Rob gets a Lumia 920

Well, I managed to get my Lumia 920 today. I had this idea that I might fancy one of the bonkers yellow ones, but they are a bit hard to get hold of, and so I’ve settled for a rather nice matt black one which actually looks very distinguished and doesn’t show fingerprints, which is nice. The man in the shop was very keen to show it off and said there had been quite a lot of interest in the platform (but then he would say that I suppose, he is selling them).

Of course I like it. Windows 8 has a bit of a turn of speed compared with earlier Windows phones. Some of this is down to the fact that it has a hairier, dual core, processor and some of it is down to the way that the applications are now deployed in a faster way. Whatever, all I know is that the apps snap into memory and run real fast. The phone itself is very solid in the hand and has a nice balance to it.  The screen quality is excellent, although for screen contrast I reckon the Lumia 800 just beats it. The Lumia 920 does have an LCD panel with lovely resolution and colour rendition though. And being LCD means that you can display bright whites without flattening the battery.

I’ve not had the chance to try the wireless charging yet. The shop I bought the phone didn’t have any of the chargers in stock yet, I should get a free one soon. However I have played with just about everything else on the phone. The camera is very good, pictures are perhaps a bit flat in normal light (although I’ve got a program that I can use to give them a bit more punch). In darkened conditions the results are really good.  Moving videos are great. The audio output quality is the best I’ve heard from a smartphone (except perhaps the very first iPhone, which was amazing) and they have this funky equaliser which you can use to fiddle with the sound if you want. They also have a Dolby gadget which didn’t do a lot for me when I tried it but you might like the phasey spaced-out feel it seemed to add to the music.

I’ve unlocked the phone for development and slapped a few programs on it which worked fine. Next thing is to fill the phone with music. One difference in Windows 8 phones is that they don’t use the Zune program to talk to the PC. You can just plug the phone into your PC and it will show up as an external drive you can load up with content. There is a ‘Windows Phone’ application you can get for Windows 8 that makes it slightly easier, but you don’t actually need this to get content onto your phone. I’ve moved a few files over. If they are in the MP4 audio format (i.e. they came off a Mac) the transfer process offers to transcode them (which implies they need to be converted for phone use) but I said “no thanks” and the music worked fine. Being a Windows 8 phone I can actually take screenshots now (touch the Windows key and then press the Power button) and you can see what my phone home screen looks like above.

I admit it, I’m a Windows Phone kind of person. I had iPhones for a while and loved them all, but I prefer the user interface of the Windows Phone. And I reckon that the Lumia 920 is an absolutely cracking phone by any standards, including those of the folks from Cupertino.