Problems with Windows Phone OS

Microsoft is said to be emperor in Desktop Operating Systems market. They are like synonym to PC and also for laptops. Almost all these computers are installed with Microsoft’s Windows OS. But today, the whole picture is changed. Mobile phone market has overshadowed computers market and everyone measures technology with mobile phone markets.  Currently, Apple’s much anticipated iOS and Google’s Android has conquered mobile phone OS market. And it was in October 2012 when Microsoft also entered in this market with their Windows Mobile OS and tried to make some good numbers in this market. After almost one and half year, still Microsoft is significantly lagging behind iOS and Android.

In this article I am going to discuss about what are the major problems and issues in Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. I am writing this article by experiencing these by using Nokia Lumia phones, which are exclusively using Windows OS. First of all, let me clear that the hardware used by Nokia is great. According to me, they are still best hardware manufacturers. No problem with Nokia’s hardware. But the problem is inside of the phone, the much important part Operating System. Now let me come to the point and start to describe these issues.

1. No app transfer to micro SD card

Normally all Android phones comes with 4GB or 8GB of internal storage and even Windows phones also comes with these capacity. In Android phones, you can transfer your apps data to SD card and install more number of apps in your phone, in Windows phone it is a limiting factor. You cannot transfer apps into SD card.

Another issue is the apps designed for Windows phone consumes more space than Android games. For example, popular game Subway Surfer comes with a size of around 40MB on Android platform and same game comes with size of around 80MB on Windows platform. It clearly means that you will not be able to install more apps and games on your phone. 

2. Not having own file manager

This is probably one of the biggest drawback of Windows phone, you cannot get a native file manager app for your phone. You would be able to install third party file manager apps but still it is having limiting factor like you have one Read Only permissions of your SD card using your file manager. It’s kind of frustrating thing that you are not able to use all storage capacity of your micro SD card effectively.

3. Absense of LED notification light

Normally all Android phones comes with physical LED notification light which will blink whenever you will be having any missed call, Whatsapp message or a Facebook notification. On my Sony Xperia phone, whenever I have Whatsapp message it blinks with violet color, for Facebook notification it turns into blue and for a missed call it blinks with green. So it helps me a lot in everyday life of use. For a Windows phone, you will not be able for get this facility in any single model. This feature is more important if you are a busy and heavy user of Whatsapp and Facebook. 

Sony Xperia phone with notification light 

4. Notification bar problem

Biggest advantage of Windows phone is its Metro UI called Tile interface. It’s actually very innovative and easy to use this look. But it does not give you all notification in single screen. Like you have to scroll up and down to see notifications in their respective tiles. In Android phone, even latest iOS7 also have it's native notification bar in top of the phone and you will be able to see each and every notification very easily. 

Different notifications in their respective tile in Windows Metro UI

5. Not having integration with Google apps

If you are a heavy user of Gmail, Google Maps, Youtube and other native Google services then you will not have a good experience with Windows phone because Google does not provide their own apps for Windows mobile platform. You will be restricted to use Google services on Windows phone.

6. Instant toggle to specific shortcuts 

For Android and iOS phones, if you want to switch on/off Bluetooth or Wi-Fi then you can do it just in one click. You can get same other features like mobile data traffic, NFC, profile, auto-rotate shortcuts in upper notification bar. Thus you can toggle to specific setting very quickly. But this is not possible in Windows phone. You have to make at least 2-3 steps for starting that service. You can create these type of shortcuts in Windows phone, but again they will still require 2-3 steps.

shortcuts in notification bar in normal Android phone

7. USB OTG not supported

Windows phone does not support UTG OTG and it is kind of limiting factor when you want to use your other devices with your Windows phone. It means that you cannot connect USB flash drive, music player, digital camera or keyboard to your phone. 

8. Not support to third party web browsers

This is one of the biggest problems because without good internet browser you cannot use your phone effectively. Windows phone comes with default browser Internet Explorer and it also supports UC browsers and some less known ones. But still it misses some biggies like Firefox, Chrome and Opera Mini browser. So it is a huge drawback with Windows phone.

So, these are some issues or problems which I noticed in Windows phone OS. If you are agree with me or even don’t agree with me then also mention your precious comment below. Thank you and enjoy my other articles. 

Google Nexus 5 with Android KitKat 4.4

After so much wait, finally Google & LG has announced another Nexus series phone. New Nexus 5 is more powerful,lighter & better looking phone. Except these, Nexus 5 comes with latest Android 4.4 named Kitkat. Which is the biggest advantage of this phone. I will compare this phone with its predecessor Nexus 4 in different aspects to easily understand its specifications. 

Hardware:

Nexus 5 comes with the latest Qualcomm 2.3 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, which is the fastest processor available in the market. This phone have Adreno 330 GPU. So here it has the same processor like Sony Xperia Z1, LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Note 3.While the older Nexus 4 had 1.5 GHz Quad core Krait processor with Adreno 320. Both Nexus 5 & Nexus 4 have 2 GB of RAM.

Battery:

This phone have 2300 mAh battery which is improved from Nexus 4, which had 2100 mAh battery. Company claims that the phone lasts 17 hours on 3G with this battery. 

Display:

Nexus 5 have a 4.9 inch full-HD IPS plus LCD display with 445ppi.  Phone also features Corning Gorrila Glass 3 for screen protection. Previous Nexus 4 had a 4.7 inch display with same technology having 320 ppi. 

Camera:

This phone also have same 8 Mega pixel sensor which was their in Nexus 4. But newer phone have an OIS sensor which means Optical Image Stabilization. OIS helps in taking pictures with lesser blur. In OIS technology, a small gyroscope and a motor reduces the difference caused from shaking hands when taking pictures. So we can get much better and stable picture. Other camera features are Panorama 360 and HDR+. 

It has 1.3 MP front facing camera for video calling facility.

Operating System:

This is the department in which Nexus 5 overshadows its all other competitors. It has exclusively unveiled Android KitKat 4.4 . We will write an in-depth review on this Kitkat OS. But still Google said that, they had made many improvements and changes in new OS. If you are Nexus 4 user then you will get new Kitkat update very soon. Other phone users have to wait more. This phone have a unique feature called as 'OK Google' for waking up the phone by saying these words. They adopted this from Moto X phone. 

Final conclusion with price:

If you are looking for a great value for money device and a big fan of Google Android then you must upgrade to this new Nexus 5. If you are not, than also you have many reasons to buy because it have same hardware specifications of other companies top of the line phones. Because this phone comes with around 50% price comparing with others. Only one drawback of this phone is, not having micro-SD card slot for expanding memory.

The 16GB version comes at $349 & 32GB version will be cost $399. For Indian customers, it is priced at INR 28,999 for 16GB & INR 32,999 for 32GB. 

LCD vs TFT vs AMOLED : Display Comparision

These days screen size of any mobile phone is benchmark to compare them. The more it will be big, more you will be impressed. But technology behind that screen in not much known for most of us. Even if the persons who know about LCD, TFT, IPS, AMOLED, SUPER AMOLED will be also confused that which one is better. 

These displays are generally having two main types. First one is LCD & second one is AMOLED. We know name LCD because it is used in the wide range of electronic products. But most of us are not aware about AMOLED. So let's discuss about it. 

LCD:

LCD, liquid crystal display is made of wondrous liquid crystals. In which these crystals are combined between two couple of glasses with the use of the light source. They produce most realistic colors, but they does not represent much wider contrast ratio if we compare them with AMOLED.

TFT & IPS are also based on same LCD technology. TFT which is Thin Film Transistor & IPS is In Plane Switching. 

TFT makes LCD much efficient by making it's wiring reduced and also reduces electrodes per pixel. TFT improves image quality of LCD display.

IPS is improved from TFT by offering much better color reproduction and more accurate viewing angles. 

LCD is used in most of Sony, HTC, iPhone., etc. 

AMOLED:

AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. 

It is old technology but gained popularity in recent days. In this technology, a thin layer is made from thin layers which is zapped by an electric current. One major advantage of this technology is, it can create much thin layers and also do not require back light. This means it can create much better black colors and reduces battery usage because the back light is not used. 

Here three major colors Red, Blue and Green are divided in sub category like RGBG color. This is called as a 'pentile display'. But this have a disadvantage also, they can represent lower resolution because of much larger and visible sub pixels. 

Now a days, Samsung is known for their Super AMOLED, HD Super EMOLED displays. But this is nothing but simple AMOLED which is used with just prefix 'super'. They are traditional EMOLED. So do not fooled by these type of names. 

These are the devices which uses AMOLED technology: HTC ONE S, Galaxy series by Samsung.

Conclusion:

Now let's come to the answer that which one is better? So my answer is both LCD and EMOLED have their own strength and weakness. So it is totally dependent on you which one is like by you personally. If you try and phone and you get good resolution, better color reproduction and good viewing angles, then definitely that display is good for you. 

Moto X Review

Motorola is the first company which introduced first mobile phone to the world, and they were the leader in this industry before some years. But after that they leg behind and Apple,Nokia,Samsung  surpass them. But now Motorola have new owner in big name of Google. Thus their new phone is making big news and lets review this latest phone.

moto x with random cutomizable color covers

Because of the ownership of Google,it has a stock version of Android. But unlike Nexus phones, this phone have many customization and more importantly Motorola claims that they can ship you totally customized phone as per your requirements. And that special feature with comparison of other phones. It is something like desktop computers, for which you go to Dell or Lenovo and tell them your required configuration and get desktop according to that. So that's cool but it doesn't make much sense when you have heavy competition with Apple,Samsung etc.

specially Wooden made cover for Moto X

Personally I didn't found any other wow factor in this phone. So I am just sharing its configuration and specification. Watch out for that below.

• Chipset: Qualcomm MSM8960Pro Snapdragon
• CPU: Quad Core 1.7 GHz with Krait architecture
• GPU: Adreno 320
• RAM: 2 GB
• Display: 4.7 inch EMOLED 720x1280 capacitive display with protection of Gorilla glass
• Camera: 10 MP auto focus camera
• Battery: 2200 Mah

Now from these specifications, you can easily conclude that its not special from the others. But if you are a Motorola fan and want to buy something latest then you may buy it at $200 with 2 year of a contract. In India the price is still undisclosed. 

Micromax Canvas 4 review

Just before 3 years when my some friends bought Micromax phones and I was wondered that why are they going for such a downcast company. But after that time passed and Micromax consistently launched new phones and they built their position much and much strong.

Before some months ago when Galaxy Note was ruling Bigger Size phone market in India, at that time Micromax introduced first Canvas phone and it becomes blitzkrieg successful.
 After that they launched Canvas 2, Canvas HD, Canvas 3D and much more hit phones.
Now everyone eyeing on Canvas 4. So here are some 'hot' news about Canvas 4.

Micromax will start prebooking of this phone on 28th June. Till than and before its official release we can clearly assume that it will have a 13 MP camera because the teaser of the phone showed that.

One thing which disappoint me a little bit is that, Like other Micromax and Samsung phones this phone doesn't have great looks. The phone looks like other plastic cover phone.

If we believe on other news than the second thing comes into my mind is that this phone will be having a full HD display. But having a full HD display will recommend better battery life and I hope Micromax will increase battery life.

The last and most important topic,price!!! Like other Micromax product, this phone will also come in below rs 20,000.