficient bitrate are clearly visible, which has not been for at least 5 years since Nokia N8. Thus, it becomes meaningless and shooting in a widely advertised 4k resolution ( sample 1 , sample 2 ) ... Completes these troubles with a video of a couple of cherries on the cake:
1. The wonderful E-AC3 codec, with which sound recording in 5.1 is implemented, simply does not read any player other than VLC, and meGUI, Sony Vegas 12, Sound Forge 11, and Good old cool edit pro.
2. The video itself is encoded only with the help of a constant bit rate. What does this mean? And the fact that on the good old 808 Pureview , such a video with a static camera layout and a small number of movements in the frame occupied only 6.5 gigabytes as 1080p (thanks to a smart encoder and rational use of bitrate) when on the 930th Lyumiya ( thanks to the “stupid” encoder and constant bit rate) in the same 1080p it will already take 21.9 gigabytes, risking clogging up all the available memory.

Maybe someone will say that all this is nonsense and the shortcomings I have listed are not critical, but we are still talking about a flagship that Microsoft is supposed to compete with the iPhone 5/6 and Galaxy S5 / S6. Moreover, the lion's share of the flaws I have described relates specifically to software, not allowing to fully unlock the possibilities of "hardware".
Meanwhile, the new flagship running Windows Phone 10 is already looming on the horizon, and if everything is in general clear about the device's characteristics (by and large, the Lumia 930 will be distinguished by the extra 2 cores of the processor and an extra gigabyte of RAM), then the capabilities of the mobile The “dozens” still raise doubts - will Microsoft correct the annoying flaws mentioned above 8.1, will it take into account the experience of the “insiders”, will it agree to implement the diversity of the functionality advertised at the company's forums? Judging by the preliminary OS versions for the participants of the “Windows Insider” program, there is a positive trend in this issue. Well, let's wait until the fall and find out!