Nexus 4 or Lumia 920/820?

[mikewp]

I have the Lumia 920 (got in unlocked and contract-free from Vodafone Germany) but will be returning it for the Nexus 4.

The Lumia's a great phone and I do like WP8 a lot. However:

- The price-tag: the 920 is insanely expensive here. I paid 750$ for it off-contract for it. While it's a great phone, it's not 750$ great.

- The weight: at first, I thought it bothered me a lot. Then I thought I could live with it. Now that I've used it for a couple of days, I've decided that I can't. I don't like phones that feel like a brick in the pocket of my jacket when I walk around

- and last but not least: I'm a Google Apps customer. I like my Google Search, I like my GMail and I really like Google+. I guess there's a reason why Google isn't releasing any of their stuff to WP8: to keep customers like me from running over to the competition.


I don't care about storage - heck, I could probably live with the 8gb version (but who's gonna buy that if you can get 16 for 50 bucks more) and I have absolutely no worries about it being made by LG.

I don't have a huge amount of stuff on my phone and I'm over 8GB of storage... Hate having to manage space and want the extra space to store a movie or 3 when I'm traveling on the airplane.

Hey as far as google search goes, have you ever tried the bingiton site that does comparisons? I use Google too... it's ingrained... But again, I wanted to try Bing, but psychologically, I felt the Google results were better. Until I tried the bingiton challenge. You do 5 searches and you choose the results you like better. Of course you can lie to make yourself feel better, but I honestly answered... and I really tried to do searches that I thought Google would do better, and Bing came out on top, barely for me..might even call it a draw. Still use Google though haha.

All the competition has been GREAT for us consumers. Both Google and Apple have done quite a bit to really push things forward these past few years. I also think that MS and Nokia has stepped it up as well and has created an integrated ecosystem that works really well. The apps will come.

 

[camstreet1]

Just a note to those wondering about "signing my life away" on contract. The situation in the UK is quite different to the US - here the phone has launched exclusively on the one and only LTE network, which has just launched, and has a monopoly on 4G until mid-next year. As a consequence, the plans are insanely expensive for the amount of data usage they offer (what's the point in having super-fast speeds if your data allowance is only 500 mb/1 gb?), and the top-up costs if you do use up your data allowance are ludicrous. EE's 3G subsidiaries are starting to offer the phone too, but also at very uncompetitive long-term prices, probably to try and angle people onto the 4G network (the tmobile rep told me as much on the phone).

So the situation is that if I get an EE contract, I'll be paying through the teeth, and in 6 months time 4G will get way more competitive as other players enter the market, but I'll be stuck paying extortionate prices for another year.

Adding insult to injury, you can't actually get an unlocked 920 in the UK, and no guarantee 3rd parties will be able to unlock it either. I'm heading to Oz in December for a few weeks and will need a local SIM card (my backup phones have systematically died over the last few weeks) - not knowing if I'll be able to do this is a real drag.

If the 920 was incontrovertably the best phone out there, maybe I'd still suck it up. But let's face it, all things considered it's a marginal call. The main bug-bear of US reviewers about the nexus 4 is the lack of LTE, but that isn't currently a problem in the UK as explained above, and won't be for a while. My previous phone was a galaxy s2 and android is great, if a bit stale compared to WP8. The price difference, however, is not marginal. And that makes Nokia's offering uncompetitive... in the UK.

 

[xbilly]

I agree.

Seems crazy that Nokia (and to an extent Microsoft) are prepared to throw away customers in an effort to help EE build their LTE network. They are hardly in a dominant market position. Even more aggravating is that US and other markets are getting better deals. Be interesting to see the take up of WP8 and Nokia products by the turn of the year.

Was prepared to bite the bullet to the extent of a 12 month ?51 p/w contract with ?49 920 but when EE decided they could eek out more cash out of WP8 and Nokia early adopters by jacking up the price, I bowed out.

Aye well, at least Google have stepped into the bridge.

 

[cgk]

So after using the nexus 4 for a few days (my other half got one), as much as I like the WP interface, do I like it at double the price? No.

I might string out my 800 for a bit longer but for my type of usage, but I can't see myself paying ?400+ for a phone when I get one with this spec at ?240 - when I then look at my phone plan, the TCP is about half and that money is more useful to me in my stock pot.
Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

 

[unstoppablekem]

They are both good, but I say go with the 920. You are in a WP forum, so...

 

[brmiller1976]

The trouble with the Nexus is Android rot... after several months of using the device, it will lag, stutter, crash and freeze on a regular basis. Even the latest versions of Android haven't banished the problem.