Whew! Finally checking in after a long week of first time parenthood and working extra hours at night.
I've had a week with my 920 now. A few impressions/general thoughts.
That first time taking the phone out of its box, after laughing at how silly complaining about the phone's weight, well there is an immediate heft coming from my OG Focus. But I wouldn't come close to calling it a possible deal breaker. I don't see how anyone could decide it wouldn't work because its too heavy, but I could see how someone might not like it because of its size. That was my second impression, the first was the color. Holy hell, I can't get over how distinct the phone is. I work at a charter school with a bunch of junior high kids and every time I pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time within eyesight of any of them, they immediately burst out asking what the hell it was I was holding. The effect is immediate for anyone that sees it. I work at a local retailer nights at an electronic department and it turns heads all night. Feels good. A heavy good.
Battery has been a concern the whole week. Its been up and down all week, it'll barely lasts half a day, and the next day, it'll last the whole day. I keep messing around with the possible culprits of background tasks and NFC settings and GMail pushes, to try and find what's causing most of the problem. But today I went to work in the morning (11 am) and turned off GMail to manually sync email and by the end of the day at 9pm, my phone was still at 50%. That's the best its ever gotten, and at least its not consistently bad, but its not consistently good. Hopefully as the battery starts getting a little more conditioned it'll get better as software tweaks get released, because I don't think its really a battery issue but more a software issue.
Built quality, call clarity, low light camera performance, and OIS are all seriously impressive. And I can confirm how awesome it is to not have to rip off my gloves during a cold morning to start some music on the way to work. Just really really pleased with the phone.
I am not pleased with the downright gimped software I'm using to sync content from my PC to my phone. Playlist support is utter shit. They have some serious work to do to get it to usable levels, its barely a skeletal framework of basic function. The transition from Zune to XBOX music, and getting Zune playlist content onto XBOX Music to my new phone has been pretty frustrating. I can't sync my autoplaylist that contains all my rated music, the autoplaylist support is nonexistent in XBM. Means I have to manually choose thousands of songs I like versus a playlist I've set up and used for years to keep the good stuff with me. Very disappointed.
Cool stuff: Cinemagraph. I love this little function. And I've created a ton of little looping pictures so far, but being able to share it has been stilted. For some reason it won't upload to facebook, and it doesn't animate when I share it via email or skydrive. Any of you found a way to show a cinemagraph off easily?
That torch effect that happens when the phone is in direct sunlight? So good. Best I've ever seen on a phone.
Windows 8 specific new stuff: I'm really liking the new home screen, being able to just get more easily accessible tiles on the start screen itself makes me happy.
Here's mine so far:
What's with still not being able to use a custom sound with text messages? For some reason I thought that was in for Apollo. What a dumb oversight. How long do we have to wait till we get some basic user customization options Microsoft?
But generally I'm pretty pleased with the OS upgrades, its still crazy smooth, Kid's Corner will be useful in about a year or so, I've already shown it to someone at work who was buying a Nexus 7 to keep her kid off her phone and she asked how she could get that on her Android. Gladly informed her of other platform options.
So I think overall, I'm very pleased with what Nokia has brought to the table and kinda disappointed with stuff MS should have pulled off far far better. So uh, here's to over the air updates? I expect MS to get their software shit together over the coming months.