Nokia has been a known name in the mobile phone landscape for a while, but they seem to have lost the mojo. The iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys of this world have cornered the market share and left Nokia with a meager share of the smartphone market. With the Lumia range of phones, Nokia has inked a deal with Microsoft and thus, making moves to become relevant in the market again and reclaim their share.
Let’s take a look at one of the phones that Nokia has released to the market: The Lumia 920 is available by pre-order to the Nigerian market for N105,000 via MTN Nigeria to arrive in time for Christmas. I had the privilege of having the Nokia Lumia 920 for a week from Nokia. Let me share with you what I think about the phone and you can decide if it is a phone for you.
Meet the Nokia Lumia 920
My primary phone is the iPhone 4S. I got the Lumia 920 from Nokia as a review unit. What I am sharing here is my own experience. Now that we have an agreement, let’s dive in.
Design
The Lumia 920 is sporting a poly-carbonate uni-body design with irremovable battery. I got the black unit for review. It has three buttons at the front; the back button, home screen button and the search button. There’s a front facing camera, an 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss and a flash. On the right hand side is the phone is the power button and the volume control button. It is a 4.5″ screen display, bigger than the iPhone4S 4″ display.
I find that the Lumia 920 is pretty heavy at 185g, while the iPhone 4S is merely 140g. That is a whooping 45g extra. If you don’t mind that weight, that shouldn’t be a problem.
Specification
The operating system is Windows Phone 8, the latest iteration of the Windows Phone operating system from Redmond–Microsoft. It has a high resolution display at 768 x 1280 pixels [332 pip pixel density]. The screen is a Corning Gorilla Glass 2 and can work with the nails or keys as a touch object on the surface of the phone. It uses a MicroSIM. The phone comes with built-in Internet explorer browser for mobile phones. Due to the high resolution, you can see the phone clearly in the glaring sunlight.
Activating the Phone
This was done with ease. I popped my Airtel SIM in the phone and powered it. Boot time was fast. The first thing I did was to connect my outlook account. If you don’t have one and you are planning to get this phone, you’ll need one to gain access to the Windows Market Place. As soon as I signed in, I had my email set up on the phone and I was granted access to the Market Place.
Adding other emails that I have wasn’t difficult. Under settings, go to email+accounts, you can add your Microsoft’s accounts [Outlook and Hotmail], LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! Mail, Google, Facebook, Nokia account, Nokia Mail and other third party email accounts. [POP and IMAP].
Going into the Market Place
I downloaded Rowi app, Facebook for Windows Phone, Twitter for Windows Phone, and Evernote. Initially, Whatsapp wasn’t available for the phone. As my trial of the phone was coming to an end, Whatsapp became available for Windows Phone 8. Unfortunately, I couldn’t download it. The error message I got when trying to download it is the same error message I got when trying to download some free games and even SkyDrive. I restored the phone to factory settings to see if there was some error somewhere, but that did not fix it as I still could not download those apps. I really don’t know what the discrimination is in this case. I have gotten in touch with the folks as Nokia and I will update the post a soon as they get back to me.
What I love About The Lumia 920
The Phone is fast and snappy: I never for once saw the phone lagging or rebooting. It was always up and running, executing the assigned tasks in due time. Sending email using the built in email app is a sweet experience. I attached 15 photos and sent them and they were sent in a twinkle of an eye. If speed of execution matter to you, you’ll love the Lumia 920.
Nokia Map works offline: I decided to try Nokia Map out while there wasn’t a SIM in the phone. I thought it was just a claim, but it worked. I was able to use the Nokia Map with voice direction without WiFi or mobile Internet data. Now that’s a very cool wower. One won’t be burning lots of internet data when using the map feature in this offline mode. And one of Nokia’s strength is in mapping technology.
Nokia City Lens: Those who travel around and those who love to see places will find the city lens handy. Just launch the app. The app launches the camera. Point the camera at the direction you want to go and it will reveal different information about food, hotels, shopping, famous, fun, sights, transport and nearby.
This is a feature a lot of people will find very handy during this holiday, especially if they are spending the holiday in a foreign territory they are visiting for the first time.
The People and Me Hub: The People hub contains all the folks that are in my social hub; Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and my synced contacts–In my case Google Contact. At a glance, by swiping to the right, I can see what’s new from all the people that I am connected with on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I don’t have to look for the app for each social media profiles that I have. The amount of time I spend moving from one app and one service to the order reduced drastically. I like that Swiping allows me to move from one operation to the other. Once you get used to swiping, you’re going to find it a pleasure to use.
Other stuff: The Nokia Lumia 920 has the option of allowing USB mass storage. You can easily store media and data on the phone by connecting it to your computer, unlike on the iPhone. Since I use a MacBook and not a PC, I couldn’t do that until I got a Windows Phone 8 Connector app for Mac from the Mac App Store– As soon as I downloaded it, I was able to sync my music to the phone and access other contents on the phone. I was also able to load my songs from my iTunes library. It also asked if I wanted to sync my photos to my MacBook Air.
What I don’t really like
Virtual Keypad – My number one pet peeve is that the space bar on the virtual keypad is too narrow and close to the emoticon and the comma button. Many times I would be going for the space bar, but I will be hitting the comma. Other virtual keypads has really been improved as I have once tried typing on the HTC HD7 that is a running on Windows Phone 7. It has auto-correct that is close to perfect. This will make those coming to all touch screen phone for the first time to be very comfortable.
The WiFi Connection – This goes to sleep when the phone goes to sleep. When the phone is connected to my WiFi for internet, I can use it. As soon as I allow the phone to sleep, the WiFi is disconnected and whatever I am doing on the internet stops. I wonder why this is so. I found that I wasn’t alone. Other folks who have used the phone made the same observation. May be an OS update will fix this.
Fewer Apps – The app collection is growing. In the week I was reviewing this phone, Whatsapp was released. This is a sign that many of the apps that are popular are still coming. There’s Evernote, but I couldn’t get a Dropbox app and one of the RSS feeds that I have been used to on Android and iOS, like Feedly, Zite, Pocket, and Instapaper for bookmarking. These are tools I use daily but are not currently available.
My Verdict
As a new entrant and an OS that has just been overhauled from ground up, I see Windows Phone 8 being a strong contender. The Nokia Lumia 920 is one powerful device, one of the disadvantage I see with the phone is that is packed with too much value. It does so much, much more than the average smartphone user can finish exploring.
Would I love to carry a Nokia Lumia 920? Yes, as a second phone, using the camera and using it for social networking. It is the best phone for social networking that I have used up till date. Time will fail me if I have to tell you everything that is packed in the phone as it’s just too much. If you also love smartphone accessories like wireless chargers, wireless speakers, Monster HD stereo headsets and more colorful accessories, you might want to try out the Nokia Lumia 920 and stand out of the crowd.
Would you be picking a Nokia Lumia 920? The Nokia Lumia 920 is indeed a strong contender, although it isn’t yet as popular as the Nexus 4 that keeps getting out of stock. The users will have to decide if they go all out in masses to get the phone when it is finally available in the market.
