The IT Nerd

I have had a unique opportunity presented to me this week. Both Fido and Telus sent me the Nokia Lumia 635 to review at the same time. At first I wondered what I was going to do, but my wife pointed out to me that I had ability to test not only the phones, but the networks that they run on.

This should prove interesting. Let’s start with the phone.

The Nokia Lumia 635 is a Windows 8.1 phone aimed at those who are budget minded. But that doesn’t mean that it is a cheap phone. On the contrary. It feels very solid in my hand and is also very easy to hold in my hand. There’s a removable back and you can get yellow, green, orange, white, or black shells to match your tastes. Though I will note that removing the back may break your fingernail while you remove it. The Power and Volume buttons are on the right side, headset jack on the top, and Micro USB on the bottom. Inside there is a MicroSD slot for memory expansion. The screen (4.5″, 854-by-480, 218ppi) looks a little fuzzy and it does attract fingerprints. But unlike some other phones that I’ve tested, they don’t interfere with you looking at the screen. The Lumia 635 allows you to connect to 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, but on the 2.4GHz band only. But it does have an interesting trick. It comes with Microsoft’s Wi-Fi Sense. This feature uses Devicescape’s database to find public Wi-Fi hotspots on the street and try to connect to them. It worked intermittently for me. Thus it’s a very good thing that you get LTE connectivity as part of the deal.

I mentioned earlier that the phone runs Windows 8.1 phone, and it is a simple and easy OS to use. Though there does seem to be a pause when you start apps which is something that I have not noticed with a Windows Phone before. You get the usual Nokia add ons including:

• HERE Drive + is a navigation app that offers voice based turn by turn navigation. It works well enough, but the voice prompts will sometimes give you specific street names, or simply tell you to turn left or turn right. That can force you to look at the phone rather than focus on driving. One advantage that this app has over Apple Maps is that the maps are resident on the phone and you can have as few or as many maps as you want on the phone.
• HERE Transit helps you to navigate from place to place using public transit. It fetches public transit schedules to give you an idea of how long your journey will take. I have no idea if this accounts for delays on the subway and the like, but it is simple to use.
• HERE MAPS is another navigation app which takes into account walking and even shows you passenger rail options.

In terms of add ons from Telus and Fido, Telus seems to have kept the phone relatively stock. Fido on the other hand has added a My Account app to check your Fido account details. One note, the Lumia 635 comes with a very good FM radio. At the same time, it also comes with Nokia’s streaming MixRadio which is equally as good. Anything that I played sounded pretty good on the internal speaker.

The camera is the next thing on my list. The rear camera is a 5MP shooter that lacks a flash which is going to limit how useful it will be. But it does take pictures and video that aren’t bad. Here’s a picture of an Air Canada 777 landing at Pearson Airport.

Now the video which is shot at 720p:

As you can see it lacks image stabilization, but it’s pretty good.

Each of these phones gave me 12 hours of battery life which means that they’ll last you the whole day. That’s pretty good for those who need a phone that will go for as long as they do.

The only question that’s left to answer is how fast are these phones on their respective networks? That meant that I had to come up with a method for testing. Fortunately, my wife who works with cancer researchers had an idea:

• Go to a minimum of five locations.
• Have a mix of outdoor and indoor locations. Plus they have to be in a variety of geographical location in Toronto.
• Ensure that both phones are getting LTE coverage.
• Run three speed tests using the Speedtest.net app from the Windows App Store and note the results.
• Average the three results to get a final result for both download and upload speeds in Mbps.
• Make sure the tester doesn’t know which phone is on which carrier.

Now I should note that this isn’t about which network is better. I am not doing a test that could say that with any sort of validity. Still, this should be interesting to see what results we get. So, let’s see what we got in terms of numbers. I took the Fido phone and put a green back on it and left the Telus phone with the black back and sent my wife out to do the test and record the results after showing her how to use the Speedtest.net app.

Location #1: High Park near Bloor St. West and Quebec Avenue in Toronto, On

This one was easy with no issues getting a LTE signal. The download numbers were close, but it is interesting that Telus got a significantly higher upload speed.

Location #2: Sherway Gardens Shopping Mall indoors in Toronto, On

Now what was interesting about testing at Sherway Gardens was the fact that my wife had to work hard find a location to get an LTE signal on the Fido phone while she had no issue with the Telus phone anywhere in the mall. When she did get a signal, it wasn’t strong on the Fido phone while she reported to me that she got full bars on the Telus phone. That likely influenced the results. My guess is that Fido needs to improve the coverage in that area. As a means to validate this, I asked her to return with her iPhone 5 which is on the Rogers network to do the same test. She got similar results which didn’t surprise me since Rogers owns Fido and the networks are likely shared to some degree.

Location #3: Pearson Airport Terminal 3 departures level in Toronto, On

This was another interesting result as the Telus had a faster upload speed relative to its download speed. I cannot explain this but according to my wife, it was repeatable.

Location #4: Derry Rd. and Dixie Rd. in Mississauga, On

Fido pulled in a download number that is the highest number of any speed test that I’ve recorded on any phone that I’ve ever reviewed. Clearly in this area, if you have Fido, you’ll be surfing at warp speed.

Location #5: Scarborough Town Centre Indoors in Toronoto, On

In this location, the Fido phone put up some really quick download speeds. But I should note that the numbers that the Telus phone got were not too shabby either. Particularly on the upload side of the fence.

Location #6: Pacific Mall Indoors in Markham On

Once again, Fido put up some stunningly fast numbers on the download side of the fence and their numbers of the upload side of the fence aren’t anything to sneeze at either.

So, these results generally seem to support what PC Magazine found last year when Rogers was named the fastest for mobile network speeds. But faster doesn’t mean better. The Fido supplied Lumia 635 seemed to have problems getting a LTE signal in one of the six locations that my wife tested in. After my wife told me that, I went to the same locations and found that the Fido supplied Lumia 635 did sometimes have a weaker signal in some of these locations when compared to the Telus supplied Lumia 635 which always seemed to have full signal strength. So if you value signal strength above all else, you might opt for the Telus network.

So what’s my bottom line? Regardless of which carrier you go with, the Nokia Lumia 635 is a good phone for those on a budget that has a pretty good feature set. If you choose Fido, you can expect to pay $0 on a 2-year Tab24 agreement on a Standard plan. $200 on a monthly plan only (no Fido agreement) or with prepaid service. If you go with Telus, it’s $0 on a two year term or $200 outright. What makes you want to choose one carrier over the other depends on what is important to you. If you value speed, Fido will be your choice. However, my testing found that Telus had better signal strength. Thus if that matters to you, Telus should be your carrier of choice. Either way, you will be getting a phone that I think you’ll like.