Fair warning, this post is a little bit of a rant. So first, some history about my history with Nokia.
I've only used Nokias my whole life. For the last 13 years since I was 16, from the 3210 to my now current (2) Nokia Lumia 920's. I've never had any serious problems with my Nokias, not until recently. I'm a brand loyalist and I never had any reason to switch from Nokia. Sure the occasional random reboots happened with my Nokia E7, but being a smartphone it never bothered me. My partner's N8 battery started failing after a year + a few months of use which isn't so bad considering it was issue-free during all that time.
When that happened we decided to get new phones. The 920 had just been released but opting to go the cheap route, he got a Lumia 800 and me the 900. For the most part I loved my cyan 900. It had good battery, never heated up, barely EVER got warm at all, was rock solid to the feel like a freaking brick. The only issues I had with it was random reboots about once a day or 2, didn't bother me at all because it booted up very fast and it never happened while I was actually doing something, mostly when I'm just looking at the homescreen. That and the fact that the chrome strip on the back was very prone to scuffing. I only used it a month and the chrome strip looked battered. I've never used any sort of protection on my phones before and honestly the rest of the 900 looked flawless except for that strip.
Fast forward a month with my cyan 900, my first windows phone, and I've been reading all this stuff about WP8. Increased capabilities, better support for a wider range of functions and what not. Now I did read up a bit about how WP7 devices will not be compatible with WP8 and apps specifically developed using the Windows 8 kernel. I just naturally assumed that since WP8 devices will be backwards compatible with WP7 devices that developers would just naturally choose to make apps compatible with both versions of WP. So I was wrong. I was missing out on a lot of new and great apps coming out for WP8 that I simply can't get on my 900, in addition to the new start screen. Microsoft really bent WP7 users over and stuck it to them with this honestly. I never blamed Nokia, it's not like they're in control of what goes on with WP development.
Anyway, I got annoyed and antsy and decided to buy a Lumia 920, a month after getting my 900. We always purchase our phones outright and never get locked down to any contract because 1) We're on a GREAT legacy plan that is so cheap and gives so much credit and 2) We tend to change phones before a 24-month contract would be up. So this was an extravagant purchase for sure. Despite great disapproval from my partner I decided to purchase a 920 even though it didn't come in cyan which is my preferred color (we get the grey in Australia instead, but it's super rare). I initially wanted to get a yellow one but our local shops didn't have any yellow ones in stock so I settled for a white one.
Right off the bat I had glaring issues with this 920. It heated up a lot and the battery life is piss poor. The heat was especially worrisome whenever I used the phone while it was charging, to the point where the ceramic keys were actually too hot to touch. The 900 had absolutely no such overheating issues even when used while on charge and the one and only Nokia that ever got "warm" on me was my E7 and that was when I downloaded an app that over-wrote the screen brightness and I set it to full and watched videos, then the screen would get warm. This wasn't warm, it was HOT and the first phone ever to do so on me. It was a major concern.
Right around this time my partner had an accident with his Lumia 800. He set it on a desk and the desk had some undried super glue on it so it stuck to the phone (his desk, so it was his clumsiness). I managed to get the super glue off using nail polish remover and a lot of scrubbing but in the process I accidentally scratched the "Gorilla Glass" (the glue was on the back of the phone so I had to scrub it off with the screen facing down on the desk). So the screen had a very tiny scratch on it.
The next day I decided to go back to the store I purchased my 920 from and see if they could initiate an exchange or a repair for it. Unfortunately for me, I had already factory reset the 920 prior to bringing it back so when the storeperson tried to replicate the heating issue I experienced, there weren't very many apps on the phone that would make it heat up. Simply going through the menus and browsing did make the phone warm though so they sent it to Nokia for "assessment". So they told me that Nokia might fix it and send it back to me, or give them the OK to hand me a replacement off the shelf, or simply turn around and say that it's normal behavior and that the phone simply operates that hot (I should hear from them in a few days and if it turns out this is normal behavior I'm getting myself an iPhone5).
Anyway, due to some complications the store wasn't able to provide me with a loan phone. Not having foreseen this problem, I had already gotten rid of my old cyan 900. Instead of going without a phone for a week or 2 my partner instead decided to just get himself a new phone and let me use his (now somewhat superficially flawed) Lumia 800 until I get my 920 back. He decided to go with the iPhone5 this time around, the first time he'd use a non-Nokia phone in the 9 years we've been together. Still having faith in Nokia and being sure that I was unlucky and got a defective unit, I tried swaying him to go for the 920 like I did, but seeing as he favored smaller phones (Nokia N8, Lumia 800) I had little chance of succeeding. So off we drove to the next town over to get an iPhone since there were no retailers nearby that sold them outright.
On our way out from the iPhone purchase I spotted a yellow Lumia 920 display unit and was quick to ask the salesperson if they had any in stock. They had ONE. This was the first and only yellow unit I've come across and I've read threads about how difficult it is to find one. A testament to my faith in Nokia, and convinced that I was unlucky and got a lemon with the white one, I purchased this yellow 920 right then and there. I figured it was a sign, my white one sucked and here's my second chance to get the perfect 920, it's gonna be yellow and issue-free! Boy was I wrong...
Granted this yellow one has been easier to live with, and worried me less than the white one but it's got its own set of issues. The deliberate design "gap" between the polycarb body and the screen is more pronounced on this yellow unit than my white one, and has started gathering dust (I used a post-it note to clear them out). I'm worried that later on the dust will get under the screen. This one also has some "give" on the sides of the screen meaning the screen isn't completely flush against the body and when pressing down hard on it I hear some very low "creaks and clicks" on the device. It also suffers from random reboots much more often than the overheating white one. Whereas after using the white one for about a week I only encountered one random reboot, this yellow one reboots once or twice each day since I've had it.
So there you go, on the one had I have a white 920 with excellent build quality expected of Nokia's standards, but overheats and has a huge battery drain whenever in use. And on the other I have a gorgeous yellow 920 with dust-gathering gaps, creaky clicky screen and rebooting problem. And still relatively poor battery life especially compared to my partner's new iPhone 5, which lasts him about 3-4 days on a single charge (he's a light user, mostly just calls/texts/photos). I'm yet to make my battery last 2 full days no matter how "lightly" I use it, even on the yellow unit which has slightly better battery performance. No reboots on the iPhone either, but instead you're forced to deal the nightmare that is iTunes and iOS with its lack of at-a-glance information support (ie. Live Tiles or Widgets).
Either way, once Nokia gets back to me, depending on their response I might try my luck with a third Lumia 920, or choose between an iPhone 5 or a Galaxy S3. If you've read this far my question to you is:
Do you have an issue-free Lumia 920? And if you do, how many 920's did you go through before you got lucky? I've been reading about people who are on their third or fourth replacement 920's so this doesn't seem to be uncommon. And if it is a large-scale issue then I think we should inform Nokia one way or another.
When I look at the Lumia 920 forums, most of the threads are about people having issues with their phones, I took a look at other handset forums and it's not like this. It seems like people are seeking out these forums not to share their excitement about the phone, but instead to seek help with issues they're experiencing with it, which to me is saddening. And honestly, I'm not proud to start another one of those threads but I am simply devastated by my recent experience with Nokia and the amount of money I've sunk into trying to find the "perfect" 920 and still not getting it in the end. I just wanna know how many people out there have issue-free 920's and if that number is higher than that of people who have issues with theirs. Because frankly, to me it seems that there are more people that have one issue or another (or several) with their 920's and if that's the case then there's something seriously wrong with Nokia's recent manufacturing process and quality control management that ought to be brought to light, for the the good of Nokia and their customers.
TLDR: Do you have an issue-free Lumia 920? And if you do, how many 920's did you go through before you got lucky?
I've only used Nokias my whole life. For the last 13 years since I was 16, from the 3210 to my now current (2) Nokia Lumia 920's. I've never had any serious problems with my Nokias, not until recently. I'm a brand loyalist and I never had any reason to switch from Nokia. Sure the occasional random reboots happened with my Nokia E7, but being a smartphone it never bothered me. My partner's N8 battery started failing after a year + a few months of use which isn't so bad considering it was issue-free during all that time.
When that happened we decided to get new phones. The 920 had just been released but opting to go the cheap route, he got a Lumia 800 and me the 900. For the most part I loved my cyan 900. It had good battery, never heated up, barely EVER got warm at all, was rock solid to the feel like a freaking brick. The only issues I had with it was random reboots about once a day or 2, didn't bother me at all because it booted up very fast and it never happened while I was actually doing something, mostly when I'm just looking at the homescreen. That and the fact that the chrome strip on the back was very prone to scuffing. I only used it a month and the chrome strip looked battered. I've never used any sort of protection on my phones before and honestly the rest of the 900 looked flawless except for that strip.
Fast forward a month with my cyan 900, my first windows phone, and I've been reading all this stuff about WP8. Increased capabilities, better support for a wider range of functions and what not. Now I did read up a bit about how WP7 devices will not be compatible with WP8 and apps specifically developed using the Windows 8 kernel. I just naturally assumed that since WP8 devices will be backwards compatible with WP7 devices that developers would just naturally choose to make apps compatible with both versions of WP. So I was wrong. I was missing out on a lot of new and great apps coming out for WP8 that I simply can't get on my 900, in addition to the new start screen. Microsoft really bent WP7 users over and stuck it to them with this honestly. I never blamed Nokia, it's not like they're in control of what goes on with WP development.
Anyway, I got annoyed and antsy and decided to buy a Lumia 920, a month after getting my 900. We always purchase our phones outright and never get locked down to any contract because 1) We're on a GREAT legacy plan that is so cheap and gives so much credit and 2) We tend to change phones before a 24-month contract would be up. So this was an extravagant purchase for sure. Despite great disapproval from my partner I decided to purchase a 920 even though it didn't come in cyan which is my preferred color (we get the grey in Australia instead, but it's super rare). I initially wanted to get a yellow one but our local shops didn't have any yellow ones in stock so I settled for a white one.
Right off the bat I had glaring issues with this 920. It heated up a lot and the battery life is piss poor. The heat was especially worrisome whenever I used the phone while it was charging, to the point where the ceramic keys were actually too hot to touch. The 900 had absolutely no such overheating issues even when used while on charge and the one and only Nokia that ever got "warm" on me was my E7 and that was when I downloaded an app that over-wrote the screen brightness and I set it to full and watched videos, then the screen would get warm. This wasn't warm, it was HOT and the first phone ever to do so on me. It was a major concern.
Right around this time my partner had an accident with his Lumia 800. He set it on a desk and the desk had some undried super glue on it so it stuck to the phone (his desk, so it was his clumsiness). I managed to get the super glue off using nail polish remover and a lot of scrubbing but in the process I accidentally scratched the "Gorilla Glass" (the glue was on the back of the phone so I had to scrub it off with the screen facing down on the desk). So the screen had a very tiny scratch on it.
The next day I decided to go back to the store I purchased my 920 from and see if they could initiate an exchange or a repair for it. Unfortunately for me, I had already factory reset the 920 prior to bringing it back so when the storeperson tried to replicate the heating issue I experienced, there weren't very many apps on the phone that would make it heat up. Simply going through the menus and browsing did make the phone warm though so they sent it to Nokia for "assessment". So they told me that Nokia might fix it and send it back to me, or give them the OK to hand me a replacement off the shelf, or simply turn around and say that it's normal behavior and that the phone simply operates that hot (I should hear from them in a few days and if it turns out this is normal behavior I'm getting myself an iPhone5).
Anyway, due to some complications the store wasn't able to provide me with a loan phone. Not having foreseen this problem, I had already gotten rid of my old cyan 900. Instead of going without a phone for a week or 2 my partner instead decided to just get himself a new phone and let me use his (now somewhat superficially flawed) Lumia 800 until I get my 920 back. He decided to go with the iPhone5 this time around, the first time he'd use a non-Nokia phone in the 9 years we've been together. Still having faith in Nokia and being sure that I was unlucky and got a defective unit, I tried swaying him to go for the 920 like I did, but seeing as he favored smaller phones (Nokia N8, Lumia 800) I had little chance of succeeding. So off we drove to the next town over to get an iPhone since there were no retailers nearby that sold them outright.
On our way out from the iPhone purchase I spotted a yellow Lumia 920 display unit and was quick to ask the salesperson if they had any in stock. They had ONE. This was the first and only yellow unit I've come across and I've read threads about how difficult it is to find one. A testament to my faith in Nokia, and convinced that I was unlucky and got a lemon with the white one, I purchased this yellow 920 right then and there. I figured it was a sign, my white one sucked and here's my second chance to get the perfect 920, it's gonna be yellow and issue-free! Boy was I wrong...
Granted this yellow one has been easier to live with, and worried me less than the white one but it's got its own set of issues. The deliberate design "gap" between the polycarb body and the screen is more pronounced on this yellow unit than my white one, and has started gathering dust (I used a post-it note to clear them out). I'm worried that later on the dust will get under the screen. This one also has some "give" on the sides of the screen meaning the screen isn't completely flush against the body and when pressing down hard on it I hear some very low "creaks and clicks" on the device. It also suffers from random reboots much more often than the overheating white one. Whereas after using the white one for about a week I only encountered one random reboot, this yellow one reboots once or twice each day since I've had it.
So there you go, on the one had I have a white 920 with excellent build quality expected of Nokia's standards, but overheats and has a huge battery drain whenever in use. And on the other I have a gorgeous yellow 920 with dust-gathering gaps, creaky clicky screen and rebooting problem. And still relatively poor battery life especially compared to my partner's new iPhone 5, which lasts him about 3-4 days on a single charge (he's a light user, mostly just calls/texts/photos). I'm yet to make my battery last 2 full days no matter how "lightly" I use it, even on the yellow unit which has slightly better battery performance. No reboots on the iPhone either, but instead you're forced to deal the nightmare that is iTunes and iOS with its lack of at-a-glance information support (ie. Live Tiles or Widgets).
Either way, once Nokia gets back to me, depending on their response I might try my luck with a third Lumia 920, or choose between an iPhone 5 or a Galaxy S3. If you've read this far my question to you is:
Do you have an issue-free Lumia 920? And if you do, how many 920's did you go through before you got lucky? I've been reading about people who are on their third or fourth replacement 920's so this doesn't seem to be uncommon. And if it is a large-scale issue then I think we should inform Nokia one way or another.
When I look at the Lumia 920 forums, most of the threads are about people having issues with their phones, I took a look at other handset forums and it's not like this. It seems like people are seeking out these forums not to share their excitement about the phone, but instead to seek help with issues they're experiencing with it, which to me is saddening. And honestly, I'm not proud to start another one of those threads but I am simply devastated by my recent experience with Nokia and the amount of money I've sunk into trying to find the "perfect" 920 and still not getting it in the end. I just wanna know how many people out there have issue-free 920's and if that number is higher than that of people who have issues with theirs. Because frankly, to me it seems that there are more people that have one issue or another (or several) with their 920's and if that's the case then there's something seriously wrong with Nokia's recent manufacturing process and quality control management that ought to be brought to light, for the the good of Nokia and their customers.
TLDR: Do you have an issue-free Lumia 920? And if you do, how many 920's did you go through before you got lucky?
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram