Overshadowed by the cloud

I have a smartphone wanted, with whom I especially schedule appointments and sometimes can write longer notes. Here are the reasons why I have the Nokia Lumia 630 returned. You are completely in Windows Phone 8.1 and not in the hardware:

Who is still skeptical to store his personal data, in particular calendars and contact lists on servers somewhere in the world, for the Windows Phone is definitely the wrong operating system. WP 8.1 provides operation without cloud no longer ago. Without Microsoft account there are no apps. But as soon as you have an account, is also synchronized.

Anyone who thinks that then you could still cut the synchronization permanently, you are wrong. The calendar app understands calendars principle in the cloud created and in the Phone into synchronized calendar. These can then edit the phone, even if it happens to be offline. However, a local creation and data management of calendars is not possible.

Likewise, the transfer of calendars and contact lists from other devices will only work on an account. A transfer from the computer via the USB cable is not provided.

According to the motto What care about past events? Only those transferred from the cloud to the phone, which are not older than two weeks. It is therefore not possible to transmit full calendar from other devices. Microsoft would like to emphasize that this setting can not be changed. Alternative calendar apps can not even better, because they are obviously dependent on the system calendar. The developer of the Week View Calendar app apologizes even that otherwise allows the operating system.

OneNote files are not found in the local directory structure. They remain hidden. In OneDrive you find them again later. OneNote notes land so fundamentally on the server.

Word Mobile is at best a text editor with the possibility of character formatting (bold, italic, etc.). Paragraph formatting are completely absent - no lists, no numbering. A real step backwards compared to the old Windows Mobile; there had Word Mobile significantly greater functionality. And thus as little text fits on the screen, Word writes unchangeable 1.5 spacing instead of a single line.

Ever consumed by oversized headlines and large distances quite a lot of space. The keyboard takes including proposed line about 60% of the display, in a horizontal position even more. With Android and iOS that looks much more efficiently. Microsoft creates it so to make typing on the 4.5-inch model in the text field shown less space than on my old 2.8-inch with Windows Mobile 6 and pen input screen keyboard. Settings? - Wrong!

PowerPoint Mobile is pretty buggy. I would like to put to me a thing or two PPT from work along the way. But as text fonts are already here and there replaced by symbol fonts and therefore unreadable. And the attempt of developers to present formulas the formula editor properly, probably went wrong. Excel Mobile I have not tested.

For whom all this now does not matter who gets the Lumia 630 is a pretty good low-cost smartphone. The IPS-LCD is very bright, sharp color and strong, but also noticeably viewing angle dependent. Here talking "out of focus" of that other reviews, I can not understand. The S3 mini my wife works in the same number of pixels on 4 inch Amoled anyway pixelated. The sound from the jack is quite good and the output is not noisy. The camera takes very sharp images and accurate color rendition, and 5 MegaPixel rich with a mobile phone camera in my opinion completely out. Maybe it's the multimedia users who do not want to spend much money with this WP-8.1 smartphone better served as the office users.