Living with the Nokia Lumia 630 running Windows Phone 8.1

Is Microsoft's refined OS enough to rip out the BYOD staples of iOS and Android?

The Windows ecosystem as it stands is really starting to win us over. The launch of Windows 8.1 (and its subsequent first update), Microsoft's slow addition of Universal Apps, and the full assimilation of Nokia into the company all seem to point to a potentially brighter future for Windows on a productivity level. That may be great news for CIOs.

It's the Nokia, and Windows Phone, chunk of the conversation that has arguably represented the most under-utilised of Microsoft's potential with its Windows 8.1 software and devices.

Microsoft obviously thought so too (or at least suspected our reticence), as the company placed the world's first Windows Phone 8.1 device into our hands, and let us have a play.

We're not here so much to discuss the phone itself though, and more to give you some idea of just how Windows Phone 8.1 works in the wild. However, as the Nokia Lumia 630 - a phone that retails for under £100 in the UK - is the only device we've used with 8.1, forgive us if analysis of the phone and the operating system intertwine somewhat.

First and foremost, the 1.2 GHz ARM Snapdragon 400 that lurks within the 630 has no problem at all throwing Windows Phone 8.1 around. It multi-tasks energetically, all manner of stuff we'd forgotten about hanging around in the background sending us push messages and popping back up, all with apparently little drain on the 1830 mAh battery.

Nokia promises cellular or Wi-Fi browsing times of around nine hours a piece, which is a tad generous, the truth being nearer seven.

We never got around to testing the virtual private networking (VPN) function (who even uses that anymore?) but to step things up a little, we had a quick look at the phone's games performance, where it didn't perform terribly well. On the flipside, Jetpack Joyride crawling along at 15 frames per second at least made it easier to play. It was probably down to the somewhat measly 512MB of RAM inside the phone.

But it's the silky-smooth interface of Windows Phone 8.1 - now even, err, silkier and smoother - that made us forget the phone's modest specs. This is an interface that's had some serious time and consideration put into it.

Despite Android's many, many versions, there's a 'me-too' scrapiness to Google's front-end that apes iOS in some ways, and loses the thread on so many other. In comparison, Windows Phone feels like the 'other' option in the field of UI design.

Breaking Steve Jobs' 'rounded squares' house style rule with joy, app tiles that can be resized into three different dimensions tessellate the home screen with a sort of organised chaos, big boxes standing out as obviously more important than smaller ones.

The bizarre tapestry is enhanced further in 8.1 by Microsoft's gorgeous persistent wallpaper - system tiles appearing transparent as your chosen background image shows through them. It's simple, but a joy to interact with.

If the Lumia 630's low-res 854x480 screen wasn't so grey and washed out (with scattered spots at the top under the screen), we'd have had a great deal more fun, but it's still beautiful enough. The five megapixel camera - once you get the photos onto a decent screen - is simply spectacular for a phone at this price point, though, making even medium-priced Androids like the Nexus 7 or Galaxy 3 look like amateur hour (see the lovely macro work on Computing's Symbian the tiger cub below).

It's still no iPhone, though. And don't expect to be taking any selfies, either - there's no front-facing camera on the 630, presumably for cost-cutting reasons.

To make up for some of these hardware shortcomings, Windows Phone 8.1 makes the Lumia 630 one of the most usefully connectable devices we've ever used. Microsoft's wasted no time in taking advantage of the huge, continued enterprise use of its entire ecosystem.

[Please turn to page two]

Living with the Nokia Lumia 630 running Windows Phone 8.1

Is Microsoft's refined OS enough to rip out the BYOD staples of iOS and Android?

The Nokia Lumia 630 with Windows Phone 8.1 is even quite straightforward to connect to any corporate Office 365 server. It was literally as easy as adding a Hotmail or Gmail account to any other kind of phone. As was synching the calendar, which now pops friendly little messages up on the lock screen before important appointments, too. It's a dream for the heavy Microsoft user which, admit it, is basically all of you.

OneDrive connectivity is speedy and efficient, though misses Google Drive's neat trick of letting you work on the same file from multiple device destinations, instead 'locking' a file that's open elsewhere. It's a bit dated, but only a mild issue when you're happily switching files between a desktop and a phone like they're just another hard drive to each other.

A free, if heavily cut-down, version of Microsoft Office must also be lauded - free editing rights allowed to any traditional Microsoft file format you throw at it. A break from the ugly third-party offerings on Android, to be sure.

Props must also be given to the email accounts' default push settings which, rather than spamming the top of the screen with constant "new mail" alerts with the sender and first few words, just racks up numbers next to each mail tile. It's an excellent way of knowing you have a message, but not being immediately tempted to 'just answer this one'.

It's quite a good job Microsoft took this approach, as we've not successfully found a way to completely disable an email account, as iOS or Android does so easily, instead having to spelunk through several menus to set email update to "manual" at weekends, in order to escape the office. Not as clean as a simple "off" switch, but an okay workaround.

While we're niggling, the whole Windows Phone 8.1 experience was rather overshadowed by some other discouraging problems straight out of the box. The darn thing would not automatically sync its time from the internet, insisting the date was 22 March, 2am all the time, and refusing us access to Microsoft Store, and other Microsoft account-dependent services.

Even manually setting the date and time (which we're still relying on now) resulted in one instance of a complete reset to the 22 March starting point. It was an odd thing.

Further, we can't get the Lumia 630 to connect to public Wi-Fi spots that feature browser-based login pages. It's unclear if this is tied up with the Wi-Fi Sense feature, which is meant to automatically pipe your details to free local Wi-Fi connections to avoid having to manually log in (and which we've yet to get to work), but Tesco, Hilton Hotel and BT Cloud count among tested connections that have resulted in the 630 simply refusing to connect. We've spoken to Lumia 1020 owners who have reported no such problem. It's all a bit mysterious.

Another underplayed issue with Windows Phone 8.1 in the UK is that there's no Cortana just yet - Master Chief's sidekick just remains dormant in the menu screens. Unfortunately, there's still no fixed data for a UK release yet, with much localisation work still to do and the software only available as a developer build right now.

Still, there's a cheerful variety of largely useless Nokia legacy apps to play with in the meantime, including the ugly HERE Maps app, unused LINE messenger and stubborn Nokia Camera, which constantly tries to hijack the regular camera for the sake of about three extra colour filters. This kind of stuff is the elephant in its own room, and if the rumours are true, will be first to be excised when Microsoft drops the Nokia brand altogether in the near future and we all start buying Windows Phone devices.

But will we, in fact, starting buying Windows Phones at all? To summarise, we see absolutely no reason not to anymore. The Windows Store is finally starting to take off - it's no iOS App Store, but it's sure as heck no BlackBerry either - and the interface is now a genuine pleasure to use. Operability across other Windows services is fluid and sensible. All our niggles seem to be with early Phone 8.1 rollout, and the device itself.

Though for less than £100, the Lumia 630 really is a plucky little choice for the CIO on a tight budget. Slap one of these into the hands of every employee, and you'll be surprised how much they may end up thanking you.

Overall, we'd encourage you to keep an eye on higher-end Windows 8.1 Phone devices (watch this space) to truly see if the investment is worth it, but Computing would say the future's looking mighty bright for this platform.