At the end-of-year ESL dinner last week, one of the teachers told me she bought a new phone. "It's Nokia Lumina running Microsoft Android, I think" she told me. Well, she got three out of four right. It was a Nokia Lumina 710 running Microsoft Mobile.
"I thought I was getting an Android," she explained. "I didn't know..." Her voice trailed off.
Her error was my benefit, as I was curious to see both the hardware and the operating system. I told her of my interest, and then added that "Windows Mobile is really rare." "I know," she responded. "I don't know anyone else who has one, and nobody to show me how to use it."
The hardware is quite nice, large bright screen, but a strange chrome triangle at the upper right corner. It detracted from viewing the screen of the otherwise black phone.
Windows Mobile is fairly intuitive, after you get used to swiping down and up for more tiles, as well as right and left for even more tiles. After a while, though, the exaggerated swoosh movements of the tiles got on my nerves. The design of tiles means that they display less information than do the equivalent widgets in Android.
Her husband then complained that they could not get the contacts from the old phone onto the new one. The new Nokia uses a microSIM, and so the simple matter of sliding in the old SIM card did not work. Similarly, transferring contacts by Bluetooth did not work; the two phones recognized each other, but would not transfer data between them. I suggested they try uploading contacts to Google Contacts or a Microsoft equivalent.
So, the hardware and software combination were interesting to look at, but I felt sorry for the lonely, puzzled, and frustrated new owner.
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