The first phase of my phone fiddling is finished. Thank goodness. It's like anything you love, you think you could never have too much of a good thing, but perhaps attempting to set up 3 different phones over 6 weeks was a little ambitious.
I'm not paid to do this. I'm not the editor of a smart phone magazine. It's quite possible I have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just a guy who gets up in the middle of the night to play stuff on the radio. Maybe I should be reviewing radio shows instead. What I've been trying to do is demystify the world of iPhone alternatives because a lot of the stuff written about Androids and Windows Phones is of a somewhat nerdy, techno-jargon bent.
I'm no professional techno-nerd... I just wannabe.
So I didn't start a smart phone magazine, I started this blog instead.
Here's my third and final offering for now, the very tidy Nokia Lumia 820...
Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "I'm sure I've seen this phone somewhere before." Well, you have and you haven't. Yes, I reviewed the Lumia 920 just 3 weeks ago, and yes the two phones are similar. So although, initially I wasn't going to directly compare phones in these first 3 blogs, I've reconsidered. I've decided to make this more a battle-to-the death between Lumias and Galaxy SIII's than a polite scuffle between all three.
In saying that, there are quite a few differences between the Lumias 820 and 920, so I'll spend the rest of this ultimate first impression outlining exactly what those are.
The most obvious difference is the size, of course. The 820 passes my crucial pocket-fit test without any effort whatsoever. In fact, after the Lumia 920 and the Galxy S3, it was such a relief to have a phone that was still more or less the size of a phone, I couldn't stop slipping it in and out of my pocket. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. Hours of fun just doing that.
In fact, "slipping" is quite an appropriate verb because I've found the 820 to be perhaps the slipperiest Lumia yet. The Lumia family have this amazing polycarbonate shell with beautiful rounded edges. It's very tough, very hard to scratch and, as it turns out, more slippery than a fresh-caught fish.
Because I'm a) a bloke, b) clumsy and c) an idiot, I usually sort myself a cover to keep my handset as protected as possible. I was really keen to get stuck into the Lumia 820 though, so I started using it without a cover on and obviously dropped it on the hard linoleum floor immediately. Twice.
Nokias are Nokias though, so I was relieved to see the 820 had taken its beatings without complaint and had kept on ticking. The reason I dropped it the second time was due to my attempts to insert the sim and SD cards. (The first time was just blokey, clumsy idiocy) Other Lumias I've used have just had a little pop-out compartment at the top of the handset for the sim, with no option to expand the storage via SD. (You know what I mean; those memory cards you bung in your camera only smaller. I wonder what the SD stands for... "Stupid Doofer"?)
The Lumia 820 has the SD option. In some ways this is great because you can insert as much storage as you need. In other ways it's annoying because it means there's not much storage to begin with. Anyway, the upshot is, for the first time Nokia let's you take the back off their phone... if you CAN. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy SIII, which has a back so easy to remove you've done it before you meant to, the Lumia 820 requires an intricate combination of pushing, bending and jamming your thumbnail in at just the right time to gain access to its privates.
You can see how a guy could work up a sweat and lose his grip on the thing. Oh, the battery flew out and skidded across the floor as well. That too seemed to suffer no ill effects. No harm done.
Previously I've mentioned an app on the Windows 8 Lumias called Transfer My Data. This is what I tried to use to get my contacts and settings from last year's Lumia 800 to the all new Lumia 920. Without success, because they wouldn't talk to each other via bluetooth. I figured the problem might be something to do with a Windows 7.5 phone trying to get it on with a Windows 8 one.
This time I was trying it with the 920 and the 820, both running the same operating system and sure enough, big Lumia made contact with little Lumia and identified some stuff to transfer. Actually, that's an overstatement. It transferred half my contacts and nothing else at all. Am I using this app in some wacky way? Not sure, although an update came through for it last night, so maybe now it's a bit more useful.
So yet again I was setting up a phone almost from scratch. How hard would it be to develop a program that transfers your apps, settings and accounts from your old phone to the new one? Too hard apparently. Luckily I am now an old hand at personalising a Windows handset and I reckon I probably broke several speed records this time round. As far as how it operates, in terms of apps, browsing and on-screen appearance, there is literally no difference between the 820 and the 920 other than the 920 having a bigger screen.
The camera is the same, (yes, there's a forward-facing camera on this one too) and the speed appears to be the same, although you may experience a minuscule delay accessing things stored on your SD card, depending on how whizzy it is. (That means, did you buy the cheapest card available or did you pay through the nose for something super-fast?) Because I've now used 2 phones using Windows 8 and only one on Android, I'm starting to discover some quite interesting little tricks and hazards which can greatly enhance or hinder your Lumia experience, but we'll get into those down the track.
Let me just conclude these 3 first impressions by admitting so far the Lumia 820 is easily my favourite. If I'm being totally honest, I thought it would be right from the start, that's why I left it till last. The 920 is equally nifty, but just way to big for me, and while I liked the Galaxy S3 about a million billion percent more than I thought I was going to, it's still too weird for me to feel totally comfortable with.
Yes, Round 1 goes to the Nokia Lumia 820, but it's early days and I think you might be surprised what else these phones can and can't do. Dum dum dah...
Some people go away for the holidays. They might go camping. Maybe they'll stay with relatives. If they're really lucky, they could head off overseas somewhere, perhaps Hawaii, like John Key. If they're really UNlucky, they might end up in Antarctica, like John Key. Me? This year I took a slightly different approach. This year I just spent some quality time... with a bunch of smart phones.
Last week I showed you the Nokia Lumia 920, a very slick, if slightly massive new Windows phone. I loved it, but then I was probably always going to, given I'm not a huge iPhone fan and I'd already spent most of last year loving its predecessor, the Lumia 800.
Turns out, there's another bunch of handsets out there that aren't iPhones either. They're a bunch of phones I've never paid much attention to, but this summer, all that changed.
Here's my first foray into the world of the Android; the Samsung Galaxy SIII. In white...
It's time I came clean. Just like Lance Armstrong, I've been living a lie, deceiving the public for years and if Oprah knew who I was, I'm sure she'd want to interview me about it over 2 gripping episodes. My secret is deep, it's dark and I only hope we can confront it, deal with it openly and move on. Here goes... I was an Android bigot.
By that I don't mean I used to be a racist robot. That really WOULD be news. No, what I'm confessing to here is writing off the world's most popular smart-phone operating system without even really trying it. Very naughty of me really, given that at first glance, Android seems to give me the ability to do the very thing I've always wanted to do; build my phone from scratch.
In my defence, there are a couple of reasons why I have deliberately ignored phones like the Galaxy SIII until now.
1) I knew how to work Apple and Windows products already and couldn't be fagged learning something new and 2) The S3 just looked so huge I wasn't sure I'd be able to lift it.
Let's deal with that last one first. I've seen people using the S3 in public. Hard to miss, given it appears to be the size and shape of your average dinner plate. Obviously I get that bigger screen size makes for a more accessible browsing experience but as I've asked before, if I can't slip it in and out of my pocket, just how mobile IS my phone?
Just goes to show how deceiving appearances can be. The Galaxy would prove to be a veritable bundle of surprises, the first being how easily it passed the pocket-fitting test. Yes, the front is wide, but the whole thing is very rounded and tapered, giving the impression of being quite slim indeed.
I was impressed by how light the Galaxy is too. Unlike the Nokia's heft, which gives them a definite feel of durability, the Galaxy almost strays into the flimsy end of the spectrum - especially when you peel the back off to insert your sim or SD cards. That's literally how you do it, almost like peeling the backing sheet off a bumper sticker. This particular bumper sticker's worth about $850, so ripping it to bits to make it go is a tad nerve-racking.
It all still seemed to work once I'd clipped it back together though. Then it was time to set this puppy up. Turns out, the setup on this particular puppy is a bitch.
I always thought what I wanted was a phone with countless possibilities... any number of ways to set it up... change the lock screen... change the home screen... unique ringtones and text alerts... live updates of weather and social media... Sounds amazing, right?
Nightmare.
Too MANY possibilities. Too MANY options. This wasn't a Matrix-style, "Choose the RED pill or the BLUE pill" situation, this was a "Here are pills in every colour of the rainbow, plus some colours you've never SEEN before" situation.
I found myself trying out 10 different apps for everything I wanted to do. Then I realised most of things I was trying to do, were things that were already set up FOR you on a Windows phone. Maybe I wasn't quite the freestyling smart-phone user I thought I was. Maybe I really didn't mind having someone tell me what I wanted, as long as they knew what I actually what I wanted. One thing the Galaxy was teaching me fast; I was the LAST person who knew what I wanted.
Over time, a GREAT DEAL of time, I started to whittle down the seemingly endless possibilities. I started to learn the difference between what Google and Android call Apps and Widgets, and I'll attempt to share this wisdom with you in some kind of useful way in a future blog.
Let's just say I made it work. Eventually I could check my emails, browse the web, text and tweet almost the way I was used to. I could sense the potential for greatness here, if I could just cut my way through some of the less-great chaff being thrust at me from every direction. I also rediscovered some of the things I used to like about Apple, are readily available for Android too. Meanwhile, in many cases the Windows phone is still waiting for its version to be invented.
Again, more details for more blogs. As part two of 3 first impressions, I'll conclude by saying the Galaxy looks and feels a gazillion times better than I expected. But... at least SOME of my Android bigotry was well-founded - not due to any restrictions I came up against, rather the LACK of them was just so overwhelming.
I can still hear the Domestic Manager complaining, (totally justifiably) "You're not STILL fiddling with that phone, are you?" The reason I can still hear her say that is, I still am.
I'll try and put it down long enough to give the Nokia Lumia 820 a go for next week's post, but I tell you what; something about this S3 is bloody addictive.
I've been fiddling with a few phones over the holidays. Actually, fiddling is understating things somewhat. Obsessively dedicating every waking hour to them might be more accurate. So thought I'd justify all the hours I've spent ignoring my family by sharing some of what I love and hate about them with you. (The phones that is, not the family)
Hopefully this won't be like the majority of other phone reviews you'll find online. I'm not going to list off all the specs you can just Google on the manufacturers' websites. I don't know about you, but I don't actually care how many cores the processors have as long as the phone does what it's supposed to.
Also, they lie. Claims around things like battery life and charging time are usually... shall we say... ambitious?
Instead, I'm just going to tell you about what I tried to get these phones to do, and how well they actually did it.
Let's kick things off by introducing you to the Nokia Lumia 920... Or as I've come to think of it, the Beast.
The thing you should know about me as a smart-phone user is I'm a bit of a weirdo. I'm kind of anti iPhone, but I think that's more to do with my personality than the phones themselves. I've always resisted authority. I don't respond well to being told what to do, so me and Mr Jobs never really saw eye-to-eye. Sure he was an amazing uber-genius and perhaps one of the greatest innovators of our time but the arrogance of his design philosophy often left be bewildered and frustrated.
I like to tinker and customise, upgrade and modify. The Apple devices I've encountered over the years seem specifically developed to thwart these urges at every turn. Tightly sealed boxes with few buttons, Apple tells us how to use their phones, how they should look, how they should interact with other devices and we, the customers get very little say.
That's why the new breed of Windows Phones from Nokia really captured my imagination. I've always been a Nokia man. (In the age before smart phones anyway - I guess were they "dumb" phones?) There seems to be a feeling of solidity to a Nokia you don't always have with other brands. I'm not claiming they'll survive being run over or dropped in the loo, but I've heard and seen some pretty incredible comeback stories.
That's just the way last year's Nokia Lumia 800 felt too. Fitting easily in one hand, it seemed more like a phone more than a small tablet. After going from turning it on to changing everything to my favourite colour within the first 3 minutes, I was pretty much in love.
The Lumia 800 runs on Windows Phone 7.5, which made syncing with my Office email, documents and Skydrive cloud folders an effortless operation - in fact, the phone set a lot of things up for me without me even realising it.
I'm a big fan of effortless operations, so I was a little worried about upgrading to the all-new Nokia Lumia 920. Turns out, my worry was ever so slightly justified. The Lumia 800 had this magical app installed on it called Contacts Transfer. This enabled you to connect to any old "dumb" phone with a bluetooth connection and suck up all the contacts. How it worked I have no idea, but it did.
So it was with some disappointment I discovered there was no such app on the 920 - I couldn't even install it from Windows Marketplace (the Windows version of the iTunes App Store) However... I did discover something called Transfer My Data. "This sounds promising," I thought, "Maybe this'll literally just clone all my existing settings, contacts, photos and music directly over to my new phone!"
Sadly, the 920 wouldn't even connect to my trusty old 800. Don't know why, but it wasn't for lack of trying. (Not to mention endless Googling)
Luckily, saving my contacts to my Windows Live account (ie: Hotmail) was a reasonably straightforward task. Those contacts then all synced back onto the 920 once I signed in. A bit of a pain having to do it that way though, and even more frustrating having to re-download all my apps and settings.
On the plus side, the 920 is bloody fast. Apps open quickly and the browsing is noticeably quicker than on the 800. This is partly due to some slightly whizzier hardware, and partly due the the Windows Phone 8 operating system. Designed to look and feel like the Windows 8 OS installed on all the new Microsoft PC's, at first glance it's not massively different for an experienced WP 7.5 user like me.
The smooth scrolling and customisable start tiles are still there, but the cool thing is, they're more customisable than before. There are more colours to choose from and more sizes too. So unlike the iPhone's uniform little boxes, you can have larger tiles for apps you use more often, a bit like the "widgets" you can access on an Android-based phone like the Samsung Galaxy S3. Personally, I think the tiles on the Lumia look a bit nicer, because they generally default to your preferred colour scheme, so you're not left with a hotchpotch of different hues, shapes and fonts like you can end up with on an Android home screen.
Most of my frustrations with the Lumia 920 are nothing to do with the phone itself. Microsoft has still got a long way to go to catch up with Apple and Google when it comes to the range of apps available. For example, I much prefer the Google Chrome browser over Internet Explorer but Chrome simply isn't an option on a Windows phone. At least I can now select Google as my preferred search engine, as opposed to Bing, which I loathe, mostly because of its stupid name.
But all those are niggly details for another blog. This is part one of 3 first impressions, so I won't get bogged down in the nitty gritty. I was impressed by the look. I was impressed by the speed. I was impressed by the screen size but with that comes one down side. This thing is huge. I've always been suspicious of the Galaxy S3 as a practical handset because of its size, but the Lumia 920 is easily as wide. It's not quite as long but it is thicker and heavier. That all means it doesn't really fit in my pocket... which is a major bummer because I kind of love it.
I'll tell you some more reasons why I love it in blogs to come, but in the meantime, I'll give you my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy SIII next week.
