Lumia 920 First Impressions

In Syracuse, I was the first person to buy the Lumia 920 at 10:00 AM, when our local AT&T store opened for the day. There was no launch, there were no lines, there was no promotion. It was just me and an AT&T rep who didn’t know about the device either. The buying experience was dull, except for my personal excitement of owning a Windows Phone 8 device; now I’m over it because I’m disappointed. I’m keeping my thoughts on Windows Phone 8 for a follow-up post, this one’s about Lumia 920.

Here are my initial impressions over the past 3 days:

1. It’s not as heavy as the reviews made it sound
2. The AT&T box doesn’t come with earphones, that’s being really cheap. They could’ve given at least a basic pair of $8 Nokia earphones!
3. It’s a really wide device, tough to hold/use with one hand; can be done but, it’s too wide
4. It’s a really well built phone and feels good to hold. The glass tapers perfectly into the body
5. The camera is truly amazing (I’m still working on a comparison photoset of my own). But the camera is stunning without flash, with flash, with and without focus assist light, depending on the scene
6. The screen size makes several app tiles look blurred, probably due to WP7 resolutions
7. The front-camera is quite bad
8. Nokia’s set of exclusive apps like Nokia Maps, City Lens and Nokia Music add to a good first experience out of the box. I love free offline music
9. Windows Phone 8 is responsive and quick, not sure how much that has to do with the Lumia 920 though
10. The screen is crisp and the PureView photographs look really vibrant on the PureMotion HD+ screen
11. The battery just barely manages to get me through a day, I keep toggling my 4G ON/OFF with Wi-Fi ON but not connected

For $99 it is a good device, but you really need to want a specific Windows Phone 8 feature that’s missing in iOS.