Recently I
was forced to buy a new phone, as my old Lumia 920 started to show signs of
wear and tear. It seems that Microsoft had no intentions to release new phones
after the Lumia 950, and so my options were limited to iPhone or Googles
Android. My preferred model was the Sony Xperia Z5, because it is water and
dust proof, which is a great feature for outdoor use.
My first
week using the new Android device was not a success, overheating, fast battery
drain etc. It took me a while to figure out the issues, the WIFI seems to drain
the battery and overheat the device fast, and it is preferable to swath it only
on when in the vicinity of a strong WLAN. The display of course (HD) also uses
a lot of energy and one should reduce the display brightness to a minimum. The
use of Battery 360 help to improve battery life and now I have about 26 to 29
hours between charging.
To get your
contacts from the Windows phone to the Android was done easily by just syncing
email accounts (Exchange, Hotmail, Outlook). Onedrive works, but syncing is
less fluent then on the Lumia due to WIFI issues, if left on in a weak WLAN the
battery starts to heat up and drains fast. The camera is ok, but images are
often out of focus and the Geotag hundreds of meters off, much worse than my
Lumia 1020 or old Lumia 920. Setting camera to autofocus helps.
The
smartlock feature, where you can use (your) face recognition or geolocated “safe” places is awful, as
indoor GPS-locations are always inaccurate and face recognition works only when
holding the phone in the right angle and at the right distance from your face.
The thing I
hate most is the relentless efforts the phone makes to get your details,
location and web usage for marketing services. All these feature can be switched
off, but this takes time and one must go into Google setups. It is also unclear
what exactly Google Services actually do, the consume quite a lot of power, so it is clear that they monitor phone
usage in many ways.
In
comparison I found the Lumia Windows system more balanced, more reliable, and
Apps have far less advertisements. All in all, I still favor my Luumia 1020,
and the Xperia phone is just my personal backup.
