Published by Steve Litchfield at 10:40 UTC, May 21st 2018

Most who know me will also know that there's a vibrant smartphone discussion community over on Google+ here . While a lot of the chat is about Android and iOS, there are plenty of Windows fans too. And Andrew Manning, one of the PSC group's moderators, posted a nice piece today about his '3.5 year old' Lumia 1520, quoted below.

From the Google+ post:

As always the 3.5year old Nokia 1520 was a pleasure to use. Buttons in the right place, a practical and pleasing 6” screen that is very good in bright sunlight. And the battery life is still very good.



I preferred doing my emails on it over my Android and iOS devices; I enjoyed the photography experience more; the audio book app Audible is better than on Android and iOS; the music app is very good; the travel app for public transport is excellent; I found the msn news app better than Google's (one article included some ideas of things to do with smartphones, including checking if your remote was working by pointing it at the phone camera and pressing a button on the remote. Through the camera app, you can see the infrared button light up if it's working)...



Going back to my Android and iOS devices, they do feel rather dull in comparison.



Google has pretty much got the mobile OS market sewn up (along with search etc). And it's hard to see how any new entrant into the mobile OS market would make any head way with smartphones. Whilst that lack of competition will please many Google loyalists, I'll miss the lack of something refreshingly different. Though I'll continue using my enjoyably different, 3.5yr old Nokia 1520☺



Good to see. Nokia got quite a lot right with the Lumia 1520 (not least helping predict the rise of the 6"-screened phone!) and I hate it when people talk about 'Windows phone' being dead. 8.1 still works fine (mostly), and Windows 10 Mobile still has at least 18 months of updates ahead of it. The biggest 'hole' in the scene right now isn't software/apps, it's that no one is making new flagship hardware. Maybe later in 2018 (cough, cough....)?

And yes, with iOS still wedded to static homescreens and with Android seemingly often trying to mimic iOS more and more, the Windows Start screen system still looks as fresh today as it did in 2013!



