Except for a few nuanced drawbacks, the Microsoft Lumia 640 is a solid phone. The Lumia 640, running on the Cricket network, dropped into my lap on Friday of last week. With our kids' school winding down, a couple birthdays and a college graduation, this last weekend was one of our busiest in a long while. I absolutely had no time to relax, and spent much of Monday just trying to recover from all the joy. But, for a product review, that actually turned out to be a good thing. I suspended use of my regular handset (the HTC M8 Windows Phone) and opted to use the Lumia 640 as my primary mobile device all weekend long. Interestingly enough, my hardware review actually turned into a test of Cricket wireless. But, I'll get into that in a minute or two.

For specs and pictures, check out First Look: Microsoft Lumia 640, and instead of going into a full, bit-by-bit of the hardware and services, I'll just give you an overview of the good, bad, and strange.