First off, let me start by saying hi...I've been following the discussions around WPCentral quite closely over the past few months because I've wanted to get an idea as to what WP7 was actually like. You guys and your discussions here have been instrumental in my understanding.
Also, I'd like to take this moment to say that my experiences are purely anecdotal and purely my own, in case someone vehemently disagrees with me by saying "I tried out product X and didn't have those issues!"
My whole life I've always owned Nokia phones. That has meant years and years of Symbian. All the way from the Nokia 3210 to the Nokia N8 with such illustrious examples as the ill-fated N-gage and the beautiful E71 in between.
Nokia phones were and still are good at doing a few things. I strongly beleive that the N8 was the epitomy of symbian. It had the following strengths:
- a file system
- Could take a decent 12MP photograph
- Full HDMI out
- Mass Storage
- All audios and videos played (native codec support is extensive)
- Excellent Navigation.
- Full multitasking
- Very good batter life/call quality/signal reception/build quality (all being KEY elements!)
These things are important to me, especially that last bit! How the phone works as a communicator depends on how robust it is build quality and signal strength wise! I've just never really felt that the competiton, until very recently, has been really any good.
The past 5 years really saw fortunes turn for Nokia. Suddenly, it wasn't the leader anymore. It needed a comeback. It tried to push the N8 and Symbian 3 as an answer. That strategy, I think we can all agree, failed. Symbian's fate can now be summarised as:
Because while Symbian was good, it lacked usability. A symbian veteran like me could esily get around its limitations and enjoy it for what it really was- a really robust communication platform.
However, the AVKON UI became a bit too dated for the masses...lets face it. It froze up, the browser was god awful and really Symbian didn't have the coolest applications. It just didn't. The OVI store had a few gems mind you, however, it was a dissapointment. Even the applications Symbian did have were outclassed by their IOS and Android counterparts. One only has to look at Skype for Symbian to see where I'm coming from here. It worked fine...but...it really wasn't...enjoyable. It frustruated me. Oh, and no video chat.
So, enter Feb 2012 and a new CEO...and a big announcement. I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for Wp7. At first, I was pretty annoyed. I really thought they were going the Meego route. Ah well, I thought. Time to give the competition a serious glance. I hear this Apple company has been doing a pretty good job.
The iPhone 4 was not a choice because of its battery and singal strength issues. Not to mention iTunes...the bane of all music library organisers. The iPhone 4S fixes the signal strength issue...but, still iTunes.
I really wanted to like Android, I really did. However...even the highest of the highest end Android models were kinda...sorta...laggy. Samsung's build quality didn't exactly inspire confidence either. It never really has. Even before I bought the Lumia 900, I tried the Galaxy Nexus out. It lagged sometimes...not often, but sometimes. The screen was beautiful. The battery life, acceptable (1 day). The applications were...of dubious quality. Some good, some bad. I also didn't like the idea of having to mess around with custom ROM's in order to just get the stock android experience on the best hardware.
On the whole though, I wasn't thrilled with Android, and wasn't prepared to accept iOS and iTunes or Samsung and HTC (until very recently, HTC has been putting in some pretty terrible radios and cameras on their phones. This will probably change with their new One series push). All I heard my friend complaining about with his HTC Incredible was the bad signal reception and poor internal and external speakerphone quality. I tried out his phone. I agreed. Call quality was miles better on my N8.
So, with all that in mind, I bought the Lumia 900 on AT&T.
Firstly, wow, this is a really striking phone in blue. Its really striking. It also feels fantastic in my hand. It actually surpasses the N8 in build quality, which is saying a lot.
Call quality and signal have been excellent. Also, I loved the Nokia contacts transfer program which simply transferred all my contacts to Live (I've been a long time hotmail user, but never really for contacts). This combined with the fact that for 90% of my contacts, the phone linked the facebook account flawlessly (for the other 10%, I had to manually link) meant that set-up was really a breeze.
I also subscribed to spotify before. I moved over to Zune and Zune Pass. These are EXCELLENT. Zune Pass, just by itself is excellent. It is a miles better looking media program than Spotify or iTunes. Also, most importantly, it had everything I needed. I guess my taste in music is a good fit for Zune. And really, thats what matters about WP7 as a whole....it has everything I need. It has:
- Good call quality
-A decent Application selection (bank of america, netflix, a good weather app, etc)
- Native FB support. The amount of CONTENT I can view in a second stuns me as someone coming from Symbian. The People Hub is fantastic. Can view pictures, updates and all pretty easily. I guess I'm not a Facebook "power user." This is good enough for me. It works pretty elegantly too.
- Zune on phone is excellent. The syncing and metadata management process was eminently tolerable (thats the best that can be said about these things after all!)
- Lastly, and most importantly- Audio quality is excellent. Absolutlely excellent. I use my phone for music a LOT.
I love the Metro UI. The native messenger integration. The native FB chat integration and while gchat isn't natively there, there is a very good application for it. Though, I wish it was natively there. There is no technical reason it CAN'T be...its just a political decision, but I digress.
To all that say WP7 isn't upto par with Android and iOS, they are wrong. It most definately is upto par. People are complaining about the screen res? I'm sorry, the screen looks great to me. I know some out there will come at me with "but....but....the ppi is so low!" Ok. Fine. Whatever. I'm coming from Symbian (640x360!) which I thought was good enough. To all the people that aren't obsessing themselves with ppi, the screen is really pretty good. It pops nicely and colours look good on it. IE9 also does a good job especially on AT&T's 4G network. Really snappy.
I'm not a huge camera guy, so, the 900's camera (I've heard a whole bunch of mixed bag reviews) isn't really even a factor for me.
What I like most is that WP7 is not laggy at ALL (a similarity it shares with iOS). The Android people are right about one thing though. The only reason Android appears laggy is just because it doesn't treat UI rendering with the same priority that Wp7 and iOS do (or so I hear, someone can correct me). So while it is still REALLY fast, the UI appears to lag sometimes while iOS and WP7 kind of "mask" their inherent slowness by using pretty animations. Well...they're masking it pretty well then! Its working! This feels smoother than Android!
So there's my take on the Nokia Lumia 900 after years of Symbian. I think that it maintains Nokia's tradition of being an extremely robust communication and navigation (Nokia Transit is nothing short of AWESOME) platform. It has Nokia's dedication to build and radio quality while featuring some pretty excellent communication options (people hub, native messengers, whatsapp, etc).
Consider my faith restored.
Also, I'd like to take this moment to say that my experiences are purely anecdotal and purely my own, in case someone vehemently disagrees with me by saying "I tried out product X and didn't have those issues!"
My whole life I've always owned Nokia phones. That has meant years and years of Symbian. All the way from the Nokia 3210 to the Nokia N8 with such illustrious examples as the ill-fated N-gage and the beautiful E71 in between.
Nokia phones were and still are good at doing a few things. I strongly beleive that the N8 was the epitomy of symbian. It had the following strengths:
- a file system
- Could take a decent 12MP photograph
- Full HDMI out
- Mass Storage
- All audios and videos played (native codec support is extensive)
- Excellent Navigation.
- Full multitasking
- Very good batter life/call quality/signal reception/build quality (all being KEY elements!)
These things are important to me, especially that last bit! How the phone works as a communicator depends on how robust it is build quality and signal strength wise! I've just never really felt that the competiton, until very recently, has been really any good.
The past 5 years really saw fortunes turn for Nokia. Suddenly, it wasn't the leader anymore. It needed a comeback. It tried to push the N8 and Symbian 3 as an answer. That strategy, I think we can all agree, failed. Symbian's fate can now be summarised as:
"The King is dead. Long live the King."
Because while Symbian was good, it lacked usability. A symbian veteran like me could esily get around its limitations and enjoy it for what it really was- a really robust communication platform.
However, the AVKON UI became a bit too dated for the masses...lets face it. It froze up, the browser was god awful and really Symbian didn't have the coolest applications. It just didn't. The OVI store had a few gems mind you, however, it was a dissapointment. Even the applications Symbian did have were outclassed by their IOS and Android counterparts. One only has to look at Skype for Symbian to see where I'm coming from here. It worked fine...but...it really wasn't...enjoyable. It frustruated me. Oh, and no video chat.
So, enter Feb 2012 and a new CEO...and a big announcement. I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for Wp7. At first, I was pretty annoyed. I really thought they were going the Meego route. Ah well, I thought. Time to give the competition a serious glance. I hear this Apple company has been doing a pretty good job.
The iPhone 4 was not a choice because of its battery and singal strength issues. Not to mention iTunes...the bane of all music library organisers. The iPhone 4S fixes the signal strength issue...but, still iTunes.
I really wanted to like Android, I really did. However...even the highest of the highest end Android models were kinda...sorta...laggy. Samsung's build quality didn't exactly inspire confidence either. It never really has. Even before I bought the Lumia 900, I tried the Galaxy Nexus out. It lagged sometimes...not often, but sometimes. The screen was beautiful. The battery life, acceptable (1 day). The applications were...of dubious quality. Some good, some bad. I also didn't like the idea of having to mess around with custom ROM's in order to just get the stock android experience on the best hardware.
On the whole though, I wasn't thrilled with Android, and wasn't prepared to accept iOS and iTunes or Samsung and HTC (until very recently, HTC has been putting in some pretty terrible radios and cameras on their phones. This will probably change with their new One series push). All I heard my friend complaining about with his HTC Incredible was the bad signal reception and poor internal and external speakerphone quality. I tried out his phone. I agreed. Call quality was miles better on my N8.
So, with all that in mind, I bought the Lumia 900 on AT&T.
Firstly, wow, this is a really striking phone in blue. Its really striking. It also feels fantastic in my hand. It actually surpasses the N8 in build quality, which is saying a lot.
Call quality and signal have been excellent. Also, I loved the Nokia contacts transfer program which simply transferred all my contacts to Live (I've been a long time hotmail user, but never really for contacts). This combined with the fact that for 90% of my contacts, the phone linked the facebook account flawlessly (for the other 10%, I had to manually link) meant that set-up was really a breeze.
I also subscribed to spotify before. I moved over to Zune and Zune Pass. These are EXCELLENT. Zune Pass, just by itself is excellent. It is a miles better looking media program than Spotify or iTunes. Also, most importantly, it had everything I needed. I guess my taste in music is a good fit for Zune. And really, thats what matters about WP7 as a whole....it has everything I need. It has:
- Good call quality
-A decent Application selection (bank of america, netflix, a good weather app, etc)
- Native FB support. The amount of CONTENT I can view in a second stuns me as someone coming from Symbian. The People Hub is fantastic. Can view pictures, updates and all pretty easily. I guess I'm not a Facebook "power user." This is good enough for me. It works pretty elegantly too.
- Zune on phone is excellent. The syncing and metadata management process was eminently tolerable (thats the best that can be said about these things after all!)
- Lastly, and most importantly- Audio quality is excellent. Absolutlely excellent. I use my phone for music a LOT.
I love the Metro UI. The native messenger integration. The native FB chat integration and while gchat isn't natively there, there is a very good application for it. Though, I wish it was natively there. There is no technical reason it CAN'T be...its just a political decision, but I digress.
To all that say WP7 isn't upto par with Android and iOS, they are wrong. It most definately is upto par. People are complaining about the screen res? I'm sorry, the screen looks great to me. I know some out there will come at me with "but....but....the ppi is so low!" Ok. Fine. Whatever. I'm coming from Symbian (640x360!) which I thought was good enough. To all the people that aren't obsessing themselves with ppi, the screen is really pretty good. It pops nicely and colours look good on it. IE9 also does a good job especially on AT&T's 4G network. Really snappy.
I'm not a huge camera guy, so, the 900's camera (I've heard a whole bunch of mixed bag reviews) isn't really even a factor for me.
What I like most is that WP7 is not laggy at ALL (a similarity it shares with iOS). The Android people are right about one thing though. The only reason Android appears laggy is just because it doesn't treat UI rendering with the same priority that Wp7 and iOS do (or so I hear, someone can correct me). So while it is still REALLY fast, the UI appears to lag sometimes while iOS and WP7 kind of "mask" their inherent slowness by using pretty animations. Well...they're masking it pretty well then! Its working! This feels smoother than Android!
So there's my take on the Nokia Lumia 900 after years of Symbian. I think that it maintains Nokia's tradition of being an extremely robust communication and navigation (Nokia Transit is nothing short of AWESOME) platform. It has Nokia's dedication to build and radio quality while featuring some pretty excellent communication options (people hub, native messengers, whatsapp, etc).
Consider my faith restored.
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