February 27, 2003 ....;)

haha

well, the nokia purity in-ear headphones were delivered this morning and i'm very happy with them. i'm all-in with win8 and wp8 now (other than i haven't decided which win8 tablet to get) and i have 2 sets of headphones that were designed to work with wp8 and sound great. i'm a happy camper.

:))

I had the opportunity to show a friend who recently picked up the Samsung AtivS (Windows Phone 8 version of the Galaxy S3) how to configure some things in the OS and some other general tips and tricks and a few things became immediately painfully obvious to me.

On the Samsung AtivS WP8 just doesn't 'feel as slick' as it does on my Lumia.  What I mean is.  It is obvious to me that my Lumia has a faster more fluid (seems to have more inertia) display.  Also, while the AtivS has a super-AMOLED display, I swear one can really tell the difference between the Lumia's 332 PPI over the AtivS which has (if I'm not mistaken) a PPI of 308.

I was beginning to go over a few of the things I find so helpful about WP8 when I realised that a few of them weren't in fact WP8 things, rather NOKIA exclusive apps and therefore not available to him.......

The build quality.  Wow......what a difference.  The AtivS (not unlike most other Samsung phones at the moment) just has such a 'pasticy' feel to it and feels too light to me.  I have yet to put my Lumia in a case (and I can't see myself actually doing that) whereas my friend's AtivS would feel even flimsier without one.

Wireless charging.  What did I ever do before I had Qi with my Lumia?  I can't remember.....

Camera.  But since the camera on the Lumia bests any other mobile phone camera on the market today it's sort of a moot point by now.....

On the plus side, the AtivS has a slightly larger screen and has a removable backing which allows for battery swap and of course removable storage (which is actually the one thing I miss having on my Lumia).

I really cannot (other than brand loyalty to Samsung) understand why anyone would choose that phone at this time over either the Nokia Lumia or even the HTC 8X.  Both of those phones are better (in my opinion) than the Ativ S.  Seems to me Samsung gave WP8 'the old college try' and to me......that just isn't good enough.

That's why I was quite happy to settle with the Lumia 820 when the 920 wasn't readily available on an affordable plan.  While I have a 32gb SD memory card in mine at the moment, I can and will add one up to 64gb so I can carry more photos, files and music with me when on the go.  As for the 820's display, despite it being super AMOLED and slightly smaller than the 920, it is still more responsive and fluid than the iPhone and others I road tested on the day... an yes, of all the phones I handled that day, and previously, the Nokia Lumia 820 and 920 are the sturdiest, most solidly built of them all.

Another thing I've been hearing about lately it the comparison between the Nokia and HTC WP8 phones.  While many reviewers favour the HTC offering, Nokia is the one that presents with fewer problems [hard and software] and tends to be the more reliable, better built phone.  A friend who had nothing but trouble with her HTC, ended up taking it back to the store and exchanging it for a Lumia 820.  She said that during the exchange the salesperson told her that she was not alone in here dissatisfaction and several other customers had also returned theirs. 

Yup, glad I got the Nokia.
  

An interesting development for Lumia owners, Nokia is branching into Windows 8 tablets as well.

For more information, I put up a thread about it over here...https://forums.wincustomize.com/439984

http://youtu.be/xcJjyQ5Cb84

The tech guru who services our office was in this morning (bad power supply on one of our workstations) and showed me his 4-day old LG Google Nexus.  Was an iPhone 4S user.  Paid ~$350 for the phone, using T-Mobile all-you-can-eat no-contract plan @ $70/mo.  Pretty damn sweet, I must admit.

Loved the vid, MadDeez.

@MadDeez

Yeah funny vid. 

That's the same guy who made the 'tribute' video I linked back on page 6.  He really does need to get a side-job with Nokia making AD's for them.  He has some real talent.

Fixed the link...;)

thanks, Paul. i hadn't noticed the text wasn't a link. i guess i should've double and triple checked the post.

Those with a Nokia Lumia device should check back to the "Nokia Collection" in the app store from time to time.  Nokia has been steadily growing their own app offerings from month to month.  I am not sure about this, but I was under the impression that those apps in the "Nokia Collection" were Nokia exclusives so they may not show up anywhere else....

My sister recently purchased an unlocked Nokia Lumia 620 for $279.00 AUD and is very, very happy with it.  Essentially it is a smaller version of the 820 an has a 1.0ghz processor instead of the 1.5ghz, but other than that it is a nice unit that does all she needs and what the 820 does.

Had it been available when we got our 820's, I may very well have considered it as an option.  Oh well, I'm happy with what I have.

i was showing some pics of my granddaughter to my 94 year old neighbor lady a couple of weeks ago and she became pretty interested in my 920. last saturday,  she asked me to take her to the grocery store. as i was checking off items of my grocery list on my phone, she was even more curios about the phone. well, to make a long story short, we made a side trip to the at&t store where she bought an 820. other than my spending about 20 minutes to show her the basics of the phone that day, she's been on her own and she loves that phone. she even came over to my place in the middle of the snow storm tuesday night to show me how her weather app was animated.

my only complaint about the phone and os is it isn't very easy to create a music playlist. hopefully, the next os update will ease that issue.

8 months of Lumia 920 and I have this to say......

I still miss my Blackberry QWERTY keyboard (I don't think I will ever stop hating touchscreens for typing) but hey.....one can't have everything eh?  

The Lumia 920 still takes the best pictures of any phone in our home and with Photobeamer (Nokia exclusive app) you can 'beam' your photos to any internet-enabled screen anywhere (there is simply no easier way to display/share your pictures with family/friends).

The flexibility of being able to pin absolutely anything to the home screen (and then resize it at will) is still something I'm not entirely used to.  For instance say I were to pin my wife to the home screen, her texts, posts/updates etc. would now show up nicely in her live tile.  Same thing with pinning GPS locations, and/or specific webpages etc.  I guess old habits do die hard because I'm still stuck in the mindset of having one tile for all texts, one tile for all phone contacts, and so on.

The integration of this phone with skydrive/sharepoint is nothing short of amazing.  There are a multitude of file-handling options, editing capability with Office and with full LTE network coverage in many places these days my phone is faster at downloading/uploading than my desktop PC's.

I have to confess I haven't used the phone much for gaming/music although I have watched the odd show via Netflix when travelling.

The wireless charging is still the only way I charge my phone (I think I charged it the very first day with the cord) and it works like a charm.  Battery life is still fantastic and easily takes me through the entire day even with moderate to heavy use with things such as skydrive/sharepoint etc.   I do make sure any 'background apps/tasks' are limited and I turn things like WiFi, NFC and Bluetooth off when not expressly needed.

Just an update on how things are going with my Lumia 920.  Here's hoping those of you with the same devices are just as happy/satisfied.  

The Lumia 1020 looks promising, but for now I'm still sticking to Android.

I'm curious, would you mind elaborating as to what is keeping you from switching?   Is it your ecosystem investment?   I have had a few friends recently switch (some of whom were actually pretty heavily invested in the droid ecosystem) so I'm always curious for reasons either way......

I guess that I like the customization options with android. Before my first android device, I had a series of Nokia devices. The symbian UI was also pretty customizable and I enjoyed that. I haven't used a W8 phone so I don't really have a real basis for not wanting to switch, but it seems more "set" and less flexible from what I've read/heard.

What do you mean by "droid ecosystem"

I tried a Windows phone. Traded it for what I have now. Just didn't like it. Lack of apps. The interface didn't work like a Android phone. 

Yeah, that's kind of the point....

Well the phone OS is certainly more closed but the UI, at least the part of the UI one tends to be most in contact with (ie. the Home Screen) is certainly flexible with the 'live tiles', ability to pin and resize (turn into a live tile) most anything on the device. etc.

I don't like that there is absolutely no sort of 'file explorer' on the device, but then I don't have any real reason for wanting one other than assuaging my OCD issues. 

The google app-store.  Some people who have purchased a lot of apps for one device might feel reluctant to move to another platform etc.

Lack of what apps specifically?  How many apps do you need that do the same thing?  Certainly any app-store starting out would be lacking some 'favourites' but looking around on the net it appears the MS store has 'bulked-up' quite nicely in the last while.  For me anyway, there is at least one app of everything I could conceivably need available in all 3 ecosystems.  Of course Apple and Google have many more iterations of the same app so it stands to reason they would have many times the apps available in the MS store.

I used to hate when people criticized Android early on about it's lack of apps.  I would use the same arguments as these.  Afterall, how many note taking apps do you need (for example)?

Now that the Android ecosystem has matured quite a bit, I have a different perspective.  The quantity of apps isn't needed, certainly, but it provides choice, which I think is overlooked in the "how many apps, not enough apps, etc" discussions around the various ecosystems.  

Everyone on every platform can get Evernote, for example.  I can't stand Evernote.  That Android has 15 other quality note taking applications is a benefit to me because I can try different ones until I find one that fits my workflow.  

I think the arguments about raw numbers of apps available are mostly overblown.  Any decent platform will let you do most of what you want.  And even on Android, with it's stupidly large amount of apps, I occasionally find myself not able to get the right app for the task I want (at least how I want to do it).  

I guess I don't have much point other than to say that, while the "your app store doesn't have as many apps as my app store" argument is pretty silly, there is some benefit to be gained from the higher number of apps.  They're not all just fart apps. 

Got it.

No....I never buy apps.

Im glad for all of you guys, but I will stick with iphones for whole family. we have a whole excosystem in house and it works wonders. No need to use apple maps if unsatisfying, there is google maps too.

As tot he others, I have a few friends using all of it, and one has house things with android connectivity, and it really doesn't come close to what we have with apple - constant problems with everything, half features dont work etc.

on another hand, another friend has lumia and is happy, just hates it that he doesnt have as much apps and games like I do, but the store is growing...

oh, I necroed? My bad...