It took some time to decide on a new Smartphone. There are so many leading
phones out there and each one has their own pros and con's. My decision was
ultimately made for me by the availability of my shortlisted phones from the
service provider. I had narrowed my choice down to the
Samsung Galaxy S3, Nokia
Lumia range and on the day I went to the store the new Sony Xperia J.
Yes, the Apple
iPhone was not on my shortlist. There are many reasons for
this but let’s just leave it there. As it turned out my Blackberry 9800 started
to give me issues and eventually stopped working so I was forced to go with
what was available at the time. What was available was a
Nokia Lumia 820.
I had been a fan of Nokia for many years and it was a big move away from
Nokia to Blackberry for me. However moving from Blackberry back to Nokia was
not that difficult. I have now had my Lumia 820 for a little over two weeks and
have gotten to know it quite well.
The first thing that I noticed is the weight of the phone, due to the
wireless charging cover the phone is slightly heavier than you would expect for
a modern day Smartphone. It actually feels comfortable though, like you are
holding something of substance. It is also good to note that Nokia's build
quality is still as good as it always was. Wireless charging is very impressive
and the Lumia charges quickly wirelessly. Just place the phone the wireless
charge pad and it starts charging, no more looking for cables and ensuring the
connection is made.
The Nokia-
Microsoft partnership is starting to pay off; the biggest draw
card for me was the integration with my Microsoft account. Once the details
were put in the phone was setup and all my contacts were synced. Likewise with
other accounts such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn etc...
It is unfortunately quite a surprise at the lack of integration with a
Windows computer and the software available. The
Nokia Ovi suite was a powerful
piece of software that allowed to you basically control your phone from your
pc. Now there is no such thing.
If you are not using an Exchange server it seems like Microsoft don't care
about you. Calendar integration with your non-Exchange mailbox is non-existent.
There is always a work-around of course but surely being a Microsoft to
Microsoft device you would expect better.
Using the phone is very easy and the home screen is extremely customisable.
Although there are only two screens to flick through, at first I thought this
was very limiting. Now two weeks in I find it very useful. If the app I need is
used often I just pin it to my home-screen. Else I flick one screen over and
find it there, no need to scroll through five, six screens. What you need is
there at your fingertips, and what you don't need at your tips is a flick away.
Sure the home screen can be boring with the colour blocking (one colour) for
most apps, but the live tiled apps have constantly changing images and
notifications popping up. Again when you have used the phone these minor things
don't bother you that much.
A minor bug bear that I do have is that to make a call you have to perform
at least three actions. It doesn't sound like much but when you need to phone a
lot of people this does waste time. Messaging people is also as cumbersome to
text someone. The redeeming feature though is the predictive text is really
good and often selects the next word in your sentence before you have even
typed the first letter. Something I would like to see though is if you hold
down the letter, it should make it a capital letter, it is a nuisance holding
shift and the letter.
Internet Explorer on the phone is slick and you can view the original
websites almost as easily as mobile websites. You can't configure much
though and as such your Internet always opens to the last page browsed and
there is no setting for a homepage. Again though you can pin a page to the home
screen and use that.
The features that made Nokia phones of old really well have been carried
over to the Lumia range. Nokia Maps, Navigation which is free for life are
really great tools to have and so far have been 100% accurate. The camera is
good and with the now default Carl Zeiss optics you almost expect the camera to
be decent for a happy snapper like me.
The new
Nokia City Lens is an awesome tool; it has wowed many friends and
family and will be of much use on travels to cities that you are not familiar
with. The ability to hold the phone and turn around and select where you want
to go makes life easier when you need to find the closest Italian restaurant or
grocery store.
Nokia Music is really impressive and although I have not upgraded my account
to the plus account I still get a lot of music out of this default app. The
ability to play a song, purchase it or even take it offline for later listening
pleasure is decent. Mix Radio is a great feature if you can’t make your mind up
and wish to listen to specific genre of music. Select your genre and hit play.
The benefit of Nokia partnering with Microsoft is seen and felt with Skydive
- with 7GB off cloud storage made available for free you can store your Office
documents and access them on the phone or pc. Using
OneNote helps you make
those quick notes that was once reserved for those pesky yellow sticky notes.
These features have come in very handy over the last few weeks.
The other integrations that I like is the Xbox integration and games. My
Xbox is linked to my phone and with extra apps installed I can basically
control my Xbox from my phone. The games available are awesome and the quality
of the games that run on the phone is incredible.
The main drawback so far is that you cannot attach documents to e-mails sent
from your phone. Maybe Microsoft are trying to drive people to use SkyDrive and
share a link to the file from there? Either way it is very limiting and painful
that you can only e-mail pictures.
If there was a feature I wish the phone had, which it presently doesn't is
the ability to have profiles. To quickly change between silent and other
settings would be nice. You are only limited to vibrate and vibrate + ring. If
on vibrate other sounds still play which when you have just got your six month
old to sleep is not good.
The much debated
App store is not that bad. I think Nokia and Microsoft have
gone for a quality over quantity approach on this front. There are some really
brilliant apps and the apps that have made a name of themselves on other phone
systems like Android and iPhone can be found on the Windows Store. Granted not
all the apps but then again Windows 8 phone is the relative new comer to the
market and the app store will get bigger over time.
Overall the phone is good. It does have a number of shortcoming that's I
hope will be addressed in later updates and with Nokia taking a progressive
step in setting up a site dedicated solely to suggestions to make the phones
better I think they may well be on the way back, albeit against very tough competition.
I would give the phone a 7.5 out of 10 rating. It is still early days though
so I look forward to playing with it more and will let you all know in about
six months time if things have gotten better or worse.
