[Android] Finally shifting to Android from WP7.8

I have been a WP user for last two and half years. The samsung omnia was my first smartphone and it has been wonderful hardware so far. Even after so many years of rough use the phone still feels solid in hands. And the software has been great too.

But all software ages. And so has the old WP7. Mind you, its still has the performance. The UI smoothness is there, the OS is responsive as ever. The hardware is solid, the phone has not rebooted of its own accord. And whatever features it provides it excels at them. For me though the first blow was losing gmail support after upgrading to WP7.8. And recently Whatsapp outage was something else I could say was most significant for me to start considering something else. But the problem was I had sunk almost INR16,000 in this one back then. Thats about $320 back then.

And right now I am weary of sinking so much hard earned dough into a smartphone. But thankfully the smartphone prices have also come down dramatically. I was looking for a killer deal and I knew what my requirements are. So when I came across this ZTE Blade C - going for just INR4000, thats about $67, I jumped on to the opportunity. The phone is one full generation old and is very entry level with a 1GHz cortex-a9 dual core processor and 512MB Ram. So when Antutu produced a score of 8000+ that was a startling thing for me. Because I had a Karbonn Titanium S1 which had a 1.2 GHz Qualcomm S4 play quad core chipset and 1GB Ram. But it managed to score only about 10000 points.

Anyway lets get back to the point of shifting to Android. I had to make following preparations for the actual shift.

1. Contacts: Create hotmail contacts export as csv and import them in gmail.

2. Apps: List down the required apps and hunt their equivalents in Android. Thankfully I dont use the phone for anything else than calls, email, little bit of web surfing, and slight gaming. Oh and the Whatsapp. I got hold of most of the stuff right away. Some like skype I had to drop, because Blade C doesnt have front cam. No problem. I am not a heavy skype user.

3. Performance: The phone has been zippy and has been able to handle almost everything I could throw at it. The battery performance is not consistent though. It drops once in a while very fast. And then it will sit quiet. Must be some issue with battery calibration. I dont mind as long as I get decent battery backup. If the phone can make 8 hrs without dying, thats good enough for me.

So lets see how things go. Ill be posting stuff about the ZTE here as things happen around.