Lumia is dead. Where to from here?

I tend to be a rather loyal consumer when it comes to brands.
I've always liked Nokia, and I have stuck it out with Cell C ever since I left MTN over 10 years ago, but there comes a point at which it just becomes illogical to flog a very nearly dead horse.

I am of course referring to the steady decline in popularity and market share of Microsoft's Lumia range (formerly Nokia), and how the decidedly lacking app ecosystem of Windows Phone has contributed to this factor.

When I received my first Lumia, the 920, I was unfazed by the critics and naysayers, all of whom were very quick to point out the lack of apps available on the Windows Phone platform.
At that point, apps weren't quite as big a deal as they are now, at least not to me.
I could do everything that I needed to, and for the most part I had all the apps that I required, with a decent piece of hardware to run it all on.
Also back then, Windows Phone was still gaining some traction, and developers were starting to work on more and more apps for the platform as a result.
Not so anymore it seems - all you see these days are Android and Apple logos all over the place.

This becomes especially troublesome when you work in the technology field daily - all the more reason to have all of the latest and greatest apps and tools at your fingertips.
Lately it just seems that the apps that I need the most, simply don't exist on the Windows Phone platform - very disappointing since the Lumia hardware has always been up for the challenge.

I then had an opportunity recently to play with the spaceship that is the Samsung Galaxy S7 - my mind was shredded when I started to grasp the sheer extent of the number and variety of apps that are available for Android.
This is of course common knowledge to Android users I would imagine, but for a Lumia user experiencing it for the first time, it's quite overwhelming.
The S7 also just does everything right - "it just works", as Apple once mistakenly claimed about every single one of their Macs... except this time, the S7 does just work, and damn well too.

Given my history with phones then, I would say that my next step would logically be to Android - possibly the Samsung S7, or whatever flagship is around when my upgrade is due early next year.
If you're an Apple user reading this, I can only begin to imagine what must be going through your head right now:

 - "...what about the exploding Samsung battery???";
 -"iPhones are the best!";
 -"the new iPhone 7 has the best hardware in the world!" (probably all made by Samsung anyway ;))
 -"iPhones are the best!";

Truth is, you either like a platform or you don't.
Of late, I've just warmed up to Android, and I like how Samsung releases smartphones that get people talking - not just about how they look or because they're "cool", but about the incredible technology and functionality that they pack into each new device that they release.

So let's have it - Samsung lovers, Apple lovers, Android lovers and haters, Nokia loyalists, Windows Phone lovers, Blackberry purists, bring it on.
What should I go for?

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The day that Evernote died...

Evernote, for me at least, is the king of all note-taking apps.

Evernote (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let's go through some essential features that set it apart from the crowd:

• Cross platform: This is a biggie - Evernote runs on any device that you may be using, be it Apple, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, PC, Mac... the list goes on.
  You can also access it directly from any web browser of course.
  There is serious power in compatibility.
  
  
• Pricing: The free version offers a lot of functionality, so much so that I only found a need to upgrade from the free plan this month, for reasons that will be covered in this blog post...
  
  
• Evernote offers features that I haven't even started to use yet - scanning through the menu on my PC, I don't even know what some of the features do, but I am guessing that once I start using them, I will find it hard to imagine life without them!
  
  
• Convenience: Instead of trying to remember each and every thing that I did in my day, which customers I visited, time spent on-site, tasks completed etc., I make a point of updating Evernote on my Lumia 920 several times per day, and the data is automatically synced back to the cloud, and then onto each of my other devices when they in turn sync later on.
  Couldn't be any simpler really.

Cloud-based note software is therefore an amazing way in which to keep your life, your devices and indeed your mind in sync, no matter where you are or what device you happen to be using.

It is the perfect, simple, centralized solution... or is it?

For over a year now, I have been using Evernote (free), to make my life simpler by remembering important stuff for me - and it has worked sterlingly well.

Then last week, something decidedly odd and alarming happened which caught me completely off guard, and which turned an otherwise fantastic Monday into one with a distinctly blue hue.

While opening a critical note (I say "critical", since it pertained to information stored for the month that directly affected the bottom line of my business), I discovered that the entire note appeared blank.

The note title was intact, as was a preview of the first 3 lines of the note, but that was it.

No stress, I thought, still reasonably calm at this stage, as I switched over to my phone to access the note there.

Same thing on the phone. Zip, nada, nothing in the note.

Stress level successfully upgraded.

Last ditch to recover data? You guessed it - turn to the oracle of all things - Google.

Oddly, while this particular event appeared to be rather common in search results, no real explanation, solution or fix accompanied any of the articles that I was desperately trawling through.

Attempting to start rebuilding the note from memory only made things worse - the more that I could remember from the scattered bits and pieces haphazardly floating around my brain, the more I realised that the task facing me was near insurmountable - I had stored a lot of data in that note...

It would be safe to say that I was going through unusually high stress levels at that point.

In desperation I continued what now seemed a pointless effort to find any scraps of info online, that may turn the situation around.

Finally, one faint glimmer of hope caught my eye from the far recesses of the web - a feature included in the Evernote Premium (paid) which allows you to roll back to a previous version of any note.

Ah, but I was on the Free plan, so what use would this be to me?
Thankfully, quite a bit, since Evernote actually implements this feature on all new accounts, Free or Premium. 

This means that by upgrading from a free plan to a Premium plan, you can access historical data about your notes, even from the period before you became a Premium user - a massive lifesaver if you are someone like me, who was about to lose most of my remaining sanity due to data loss.

In short, I was able to upgrade to a monthly Premium plan (R 49 per month), and access a version of my lost note that had been saved that same morning, approximately 99% intact.

Stress levels normalised. Meltdown averted.

So what's the point of this post really?

Well, I am an avid cloud service advocate - whenever clients ask me about data storage needs for the future, cloud is always in there somewhere when I respond.

I think that the lesson in all this, is that while the cloud is as reliable, secure and stable as it can possibly be, shit does happen.

Just as external hard drives can be dropped or fail at random, cloud services and syncs can fall over with unpredictable results, and when dealing with your data, unpredictability is a scary thing.

Whichever way you go, be it local storage or the cloud, take precautions and put extra measures in place, within reason obviously.

Duplicate backup drives, store a local copy of your cloud data or make use of multiple cloud storage services.

Whatever you do, have something to fall back on, because when it all goes belly up, data is impossible to replace.

Related articles

• The New Evernote for iOS 8: Web Clipping, Quick Notes, and More
• Manage Your Small Business With Evernote - What's Not To Love?
• How I Organize Documents in Evernote
• Turn Evernote Into the Ultimate Paperless System With Scanned PDFs

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What People Do On Smartphones To Pass Their Time?

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Which phone should I upgrade to?

It's almost that time again - when my cellular network cleverly gets me to sign up for another 2 year contract with them, by offering me a "free" upgrade to my existing cellular device.

That's right folks, Cell C are giving me a free new phone... not!

Anyway, I thought I would put it out there and get some suggestions on what my next handset should be.

Here's my cellular device history thus far, right from the very beginning... my very first Ericsson GA318...:

- Ericsson GA318

- Ericsson T10s

- Motorola Timeport T250

- Sagem MyX-5

- Sagem MyX-7

- Nokia 6100

- Nokia N80

- Nokia N95

- Nokia N97

- Nokia E7

So no prizes for guessing which brand I am most likely going with for my next phone... :)

Things are heating up in the smartphone arena though, and right now there are so many players out there, all manufacturing spectacular devices.

A few that spring to mind are:

- Nokia Lumia 920 - Nokia's make or break flagship Windows device, after their departure from the long-standing Symbian OS.
So far it has received rave reviews all over the web... (pardon my bias - I have supported Nokia for so many years... :)

- Samsung Galaxy S3 - Samsung's hardware powerhouse, running Android and equipped with everything but intercontinental missiles... perhaps we will see those on the Galaxy S4...(which, incidentally launches in less than a month... what else will that bring I wonder?)

- Apple iPhone 5 - A strong contender by any account. Some feel that the evolutionary development of the 5 over the 4s has dropped Apple behind in the innovation stakes, yet this handset continues to garner steadfast support from Apple fans worldwide.

- Blackberry Z10 - Although Blackberry has been on a general decline in recent years, the Z10 packs in everything that Blackberry fans have asked for in the past. Featuring hardware that matches up to or exceeds current trends, can the Z10 pull Blackberry back from the brink?

Worth considering, I think...

Then there's HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and others, all with their own unique spin on cutting edge smartphone technology.

It's a tough choice, and obviously my Nokia run has got me slightly biased in the direction of the Finns, but I still have a month or 2 to go, and in that time a lot can happen in the smartphone world.

So what should I get folks?

What would you get as your next smartphone upgrade?

Related articles

• Nokia launches cheaper Windows smartphone
• Gartner: Android ranks 2nd in global smartphones
• Sony Ericsson guns for No.1 Android maker (Q&A)
• Is Nokia Targeting Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhone with Cheaper Device?
• Is Nokia Stock Oversold?

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