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Another pleasant design feature is that the charging socket is at the top, making it easy to use the phone when it is on charge. The only thing that took a bit of getting used to was the on–off switch, which looks exactly the same as the camera shutter and virtually the same as the volume keys.

The sober design suggests ease of use, and this is indeed true. All apps are listed in a long alphabetical list – when you want an app to appear in start menu, you simply tap and hold it, and then select “pin to start”. The symbols then appear in the start menu as square tiles, and are slightly larger.

Some tiles are even larger. The calendar tile, for example, is twice as wide as it is high and also displays your next appointment as text. The photo tile, which is also square and just as large, can display your favourite pictures as a slideshow.

Tiles can communicate more than just a number – their content can be animated. For example, the profile pictures of your contacts alternate in a colourful array on the contacts tile.

The Lumia’s operating system is Microsoft Windows Phone 7.5, so we can reasonably expect it to work well with other Microsoft products.

First of all, there’s the Cloud storage space SkyDrive which, unlike the 16 GB in-built memory, is easy to access for other devices or computers. So ideally, you would load all the Office documents into this storage space that you want to use on the Lumia.

Word files are easy to read on the phone, particularly when you hold it horizontally, as it then also has fewer problems displaying tabs. When you want to edit the document on the phone and not just view it, the document should not be saved in an old Word format. However, the on-screen keypad does not exactly invite you to type long texts.

PDF files are displayed well using Adobe Reader, which is free to install – A4 documents can even be read in landscape format. PowerPoint presentations and Excel tables can be presented and even edited or created, even though this is perhaps not advisable on a pocket-size display. But it is adequate for looking through a presentation or even making minor corrections in a PPTX or PPTM file.

Those who use Lync for work can also use its functions with the Windows Phone. The program is free to download and displays presence information; it also enables instant messaging and phone conferences. If you use OneNote, you can now also do this on the move. The phone can be used as a hotspot, and thereby provide its Internet access to a tablet, laptop or eReader via WLAN (this function is called “Internet Connection Sharing”).

The Lumia is not only a multimedia phone that allows you to conveniently consume music, videos, radio and TV (via Swisscom TV air), it is also a business smartphone that can handle Office documents, e-mails, calendars and addresses. It sits so well in my hand that I could hardly put it down.

Which phone can you no longer live without – and why?


Quelle: KMU Update