LG Optimus 7 – The end

It was back in April 2011 when I got my LG Optimus 7 (E900) second-hand from a good friend of mine. I needed to replace my workhorse, an HTC Blackstone running Windows Mobile 6.5 with a custom ROM. The Blackstone was still working but it was obvious that the battery needed replacement and maybe a refresh was also necessary as the menus were lagging even with a relatively light ROM.

I was new to Windows Mobile 7 but I found it really easy to learn; a nice start-screen, a list of installed apps and a variety of settings. That was all – no file managers, no hidden options, dead-simple menus. The hardware was really decent, featuring 1GHz (single core) CPU, 512 MB RAM & 16GB storage, along with a 3.8-inch screen. The phone itself was really sturdy and went through a lot of abuse but never even showed a sign of wear. Soon the OS was updated to 7.5 (the last one to be supported by the mobile) and the battery was replaced by a third party one. Everything was working fine, with some glitches due to the OS itself and not the phone (e.g. lack of Greek support for SMS, ringtone and vibration not working at the same time etc.). The camera was also lower quality than expected (at least worse than the one of my Blackstone) but I learned to live with it.

All good things come to an end, so was my life with Optimus 7. The second battery also started showing reduced lifetime, the power button did not always woke the screen up, menus started closing for no reason, voice command feature started switching on without my intervention (even during phone calls), apps were closing with no reason and most of these must have been due to my poor technical skills when replacing and gluing the Windows button back in its place after my youngest son had peeled it off. Lately, the battery was so swollen that it pushed hard the cover of the battery compartment from the inside and I missed the (lost) functionality of the Windows key…

It was time for a replacement; since I l got used to Windows Phone, I went directly for a Windows Phone 8 powered one. At first I thought about getting the cheapest Windows Phone, which was Nokia Lumia 520 at about 140 euros; despite the fact that I liked its large screen (larger than the 3.8-inch of the E900), I didn’t like the lack of flash in the camera. My next choice was Nokia Lumia 620 (at about 160 euros); it had a LED flash but no radio, which I sometimes use while commuting. The next in line was Nokia Lumia 720 (I like the Lumias, mostly for the apps that are bundled with; they surely provide added value to the phone). The Lumia 720 combined FM radio and LED flash, a better construction, larger and higher screen quality and better battery life (among others); it was also lighter and had a rather better camera. For 189 euros it seemed like a bargain to me, so I ordered it online and hope to get it in the next couple of days! The specs compared to my LG Optimus 7 are a bit lower (still 1GHz CPU but dual-core, same 512MB RAM and only 8GB storage) but according to the reviews everything is running smoothly, thanks to the specific OS.

Using a Windows Phone without a Windows button…

It is one of the lessons I learned the hard way:

I have this really nice LG Optimus 7 Windows Phone mobile for about a year now and I have been really happy about that. I just replaced the battery and could not complain about its performance in any case. One day, I decided to make my youngest son (just 15 months old) happy and gave him the mobile phone (airplane mode on) in order for him to listen to music, which he really loves! I decided to take my eyes off him for some minutes, so that I can check my emails…I soon realized that he was really quiet, therefore he was into something not good for me. Indeed, when he saw me he gave me back my phone, which was still playing music – but with the Windows button missing!! (just to remind you that the Optimus 7 is one of the few Windows Phones with hard buttons – not the soft ones available in the majority of the other Windows Phones).

I started looking around for the button but it was nowhere to find… so I understood: I had to wait until this little guy pooed and do a little ehm… research before I found the button again, shining! After a nice wash and disinfection, the button was ready to be glued back into place.

I got a nice, strong glue, in order to make sure that it will not be peeled off again by this little guy. I tried to drop one drop but the glue run quickly, so instead there were 3-4 drops in the mobile phone’s button place. I though that it would only make it stick even better and I was right: There was so much glue inside that it apparently run off the button hole and it made the hole button hard as a rock! There is no way to press the Windows Phone button now as it is stuck for good! Acetone did not do anything apart from making the black color turn to grey…

Now I have to learn how to operate my Windows Mobile phone without its flagship button. I only miss the direct transfer to the home page, as I can move there  indirectly, by pressing the Back button a couple of times (or more in some cases…). But the hardest lesson I learned is not to trust my sons with my gadgets,at least not until they become old enough to understand the pain I am going through after seeing my gadget being treated like that!

My laptop, also abused by my youngest son…

LG Optimus 7 – Updated to WP7.8

To make a long story short, I read the news at WPCentral, where rumors about all existing WP7.5 Windows Phones (no matter which the manufacturer was) were to be upgraded to WP7.8 in the next hours. That seemed to good (and optimistic) to be true, especially as manufacturers like LG and HTC have stated that they were not interested in supporting their older Wp7.5 devices.

Waking up today and without checking any news, I decided to plug my LG Optimus 7 to my laptop and open Zune – in fact

I first checked through the WiFi connection of my phone for updates and it showed that some updates were available and I had to connect my phone to my computer (which I had already done by then). After checking for updates through Zune, I got two of them along with a long backup of my phone’s content and then the third one was… WP7.8! Everything was done automatically, so there was no need to “push” or “trick” this update to my phone. Has Microsoft decided to show to its reluctant partners like LG and HTC who is the boss in the field of Windows Phones? We will never now; however, it seems that those who stated that the update was up to MS and not the manufacturers were right.

I was never fond of this update, nor I was really disappointed to hear that LG is not to update the Optimus 7 to WP7.8. The main features were purely cosmetic (large and small tiles along with more color accents!) and for the rest of the fixes there were not much mentioned. So far, the standard size of the tiles looks bigger than I would like and the small ones tiny for my large fingers – as for the color accents? No comment! However, I like to see my devices always up-to-date featuring all the latest firmware and features and this is why I ended up with this update.