It seems as if several of us have purchased the RM-985 from eBay and have posting about it in various threads. I thought this would be a good place to consolidate all the information about it, especially in the future as (hopefully) the device is updated. So, jumping right in about my new RM-985 on AT&T...
1. There is no carrier branding on the exterior of the phone
2. It boots up with a Claro screen, so this is obviously destined for somewhere in Latin America
3. The device feels premium. I know it's plastic but feels like a classier type of plastic than my 920. I can't explain exactly why that is. It might the combination of the large screen and light weight. In any event, I realized how heavy the 920 was once I held this.
4. I have the same problems others have described, namely the lack of glance options and the Debian Red firmware with "Prototype-- not for sale" indicated on the screen. Hopefully the device will be updateable to production firmware in the near future.
5. I cannot find any evidence of an updated camera app. I have two: "Camera", which is the default MS camera; and "Nokia Camera", which is the same as we had on earlier Lumia devices. No Denim camera app as far as I can tell.
6. Performance seems snappy; I don't care about benchmarks so I don't run them. But in common tasks (launching apps, etc.), it seems plenty fast.
7. I am getting about 20 Mbps download speed on AT&T LTE (indicated by an "L" at the top). This is much faster than my 920, which was getting pretty pathetic speeds of around 3-5 Mbps. I don't know why the 920 was so slow; the speeds were checked back to back using the same SIM card, and multiple attempts were made. The 920 was just slow. Don't have an explanation for this, but I'm happy that everything seems to be working.
8. AT&T Internet Sharing worked out of the box with no need for any stupid keyboard tricks. Same with MMS.
9. My 920 had a weird bug where it didn't like my 5GHz WiFi router. It would lose internet connectivity after several minutes (even though it was still connected), forcing me to either disconnect/reconnect or switch to the cellular network. My 830 shows no evidence of this behavior (which makes me very happy).
10. The device seems to run much cooler than the 920. After ~20 minutes of internet surfing on the 920 it would be very hot to the touch; the 830 gets slightly warm but by no means hot.
11. Qi charging works like a champ
12. Kind of annoyed at the USB port on top; will make charging in the car difficult in my setup (but that's by no means a universal issue).
13. This is one of my favorite things: I took the SD card on which I store all of my music on my Surface Pro 2 (including DRM music that I download using Zune) and plugged it in to the 830-- it worked with absolutely no hiccups. All files (including DRM files) played with all metadata showing up. This is now officially the easiest way to transfer music from my computer to my phone.
14. The microSD and nano SIM cards are very hard to get out once they're in. I needed a SIM tray key to get the microSD out (and yes this was after clicking it out-- there's just no way to get a grip on it) and the nano SIM required a pair of needle nose pliers to remove. It seems way too difficult, maybe I'm doing something wrong?
15. The back cover is a little tedious to get off and is a little touchy getting back on. I had an old HTC HD7 with a removable back and it was much easier. Also, I notice that there is a little play in the cover near the camera; I can press down on it and it flexes slightly. Not a huge deal, and I'm going to get the orange back anyway which may or may not have the same issue.
16. The screen is nice, I can't tell that's it's only 720p. Then again I don't examine my screens with a magnifying glass. In normal operations it looks great.
17. I was worried about the sound getting muffled while laying the device flat since the exterior speaker is on the back; I shouldn't have. It's curved slightly at the bottom, where the speaker is, with the effect being that the sound bounces off the table and makes everything sound louder. Yes, it actually sounds louder while on a flat surface, which is kind of cool.
Ok, I think that covers everything that popped into my head in the first 2 hours of playing around with it. Feel free to contribute and/or ask questions!
EDIT: 18. There is no option to have the standard tile layout under "theme". By default, you get the three medium tile layout and you're stuck with it. I don't know if this is a function of the prototype firmware or not, but I feel like a 5" screen isn't quite big enough to pull this off. I'm sure it looks great on the 1520, but I'm not sold on it here
1. There is no carrier branding on the exterior of the phone
2. It boots up with a Claro screen, so this is obviously destined for somewhere in Latin America
3. The device feels premium. I know it's plastic but feels like a classier type of plastic than my 920. I can't explain exactly why that is. It might the combination of the large screen and light weight. In any event, I realized how heavy the 920 was once I held this.
4. I have the same problems others have described, namely the lack of glance options and the Debian Red firmware with "Prototype-- not for sale" indicated on the screen. Hopefully the device will be updateable to production firmware in the near future.
5. I cannot find any evidence of an updated camera app. I have two: "Camera", which is the default MS camera; and "Nokia Camera", which is the same as we had on earlier Lumia devices. No Denim camera app as far as I can tell.
6. Performance seems snappy; I don't care about benchmarks so I don't run them. But in common tasks (launching apps, etc.), it seems plenty fast.
7. I am getting about 20 Mbps download speed on AT&T LTE (indicated by an "L" at the top). This is much faster than my 920, which was getting pretty pathetic speeds of around 3-5 Mbps. I don't know why the 920 was so slow; the speeds were checked back to back using the same SIM card, and multiple attempts were made. The 920 was just slow. Don't have an explanation for this, but I'm happy that everything seems to be working.
8. AT&T Internet Sharing worked out of the box with no need for any stupid keyboard tricks. Same with MMS.
9. My 920 had a weird bug where it didn't like my 5GHz WiFi router. It would lose internet connectivity after several minutes (even though it was still connected), forcing me to either disconnect/reconnect or switch to the cellular network. My 830 shows no evidence of this behavior (which makes me very happy).
10. The device seems to run much cooler than the 920. After ~20 minutes of internet surfing on the 920 it would be very hot to the touch; the 830 gets slightly warm but by no means hot.
11. Qi charging works like a champ
12. Kind of annoyed at the USB port on top; will make charging in the car difficult in my setup (but that's by no means a universal issue).
13. This is one of my favorite things: I took the SD card on which I store all of my music on my Surface Pro 2 (including DRM music that I download using Zune) and plugged it in to the 830-- it worked with absolutely no hiccups. All files (including DRM files) played with all metadata showing up. This is now officially the easiest way to transfer music from my computer to my phone.
14. The microSD and nano SIM cards are very hard to get out once they're in. I needed a SIM tray key to get the microSD out (and yes this was after clicking it out-- there's just no way to get a grip on it) and the nano SIM required a pair of needle nose pliers to remove. It seems way too difficult, maybe I'm doing something wrong?
15. The back cover is a little tedious to get off and is a little touchy getting back on. I had an old HTC HD7 with a removable back and it was much easier. Also, I notice that there is a little play in the cover near the camera; I can press down on it and it flexes slightly. Not a huge deal, and I'm going to get the orange back anyway which may or may not have the same issue.
16. The screen is nice, I can't tell that's it's only 720p. Then again I don't examine my screens with a magnifying glass. In normal operations it looks great.
17. I was worried about the sound getting muffled while laying the device flat since the exterior speaker is on the back; I shouldn't have. It's curved slightly at the bottom, where the speaker is, with the effect being that the sound bounces off the table and makes everything sound louder. Yes, it actually sounds louder while on a flat surface, which is kind of cool.
Ok, I think that covers everything that popped into my head in the first 2 hours of playing around with it. Feel free to contribute and/or ask questions!
EDIT: 18. There is no option to have the standard tile layout under "theme". By default, you get the three medium tile layout and you're stuck with it. I don't know if this is a function of the prototype firmware or not, but I feel like a 5" screen isn't quite big enough to pull this off. I'm sure it looks great on the 1520, but I'm not sold on it here
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