2016.04.29_Review Microsoft Lumia 550

published on GSM Arena
https://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_lumia_550-7612.php
https://www.gsmarena.com/microsoft_lumia_550-reviews-7612.php


I will not repeat what is already written in the accurate and well made GSMArena professional review, but I would like to add my personal experience with the phone:

- The IPS display is very clear and sharp, and the subjective image quality is very good. With the phone I bought a screen protection called Glass Pro (made of glass not plastic), on which the finger glides a lot better and is very hard to scratch.

- The speaker is loud enough, and on headphones the sound is beautiful. The sound chip used on Lumia 550 is of good quality.

- MS Lumia 550 have no possibility to read directly USB Sticks, and on the micro-USB port, cannot be connected any peripherials like mouse or keyboard or USB sticks. Is not working either with OTG cable, and the connector is a normal micro-USB, not Type C. The only solution is to connect the phone to a computer with a normal micro-USB to USB cable and then access the phone memory from the computer. Or, of course, by wireless / bluetooth / internet.

- On the browsing side, Microsoft Edge web browser looks to me a lot faster and stable then the default browser integrated on Android (I can compare only with Android 4.2.2, so, maybe on newer versions things changed). All in all, my entire online experience with Lumia 550 phone is a lot better then on my old Android platform. Basically, everything on the net, windows store, web browsing, maps, etc., runs better, smoother, faster and most important, without crashes.

- The camera is only 5 MP and is not awesome from this viewpoint, but the photos are clear, have natural colors, and the camera menu offers advanced functions like manual adjustment of many parameters that are not accessible from any Android platform. For example you can manually adjust focus, ISO 100 - 800, or activate the option to capture "living images", HDR, white balance and others. Video capture at 720p with 30 fps is of very good quality in my opinion, but my standards are not as a pro photographer.

- Programs found on Windows Store are OK, and their number increase day by day.
For example, I found a free video player called CCPlayer that is able to play my MP4 files (codec HEVC H265 with AAC audio) and with ASS subtitles placed on the same folder. The same player can play MKV files with H264 and subtitles inside MKV container. Very important, the phone have hardware acceleration for H264 AVC1 and H265 HEVC, so, the 720p movies play fluently, without any glitches.

- A big problem, not of the phone but of the OS, is that, at this time, you canÂ’t remove downloaded and uninstalled applications from MS Store > My Library. Once you install an application, it will be there forever. Even if you decide it was crap and will never be installed again, there is no way to get rid of it, rendering My Library almost useless. I hope Microsoft will solve this problem soon.

In conclusion, after more then a week of intense usage, net surfing, installation and removal of tens of programs, I realize that I like Windows 10 Mobile (Version 1511 OS build 10.0.10586.218) more then Android. Even if the phone have only 1 GB of RAM, it never run out of memory, the OS is running fluid, internet experience is better on Win10 then on Android, the phone never locked and didn't had errors, and for me, hardware acceleration for movies encoded in H265 HEVC is a real deal.