I returned my Lumia 920 today, and I wanted to tell the world why because it was for a good many reasons completely different than any you would read from reviews on lame sites like Gizmodo, The Verge, or even Engadget.
I went to a Lumia from an iphone 4S. After weeks of scowering all the afore-mentioned tech blogs for the latest info on all the awesome new things microsoft is doing, I was just waiting for my 2 YR contract to expire (a couple days ago) so I could pick one up (and man, hurry on up Surface Pro before other makers beat you at your own game). I knew from the start I was going to get a 920 over an 8X or any of those other ones on different characters, and I must say the last few days of using it havent been completely negative ...its amazing screen, super snappy UI, the Nokia apps, and not to mention all the screen real estate you get coming from a little iphone, it really helped un-cross my eyes and made me super happy! But all in all let me get to what contributed to my frustrations until it was just time to give up on it (because, this is supposed to be a negative thread, after all XD)
Main reason for the sending it back: its reception was God awful. When it worked it worked amazingly, and everyone I talked to said I clearly did sound better than when I used my 4S, but how often it would jump from 5 bars to 1 bar to no reception at all in a friggin city (problems persisted in both Colorado Springs, and Denver, as well as a small mountain I visit every weekend called Woodland Park, where my 4S would have 3-5 bars, the 920 was completely without reception all weekend, and that was frustrating to the point of being the deal-breaker) was absolutely not allowed in the year 2012.
reason #2: Even if my phone was kind of defected, shame on Nokia for having so many defects (reading about all the battery problems and such, mine didnt drain that fast, but it definitely didnt last as long as the 4S, which is also unacceptable for such a large phone/chassis to not have a great battery) and such a crappy device launch. I really did wait forever to get a blue phone, but after 2 weeks with no shipping status, cancelled my order when I found out a local store had a red one, and decided I guess i could go with the red. It's like, for God's sake phone company, Y U NO TAKE MY MONIES NAOW?!
building up my anticipation so much and letting me down in such a short time in several of the areas Im about to address was kind of a "strike 2!" of it's own.
reason #3: coming from an iphone, there were a couple things, some purely aesthetic and some not, that I noticed about the phone that couldnt be changed and were completely ridiculous:
NOT to have accurate battery percentage displayed OVER the battery on the top of the screen, and having to go into settings to know exactly the amount of battery I had? Stupid. the meter changed in increments of like 20%. like, wtf dude
Also it never told me when it was switching between EDGE and 3G and LTE. Why why why Nokia?
Reason #4: all my iPhone friends (aka all of my friends. yes, I hate that as much as you do.) use imessage, so I had to ask them to turn it off so their texts would go to my SIM card and not to my now dead 4S sitting there on the counter? 1st world problems.
Reason #5: When I had my 4S, I used it for about 3 things: imessaging 4 people at once (my best friends in a "group text". throughout the course of a day we 4 probably contribute to half of the data used by the whole entire world in a day (joke(parenthesis-ception))), Facebook, and GPS navigation (music too, but though the Zune thing was new and different, I liked it more than boring old itunes)
every time someone sent a picture message (probably about 100 of those a day, .gifs and stuff) it wouldnt just pop up. It came in as media message and I had to tap to download it? a minor thing, agreed, but still, just receiving a funny picture is way funnier than receiving a message, downloading whatever, and then laughing at it.
Facebook on windows phone 8? No guys, just no. Not yet anyways. I do wish WP8 all the luck in the world.
and finally the GPS wasnt as accurate as the google maps on my 4S (I have updated my iphones software cause I dont trust in Apples maps yet) i was just using the native app. I dont like 3rd party apps for basic things like GPS, messaging, and being able to change the theme of your phone. Thats a large reason I thought I could make the switch to WP8, cause the loudest scream you ever heard was "but there are just no AAHHHPPPSSS!" well that didnt bother me. Other than not having Mint, or iMapMyRun, it just didnt bother me. But back on track to the GPS thing, living in CO here I hike 14ers (big mountains) every/ every other weekend, and have up to this point, depended on the GPS on my 4S and been just fine. the 920, whenever i told it to go to my location, always gave me a 50-ish foot radius of uncertainty as to where I was. Bad dog, 920. For all it knew, I could have been at the bottom of that crevasse over there. Ouch.
Reason #6? 8? I dont care anymore...
there were 3 settings for screen brightness. you guessed it. low, medium, and high. Low was still way too bright to even think about getting a sneak peak in a movie theatre and not being an *******, and when Im in bed in a pitch black room? no, I do not want to fry my pupils (however gorgeous your screen might actually be because dang, it was gorgeous). just let me choose my own damn brightness. give me a birhgtness-freakin-scroll bar like the 4S. ahhh, 4S, why do you have to be so subpar, yet do the little things; the things I enjoy most, so well?
Another Reason: There was no notepad equivalent on WP8? or did I just miss it? Im sure there was an app for one. an additional app, but why was there no notepad?
Another Reason: Was really hoping to get those near-DSRL shots on the top of all the mountains I climb, but low and behold, that camera was no better than my 4S. It did have a bigger screen and a much larger picture to take so it was probably more detailed, but unless Im pulling that up on a computer to expand and cry about the pixels I can now see? no better. The highly acclaimed night photos? I whipped out my new 920 over a lookout off a trail I did last night, ready to show off my first night picture to my friends with whom i was hiking, and exclaim how ground breaking this mobile device was!!....
The night photos were no better than on my 4S.
And yes, I DID change the setting to "nightmode".
Well ****.
I think there are some things I am forgetting, but to round it all up, WP8 DOES have potential to be the best for me personally. It just needs to get some stuff together. Some stuff like ALL of the couple things I mentioned above. I hope in time it will. But until then I guess I'm stuck with iOS, and I say that like a kid with his hands in his pockets kicking a stone. I just dont like Android. (used it for a year about 2 years ago and just dont like the look of it. it was an efficient OS, but I just didnt like the look. Shoot me.) The tiles for WP8 are cool though. the live "people" tile doesnt really do anything... I was expecting to be able to click on indiviual people in the tile as they popped up to see what they were up to, but it just opens the peoples thing to the main screen and I have to find the person. so is it purely cosmetic? Its nice but I'll take my battery life over a "feature" like that. (but the live tile for the "photo" tile does make perfect sense to me. kind of like one of those usb picture frames). OK, I'm gonna end abruptly because this is just taking too long to write. I could blabber on for hours. Glad this evening was completely open...
Oh, and to all those stupid reviewers who just said all the same stuff about WP8, I might as well say it here while I'm talking about this ridiculous stuff in the first place:
If you discredit the 920 because it is heavy, YOU ARE ******ED. if its not your personal taste, fine. But since when were reviews on major tech blogs just about that reviewers personal taste? The phones weight was far less than I was expecting after reading all that pathetic BS. Besides, with a case on my 4S (i keep it in a case to maintain resale value when I change) they weigh the same, yet the lumia feels lighter because it is spread out over more surface area. imagine walking about with a 1 pound weight the size of a small awkward ball that bounced around in your big pockets (I wear regular jeans. i am not a hipster and I am not a transy) or wearing a 1 pound object that fitted ergonomically with the curvature of your leg. Which object is going to be more of a nuisance to carry around? Analogy over.
If you discredit the 920 because of the lack of apps. Microsoft is late to the mobile game it is true, but they ARE JUST NOW STARTING. they are off to an extremely strong start if you ask me. especially in comparison to droid or apple, even though it is hard to compare that, since apple kind of didnt really have any extremely well-grounded mobile competitors when it was just starting off.
if you discredit the 920 because its cheap vibrating noise, yours is a defect. the speakers and vibrator and mic were all better on my 920 than on my 4S. (but again, why the inconsistent build of phones, Nokia?)
if you discredit the 920 because of the screen, you are blind.
if you discredit the 920 because of the size, you are-well, I guess thats the only thing you got me on, here. yes the phone is big, but I loved it in my large rock-climbing hands. absolutely loved it. I was super skeptical about switching to such a manly phone, because I dont like wallets and 4S's and things in my pockets as is, but the form factor was just so good it made it work. I wish my 4S was that size now. (but no. all you teenage girls with that stupid galaxy note 2 phone-tablet-home-office-freaking-super-computer device are still dumb and your phone is still way too big. get one of those irrelevant 7" ipad minis or something, and just get yourself a normal phone. lawd. Oh and please dont take pictures with those beasts. or watch movies in portrait mode. lawd.)
this being said, I'm leaving. an hour and a half of my time now gone, I'm not expecting or hoping for anyone to read such a long post, but if you do I hope you get as much of life's fulfillment out of it as I did in writing it.
And to all those who are still thinking about a 920, ask yourself: "Do I not care about my toys as much as that stupid guy that wrote this long post? Do all his complaints not apply to me? Do I want an awesome phone that tries to do everything 80% awesome instead of anything 100% awesome, but is still awesome? Do I want a phone that I can drop and, rather, break the earth instead of the phone??"
If answered yes to any/all of those, then buy this phone. Good luck getting the color you want, because nokia doesnt have any in stock (though its been a few weeks so that should soon change) and good luck on it not having either its antenna or its battery acting screwy.
But maybe with some good luck, you just scored yourself the smartphone that does everything differently. Some things worse, some things better, but all things differently. And that alone makes you a pretty cool dude, I guess.
I went to a Lumia from an iphone 4S. After weeks of scowering all the afore-mentioned tech blogs for the latest info on all the awesome new things microsoft is doing, I was just waiting for my 2 YR contract to expire (a couple days ago) so I could pick one up (and man, hurry on up Surface Pro before other makers beat you at your own game). I knew from the start I was going to get a 920 over an 8X or any of those other ones on different characters, and I must say the last few days of using it havent been completely negative ...its amazing screen, super snappy UI, the Nokia apps, and not to mention all the screen real estate you get coming from a little iphone, it really helped un-cross my eyes and made me super happy! But all in all let me get to what contributed to my frustrations until it was just time to give up on it (because, this is supposed to be a negative thread, after all XD)
Main reason for the sending it back: its reception was God awful. When it worked it worked amazingly, and everyone I talked to said I clearly did sound better than when I used my 4S, but how often it would jump from 5 bars to 1 bar to no reception at all in a friggin city (problems persisted in both Colorado Springs, and Denver, as well as a small mountain I visit every weekend called Woodland Park, where my 4S would have 3-5 bars, the 920 was completely without reception all weekend, and that was frustrating to the point of being the deal-breaker) was absolutely not allowed in the year 2012.
reason #2: Even if my phone was kind of defected, shame on Nokia for having so many defects (reading about all the battery problems and such, mine didnt drain that fast, but it definitely didnt last as long as the 4S, which is also unacceptable for such a large phone/chassis to not have a great battery) and such a crappy device launch. I really did wait forever to get a blue phone, but after 2 weeks with no shipping status, cancelled my order when I found out a local store had a red one, and decided I guess i could go with the red. It's like, for God's sake phone company, Y U NO TAKE MY MONIES NAOW?!
building up my anticipation so much and letting me down in such a short time in several of the areas Im about to address was kind of a "strike 2!" of it's own.
reason #3: coming from an iphone, there were a couple things, some purely aesthetic and some not, that I noticed about the phone that couldnt be changed and were completely ridiculous:
NOT to have accurate battery percentage displayed OVER the battery on the top of the screen, and having to go into settings to know exactly the amount of battery I had? Stupid. the meter changed in increments of like 20%. like, wtf dude
Also it never told me when it was switching between EDGE and 3G and LTE. Why why why Nokia?
Reason #4: all my iPhone friends (aka all of my friends. yes, I hate that as much as you do.) use imessage, so I had to ask them to turn it off so their texts would go to my SIM card and not to my now dead 4S sitting there on the counter? 1st world problems.
Reason #5: When I had my 4S, I used it for about 3 things: imessaging 4 people at once (my best friends in a "group text". throughout the course of a day we 4 probably contribute to half of the data used by the whole entire world in a day (joke(parenthesis-ception))), Facebook, and GPS navigation (music too, but though the Zune thing was new and different, I liked it more than boring old itunes)
every time someone sent a picture message (probably about 100 of those a day, .gifs and stuff) it wouldnt just pop up. It came in as media message and I had to tap to download it? a minor thing, agreed, but still, just receiving a funny picture is way funnier than receiving a message, downloading whatever, and then laughing at it.
Facebook on windows phone 8? No guys, just no. Not yet anyways. I do wish WP8 all the luck in the world.
and finally the GPS wasnt as accurate as the google maps on my 4S (I have updated my iphones software cause I dont trust in Apples maps yet) i was just using the native app. I dont like 3rd party apps for basic things like GPS, messaging, and being able to change the theme of your phone. Thats a large reason I thought I could make the switch to WP8, cause the loudest scream you ever heard was "but there are just no AAHHHPPPSSS!" well that didnt bother me. Other than not having Mint, or iMapMyRun, it just didnt bother me. But back on track to the GPS thing, living in CO here I hike 14ers (big mountains) every/ every other weekend, and have up to this point, depended on the GPS on my 4S and been just fine. the 920, whenever i told it to go to my location, always gave me a 50-ish foot radius of uncertainty as to where I was. Bad dog, 920. For all it knew, I could have been at the bottom of that crevasse over there. Ouch.
Reason #6? 8? I dont care anymore...
there were 3 settings for screen brightness. you guessed it. low, medium, and high. Low was still way too bright to even think about getting a sneak peak in a movie theatre and not being an *******, and when Im in bed in a pitch black room? no, I do not want to fry my pupils (however gorgeous your screen might actually be because dang, it was gorgeous). just let me choose my own damn brightness. give me a birhgtness-freakin-scroll bar like the 4S. ahhh, 4S, why do you have to be so subpar, yet do the little things; the things I enjoy most, so well?
Another Reason: There was no notepad equivalent on WP8? or did I just miss it? Im sure there was an app for one. an additional app, but why was there no notepad?
Another Reason: Was really hoping to get those near-DSRL shots on the top of all the mountains I climb, but low and behold, that camera was no better than my 4S. It did have a bigger screen and a much larger picture to take so it was probably more detailed, but unless Im pulling that up on a computer to expand and cry about the pixels I can now see? no better. The highly acclaimed night photos? I whipped out my new 920 over a lookout off a trail I did last night, ready to show off my first night picture to my friends with whom i was hiking, and exclaim how ground breaking this mobile device was!!....
The night photos were no better than on my 4S.
And yes, I DID change the setting to "nightmode".
Well ****.
I think there are some things I am forgetting, but to round it all up, WP8 DOES have potential to be the best for me personally. It just needs to get some stuff together. Some stuff like ALL of the couple things I mentioned above. I hope in time it will. But until then I guess I'm stuck with iOS, and I say that like a kid with his hands in his pockets kicking a stone. I just dont like Android. (used it for a year about 2 years ago and just dont like the look of it. it was an efficient OS, but I just didnt like the look. Shoot me.) The tiles for WP8 are cool though. the live "people" tile doesnt really do anything... I was expecting to be able to click on indiviual people in the tile as they popped up to see what they were up to, but it just opens the peoples thing to the main screen and I have to find the person. so is it purely cosmetic? Its nice but I'll take my battery life over a "feature" like that. (but the live tile for the "photo" tile does make perfect sense to me. kind of like one of those usb picture frames). OK, I'm gonna end abruptly because this is just taking too long to write. I could blabber on for hours. Glad this evening was completely open...
Oh, and to all those stupid reviewers who just said all the same stuff about WP8, I might as well say it here while I'm talking about this ridiculous stuff in the first place:
If you discredit the 920 because it is heavy, YOU ARE ******ED. if its not your personal taste, fine. But since when were reviews on major tech blogs just about that reviewers personal taste? The phones weight was far less than I was expecting after reading all that pathetic BS. Besides, with a case on my 4S (i keep it in a case to maintain resale value when I change) they weigh the same, yet the lumia feels lighter because it is spread out over more surface area. imagine walking about with a 1 pound weight the size of a small awkward ball that bounced around in your big pockets (I wear regular jeans. i am not a hipster and I am not a transy) or wearing a 1 pound object that fitted ergonomically with the curvature of your leg. Which object is going to be more of a nuisance to carry around? Analogy over.
If you discredit the 920 because of the lack of apps. Microsoft is late to the mobile game it is true, but they ARE JUST NOW STARTING. they are off to an extremely strong start if you ask me. especially in comparison to droid or apple, even though it is hard to compare that, since apple kind of didnt really have any extremely well-grounded mobile competitors when it was just starting off.
if you discredit the 920 because its cheap vibrating noise, yours is a defect. the speakers and vibrator and mic were all better on my 920 than on my 4S. (but again, why the inconsistent build of phones, Nokia?)
if you discredit the 920 because of the screen, you are blind.
if you discredit the 920 because of the size, you are-well, I guess thats the only thing you got me on, here. yes the phone is big, but I loved it in my large rock-climbing hands. absolutely loved it. I was super skeptical about switching to such a manly phone, because I dont like wallets and 4S's and things in my pockets as is, but the form factor was just so good it made it work. I wish my 4S was that size now. (but no. all you teenage girls with that stupid galaxy note 2 phone-tablet-home-office-freaking-super-computer device are still dumb and your phone is still way too big. get one of those irrelevant 7" ipad minis or something, and just get yourself a normal phone. lawd. Oh and please dont take pictures with those beasts. or watch movies in portrait mode. lawd.)
this being said, I'm leaving. an hour and a half of my time now gone, I'm not expecting or hoping for anyone to read such a long post, but if you do I hope you get as much of life's fulfillment out of it as I did in writing it.
And to all those who are still thinking about a 920, ask yourself: "Do I not care about my toys as much as that stupid guy that wrote this long post? Do all his complaints not apply to me? Do I want an awesome phone that tries to do everything 80% awesome instead of anything 100% awesome, but is still awesome? Do I want a phone that I can drop and, rather, break the earth instead of the phone??"
If answered yes to any/all of those, then buy this phone. Good luck getting the color you want, because nokia doesnt have any in stock (though its been a few weeks so that should soon change) and good luck on it not having either its antenna or its battery acting screwy.
But maybe with some good luck, you just scored yourself the smartphone that does everything differently. Some things worse, some things better, but all things differently. And that alone makes you a pretty cool dude, I guess.
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