My User Review

Slai

New member
Nov 27, 2012
557
0
0
Visit site
Allright another user review.
Someone mentioned that they appreciate user reviews, so I figured Id make one.

Im coming from this history:

- Nokia N97 for a few months, as it was utter ****.
- Nokia N900 for a good while, fantastic device, best browsing experience EVER on a mobile phone for me and fully customizable homescreen, far more than Android for instance.
- Nokia N8, which was allright. Faster than the N900, but more limited. Great camera, used it as a camera and GPS device for a long time after I stopped using it as a phone.
- Samsung Galaxy S2, which was amazingly awesome. SNESemulators, homescreen customization options, big big screen, thin and light. Just nice.
- Nokia N9, because I felt I had to give the successor to N900 a whirl. Not too impressed. The lack of a HW keyboard really made what made the N900 so good disappear, as well as slightly weird choices regarding the UI.
- Lumia 800, I won that in a contest, or Id never get one. However, I ended up using it for quite some time. It was fast, did pretty much what I wanted it to do. Disliked the homescreen, the tile size plus the negative space was just not good for a homescreen solution IMO. Some other issues like not being able to copy the BNet authenticator code right off of the app like on Android, and so forth, in combination with the ridicolously small screensize made me change.
- Samsung Galaxy S3. Definitely as close to a perfect phone as can be for me. Great huge screen, thin, really fast, design was OK-ish, browser choices were great with Dolphin and Chrome leading the charge, Swiftkey X, SNES/PSX emulators, etcetera.

So why would I change from the reasonably new SGS3 if I was so happy?

Because Im a ******. In case you havent noticed on the above list, I love getting new phones. Its fun, its like a hobby.

I was totally done with WP. It wasnt a good experience on the Lumia 800. Then I went into a meeting with some people from a software developing firm, discussing a switch of telecom-operator, and one of them mentioned that he was getting rid of his faulty horrid Huawei and getting the Lumia 920. So I asked him if he meant the Lumia 900, since I didnt know WP8 was even being released until like late 2013. He assured me that no, it was a 920 and it came with WP8.

So later that day I went and read a bit about this phone. Design, promises of the WP8 system, and so forth. And, dumb as I am, my brain slowly starts convincing me that this is an awesome choice, you should get that, its going to be awesome, do it man, just do it.

So I did. I got one of the first 920s in my country, ordered it from the UK when their first shipment came in.

And Im really happy I did.


Designwise the phone is stellar. This is what I want my phone to look like. Its sexy as ****, has powerbutton on the side (jesus christ top-power-buttons are ridicolous on anything but a 2.5" screen device...), the curved back, the flat bottom (wow, I just wrote "flat bottom" as a positive thing), the darkness of the ceramic buttons/camerathing works so well with the black screen/bezel in contrast with the white unibody, and the black of the top jack and the bottom usb-slot and screws.

As for function...

My primary use is really browsing, texting, calling, FBchatting, watching videos, taking pictures and listening to music. Thats pretty much it.

Browing is good. Screen size is great, its a smooth experience in IE10, it looks great with the resolution, and generally works really well. It does however have some hickups. For instance, if I go to WPCentrals forum and press the quick reply box, it pops up a keyboard for me that disappears after less than half a second. These type things are in most browsers Ive tried. Some things just dont work well.

Generally speaking I do use the desktop version of sites, as I dont have a 3.5" screen and can navigate fine on desktopsites.

Browsing on the Lumia 920 for me is about a 8/10, with the SGS3 holding a 9/10.

Texting/FBchatting is great. The joined inboxes of FBchat and SMS really is something that I enjoy in my daily use. Ive had no troubles with the FBchat, nor the SMS.
Typing is not QUITE as good as with Swiftkey X, but its not that far away. Unlike the smaller sized Lumia 800 and Nokia N9 I dont miss keystrokes as much, which is a very nice thing.

Calling is perfect. Works flawlessly for me, but thats to be expected.

Videos... Yeah they work. The screen is amazing, as mentioned, even in direct sunlight. I use the auto brightness and Ive never even considered turning it off for a manual choice, it really works well.
The only thing that this phone lacks in the video department as far as Im concerned is a function found on the SGS3;
When playing a video and locking the screen, the video keeps playing, but all buttons are locked. So no accidental press of the search or backbuttons while watching, no matter how you grip your phone.
THIS would make it a 9/10, but atm Ill put it at 8/10 with the SGS3 at a 9/10.

Taking pictures... we all know about the SW update to fix the softness. Other than that I love the lenses, panorama is easy to use and looks great, lowlight is amazing, closeup is nice... All in all, I can see myself enjoying this camera as much as my N8s camera, once the SW update is in :) .

Listening to music is probably where I deviate the MOST from normal users. I dont stream crap, I dont use wimp or spotify.
I did enjoy making standup mixes for offline use with Nokia Music, but generally I copy MP3-files to my device and play them.
And for that it works well. Not ?berMarioPerfect but well. I find my albums and tracks, artists, etc, and can play accordingly. Which is what I use.
Im not very in to sound quality etc, but to my untrained ears the sound from the accompanying earplugs are fairly good. Equalizer also helps, though it IS slightly hard to dig out, should be accessible from the music app directly. I havent found a way to do that yet.
Loudspeakers I dont use much.


Then theres the Apps.

Never understood the appeal of Instagram, I dont have many friends that use WhatsApp and I have pretty much unlimited SMS on my subscription so its fairly useless, and I have practically unlimited minutes as well, so VoIP/IP-calling like Skype and Viber are fairly non-issues.

The only apps I can think of that I miss from Android are a PSX emulator and a SNES emulator.

I had tons of apps downloaded on my SGS3, but mostly they were browsers, keyboards, widgets, apps that do what the stock ones do but in a different way... Generally apps that I dont need on the 920.

I guess Im not an app-dependant person.

Battery seems about the same as my SGS3.

Wifi seems a bit stronger than my SGS3.

Wireless charging is a VERY nice thing. Its not a huge selling point, like CPU and screen and so forth, but its a very nice addition.

NFC is fairly useless for me atm, since the only use I can see for it is writing NFC tags for phone behaviour in-house and at work. And I dont have NFC tags :p .

What else is there... Oh yes, responsive screen with gloves. I never use my phone with gloves, as it tends to be far more slippery, and I dont want to drop my expensive-as-**** phone.
But it works. It works very well.

Homescreen!

Yes, the homescreen. This is the same that will be available for WP7.8+ as we know.

The change from WP7.5 to WP8 homescreen is tremendous.

Firstly you just get so much more on the screen with the new small tilesize. Having a HUGE quarter of your screen just for the phone app, for instance, drove me insane with WP7.5.

Secondly, the screen is far more customizable now, due to the small addition of the small tile size.

As an example of what you can do with the WP8 homescreen in terms of personalization:

mjv7mp.png


To conclude, I definitely see that there is an enormous room for growth with the platform, and I see valid concerns about streaming/syncing music, app-shortage, and so on and so forth.
Personally I dont mind these things atm, but it sucks that it isnt smoother for those who do mind these things.

I hope that the WP8 OS will do well. I like the way Nokia designs phones. I like the way WP8 feels at its core. I do however see that it could easily be a rocky road ahead. Could.

As it stands, the 920 is pretty much exactly what I need and want in a phone at the moment.
It easily ties with the SGS3 as my favourite phone to date.
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,905
Messages
2,242,870
Members
428,004
Latest member
hetb