It’s been a week since I purchased the Lumia 920 and here’s the update:
First & foremost, these new series of smartphones are very fast but they seriously lack a good battery life. I’d used a Nokia X6 which also was a smartphone but a few generations behind so very often I’d encounter error messages like "memory full" while using Nokia maps/ navigation. This doesn’t happen on 920. The processor is really fast. But you need to charge the battery everyday.
First of all the Handset is very "good looking". Nicely rounded corners, glossy covers. It’s a little big but if you compare it with any of the new Samsung Galaxy series, this one is much better- smaller. Comparatively.
What’s the most impressive thing about Nokia? The amazing display. An absolutely crisp screen with mind blowing colours. A 4.5 inch display with a Corning Gorilla Glass where you don’t need to bother about putting a scratch guard( typical Indian style of covering expensive products). It’s completely scratch free.
Being a windows hater( b’coz of Microsoft’s aggressive attitude) & being in love with iOS (since I’m using a macbook pro) I never thought I;d buy a windows phone but with every tom, dick & harry buying android, I wanted something different. And the windows 8 interface blew me off. The tiles are extremely intuitive. Very user friendly. And with a processor of 920, there’s no lag.
Music quality on the headphones is amazing. I am used to bluetooth headphones for last 5/7 years. When I paired my Plantronic headset with 920, I realised that every SMS that I receive can be read by the machine. I don’t know if this feature will also work with other bluetooth headsets but with Plantronic’s "vocalyst" basic service, I am able to do it.
Setting up mails is extremely easy and I’m sure slowly all those who were on Blackberry due to its mail support are going to move to either Android or windows because that wasn’t really a great feature for which people paid min 300 bucks a month. Whatsapp replaces BBM very easily.
Coming to the "pureview" camera experience, it’s unbeatable. You can shoot in low light which was so far not possible. The picture quality is amazing. Settings have various options like ISO, Exposure, White balance and a lot more. Panorama lets you click a 180 degrees or more horizontal picture. Cinemagraph is fun to create animated images like" Zee horror show". With smartshoot, you can capture multiple images and edit them- like removing a person who suddenly enters the frame.
I somehow don’t like installing too may apps on the phone. Why does one need some lousy app to tell you what to eat & what calories you consume. How correct is it? I wonder. Some basic apps like say- m-indicator for a Mumbai traveller. which can help you understand train, bus timings, taxi & rickshaw meter calculation is far more imp. Or a sky drive - 7GB space. Or a wikipedia offline. You get all that on windows apps.
The nokia maps is a fantastic product that Nokia has which no one can compete with. You can also download city maps so even if network coverage isn’t available, you can use the offline maps. Here they have used it in the maps as well as in City lens- you focus your camera anywhere & it starts showing you places of shopping, restaurants etc. Extremely useful if you are in a new place.
Wireless charging is all bull. You need to buy a wireless plate worth 4000 bucks to have your mobile charged without inserting the charger inside. Not worth it.
Wifi hot spot also is possible on this phone so in case you have an ipad without 3G, you can use this.
I’m sure there are quite a few features which I’ve not tried as of now but with whatever I did, I was satisfied.
All in all, Lumia 920 is definitely a good buy. It’s the most expensive Windows 8 phone as of now but it’s definitely good. If nokia brings down the price to around 28k, it’d be ideal.