Thought you guys might enjoy this... I'm a freelance writer for Mac|Life and received my preorder Lumia 900 along with many of you on Friday after being curious about Windows Phone for awhile. I'm a die-hard iPhone 4S user so I wrote up my thoughts on a weekend with the Lumia 900 and -- spoiler alert! -- I liked it. I think the various reviews I've read are being way too hard on it, IMHO.
An iPhone 4S User's Weekend with the Nokia Lumia 900
And for the record, I paid the no-commitment price out of my own pocket and intend to keep it (along with my iPhone 4S)... so it doesn't have to be one or the other. ;-)
JRB
I disagree with your review somewhat. I was on the same boat as you. I've used iPhone since it was released in 2007, used an HP Veer, and played around with Android here and there.
I'm just going to point out a big thing you didn't point out and that's multitasking. I spent more time spamming the back button and hitting the Windows button more times to get back to something else. Holding the back button seemed like an afterthought in the grand scheme of the design. Hitting the home button took me back to the main screen. I felt like I spent more time starting from my upper, top tiles and scrolling more than I was using the phone.
I thought iOS home button, soft keys in Android, and WebOS touch area are the way to go and more intuitive than capacitive hardware buttons. I think that with iOS in particular, and this extents to mice, and clickable trackpads on laptops, there?s some sort of subconscious gratification to hearing slight clicks or some sort of feedback. I didn?t feel that with the Windows 7 device.
The ClearBlack AMOLED display along with the Windows Phone 7 interface is deceptively black. I didn't have issues with pixel density and white balance until started using Internet Explorer. I felt that for general reading, the whites were too grainy at a comfortable (lower brightness) compared to the iPhone 4/4S. Everything is fine until you start using things that have a lighter UI.
The applications in general ? besides Netflix, Amazon, Evernote, GasBuddy, Twitter, Facebook, eBay, some of the Nokia specific apps ? well, felt like there was a lot left to be desired.
The social aspects were interesting but I only use Twitter occasionally and rarely use Facebook, so social integration just wasn?t a wow factor for me.
I normally don't sync my phone directly with my Mac. If I can't do it over the air, I won't do it at all. Windows Phone 7 Mac software looked nice but it didn't get used at all.
Hardware is solid except for the SIM tray. Buttons are solid. Back silver around the camera does scratch way too easy ... but knowing that in early reviews was easy to accept. I think they tried to improve things from the door design in the Lumia 800 but I still think the 900's SIM tray is flimsy and prone to breaking.
It was interesting to see a different experience from a similar iOS background.
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