Look and Feel.
The phone I was given to test was a horrible garish orange colour which you wouldn’t lose in the dark. I felt the smooth plastic casing made it feel a little cheap but I suppose for the price tag you can’t complain. The plastic volume and power buttons could be placed better. The 5” screen displays colours vividly and I found pictures and videos playes back well. The 8mp back facing camera worked well and pictures taken looked ok when displayed on a laptop. I did find though that pictures taken in darker settings didn’t come out great.
Performance
The quad core snapdragon processors perform well and generally the phone is very responsive. I did find though that some applications did struggle and lagged a little. The battery seemed to last well and only needed charging after a couple of days of use. With only 8gb of internal memory you would soon run out of space and would definitely need an SD card to increase capacity.
Applications
The Windows 8.1 user interface does work well but personally I have never been a fan of the desktop version so couldn’t warm to the mobile version.
The live tiles are good and supply some interesting updates but nothing different from Android or iOS devices.
Pre-installed are all the usual Microsoft Office applciation but obviously the mobile versions. Opening large documents in Word loaded quickly and were eas to edit. Works well with One Drive allowing easy editing between mobile and desktop versions. This would work very well for business people who need to be abe to take work home and edit documents/spreadsheet 'on the go'.
One thing I did think odd was that the ‘maps’ app doesn’t use live traffic information to aid smarter navigation from start to finish but does display congestion.
The app store is lacking many of the applications that would be found on iOS and Android devices. No Google applications are available so being an Android user I would be put off moving over to a Windows phone.
Overall
I think this phone would be great for a first time smartphone user who has a limited budget. It’s easy to use and navigation simple and performs well.
