Two Lumias One PIMP

The day my Nokia Lumia 710 had been waiting for is today. This morning, as per my daily routine since the end of January, I checked for updates for the Lumia 710 and this time was greeted with the black Zune update screen.

Finally!

I went through the update process. I actually went through the update process five times. My Three UK Nokia Lumia 710 initially updated to OS version 7.10.8779.8 and then to 7.10.8783.12. These were both updates to Windows Phone 7.5 Tango which had never been pushed to the device. After the first two updates Zune prompted me to update again to 7.10.8858.136 (Windows Phone 7.8) and then to 7.10.8860.142 and 7.10.8862.144 ("bug fix" and "quality improvement" updates).

My Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone 7.8

So now my Nokia Lumia 710 had updated to Windows Phone 7.8 I was happy. But not as happy as I would have been if the update had arrived sooner. Why was I not elated I now had the update that brings Windows Phone 8-like tiles and live tiles and a suite of improvements? Well, I have to confess, yesterday I went and purchased another Lumia, one running the full Windows Phone 8 operating system and with model numbering 620. 

Yes I now have two Nokia Lumias. They are similar on the surface but very different devices in under their plastic shells.

Move over, "colleague".

Nokia's marketing department made a bit of a faux pas when naming their line of Windows Phone devices and choosing the name Lumia. In Finnish it is noun, a partitive plural form of lumi which means snow. In Latin lumia is the word for the citrus fruit called lime in English. In Spanish on the other hand it is a synonym for prostitute/whore/hooker. I played on this Spanish meaning of Lumia when I "broke up" with my Nokia Lumia 710 in February. So excuse me while I go ahead and do so again in the next paragraph.

I'm now in the situation where there are "Two Lumias One PIMP". PIMP is an acronym for "Person Into Manhandling Phones". Yes, it is going to get messy.

Once you have got over the cringe-worthy joke, if you haven't already clicked away, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Breaking Up With My Lumia

At the end of January Microsoft started rolling out the Windows Phone 7.8 update for devices that had previously been running Windows Phone 7.5. Windows Phone 7.8 is an update that gives you a Windows Phone 8-like homescreen, a slight rebranding to make the UI more similar to Windows Phone 8 and some other minor features. Once again, my Nokia Lumia 710 seems to be one of the last devices to be updated in the rollout.

Lumia - No SIM

I have a Nokia Lumia 710 which until not long ago was one of my main mobile devices. The frustration of not receiving the Windows Phone 7.8 update and my acquisition of an Intel powered Orange San Diego and a Google Nexus 4 made me stop using the Lumia 710. This is because as well as not having enough SIM cards to run all these smartphones simultaneously, I have fallen out of love with Windows Phone.

I really liked Windows Phone. This time last year I really had hope and expectation that Windows Phone on Nokia devices would be a success and satisfy my smartphone needs. I was so enamoured with the potential of the platform that I got a Nokia Lumia 710 which had Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) running on it. One of the promises of Windows Phone on the Nokia Lumia line was that it would always get updates promptly, as the updates are pushed by Microsoft, so that there shouldn't be delays due to carriers and/or manufacturers. I was really enjoying using Microsoft's new mobile operating system, and the idea that there would be less of a fragmentation issue. (I had previously been scarred by my experience with an HTC Desire and slow updates to new Android versions)

Almost a year on I have fallen out of love with Windows Phone. When Windows Phone 8 was announced in 2012, it was also made abundantly clear that existing hardware running Windows Phone 7.5 would not be upgraded to Windows Phone 8. Details of the Windows Phone 7.8 update leaked and then were announced, but I still was disappointed by the no Windows Phone 8 issue.

Using the Nokia Lumia 710 on a daily basis, alongside at least one Nexus device (a Nexus S, then a Galaxy Nexus and now a Nexus 4), I had a few little things that kept on annoying me. First off using Gmail was overall a pretty good experience, apart from slightly slower updates than on my Android devices and that any time I replied to an email from the Lumia 710 I broke the conversation in web view for myself and everyone else. Secondly there is a lack of apps to satisfy many of my online needs. No Google Plus app, and having to fall back to a horrible web experience through Internet Explorer mobile was a real pain. No Instagram, painful Twitter experience, no Google Maps app and for a while no Google Maps through Internet Explorer mobile was annoying. The lack of an always on instant messaging client made things worse. One of the few reasons I stuck with the Nokia Lumia was that I always had an Android fallback device to do what I really wanted to do.

This time last year the user experience on the Nokia Lumia 710 was better than on most Android devices. The device and UI seemed more responsive and fluid. The Live Tiles UI was interesting and different as well as great for one hand use. Now, through Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Android 4.1/4.2 (Jelly Bean) updates, lag on Android seems to be a thing of the past. The Android User experience is now superior and polished. The appeal of Windows Phone has faded.

It is sad, but on Saint Valentine's Day 2013 I'm officially breaking up with Windows Phone. I hope we can still be friends. I may make a booty call from time to time and pop my Micro SIM card into a Windows Phone to try it out or to review an app or service on it. My Nokia Lumia 710 may try and win me back if it ever updates to Windows Phone 7.8, if it succeeds I might blog about it through the Official Blogger App for Windows Phone (unlikely to ever be released).

I have to admit, I really am in love with Android.

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Picplz Shutting Down

Picplz was a photo sharing service similar to Instagram which had an Android client long before Instagram started being ported to Android. I have been using Picplz for years now, and am sad to find out that the service will be shutting down on July 3rd 2012.

The people running Picplz have very kindly set up a download service so you can download all your content from the site easily. Just go to Picplz.com and log in, follow the prompts and you will be able to download all your photos as a single .zip file. In my case there are 245 images, so the zip file was quite large clocking in at over 200MB.

It is a shame Picplz has reached the end of its service, I found it a useful way to avoid issues with rights to intellectual property (Facebook cough cough!), and to post images to almost all my social networking services at once (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter etc...). I'm not totally bought into Instagram even now that there is a full Android client, and sharing through Skydrive from my Nokia Lumia 710 is a bit iffy.

I'll let you know how I get on finding a replacement photo sharing service as time goes by. As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Nokia Lumia 710 And Ubuntu: They Speak To Each Other!

I've had a Nokia Lumia 710 for a while now.  This week I discovered I can use my Lumia 710 and manage media and content on it through my Ubuntu Linux machines, and I'm a very happy chappy as a result.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is one of Nokia's first Windows Phone 7 devices, the product of the Finnish company's leap of faith from a "burning platform" onto a lilly pad in the middle of a stormy ocean. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft's smartphone operating system which it pitches as a competitor to Google's Android OS and iOS (which is shipped on Apple devices).

From the beginning of my ownership of the Nokia Lumia 710 I encountered frustration with some of the basic management of Windows Phone 7. Adding and managing media could only be done (up to now) from a Windows or OS X machine running the Zune software. Zune performs similar functions to iTunes, just that it uses a simplistically shiny UI which fits in well on Windows 8, but looks out of place and unintuitive on Windows 7. I have been an avid Linux user for many moons now, and Microsoft Windows is an OS I only boot into rarely if there is some slightly more complicated in phone rooting/ROMming that requires running applications on Windows. Hence my frustration: I have to restart my computer into Windows (7 most of the time on my desktop, 8 on my laptop), wait for the slower startup (it's so much faster in Ubuntu or Lubuntu!), update the antivirus (not an issue on Ubuntu or Lubuntu!) and open up Zune.

Zune is "shiny". I like it. I like it in the same sort of way that I like Windows Phone 7's user interface, and in the same way in which I adore the WebOS user interface. It's all about the UI, its fluidity and how intuitive it is. That's probably why I like the Android 4.0.x UI too: Matias Duarte, formerly of Palm where he designed the WebOS UI, is now the Director of Android operating system User Experience at Google.

Shiny! Shinier with Rachel Stevens

At the beginning using the Zune software didn't work for me. Plugging the Nokia Lumia 710 into any USB port (either primary or secondary) was useless, it didn't show up in the device manager and Zune didn't know there was a Windows Phone 7 device connected to the computer. Only after I had reinstalled Windows 7 on my desktop did I manage to get the Lumia 710 and Zune to talk to each other. Finally I was able to synchronise music folders and podcasts with the device. This was a relief because I had been streaming podcasts over the interwebs through a browser, and this was severely affecting battery life. Once I had got used to the routine of synching the Lumia on a daily basis, things were fine.

When on holiday in Italy I was using my Nexus S as my main smartphone and the Lumia was relegated to being a wifi device when at home for Skype calls, mp3 player functions and playing a fantastic Xbox Live game called Flowers.

After having updated my Ubuntu and Lubuntu partitions on my laptop and desktop to the newest version of the distribution (12.04 Precise Pangolin), I stumbled across the fact that the Nokia Lumia 710 could be mounted as a media player. Once mounted, I could read and write the contents of the folders, manage photos, music and podcasts to the device. On Ubuntu, it even offered to manage the media player in Rythmbox, the media management application bundled with the pinky-orange Linux based OS.

Now that I don't have to boot into Windows so often I'm a happier Wobbles feeder. I can also reply to John C. Dvorak who was reiterating the fact that you HAVE to use Zune on TWiT last week: not any more! You can now live a Windows free life with your Windows Phone 7 smartphone. Until the next OS/firmware update that is... ;-)

As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions. I also started a thread on the MoDaCo forums about this so feel free to join the chatter about this there too.