The Lumia 920 resting and wirelessly charging itself up on the Fatboy Recharge Pillow.
Posted on 09/09/2012 3:26:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The early returns/opinions are in on the Nokia Lumia 920—expected to reach retailers in November—and they declare the new flagship smartphone for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system a winner.
From its high-quality construction to its dazzling display, the Nokia 920, introduced Wednesday, garners kudos across the Net.
"It's incredibly handsome," gushed David Pierce at The Verge.
"The new Nokia Lumia 920 mobile phone is the best the company has ever made," added Matt Warman, consumer technology editor at The Telegraph, based in the United Kingdom.
The 920's construction earned some praise from Andrew Wooden at T3. "Nokia’s R&D department apparently put it through rigorous tests, including dropping it, splashing it, and even putting suntan lotion on it to see if the colors would be affected," Wooden wrote. "The overall result is a solid feeling build that feels like it could take a knock or two."
Chris Burns, writing for SlashGear, added, "The displeasing ridge around the display of the Lumia 900 has gone, with a smooth blend into the plastic body."
Specs
Nokia used a unibody design for the 920's scratch-resistant polycarbonate to enhance antenna performance. The bright colors offered for the phone—a Lumia trademark—are inject molded into the plastic to prevent them from fading over time.
The 920's display resolution of 1280 pixels by 768 pixels also captured claps from pundits. "It's gorgeous," said Kyle Wagner at Gizmodo. "It's bright and defined, and photos look incredible on it."
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
Excerpt from Seeking Alpha:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/854981-nokia-a-windows-phone-8-fueled-comeback-isn-t-crazy
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Windows Phone 8 is actually a big deal. Why? It’s a slick, fast, and easy-to-use phone operating system backed and supported by one of the strongest operating system design teams in the industry. Now, this isn’t to say that Google’s (GOOG) Android and Apple’s (AAPL) iOS aren’t also great, but common sense would say that Microsoft (MSFT) is bound to gain traction with its new and improved version of its Windows Phone OS. But common sense isn’t enough, so here are some more fun facts:
Microsoft Dominated The Console Market: Remember when Sony (SNE) was the “untouchable” player in the game console market? Well, Microsoft’s first Xbox was pretty successful; it outsold the Nintendo GameCube, but lagged significantly behind Sony’s Playstation 2. But the firm’s second attempt with the Xbox 360 was a slam-dunk success, frequently outselling the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii month after month. Microsoft didn’t get it quite right at first, but eventually it succeeded brilliantly.
Strong Development Ecosystem: If there’s one thing that Microsoft does well, it’s, well, software. The new Windows Phone 8 OS simplifies porting of Windows 8 apps to Windows Phone 8, makes porting over from other platforms such as Android, Symbian, and iOS much easier than with Windows Phone 7, widening the app base for Windows Phone 8.
Why Nokia?
Nokia is very well positioned in the Windows Phone ecosystem and during July captured 59% of the Windows Phone market. People seem to really like Nokia’s offerings! The current generation Lumia 900 received great reviews and is priced very competitively, with this reviewer concluding,
“In all, it’s a fantastic piece of technology. It just looks and feels like nothing else on the market. It hits all the right notes for me. A little bit retro, a little bit futuristic, with a touch of quirky humanity in its otherwise very machined design. This is the Nokia I grew up with, and it’s clear the company hasn’t lost its ability to enchant through hardware”
More importantly to Nokia and its shareholders, Nokia’s latest Windows Phone 8 offering, the Lumia 920, comes packed with a great screen, best-in-class camera, a very fast Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon S4 CPU, 4G LTE support (the Lumia 900 had this, too), and an aesthetically pleasing design. Reviewers were generally impressed with the phone with Techworld concluding,
“The Lumia 920 looks good and performs smoothly. It has a deluge of features, and a great camera. And the Windows Phone 8 software really stands out. Camera features like the ability to add motion or delete people who’ve wandered into the shotalong with the phone’s augmented reality-flavoured City Lens will likely set the Lumia apart from other Windows Phone handsets”
The main takeaway here is that Nokia has bet its future on its Windows Phone 8 lineup and so far it seems that the company is doing its job well: great hardware and great software. With a great product in hand, Nokia’s main job will now be to make sure that the general public is aware that these phones are here and that they rock. The firm’s brand, while probably a lot less “popular” than it was in its heyday, still resonates with customers. The ball is in the marketing department’s court at this point.
Conclusion
Nokia’s back, but time will tell if the company’s Windows Phone push will restore the firm and its stock price to glory. The risks here are obvious: there are lots of good phones out there with compelling hardware and software features in the Android, iOS, and even Windows Phone camp (Samsung, anybody?). Plenty of excellent phones with wonderful hardware, great software, and sexy price tags go unnoticed in the crowded world of smartphones. Establishing grabbing customer mind-share with an excellent brand and reputation will be key, and that remains the major risk to Nokia’s future. But hey, it’s nice to know that the actual phones won’t be the major headwind to Nokia’s success.
The display on the 920 is also supposed to be a true 1080p.
Check out the Samsung Windows phone, it’s fantastic.
I have Microsoft Office, Kinect, a Microsoft Mouse and a Sidewinder keyboard. I love Windows 7. I would love to have something that looks like that on my phone.
But this looks like it was designed by color blind people. It’s not just that it’s ugly but you can’t distinguish between the different icons because of the lack of or the poor use of color.
I like the tiles, now that I understand them.
The tiles allow you to get and read updated information without you having to open your phone every time.
How does it stack up against the latest version of Galaxy?
I’ll give it a look when they are available.
Wrong, true 1080p is 1920x1080 pixels. This phone sports 1280x768, which is a tad higher than 720p (1280x720).
If there is room in the phone market for a Windows phone, I don’t think Microsoft will let Nokia fail, because the alternative would be to be the only software company without an exclusive manufacturer.
That would be a death knell to Microsoft’s foray into the phone market. As I read, Microsoft is willing to eat dirt and, even lose money, to get that vital third place.
Don’t mind being wrong.
That’s still an excellent resolution.
Yes, I agree. I had no idea the resolution was that great on a non-iphone.
LG Optimus G also coming out with 1280x768
It will also have the pur-vue camera, which takes a picture through several lenses simultaneously and combines it into one great pic.
No other non-Nokia camera will have that technology.
“The tiles allow you to get and read updated information without you having to open your phone every time.”
hmm I have widgets on my Android phone. For example, I have a stock ticker, the latest google voice mail and I also have a voice recorder button on my screen so I can begin recording with just one click.
Windows 7 used to promote widgets (they called them ‘gadgets’). I still have weatherbug and stock ticker on my desktop but Microsoft closed down the website. Google also closed down desktop which bothered me because I really liked that gmail widget.
Since this is freerepublic, I want to add a request for a freerepublic widget. Or tile. Or whatever you want to call it.
That would be up to Mr. Robinson to add such an app.
It would be a good move on Freerepublic to have such an app.
It could use the rss feed to show the latest headlines
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/feed.rss
A complete mobile app such as like tapatalk would be more complicated because FR uses its own custom forum, if I’m not mistaken.
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