So my 520 died an ignoble death on Monday. It was my bluetooth MP3 player of choice, a decent GPS and an ok way to check on the web during the day.
It's also a 30 dollar phone to replace...which made it a pretty easy decision. It came yesterday and I had a rough choice to make, whether to upgrade or not.
the old OS had great facebook messenger integration. World class even. The two people I message frequently use that ecosystem.
the old OS also had the superior music program, with features for recently added and full podcast integration.
the new OS has Cortana, which is neat once or twice, the separate podcast feed which blows and freezes all the time, the slow as shit music program which doesn't even have the recently added section, my favorite feature.
Lack of facebook integration. Messenger is ok for this but not having to boot a separate app was so much better.
But the real deal is this. WP8.1 has one awesome feature which I can no longer live without on this dataless smartphone I use as a podcast delivery vehicle; the ability to save mp3's and video files directly from the internet browser.
So in the end I did the upgrade. Coming off of a clean install the upgrade does seemingly work much better. Less lag when switching to common programs. Fewer podcast freezes.
520 is still the best 30 dollar device in this category. I'm not even someone invested in the windows ecosystem but this is a far better device than any other smartphone in this low low pricerange. It was a great deal last year at 50-70 but for 30? Unbeatable.