Received my Nokia Lumia 800 Cyan! (18th May 2012)

Having looked at prices for the past few months, £20.50 per month for 24 months on Vodafone (£492 total) looked like the best deal for the low minutes, texts and data use I’m likely to have. It also lets me stay in the Friends & Family group Mum has on Vodafone.

It’s quite a bright, almost playschool colour. But I much prefer that to boring black, instantly grubby white or girly pink.

Finding the Best Deal

The most excellent Bill Monitor found a great deal, just £20.50 per month for 24 month deal on Vodafone. Sadly the Cyan version had an additional £23.98 up-front cost, as far as I could tell.

That would still have been awesome value compared to my iPhone friends. They tell me it’s around £35 per month most of the time.

Ordered

Eventually I started filling out the purchase form, linked through from Bill Monitor. One step included giving my current number, which I thought was for technical reasons. Before I finished the purchase, I chickened out and removed the item from my basket.

Not long after that, I was called by one of their operators. She was very chatty, enthusiastic and knowledgeable about mobile phones. After what seemed like an age, she charmed and twisted my arm into making the purchase.

She also found a way to get the Cyan phone without an additional up-front cost, so a better deal that anywhere I could find advertised.

Delivery Attempted

Sadly the delivery worker didn’t seem to ring the right flat. We found a card in the lobby which said they had visited at 8am. But we were both here and our flat definitely didn’t get buzzed.

Collected from Delivery Office

So we rode to the office, taking my passport and a recent bank statement for my ISA.

Unboxed

  1. Letter from Phones 4U says the phone should charge for 14 hours before using it.
  2. Network would be connected within 48 hours of me receiving the phone.

Startup & Setup

  1. Plugged the iPhone style plug into a power socket.
  2. Connected the now standard USB charging lead into the plug and the Lumia.
  3. Within a few minutes it jingled and showed an initial setup screen.
  4. I left it while watching TV and web reading.
  5. Next time I looked it was on a language selection screen, with English (United Kingdom) already selected.
  6. I clicked Next.
  7. Next page told me this:

    SIM error

    The SIM card is missing or invalid. You can still make emergency calls if your mobile operator supports this.

  8. I clicked Close.
  9. I accepted the licence agreement.
  10. It now asked me about how much information it would send to Microsoft. I clicked Custom.
  11. I ticked all 3 options to send the most data and clicked Next.
  12. It then asked me to Choose Time Zone with Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London already selected.
  13. (Wait, no Cardiff?!)
  14. I clicked Next.
  15. Had a ‘surprise and delight moment’ when selecting the date on the Date & Time screen.
  16. Clicked Next.
  17. When placing it on the table I noticed that even these setup screens will switch from portrait orientation into landscape.
  18. It now asks about a Windows Live ID, which I do actually have. Long ago, in the era of .Net Passport, I linked my Project account with their service.
  19. Since the SIM isn’t in it, it obviously wouldn’t be able to connect.
  20. Clicked Previous and skipped the sign-in process.
  21. Next a few pages from Nokia appeared, in the same minimal GUI as the Microsoft ones had.
  22. Clicked Accept to the terms from Nokia.
  23. Arrived at the Start Screen!

Inserting the SIM

See my related entry: Lumia 800: Vodafone.

More Setup

  1. It detected WiFi networks.
  2. I logged into our one.

First Play

See my related entry: Lumia 800: Google Maps?

Non-clickable Links in Texts

The introductory text messages from Vodafone says this:

Hello and welcome to Vodafone. To see some of the great benefits you are entitled to as a Vodafone cutomer, useful advice on getting set up and the support available you, visit our mobi site at: vodafone.co.uk/hello

That link is not clickable! What text contains ccTLDs and TLDs separated by full stops, other than a link? It should be auto-linked, for sure.

So I tried to Forward the text so I could Copy and Paste it. But you can’t select words in the text message!

The Nokia N900 doesn’t make following links from texts easy but at least it is possible.

Uninstall Unwanted Apps

26 items are in the list when swiping right from the Start Screen. A few are unwanted by me, so I touch them and hold to get a sort of context menu. One item says Uninstall so I click that, for each of these apps:

Nothing against these companies, I’ll just never use these features.

Start Screen Spring Clean

Unpinned the following apps, in alphabetical order:

This leaves me with just 4 rows of tiles and that’s great. Sadly the last row is slightly cut off when scrolled right to the top. To see the date at the bottom of the wide Calendar tile, I have to scroll up slighlty.

Preferences

  1. Turned off Bluetooth.
  2. Turned off Location.
  3. Opened lock+wallpaper.
  4. Increased the Screen times out to 3 minutes.
  5. Clicked on change wallpaper.
  6. Selected Wallpapers.
  7. Selected the solid cyan which matches the case and cover.
  8. Opened speech.
  9. Turned off Play audio confirmations.
  10. Opened find my phone.
  11. It prompts to sign in with my Windows Live ID, which I now do.
  12. It gives a progress animation for a few seconds then dumps me at the Settings list.
  13. find my phone now says connected beneath it. Good, but not obvious.
  14. Opened SIM apps.
  15. This lists the My Vodafone stuff, driven by the new SIM.
  16. I remember my Sharp GX15 had these, too.
  17. Clicked My Vodafone+.
  18. After a second it said:

    Phone

    NOT APPLICABLE.

    Wow! Sorry I asked! I click OK.
  19. Wait, it worked. I have a list of customer support and accounnt manafement tools.
  20. Opened phone update.
  21. Unticked Use my mobile data connection to check for updates.
  22. The text at the bottom of this screen changes to confirm it will only check for updates over WiFi.

E-mail via IMAP

Recently the string of server moves has given me IMAP support on both my e-mail accounts. Works nicely on the N900, after a lot of fiddly setup. (Same as any system, I would think.)

Time to try it on the Lumia 800:

  1. Opened the Settings screen.
  2. Opened email+accounts.
  3. Clicked Add an account.
  4. Clicked Other account as it said POP and IMAP underneath.
  5. Entered my address and the password.
  6. I think it tried to detect the necessary settings but wasn’t able to.
  7. Clicked on Advanced.
  8. Clicked Internet email.
  9. Somehow something I pressed made it switch to system settings. Huh?
  10. Clicking → dumped me back at the main list of apps. WHAT?!
  11. So I tried again, this time selecting Advanced setup at the start.
  12. Tyo’d lots of entries multiple times as I worked down the list.
  13. Didn’t have to set any port numbers.

Sounds

Had a closer look and realised the very first item under Settings is for ringtones+sounds. So I dived in:

  1. First thing, the heading ringtones+sounds doesn’t fit in the portrait orientation. (There’s nothing to the right to swipe to, I tried.)
  2. Unticked a few things under Play a sound for:
    • Key press
    • Lock and unlock
    • Camera shutter

Stop Noisy Reminders (20th May 2012)

  1. In WLM, go to the Calendar area.
  2. In the Ribbon, click Reminders.
  3. This opens a new browser tab with the Windows Live Hotmail page for Calendar options.
  4. Scroll to the section called Turn notifications on or off.
  5. Untick Get notifications (reminders, changes to calendars, and daily summaries).
  6. I also unticked Confirmations.
  7. Scroll down to the end and click Save.

Agenda view is becoming my favourite way to view the calendar on the phone, whether that’s through the Calendar app (Lumia 800 at home yesterday) or through the website (N900 on the train tonight).

USB Charging from Laptop (20th May 2012)

Plugged my Lumia into the laptop using the N900 cable, since it’s standard and was already plugged in. After a few seconds it buzzed to confirm it was charging.

After a minute of HDD churn it gave me a Zune advert. I clicked Cancel to that, since I’d rather try syncing everything online with this new phone.

A few more seconds go past and a balloon tip confirms the drivers are installed and the device is ready to use. I click the balloon before it goes away and see the list of what was installed:

With the Lumia flat on my desk where the N900 has been for the past months, it really is a lot thinner. And the one-piece case looks way neater than the panel gaps and sliding joints of the N900.

App Updates from Market (27th May 2012)

This evening I was going to have a quick look for a clock timer app to help with cooking. My ancient Casio watch finally got through another battery and its stopwatch was a feature I used every day.

When I clicked Market on the Lumia, it has a subtle item on the bottom left saying 6 updates:

  1. I clicked on 6 updates.
  2. It gave me a monochrome list of which apps would be updated.
  3. The app icons seemed to be wrong aligned on the vertical axis, sitting just above the next item rather than neatly alongside their corresponding text.
  4. I clicked updated all at the bottom.
  5. It gave me a huge page of text asking me: Allow access to location?
  6. Only buttons were allow or cancel so I had to click allow.
  7. The screen faded to black with a progress indicator.
  8. It then became a much more colourful list, with an icon on a colour-coded gradient for each app.
  9. Each app got a line of status text below it.
  10. They started getting a status bar, one at a time, from the last one upwards.
  11. When the progress bar completed, that app disappeared.
  12. Left it while I had dinner.
  13. Screen was sleeping when I got back.
  14. Woke it up and slid the wallpaper away.
  15. All it displayed was a MARKETPLACE called downloads.
  16. Couldn’t swipe anywhere so clicked ←.
  17. Now all it displayed was a MARKETPLACE called updates.
  18. Couldn’t swipe anywhere so clicked ←.
  19. This returned me to the marketplace, no longer with a 6 updates item.
  1. Received my Nokia Lumia 800 Cyan!
  2. Sync WLM Calendar via Hotmail
  3. Sync Contacts with WLM via Hotmail
  4. Foreca Weather App by Microsoft
  5. gMaps App?
  6. Google Maps?
  7. Photos & Sharing
  8. Timer
  9. Vodafone
  10. Received my Monster Headphones
  11. Software Update via Zune
  12. Windows Phone 7.8!
  13. New Screen Protector