Today the phones are on Windows Phone are becoming increasingly popular. The latest version of this OS is Windows Phone 10.

According to the developers, it can also be obtained Windows users Phone 8.1.

However, for now this opportunity is only in the project.

On this moment the only opportunity to get a phone with the tenth version operating system from Microsoft is to buy a device with the OS pre-installed.

Rating of Windows Phones

It would be useful to understand what Cell phones work with Windows Phone. We will go by popularity rating.

No. 1. Microsoft Lumia 640

Perhaps the most popular Windows Phone model is the Lumia 640.

In terms of characteristics, this phone is nothing special - 5-inch screen, 1280x720 resolution (Hd), 8 GB of internal memory, 8 megapixel camera. Supports 3G and dual SIM cards.

It attracts only with its price - in our area you can buy it for about 130 dollars.

LG Magna H502 with similar characteristics costs about $140.

No. 2. Microsoft Lumia 550 and 650

Most recently, the new Lumia 650 entered the market, which became an improved version of the 550 model.

The screen has become larger (5 inches at 650 and 4.7 at 550), the resolution remains unchanged - 1280x720. The camera has also become better - 8 megapixels after 5 megapixels, both with autofocus.

The 650th Lumiya has 16 GB of memory, and the 550th has 8 GB. Both phones come with Windows Phone 10 pre-installed and also have built-in GLONASS, GPS and 4G features.

The price of the 550th model is $145, and the 650th is sold for 210 units of US currency.

So far the excitement has not subsided and they are charging quite a lot of money for the new product, but in the future the price will drop significantly.

Despite its short time on the market, the Lumia 650 has already received a large number of rave reviews and will certainly be as popular as the 550 model in the future.

Both phones have a standard battery for this price category. I wish there was more. Microsoft Lumia The 550 has a 2100 mAh battery, and the 650 has a 2000 mAh battery.

And this despite the fact that the budget one of these two is only the 550th.

What caused the creators to decide to make a less capacious battery remains a mystery.

No. 2. Microsoft Lumia 430

There is support for GPS and GLONASS. The price for a device with such characteristics is quite standard – $170.

By the way, there is a stereotype that phones with Windows Phone OS are produced only by Microsoft itself, but next we will look at which phones from other companies come out with such an operating system.

Although Microsoft is the best at integrating its brainchild into hardware, which is why phones from this company are in first place in the ranking.

U mobile devices from the same Nokia there are often problems with using Windows Phone.

They relate to slow operation (freezing), correct operation of some applications and other minor features.

No. 6. HTC 7 Mozart

HTC is also joining the company of Windows Phone owners. Although so far the British-Taiwanese concern has not been very successful in this.

For $210 we are offered a small (3.7 inches with a resolution of 800x480) smartphone with an 8 MP camera and 8 GB memory without a memory card slot.

There is no GLONASS support here, only simple GPS. The battery here is weak and that’s putting it mildly – ​​1300 mAh.

This phone wins only due to good, high-quality work without failures. This device will serve its owners for many years.

But I don’t really want to pay that kind of money when the Microsoft Lumia 640 XL is live.

No. 7. HTC Windows Phone 8

The Taiwanese tried to improve the situation a little by releasing in 2012 year HTC Windows Phone 8. Its screen is slightly larger - 4 inches, the resolution remains the same - 800x480.

There is less memory - 4 GB, but there is already a card slot. The improvements also include the addition of GLONASS.

For some reason, the camera was also made smaller - 5 megapixels, but they worked hard on the battery - 1700 mAh. They also removed the poor, overly oval edges and made the device more rectangular.

Now attention: it sells for $125 (yes, the HTC 7 Mozart costs $210).

This begs a lot of questions about HTC's pricing policy. But we can say with confidence that the phone is worth the money.

Advantages of Windows Phones

Windows Phone has everything to make the same iPhone and Android devices a relic of the past in the future.

This operating system has the following advantages over others, they are as follows:

• Live Tiles, that is, icons on the desktop look much better than standard shortcuts in other operating systems.
  They provide more opportunities to personalize a mobile phone, because the user can change the size of the “tiles” or customize them the way he wants. In Android, the most that can be changed is the screensaver and theme.

• Working in multitasking mode is implemented much more convenient for the user. To see all the programs, you need to press the "Back" button, after which a slide show will appear.
  On the same iPhone, you need to scroll between applications and, to close one of them, click on the small cross. On big phones This is not a problem, but it is inconvenient on a small one.
• More convenient work with contacts. By clicking on a particular contact, you can see the latest letters and messages, and not general information about the person.
  There is even a full-fledged news feed that collects information from all social networks (shown in Figure 10.a).
• More convenient integration with social networks, clouds and other services.
  The process of exporting contacts is not difficult - the user has a list of services that can be integrated with (Figure 10.b), and he just needs to click on the one he needs and enter his login and password. Then the system will do everything itself.

Conclusion! Windows Phones are great alternative to Android, iOS and other operating systems - for a lower price you can buy more powerful smartphone. Of course, it has its drawbacks. For example, this is the integration of the OS on phones not released by Microsoft - so far only Nokia's attempt can be considered successful. Still, you can and should buy Windows Phone mobile phones!

You can learn more about the features of the latest version of Windows Phone on phones from this video:

Windows 10 for phones review. Features of Windows 10 for smartphones - experience from FERUMM.COM WP-Port

Windows Phones - Most Popular Models

MOSCOW, July 29 – RIA Novosti, Natalya Dembinskaya. In mid-July, big news came from Microsoft: the company officially stopped supporting the mobile operating system. Windows systems Phone, which still powers millions of devices. The corporation had to admit: smartphones do not bring it any profit. IN last years Windows Phone's market share has been steadily declining, and has now almost bottomed out at 0.1%. Why there was no place at all for the operating system in the market, why defectors to Android blame Windows Phone, and whether Microsoft will be able to take revenge from Google and Apple - in the RIA Novosti material.

Not a bad start

Immediately after its introduction in 2009, Windows Phone managed to take a significant market share - almost 10%. At that time, the mobile market was dominated by Symbian, on which the first Nokia smartphones ran - it occupied more than 50% of the market, the second largest player was the RIM mobile OS of the then popular manufacturer Blackberry - the famous phones with a full qwerty keyboard (20.9%). Android was just trying to find its place in the sun, occupying only about 4%.

Just in case, Google bought the unprofitable startup Android Inc., which was developing an operating system for wearable devices, back in 2005 and only remembered it in 2007, when Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple iPhone.

Google quickly realized: the smartphone market is almost empty, and expensive Apple devices will not be able to fill it entirely.

Android's meteoric rise

At the end of 2009, confusion began in the smartphone market. Nokia by that time had already slowed down the development of Symbian and relied on Windows Mobile. And Google, in turn, reached an agreement with the Taiwanese manufacturer HTC. The first device under Android control became HTC smartphone Dream, which was a resounding success.

iOS and Android began to develop rapidly, but Apple's position, which prohibited third-party companies from using iOS, did not work in its favor. In 2011, with the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, Android was already called “the most advanced operating system”, manufacturers Samsung smartphones, Alcatel, Philips, LG began to migrate en masse to the new promising platform. As a result, Android took almost 50% of the market, displacing all the old-timers in one fell swoop. Analysts began to consider the rapidly falling share of Symbian and RIM together in the “other OS” category.

On the battlefield, Android, Apple and Windows Phone were practically the only three left. The latter confidently stayed afloat, largely thanks to the release of popular smartphones Nokia Lumia, which gave a second life to the Finnish phone manufacturer itself.

Devices on Windows based Phone was also produced by LG.

Nokia got mad at Microsoft

However, the Finns soon began to show dissatisfaction. In 2013, Nokia Vice President Brian Biniak blamed Microsoft for the lack of competitive applications for Windows platforms Phone. It is for this reason that sales of Nokia Lumia have declined, he assured.

The irritation eventually resulted in the transition to Android. So far, some HP and Acer models are running the latest version of the Windows Mobile 10 platform (its support, observers believe, will be discontinued soon, and Windows smartphones will finally die by 2021).

In 2015, the new head of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, officially admitted the failure of Windows Phone.

“The smartphone boom has shown that Windows Phone is significantly behind Android and iOS, and we are late for that train,” Nadella said.

Closed file system

What exactly led to manufacturers and application developers starting to abandon Windows Phone and opt for Android?

Ballmer believes Nokia acquisition will accelerate Windows Phone growthSpeaking about the recently announced deal to buy Nokia's smartphone business, Ballmer said it would "accelerate the growth of Windows Phone and strengthen the overall device ecosystem."

Experts consider the main disadvantage to be primarily the underlying closed file system which causes application compatibility issues and prevents them full-time work. Unlike Android, Windows interface Phone and Windows Mobile - limited opportunities to configure applications. Not on the smartphone Google services, it is inconvenient to work with setting up contacts there. And finally, there are many fewer applications for this platform compared to Android.

“Success is a terrible teacher,” Microsoft founder Bill Gates once said. The corporation itself, a long-time leader in the PC operating systems market, has stepped on the same rake. As it turned out, Microsoft was not ready for the advent of the post-computer era.

"Google and Apple moved forward with modern operating systems, while Microsoft continued to treat mobile devices as a third-party by-product," observers say.

Lack of change and sluggishness

Experts point out that there have been no changes since the advent of Windows Mobile 6.1. iOS and Android updated their design and functionality every year. There was no talk about this in Windows Phone - the system remained monolithic and static.

“What kind of personalization? This is the eternal strict office style, the Explorer web browser and the permanent cut-and-paste function,” ironically notes the technology portal Quora.

Application developers quickly realized that their products looked much more attractive on fast-growing platforms than on Windows. Currently, there are only about 165 thousand applications in the Windows Phone Store catalog. For comparison: there are about 900 thousand of them in the AppStore, and Google Play- almost a million.

With the advent of Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft tried to catch up, but it was too late. As a result, Microsoft found itself in the dust with Windows Phone 8: even Nokia’s high-quality hardware did not help, observers say.

What's next

IDC analysts have scheduled the “funeral” of Windows Phone for 2021 - by then it will completely disappear from the market, including latest version Windows Mobile 10. In the meantime, Microsoft does not intend to say goodbye to it and is releasing it based on it Microsoft phones Lumia (in 2014 it bought Nokia's mobile devices business for 5.44 billion euros).

However, in the near future Microsoft is going to “kill” Lumia and release its own new smartphone Surface Phone still has the same tiled interface. In April of this year, the company assured that it would reconsider its strategy and return to the mobile market with a new vision and new ideas. The market, however, has no doubt that Microsoft will not be able to step into the same river twice.

Hello, Habr!

It’s been more than a year since the announcement of the first Nokia Lumia on Windows Phone 8, during which we have acquired a large number of users and fans of our WP smartphones. But it seems to us that even the most “hardened” fans do not know all the secrets of the Windows Phone 8 platform. This is exactly what we decided to devote our post to today.

1. Write like a ninja.

Many keys have a mode for entering additional characters, allowing you to avoid switching to a keyboard with symbols. To invoke this mode, touch and hold the key until a pop-up menu with symbols appears. For example, if you touch and hold the left bracket button “(“, the left angle bracket “(“) will appear<“, левая фигурная скобка “{“ и левая квадратная скобка “[“. Чтобы добавить только один символ или цифру, не обязательно переключать клавиатуру с режима на режим. Достаточно коснуться кнопки переключения режима на цифровую клавиатуру и задерживая палец на экране переместить его к нужному символу.

And if you follow the rules of punctuation in online correspondence, then in addition to the plus sign in karma, we share advice: touch and hold the “period” key - this will bring up a menu with frequently used punctuation marks. The characters displayed depend on the keyboard language.

2. Become an Internet Explorer master.

Peculiarity Internet Explorer in Windows Phone lies in its minimalism: next to the address bar there is only one button, and all other commands are hidden in the menu. By default, this button is "Update/Stop".

Let's say that it's not that important to you to be able to instantly refresh or stop loading pages. Let's say you want to always have your bookmarks at hand. This is not a problem: open Settings > Applications > Internet Explorer and select "favorites" from the "Button in" drop-down menu address bar" You can also select the "tabs" option to quickly display open tabs, if you, for example, are an avid mobile Internet surfer.

3. Be polite when declining a call.

Are you signing a billion-dollar agreement to sell your startup? Kids stuffing pasta into the DVD player? Trying to catch the last train? No matter what situation you're in, you can decline an incoming call and still be polite. Built-in instant messaging eliminates the need to pick up the phone and say, “I'll call you back.”

At incoming call just press the “reply SMS” button. Then choose one of the standard messages - or create several of your own. To configure the list of messages, select Settings > Applications > Phone and in the “Reply to SMS” section, open the “Edit replies” menu.

4. Warn people if you are late.

There are billions of reasons why you might be late, but it will definitely be harder to forgive you if you don't warn people about it in advance. However, if you use the calendar on your Lumia, you can send email inform all meeting participants that you will be late. To do this, simply open the event and click on the Flash superhero symbol (or just a running man). After choosing whether to write a letter only to the meeting organizer or to all its participants, the mail application will offer you a default text (editable, of course): “I’ll be a little late, but I’ll definitely come. See you soon".

5. Make your Lumia screen as readable as possible.

Great advice if you have poor eyesight or, for example, if you are going to have a very fun and noisy Friday evening. So that you can accurately hit the icon desired application, write a message without errors or look at small text, use the “Accessibility” menu (Settings > System > Accessibility). There you can turn on high contrast mode for clearer visibility of some elements, increase the font size and enable magnifier, which is called by double-tapping the screen.

6. Control your Lumia with your voice.

Probably not everyone knows that with the help voice assistant You can not only call a person from your address book, but also launch applications, dial a number during a call, and even launch your favorite mixes from MixRadio. This is very convenient if you are very lazy or are driving. Clamp Windows key and hold it, thereby calling the voice assistant, and then say one of the corresponding commands ( full list commands can be viewed).

7. Don't let your photos get lost.

To prevent this from happening, set up automatic synchronization of pictures with SkyDrive. There's nothing easier than doing this on Lumia: the synchronization options are in the menu " Automatic sending» (Settings > Photo + camera). Now every photo will be saved backup copy V cloud storage(if there is an Internet connection).

8. Become a multitasking Caesar (not a salad).

If you haven't read the Lumia Black update changelog, you might have missed the news about changes in multitasking mode. Manage running applications Now it’s quite simple: press and hold the “back” button. Voila, you have opened the multitasking menu. Now just scroll left and right to select the desired application or click on the cross in the upper right corner to close the unnecessary one.

9. Consolidate your mailboxes.

Are you one of those people who has a separate email address for every occasion? Don't worry, so do we. And if you want to check all mailboxes at the same time, you need to link them in the mail menu. Open one of your email accounts, click on settings (three dots in the lower right corner of the screen). Then select the “link inboxes” menu and check the accounts you want to link. You can select as many accounts as you like and give the overall label a name, such as "Workers."

10. Organize your phone book.

The Contacts app is the perfect place to store all your contacts (unexpected, right?), no matter where they are

The Windows Phone operating system, as surprising as it may be, turns out to be the youngest on the market. Competitors to iOS and Android were announced in 2007 and 2008, respectively, and Microsoft released the first Windows version Phone in 2010.

Throw away all the emotions of those people who will tell you that windows phones not very good and will write articles such as “Ten reasons not to buy Windows Phone smartphones.” Timing is everything: so in 2011 of course Windows Phones were significantly inferior to their competitors due to the fact that the operating system itself had just begun to develop. 4 years difference between entering the market is a very huge gap. And Microsoft had to spend significant resources in order to release its Windows Phones competitive in today's market.

Our advice to you is to go to the store and look Windows Phones and on Android. Read reviews on the Internet. And make your own choice.

Windows Phone Smartphones

First smartphones on windows phone were announced in October 2011. Two smartphones Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 have opened a new subcategory of smartphones and the Lumia series in the Nokia phone catalog.

After this, Nokia was bought by the American corporation Microsoft, which is very interested in releasing smartphones based on Windows Phone. In the following years, the number of new smartphones based on this operating system grew very rapidly. And today the Lumia series of smartphones has become one of the most popular. Windows Phone Smartphones are produced both in budget segments, where they can be purchased at prices starting from 90 Euros, and in top-end price segments, where prices start from 190 Euro.

We are happy to help you choose Windows Phone smartphones. You can buy them using our website; to do this, you need to select an online store on the smartphone description page in the “Prices” block and click on its name-link. After this, you will be redirected to the online store website, where you can buy a smartphone on Windows Phone.

A review of the Nokia Lumia 520, of all “lumies” in general, or of OS Windows Phone 8 - it’s hard to say what is the best title for this article. However, in our case, the problem manifested itself precisely in the Nokia Lumia 520, so we’ll start with that.

I gave this yellow smartphone to my wife for her birthday earlier this month. The device is certified for Russia (Rostest). On the same day, we went to the MTS store to exchange a regular SIM card for a microSIM. Exchanged. Since then, the experience of using the device began. By the way, the firmware on the smartphone is up to date: updates were immediately installed “over the air” through the corresponding menu.

The problem appeared on the second day: an outgoing call was made, the connection was established, but there was silence in the conversational dynamics, the interlocutor could not be heard. Calling back did not help, the sound reappeared only after rebooting the phone.

We thought - it doesn’t happen to anyone, the device is complex, it malfunctioned, or maybe it’s an MTS or SIM card issue. But a day later the situation repeated itself - already with an incoming call. The phone with the ringer on simply vibrated; when answered, there was deathly silence in the speaker. The microphone most likely didn't work either. The second call led to the same thing. Again, only a reboot helped.

Of course, we were upset, but considering that rebooting helps, we decided that the issue was clearly of a software nature and it was worth waiting for software updates. Moreover, two weeks have already passed and it will not be possible to return the smartphone to the store.

Two more days passed, then my wife was listening to music with headphones on her smartphone, and at that moment I called her: again the same problem - I couldn’t be heard, I couldn’t hear her either. She tried speaking both through a headset and without it. After the connection was interrupted, the music did not start playing either - the device generated some kind of error. At least with headphones, at least without. A reboot helped, but literally half an hour later the problem appeared again! At the same time, I myself had been tormenting the device for a long time, trying to find a way out - the music in the player would not play (the smartphone tried to open each track for a long, long time, but to no avail), and I also could not listen to the ringtone. There was no sound coming through the headphones either (the conclusion is that the speaker itself is working). And, of course, the phone did not ring when there was an incoming call, but only blinked the screen, and after picking up the phone the speaker remained dead.

An attempt to adjust the volume, change the melody, turn off 3G Internet or switch the phone to 2G mode, disable the energy saving mode and other manipulations did not lead to anything. Only reboot. At the same time, the phone is practically “clean” - contacts are loaded, mail is configured to work, Skype is installed, Mail agent is installed and that’s it. No viruses for you.

I decided to turn to Nokia for help. To do this, I went to their official website and in the “Contact” section, I selected “Visit support page.” There is a field “Need additional support” with the column “Enter the serial number (IMEI) of your phone”, which I did, having found out the name by *#06#, after which I logged in using my account Microsoft entry and I had the opportunity to talk with a specialist technical support Nokia online chat.

The girl answered all my questions regarding the described bug quite tactfully and skillfully. Her opinion is that the problem is the new SIM card, which was incorrectly registered in software phone. She had not heard anything about the jamb I described, the problem was not widespread (according to her information), so I was asked to backup all the data and perform a general reset of the phone to factory settings. Thus, the software will be completely reset and the glitch should disappear. In principle, the usual solution proposed by any support service is: a) do a general reset b) replace the SIM card.

We listened to the advice and did a general reset. Of course it didn't help - Today the situation repeated itself again. The phone rang, but after answering there was silence, no voice could be heard. The chime is just a vibration and the same silence in the speaker, the microphone also does not work.

At the same time I googled this topic, asking the search engine queries such as “nokia lumia sound disappears”, “nokia lumia speaker sound disappears”, etc. As a result, I realized that the problem is quite widespread and apparently only the manufacturer himself does not know about it (as usual, however). Let me give you examples:

1. Question/answer on the Microsoft website regarding the Lumia 920 - answers.microsoft.com:

2. Question/answer on an unofficial site dedicated to Nokia Lumia - lumiaru.com:

3. In the same place, but about another model - Lumia 720:

4. Discussion on the forum dedicated to Windows Phone - w7phone.ru:

5. Discussion of Nokia Lumia 520 on the famous resource w3bsit3-dns.com:

6. Discussion of a similar bug in Lumia 920 on the official Nokia technical support forum:

And that's not it. Previously, I found an example of the problem of sound loss in the FAQ on the website of the Windows Phone operating system itself. The solution was to make a general reset or stomp into the SC. Just the point?

I also came across a topic on some forum with exactly the same jamb, only on a Windows smartphone made by HTC.

Conclusion: The described problem is not only with Nokia Lumia, but with Windows Phone 8 in general. Or a Windows glitch appears with a certain application. Possibly a problem with some specific micro-SIM cards (MTS?), although the sound disappeared not only during the communication session, but also simply while listening to music. That is, the buyer of any smartphone on this operating system is not insured against this trouble. And the jamb is clearly not new, but it is very, very sad, and when it will finally be found, understood and corrected, science does not yet know. Maybe never. But still we wait and hope. Because, frankly speaking, I don’t see the point in taking a smartphone to a service center - the malfunction is most likely software, and there is simply no cure for it yet. Unless you flash your smartphone to custom firmware at home and lose the official warranty. Maybe it will help, but I can’t say for sure - I haven’t tried it. Or this case is individual, therefore it concerns only the nth audience of users of certain applications. Wait and see.

PS. I asked a question about the problem on the official Nokia support forum. My topic was pasted as a message to a whole thread of similar victims. The only complaint is that the sound disappears. As an assumption, the situation is typical for those who have Mail Agent or ICQ installed. In our case there is a Mail agent. Now let's take it down and test it. Then I’ll write back as an addition to the article. Discussion at the link.

Update from December 24, 2013

So, uninstalling the Mail Agent application is indeed solved the problem: Over the past 5 days, the sound on the smartphone has no longer disappeared. What conflicts with what - Mail agent with Windows Phone or Windows Phone with Mail agent - remains behind a veil of secrecy. However, the tablet was found, so if you are worried about the same problem, you can eliminate it by simply demolishing the crooked application.