[geekmaster]

For a fan of technology. I have to say its been quite a rough 4 months. The phone you intended on getting (nexus 4) is out of stock, and including the tax + shipping its not that much of a value either. The price. Well it adds up to $390 (that's including shipping plus taxes). I wanted the nexus 4 for the apps. Lets face it. The play store is well stocked and reasonably priced for the most part. And i was introduced to all of that when i bought a nexus 7 from my local Gamestop in September. Guess what. A month later it slipped out of my arms and onto the tile floor. Display broke on contact and the stupid repair policy does not cover accidental. I guess most don't anyways. So its november, thanksgiving comes and goes. And the nexus 4 went out of stock yet again as i got home from San Jose. Then it hit me like a brick. Why the heck am i supporting an anti competitive monopoly making backdoor deals with the NSA? Why am i still being tracked even when i opt out? Why does Google not care about my security? And why do they want to know so much about me. I Believed i was better than this. Hey, maybe i am actually a human being who is more than a few GB's of data on a server miles away from where i live. The issue brought me back to Orwell's vision of the future. A bleak sociopathic society where almost everyone talks out of their *** and life is never private. You could say my Samsung focus was akin to Emanuel Goldstein from the book 1984 as the promoter of truth. And all the fandroids practicing 2 minuet hate on their self centered little forums. I came to windows phone for sanctuary from the norm. A haven of beautiful live tiles with Swiss design elements. A place where the cloud is served 24-7 but never forced on you. And an OS that is the same on every phone with removable bloatware. This is where i realized i really wanted to be. Jumping through craigslist i was able to finally secure a lumia 920. As much as i liked what was being offered with the nexus 4 i was only deceiving myself. I owed it to myself to get a phones that touches where i live, Who i am, and what i want to be. Life is a never ending story so i knew my phone had to be also. Finally it happened. Met the seller outside ATT. Handed him $350 for his black; mind you, mint condition lumia 920. The time 5:40, of the date December 19th, of the year 2012.

Enough soap opera from me. Let me just tell you how spectacular this device has been in the past few days. mind you, the more time i will have spent with it, the more my feelings about this device will change.

So first off. I noticed, the device setup seems very well thought out. As if this were a device from Nintendo. Now don't get me wrong. While the setup may be a small detail, it gave me great first impressions after resetting the sellers device. It will WARN you that if you have the volume to loud it might damage your hearing. While this maybe basic knowledge to most people, some need a constant reminder. And having that included just made the experience feel more real. Like i was actually holding a piece of technology and not a toy. Second is the Camera. Having high functioning autism + OCD discourages me from taking nice photo's. Happens to be that the ois does indeed save the day for quick pictures. I love the fact that i only need to take 2 photo's instead of 7 now to get the kind of result i wanted. 3rd is the screen. While if you look hard enough you do notice some pixels, you actually don't really notice when you're actually doing stuff. Maybe occasionally you might admire the clarity of the pure motion HD display and come across an insignificant pixel or two. But in reality you wont give two ***** about it at all. I have to state though that super sensitive touch has for the most part been hit or miss for me in day to day usage. It tends to work better with metals and it will take a miracle if it ever will be able to work with plastic. 4th is security. It's good. In fact no; Its not just good, Its insanely solid compared to most of the **** in the mobile industry. Yes maybe asking your parents to approve your phone is annoying but its an answer to a real problem. That is if you have children, you need to protect them and be a parent. Microsoft is giving the best tools on the market right now for parental controls. And don't even get me started on kid's corner, its so simple yet so ingenious of a tool. Definitely a "killer app" for parents out there. While i am not one yet, I am not blind enough to not be able to see the value to parents. 5th. Lets talk music. The lumia 920 is an audiophiles dream. After using Dolby surround with a pair of budget over the ear sony headphones. I cannot revert back to regular, because regular does not feel real. Its just that good. Also syncing. It literally only took me 4 minuets to get 600 songs on my 920. And to accomplish it, was one of the most painless tasks i have experienced next to the mess that is itunes. Now what about the design? It's stunning. And to a point almost drearily nostalgic should i say. Everything about the design has a rime & or reason to it. The curve fits perfectly in my palm. The anodized aluminum showcasing the back camera makes a mostly polycarbonate phone look more intelligent and sophisticated than it really is. The build up from the N9 to the 920 has really payed off. Not only did they do much more than apple with every iteration of the iphone, but the little tweaks are stuff you really did not know you wanted until you actually have time with it. The N9 for better or worse has evolved, but the changes are enough to make it feel less incremental and more utilitarian. The curved gorilla glass & torc screws on the rear of the device, make the lumia 920 look industrialized. The design is technical but it still looks and feels very human. And the soft touch black polycarbonate is very blissful to hold.
I have been asked about what i am holding several times already. And my personality has also changed since i picked up the 920 as well. I have been more out going and have socialized like never before. Point given i felt like a dork using android, and i feel like a genius using windows phone 8. Results may vary, but this phone has given me a positive outlook on life.

So what are my final words to you that are reading this? To tell the truth, I am actually lost for words. It would be better just to find the words to describe it yourself. Experience it, love it, Hate it, live with it. Lumia 920 is a state of mind

[sudakoma]

Welcome aboard, glad you're enjoying the experience! Even though the OS is new, it's got so much potential and a few more tweaks by MS and Nokia and it will be perfect.

[GabrielStorm]

welcome, geekmaster. love your take on the phone. I, too, am new to WP8.
the 920 is my third Nokia. I still find myself playing around with it to get it perfect for me.
Yes, the OS is relatively new. it does have potential. now to overtake iOS and android.

[asiaexpat]

glad u like it

[cardinalryan]

Lengthy post, but worth the read! Well done!!

[XENOPHOS]

Hey if geekmaster says its good, its the best.
Hah! Welcome and yes, i have to agree to every single word out there.
Am on "flagship" Motorola and believe me, the phone just freaking lags.

Dualcore, quad, hexa you name it. The very OS is buggy. I had the HD7 (technically my first smartphone) but I gave it up cause I wanted "more". Now there is so much of it, my life is in a mess. "Have a problem with the battery icon?" There is an app for that. Want to "over-clock" your phone? Here is a "custom kernel". Looking for an app called Torchlight? Its on page 37, third row from top. And even after doing so much, how does the phone perform? Slow, laggy and just plain annoying. I'm
just freaking tired of all this. I just want something that WORKS.

Anyways, come Jan and I am ditching my "flagship" for a mid-range 8S (as evident from my Avatar).


Sent from my RaZr on MIUI.

[Rudiepoo1]

Welcome and thanks for the great read. Oh.....& by the way - I whole heartedly agree!

[geekmaster]

Stop reading my mind XENOPHOS... lol. But anyways, that's pretty much what my life was like when at one point in time, I also owned a Motorola android device the (Atrix 4G). At the time i received the MA4G. They coined it as "the worlds most powerful smartphone". The rich history of innovation at Motorola plus the fact that i had family who previously maintained high positions in the company urged me to get the phone. Well it only took me about 2 months to decide to go ahead and use a custom ROM because of how terribly board i was with it. I wasted time looking on xda for new Rom's and slacking off on my school work. Literally android became a heroin like addiction. 80% of the time i was using my phone like a barbie doll constantly accessorizing its different settings. The other 20% of the time was used opening and closing apps that i never enjoyed using. The phone died on me around 5:00 PM so i decided to buy a cheep 2,300 MaH battery off ebay. It came in the mail cracked and completely broke in half after 2 weeks. To put it short, The MA4G drove me so A wall, that i drove 32 miles just to take it to a shady prepaid retailer and get a focus advertised on craigslist. Now my dad has the focus and i have the 920.

[XENOPHOS]

Stop reading my mind XENOPHOS... lol. But anyways, that's pretty much what my life was like when at one point in time, I also owned a Motorola android device the (Atrix 4G). At the time i received the MA4G. They coined it as "the worlds most powerful smartphone". The rich history of innovation at Motorola plus the fact that i had family who previously maintained high positions in the company urged me to get the phone. Well it only took me about 2 months to decide to go ahead and use a custom ROM because of how terribly board i was with it. I wasted time looking on xda for new Rom's and slacking off on my school work. Literally android became a heroin like addiction. 80% of the time i was using my phone like a barbie doll constantly accessorizing its different settings. The other 20% of the time was used opening and closing apps that i never enjoyed using. The phone died on me around 5:00 PM so i decided to buy a cheep 2,300 MaH battery off ebay. It came in the mail cracked and completely broke in half after 2 weeks. To put it short, The MA4G drove me so A wall, that i drove 32 miles just to take it to a shady prepaid retailer and get a focus advertised on craigslist. Now my dad has the focus and i have the 920.

Hahaha...exactly my life That. 80%-90% of the time goes in:

Looking through XDA for that one "perfect" ROM(which doesn't even exist BTW).

Optimizing performance (which is also a myth BTW)

Making it look, act and behave like you want your phone to be.

And by the time I am done doing all this, its 4 in the morning. Time to sleep? Nope...time to go to work.

Don't even get me started on the security. This phone has really messed up my life to a great extent. In am never touching Android again. Ever.

Sent from my RaZr on MIUI.

[baseballbert]

Welcome aboard! Awesome review, awesome tech, you will enjoy your stay on WP.

[Luminatic]

Thank you for your unique take on the Lumia 920, geekmaster! I agree, btw, even though my Android detour didn't take that long (I had a HTC wildfire, which was fine at the beginning, became laggy after the first android update, which became even laggier once I installed a few (With a few, I mean a handful!) apps, which became annoying once another android update was installed, which became fun again for a while once I found out I could actually install alternative menus, which became annoying again once I experienced that nothing would take the lagging away ... the last straw was when it became so laggy and unresponsive that it would start play music 5 minutes after I'd hit the "play" button.Not nice if you're working in a huge office full of people who need their peace and quiet to conentrate.

Lots of my colleages have android devices, they're kind of wide spread within out IT department. IT in my country (Switzerland) is like an android bubble inside an iOS world (The Swiss are, generally, huge Apple fans). Seems my colleagues don't care about lags, the one colleague who advised me to get a HTC android device even admitted as much. I do mind lags, I do mind unresponsive screen operation, and one thing the wildfire tought me was making up my own opinion versus listening to the crowd ...

Well, I'm, since last spring, when I got my 1st WP device, a happy one-person WP bubble within an android bubble within an iOS world

[geekmaster]

Its funny how almost everyone here thinks i am completely new to windows phone. Truth is I am not new to windows phone. I have been using the focus since mid june up to early December. As much as i love the windows phone software, Samsung really knows how to bastardize an experience with their c***** hardware. so i have had 2 months (for the most part) of consecutive time with 7.0, 7.5, & 7.8. All of them were great on really outdated hardware. But i have to say coming from that experience to the 920 & 8.0, its a whole new beast in and out.