Had first hand experience of Nokia Lumia 920 recently. Looks nice and has a silky slippery feel to the outer body while holding it.
Major disappointment in 3 areas right off the bat:
- weighs like a brick,
- can't work with one hand (a tad too wide to hold it comfortably) and
- every app seems to have some kinda icon (action button) which is non-standard and unlabeled leaving you guessing what the heck it does!
On the upside:
- Windows 8 tiles /windows phone interface is slick, fast with some cool features/apps which makes you wanting them on your iPhone.
- Cost differential is a plus ($50 Lumia vs $200 for iPhone).
- wireless charging is cool.
-- iPhone 5 revolutionized the charging/sync connector which can be plugged in agnostic of its orientation. But the new cable costs $19.99!!! And old/new cables are incompatible!!!! The advantage is kinda lost.
-- Lumia is revolutionizing charging wirelessly! No cables needed, no orientation needed as you don't need to 'plug' in anything. But you are now stuck carrying around the charging pad (almost the size of the phone!) or you can carry around a charging cable as usual. The advantage is kinda lost.
Lumia has NFC (near field communication) chip which is supposed to act like your personal ATM paying for stuff without actually opening your wallet - just by swiping or bringing it near the PoS terminal. Cool stuff. This industry is upcoming but not available everywhere as yet - standardized to some extent. Apple hasn't yet accepted this NFC standard/ technology. They are still waiting and watching.
Coming from long time iPhone interface use, I felt somewhat lost on Lumia's interface.
- In iPhone you scroll to right to find your apps and you scroll up/down within an app.
- In Lumia, you scroll up/down, left/right and you will find something or the other popping up (more apps, settings, widgets etc) forcing you to use the Back button more often.
Not bad but just disorienting since you are getting deeper into menus and submenus kinda and you need to retrace your steps back and take another path! iPhone keeps you focused on one thing at a time. You don't like what you are doing, press the home button start again to find another focus. (With years of use now this feels simpler as compared to Lumia's look-here-look-there-no-no-look-here scattered workflow)
I guess one just needs to get used to the UI to be able to appreciate it fully.
Camera comparison in dim light between Lumia & IPhone 5 are as advertised. iPhone 5 pic was grainy but slightly brighter. However, somehow I felt the pictures in Lumia were not as sharp as I had expected. I haven't tested it in bright light as yet.
Nokia needs to provide matching headphones! This is where it needs to learn about marketing and hype like Apple does! It seemed to me as an oversight in the rush to arrive at the party before it ended!
Surprisingly I think I can say that Lumia 920 with Windows 8 OS is comparable in stability with Apple's iOS at least on the mobile platform.
Overall, Unfortunately I think Nokia will get the leftovers of the party (the ugly and the phat chicks aka undecided patrons) cuz the good ones are already taken by Apple & Samsung! :)
-- By Dheeraj Sachdeva
Had first hand experience of Nokia Lumia 920 recently. Looks nice and has a silky slippery feel to the outer body while holding it.
Major disappointment in 3 areas right off the bat:
- weighs like a brick,
- can't work with one hand (a tad too wide to hold it comfortably) and
- every app seems to have some kinda icon (action button) which is non-standard and unlabeled leaving you guessing what the heck it does!
On the upside:
- Windows 8 tiles /windows phone interface is slick, fast with some cool features/apps which makes you wanting them on your iPhone.
- Cost differential is a plus ($50 Lumia vs $200 for iPhone).
- wireless charging is cool.
-- iPhone 5 revolutionized the charging/sync connector which can be plugged in agnostic of its orientation. But the new cable costs $19.99!!! And old/new cables are incompatible!!!! The advantage is kinda lost.
-- Lumia is revolutionizing charging wirelessly! No cables needed, no orientation needed as you don't need to 'plug' in anything. But you are now stuck carrying around the charging pad (almost the size of the phone!) or you can carry around a charging cable as usual. The advantage is kinda lost.
Lumia has NFC (near field communication) chip which is supposed to act like your personal ATM paying for stuff without actually opening your wallet - just by swiping or bringing it near the PoS terminal. Cool stuff. This industry is upcoming but not available everywhere as yet - standardized to some extent. Apple hasn't yet accepted this NFC standard/ technology. They are still waiting and watching.
Coming from long time iPhone interface use, I felt somewhat lost on Lumia's interface.
- In iPhone you scroll to right to find your apps and you scroll up/down within an app.
- In Lumia, you scroll up/down, left/right and you will find something or the other popping up (more apps, settings, widgets etc) forcing you to use the Back button more often.
Not bad but just disorienting since you are getting deeper into menus and submenus kinda and you need to retrace your steps back and take another path! iPhone keeps you focused on one thing at a time. You don't like what you are doing, press the home button start again to find another focus. (With years of use now this feels simpler as compared to Lumia's look-here-look-there-no-no-look-here scattered workflow)
I guess one just needs to get used to the UI to be able to appreciate it fully.
Camera comparison in dim light between Lumia & IPhone 5 are as advertised. iPhone 5 pic was grainy but slightly brighter. However, somehow I felt the pictures in Lumia were not as sharp as I had expected. I haven't tested it in bright light as yet.
Nokia needs to provide matching headphones! This is where it needs to learn about marketing and hype like Apple does! It seemed to me as an oversight in the rush to arrive at the party before it ended!
Surprisingly I think I can say that Lumia 920 with Windows 8 OS is comparable in stability with Apple's iOS at least on the mobile platform.
Overall, Unfortunately I think Nokia will get the leftovers of the party (the ugly and the phat chicks aka undecided patrons) cuz the good ones are already taken by Apple & Samsung! :)
-- By Dheeraj Sachdeva
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