Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Accepting the Lumia. How I once hated the Lumia and now like it... a lot



I don’t always stick to the ethics of downloading music legally. I try my best to avoid downloading new songs through pirated means, but at times, I do succumb to the temptation of downloading mp3s. During my MBA I mostly used to stream music through Youtube while I worked on my laptop. At my previous job (prior to MBA) I used to stream music on Windows Media Player’s internet radio on my Desktop at the office. Needless to say, I love listening to music. I confess that most days even when I go to bed, I put my earplugs in and set the vintage iPod on auto power-off after 30-45min. I strongly believe that if you aren’t able to sleep, then enjoy that endless tossing and turning on your iPod/mp3 player. A couple of years back when I didn’t have an iPod (or any mp3 player), I used to listen to music on my cell phone even when going to sleep. During my sleep once I accidently hit some buttons on the phone and dialed home, waking up my parents at 3:30AM. My parents who panicked after being woken up ended up calling a friend of mine to check up on me at around 4:00 AM since I was in too deep a sleep to notice their 15 missed calls between 3:30AM and 4:00AM. That was one night that made me think again about listening to music on my cell phone while going to sleep. I soon moved to using mp3 players after that incident.

Anyway, coming back to the point, because of my addiction, I always felt the need to download music. Recently when my dad got an iPhone, he handed me his one year old Nokia Lumia 710, since my 2.5 year old HTC Desire HD Android phone was nearing its demise(loads of issues). One of the features of this Lumia 710 phone is - getting streaming internet radio (a feature that I later found through an app in the HTC Android too). Internet Radio is something that I have been missing out on since my new office has highly restrictive IT policies. I am unable to use my laptop on the office net for streaming youtube/internet radio etc. The Lumia gives me loads of Internet Radio options for the latest streaming music. It also gives me the option to download music legally using the Free Downloadable Nokia Music App. And yes, I am talking about downloading free music legally. This is one of the best features of this phone. I have resorted to listening to music on my phone even when going to bed (I now make sure I lock the screen before I sleep). Just because of the free music download and radio features, I am willing to overlook the numerous other shortcomings of the Lumia. The Lumia isn’t the best when you need to share files between two devices over Bluetooth. Its volume control is really messed up. If I change the volume for the music that I am listening to, then that also changes the phone ringer volume. The default internet browser isn’t very comfortable to use and unfortunately I have not been able to install any other browser like chrome or Mozilla or Opera. Also, it does not allow memory expansion. I find the 8GB claimed (actually 6.5GB approx) memory quite insufficient. I have never used the iOS, but I do hope that iOS on iPhone 4 has atleast the option for streaming internet radio and allows for downloading music free.



Enough bashing of the Lumia, so let me close this by acknowledging that the Lumia has an amazing interface. Its UI is simply different from the usual iOS or Android – basically not just numerous icons scattered across. I happen to like the capacitive touch of the Lumia more than that of the HTC’s capacitive touch. I guess my initial dislike for Lumia has now turned into pleasant acceptability of the Windows based Finnish product.
PS: Android Supporters, I never needed Zillion+ apps, and I never needed to tweak the OS for my HTC, so I guess, I am ok with the factory made OS of any mobile phone, and the apps I need are available in both Windows Marketplace and Android Playstore.

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