Nokia Lumia 520

I used Windows Phone 8 for two years, initially it was a $180 Nokia 520 that was as snappy as iPhone. Every popular app worked or had a decent 3rd party replacement. I liked the consistent and simple OS, much better than Android in terms of UX design. One day it fell down about 3 meters on a stone floor and survived almost without a scratch. Great hardware, nice software, but a poor mobile strategy by Microsoft.

Lumia 520 was my first smartphone and I really liked it's polycarbonate back design. IIRC, it was based on WP 8 though but wasn't upgradeable to 10 (like most devices). I liked stuff like tiles and it's camera though it had its limitations (couldn't playback mkv files for eg without a paid third party app; this was fixed in WP 10). I also upgraded to Lumia 550 as my Windows Mobile 10 device and it wasn't bad either though the platform was close to its demise by that time. I eventually gave it to my Dad and got a Galaxy J7 in exchange which became my entry point to Android world.

Cheap phones really are capable these days. I just got a 2nd hand Lumia 520 for ZAR1000 (about $100) and it can do everything my much more expensive iPhone 5 can. It's good enough to be my primary phone which is pretty amazing. Even has wifi internet tethering. Windows Phone 8.1 is a solid OS. The Lumia 630 with dual sim looks very appealing to me as soon as it's available.

This. I've just bought a Lumia 520 as a play phone / replacement while I send my HTC One back to be repaired (due to it continually rebooting / crashing - I'm otherwise generally very happy with it). I had an iPhone 3GS and 4S as well before the HTC One, so I've tried the three main platforms. Windows Phone is actually very nice for the basics of webbrowsing, sending texts, calling, etc. It has its faults (limited app selection, screen's not amazing, the font hinting is a bit poor), but I'm very impressed with it (and I'm a Linux dev by trade who hasn't touched Windows for many years).

I have and use the following phones iPhone 1, Nexus 4, Nokia 520, ZTE Open. I really like the ZTE Open and am switching to it for full time use. But I'd generally advise at this stage most people would not be happy to do this. The touch screen is unresponsive, the phone is generally sluggish and the range of apps is limited. The apps that are there have limited functionality. I think it would be a much better experience built with say LuaJIT and FFI and a kernel of C routines for heavy lifting in apps. But it is what it is, and ultimately I'm a big fan of the experiment Mozilla is undertaking using Web technologies to deliver such a platform - but its going to be a long road. Part of this is also colored by my experiences developing for Android and iOS. The reason I'm switching is that I prefer to carry a cheaper phone around, and I only need very basic services (basically happy to receive phone calls, and send texts and occasionally browse to a web page in an emergency). I am also very impressed philosophically with what Mozilla is trying to achieve here. I almost returned the Nexus 4 and Nokia 520 when I got them because it is very difficult to set them up without getting funnelled into over sharing your private information with cloud services. My second choice of phone would be the Nokia 520 for pure value for money. But my view is only an iPhone or an Android device have first class web browsing capabilities and first class app ecosystems. Go with the Nokia 520