I said it at the time: "Two mobile-losers' getting together doesn't automatically make a winner". It's still the case. When you go beyond hard-core Nokia fans and MS fans, who buys Lumia?
People who like me got tired of Android's fragmentation and constant "clunky" feeling (I got so sick of flashing roms just to get my battery to survive the day) and don't want to buy into the Apple ecosystem. I've had a Lumia 920 for over a year now and think its absolutely the best phone I've ever owned. Co-worker also go the same phone, and switched back to iOS so he could iMessage with his mom but otherwise loved the experience as well.
It's a solid piece of hardware with a reliable and easy to use OS, other than a few missing apps (I'm not big into them myself), it's an impressive entry into the market.
I have owned a Lumia 820 and 920. The hardware was absolutely great, but I have grown to dislike Windows Phone's shortcomings:
- No separate volume control for the ringer, music, etc. I swear I've become almost deaf twice.
- No notification center. I do believe tiles are great, but they are not enough alone. I quickly want to have an overview of new messages, if possible reply inline.
- Sometimes I had random reboots (on both phones). Sometimes I couldn't turn the phone off (it would immediately start again).
- You cannot put applications on an SD card, which was annoying, given the 820's 8GB.
- There is a serious lack of applications. The applications that are there are generally of a bad quality. Even Microsoft's Facebook application is flaky compared to the iOS and Android counterparts.
I sold both phones and bought a Nexus 4, which I am very happy with, and has great battery life (not noticeably better or worse than the 920). I still like the iPhone the most (I had iPhones for 4.5 years), but the extra value of a 5s or 5c is not worth the price difference between an iPhone and a Nexus to me.
I like the "one volume control" feature best of all. I used a Nexus 4 and I now own an iPhone, and the volume behavior is... unexpected, to put it nicely. On my iPhone right now, I have the silent switch turned on, so the phone doesn't ring. I'm opening up a YouTube video to see something but I don't want to disturb the people around me. Thinking ahead at the home screen, I hold the volume down button until the volume is at the lowest. I then load up the video, and it starts blaring at full volume. I can't turn it down until it's already making noise? How does that make any sense?
While it might be better to have different controls for everything, at least on Windows Phone I know that if the phone is muted, sound will not play. At all.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) phones have moved away from being pieces of hardware a while ago. A smartphone without satisfactory/appropriate app eco-system is just a point-and-shoot camera that you can talk into. Furthermore, this is already a ruthless industry (just ask RIM) so I don't think that MS will be able to pull a magic rabbit out of an expensive hat this time.
