With the ascent of iOS and Android as the leading mobile operating systems powering smartphones and tablets, it easier to to write off the work which Microsoft and Nokia (alongside HTC and other OEMs) have been doing in getting Windows Phone 8 as a major player in the market place. It wasn’t until working with some fine colleagues in Germany and Italy who have been seriously considering Windows Phone 8 as the core platform to replace Blackberry devices, did I start to think that I’ve been blind sided in really understanding the increasing consumers and enterprises appeal of Microsoft’s revamped attempts to make a real player out of this. I tell you now, why Microsoft didn’t use WP8 as the OS for its tablet devices is beyond me.
Enterprises would clearly be attracted by Microsoft’s partnership with them in terms of enterprise licensing agreements, ease of platform and device integration into their corporate infrastructures notably Exchange, Lync and SharePoint. But Microsoft has focused on the consumer market with its first release of WP8. Yes, consumers are driving the demand in the enterprise.
And of course, consumers are driven by unique mixture of needs and wants. Smartphones are upgradeable accessories, and given the intimacy of this single device in the lives of most people in western and emerging economies, driving the multiple forces of social, web and cloud. What does this mean? Smartphones are increasingly driving innovation in term of being fresh and fun to use with life via apps. I’d even succumbed – while I love my iOS devices, and have been seriously impressed with the current generation of Android hardware and software, I had to take a up close and personal look at Windows 8 and its metro UI. It offers something head turning that I wanted to geek out on. What follows is not a warts and all of every feature of the Lumia 920 or/and the Windows Phone OS itself, just what it means in terms of how I use it and most importantly, is it worth keeping.
Lumia 920 hardware
The Lumia 920 is big. Fat big. For a large handed person like me, it’s substantial in the hand. You don’t feel you’re going to drop it. Yes, it’s a lot larger and weightier, but that does not always need to be seen as a bag thing, It’s outer material is made of a single slab of colored polycarbonate. Combined with my rubberised case, I’ve been running with the ‘920 and it feels solid.
The 4.5 inch screen with a 336 ppi 1280 x 768 resolution (yes higher than Retina iPhone) is just gorgeous. WP8 on it uses a 800x400 pixel set s that its UI elements appear larger and more spaced out. It works for me. As expected it supports 720P HD, and one would expect the next iteration of the flagship to go 1080P like its recent Android rivals.
The other hardware stuff is pretty standard fare – 4G radios, 2.4Ghz Wireless N, 2000mAh battery, 1GB RAM, a plentiful 32Gb of storage and so on.
Sonically, I really liked the ‘920. Syncing iTunes music and downloading Spotify, confirmed what I reckoned for the device – it hums real nicely. There was a level of musicality on the device which was on a part of exceeded my experience on Android, certainly far in excess of the iPhones, which always need equalisation to sound reasonable.
The Lumia 920 is a well made phone. May not sculpted to the reduced weight and sleekness of of the iPhone 5, but it’s solid engineering. Class A build quality. Check.
Windows Phone 8 experience
Having no previous experience with Windows Phone 7, I came into the experience of WP8 as a relative noob, hoping to be blown away and feel fanboy affection once I got used it. While there were some strange things which happened in getting it set up – for example, I couldn’t set up the Wallet on the device (had to do it on a laptop) and the MehDoh Twitter client had a horrendous screen in authenticating to Twitter, I really liked it. WP8 is a fresh and easy to pick up UI. The Metro UI tiles really work and after a few days I become quite attached. It relatively simple and is intuitive to see how the other gestures work in terms of press and hold for switching apps or revealing sub-commands in an action. Microsoft, I salute your innovation here. It’s a really good attempt to do something different.
The overall keyboard is a mix or good and bad. Again, I love the soft and tactile touch feel that the ‘920 and WP8 provide, but hasn’t anyone learned properly, that Apple seriously know how keys for an on-screen keyboard should be spaced? On the ‘920, too cramped.
The software and bugs which do hang and do odd things, and overall its a great effort. One thing, of the three buttons on WP8 hardware, the Search button is an odd one. While Android dedicates a button for home screen, going back and a task manager, WP8 forces Nokia and HTC and others to dedicate a Search button. I use twice, to realise it’s wired for Bing search only. WTF?!
Applications
My recent list highlights the apps I installed on the device which I can re-install across other WP8 devices, given the cloud back up on apps and settings built into the OS. The need for better integration across the Windows ecosystem is something I think Microsoft is not really appreciating. Xbox integration is only one part (I haven’t really played with it), but phones, tablets and desktops are able to share data via SkyDrive, but there is so much more which Microsoft could be doing in terms of offering differing types of on the go uses between the different form factors of Windows 8.
Of notable mention goes to MeTweets and NextGen Reader the Twitter and RSS reader apps. Nice, just real nice re-imagination of the app using the Metro UI.
The needs of the Enterprise
In my firm, outside of iOS and Android, there are countries in the global organisation which have expressed a strong interest in switching to WP8 devices as the primary devices (i.e.away from Blackberry). Take Italy for example, talking to the CIO there, shared that through telco and ISPs, the cost of an iPhone (a standard device in my firm), is significantly higher and not cost justifiable from a business standpoint. WP8 devices are often free with ISP contracts and thereby with its capability for device management and forthcoming integration with middleware products such as IBM Traveler and MobileIron for MDM, it’s an appealing option from a enterprise and consumer perspective. The Lumia and WP8 support the needs of the enterprise, with hardware, data, traffic and integration with a range of MDM platforms.
Performance
Geekbench is not on WP8 yet, so no benchmark comparisons can be drawn to iOS and Android device counterparts in terms of hardware and software performance. But the Lumia 920 and WP8, felt reasonably quick. Not as fast as iPhone 5 and Nexus 4, but acceptably quick. Apps can take a few seconds too long to load at times (something consistent to Surface RT as per my other post), but caching seems to help significantly. What you get with the Lumia 920 and WP8 is a smooth fluidity based on Metro. The Lumia has a soft rubberised curved finish, with a soft tactile feel on button presses and on soft like audible screen clicks. This dovetails really nice with WP8.
A couple of quirks came out which I thought were odd. Setting the date and time direct from the internet didn’t work. I had to set this manually. Crazy. Secondly, resetting the phone took ages. After leaving it for 2 hours, I had to restart the ‘920 3 times for the reset to finish. Odd.
Wrapping up
I really liked the Lumia 920, I mean seriously. It’s feel nice in my big hands, takes good pictures and the screen and software experience is fluid and feels great. Yes, there is a current paucity of apps in the store, and I think it will improve. (Sonos – please release a WP8 app – please!). The ‘920 is due to go back in a week or so. Think I’m going to struggle with that.
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