So this week my 2-year old HTC reached its untimely end due to a damaged micro-usb port. I initially thought it would be easy and cheap to fix the port, but I was wrong on both counts. If you gave this to a professional, it'd cost you $80 and 2-weeks to get it repaired. I thought it'd be worth trying to repair it myself. To get my hands on the part I'd have to import it from the US or China (ebay or alibaba, your pick) and then its opening up the phone and tinkering with the main circuit board. From the tutorials online, this doesn't seem too bad, so I'll give this a shot. Hope I can post a positive result in a few weeks time.
This.....was the best excuse for me to go hunt for a new phone. For a week I would be using an old replacement with no 3G. Losing connectivity to whatsapp/3G related services - a genuine first world problem - was both a boon and a bane. It was refreshing to stay away from Facebook, IM and other app-related services you would generally use, but the biggest problem I faced was importing data onto my replacement phone. Having gotten used to Google sync, I faced quite some trouble with my replacement where I hardly had any of my frequent contacts. Nevertheless, this lasted for only a few days.
I've spent the better half of this evening going through reviews and deciding on a phone - and finally after trying out many of the shops in the Little India locality - I struck gold in the Nokia Lumia 820! I got this at an Indian electronics shop where the non-contract mobile phone prices were supposed to be the lowest. It was pretty nice to wander around the place looking for the shop without GPS or a map but asking people around in a mixture of English/broken Tamil and Hindi. I had steeled myself for a go-as-low-as-you-can bidding war with the seller, but it was refreshing to see that the stuff over there were sold at fixed price (very rare for such a shop!). So after standing over at a counter jostling for space, I spent the better half of an hour looking at the specs and prices for a number of models and just when the shopkeeper's patience was running out decide on the Lumia 820.
Yes, the Nokia about 4 years back was terrible when it came to smartphones. The hardware was good, but the software was lightyears behind Apple and Android, but their new range of Windows Phone 8 devices does not disappoint. A combination of solid hardware and a refreshing OS giving you a sleek, sturdy and competitive device. Given that the Nokia + Windows Phone alliance is way behind Samsung and Apple, you tend to get a good deal on the phones due to a lack of demand. So far my experience with the phone has been great, hope it doesn't disappoint! With that I shall sign off, ~ciao!
This.....was the best excuse for me to go hunt for a new phone. For a week I would be using an old replacement with no 3G. Losing connectivity to whatsapp/3G related services - a genuine first world problem - was both a boon and a bane. It was refreshing to stay away from Facebook, IM and other app-related services you would generally use, but the biggest problem I faced was importing data onto my replacement phone. Having gotten used to Google sync, I faced quite some trouble with my replacement where I hardly had any of my frequent contacts. Nevertheless, this lasted for only a few days.
I've spent the better half of this evening going through reviews and deciding on a phone - and finally after trying out many of the shops in the Little India locality - I struck gold in the Nokia Lumia 820! I got this at an Indian electronics shop where the non-contract mobile phone prices were supposed to be the lowest. It was pretty nice to wander around the place looking for the shop without GPS or a map but asking people around in a mixture of English/broken Tamil and Hindi. I had steeled myself for a go-as-low-as-you-can bidding war with the seller, but it was refreshing to see that the stuff over there were sold at fixed price (very rare for such a shop!). So after standing over at a counter jostling for space, I spent the better half of an hour looking at the specs and prices for a number of models and just when the shopkeeper's patience was running out decide on the Lumia 820.
Yes, the Nokia about 4 years back was terrible when it came to smartphones. The hardware was good, but the software was lightyears behind Apple and Android, but their new range of Windows Phone 8 devices does not disappoint. A combination of solid hardware and a refreshing OS giving you a sleek, sturdy and competitive device. Given that the Nokia + Windows Phone alliance is way behind Samsung and Apple, you tend to get a good deal on the phones due to a lack of demand. So far my experience with the phone has been great, hope it doesn't disappoint! With that I shall sign off, ~ciao!
