#BlogLife431 - Nord CE2 Lite - Samsung alternate??

I've had some time to mess around with the new phone. Well the newest Nord as they are both new actually.

I've put the Honor 7A and the Samsung A13 away and I'm going to use the Samsung A41 for alarms and games and the Nord will be for everything else.

Those 2 feel like the lightest which is beneficial for my hands to keep them relaxed and not overly strained.

I'm not sure when Android 13 is coming. It's out in India but not sure about the UK.

The Nord came with 12 and then there was some other security update. Technically the operating system is Oxygen and that's 12.1.

Comparing it to my A13, the first thing I noticed I guess was the size, they're practically the same but the CE2 Lite is well, lighter ha.

The next thing was the display, Samsung is bright and clear, the Nord is really dark and dull.

I'm not an expert reviewer but I have to switch the brightness to nearly halfway in order to see the screen better, whereas with the Samsung I can have it low and still see everything clearly.

The Nord introduces this "Game" feature to rival Google Play Games, with that, it's easy to take a screenshot but I haven't figured out how to do that with the Game app.

To do a screenshot I swipe 3 fingers down and that's the way I've been doing it, not ideal and it takes many tries which is time consuming.

Ahh the battery lasted me a day and a half, with gaming, calls, texts, internet, downloads and high brightness which was very cool.

I'm still surprised it came with a proper wall plug and usb c wire. It took about an hour to charge it halfway.

I'm also surprised there were different colour options, if it was reasonable, I definitely would have gone for the green, that looked so different and unique.

But I love the light blue shade, everytime I look at it, I get happy.

I can't comment on the customer service too much. I only dialled the number once and I think I was taken to an Indian call centre, the line was really really bad and I could barely hear her and vice versa.

Switching it off used to be a pain but then I messed around with the settings and repurposed the buttons.

On the right side is a functional button and it used to say, unblock the mic and now a long press comes up with a slide to restart or power off the phone, muchhhh better.

When you swipe the left screen it has a horrible Google news feed which I hate.

I think the only way to get rid of it is disable and re-enable Google and that works, probably until you use another Google service and then it reappears.

I also had to hide the silly spotify and netflix nonsense which I will never use.

I really miss the Samsung wallpaper app and the alternative I found is Zedge which I used years ago and forgot about.

If you download the app, it will apply it to your phone directly which is so much easier than trying to download a picture and then it is a struggle to add it to the screen.

Umm I think most are free and you watch an advert to receive it, which I can live with.

I just find the wallpapers look bland. I think I will try a HD version and see if that is any better.

I thought it was having power save on but I disabled and it's still really low quality.

It's not enough to put me off but it's not something I can recommend either.

It is going to take some getting used to, having the volume keys on the left side, it just feels unnatural.

Oh one thing that is driving me nuts, the screen keeps timing out at 15 seconds even though I've set it to 30 minutes, 4 times, grrr!!

Another thing I hate is when I turn it off to charge, as soon as the usb cord slides it, it turns the phone back on grr.

I like it to have a rest and for me to have a break. The font is really unclear, it really needs a bold option.

There is a setting in Accessibility but that makes the font fainter in the music app, which is not a good solution.

I'm constantly attempting to not strain my eyes. The HD wallpapers look a whole lot better.

Something that surprised me was that in the high graphic game of Looney Tunes, it was quite jumpy on the regular setting but on high performance mode, ran more smoothly.

I know that game only works on the newer smartphones because it's probably a ram hungry app.

Oh another thing which I rarely see nowadays in the bluetooth section which has been easy to pair devices, it has a checkbox to hide it from being visible and that's a lovely security feature.

The wifi has been mostly smooth, I think it's only disconnected once or twice.

It does bug me a lil the front camera is prominent and I think you had to somehow hide it, app by app, to get the full screen mode, I've no idea how to do that.

I just checked and the current keyboard is Gboard. It's alright, it doesn't always correct errors.

I do love the pink shade though, that's really fun. At some point I might switch back to Samsung, I think that was the most productive one for me.

The camera images seem more defined than my previous phone cameras.

I can't always tell as my eyes are so bad but to me it seems sharper and improved.

I really love the fact that it came with a free case, a wall charger and a usb cord.

For the choice of shades and the accessories, it beats Samsung in that respect.

Samsung screen display is much higher so I guess it depends what you are looking for, the cost for OnePlus phones is cheaper also.

I don't know if I would permanently switch from Samsung. It's really just the dark and dreary screen of the Nord phone.

Maybe they have fixed the issue with newer phones but nobody wants to have their phone constantly really bright, depleting the battery do they?

I'll have to keep using it and maybe I will find it gets easier or they will maybe a software update or I have no idea, find a way to make it better visibly.

I guess that is the main issue for me, everything else I can tolerate.