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User Experience of Windows Phone 8, Lumia 920.
A windows phone 8 user, Ghislain, shares with us his experience using Lumia 920. Ghislain d’Adesky has been working in the mobile industry for the past 12 years. Ghislan has a strong multicultural background and is currently works at a multinational Chinese telecommunications equipment and services company as a Business Consultant. His specialties include competitive intelligence, international project coordination and networking. He holds a Master Degree in Management from SKEMA Business School (Lille, France) where he graduated in 2001. Here’s what he has to say: I have to admit, I am a bit of a smartphone addict. My first smartphone in 2003 was the Sony Ericsson P800 and it didn’t come out of the blue but rather as replacement for the Palms I had in the 90s. My next smartphones were T-Mobile branded HTC devices running on Windows Mobile (2003 SE, 5 and 6). In 2008 I moved on due to a mix of curiosity, peer pressure and availability issues of Windows Mobile devices in Bahrain, where I had moved. I became a Blackberry user for 3 years and I was quite happy with them. Nonetheless, I felt nostalgic after a while so I bought a Sony Ericsson Xperia X2 (Windows Mobile 6.5) to try it out at the beginning of 2010. The performance of this device and its size were disappointing and inconvenient. BBM also proved to be way too addictive so I ended up putting the device into a drawer and gave it away to a friend and that was probably not among the nicest gifts I ever made. At the beginning of 2011 I gave in and I bought the device I had sworn I would never acquire or even keep if offered: the iPhone (iPhone 4). After getting over the loss of a keyboard and BBM, I reluctantly had to admit that it was the most advanced smartphone I had ever used/owned. Being a frequent traveler I always need a second device and that I had the opportunity to discover Google’s Android, however the fact that these are mostly entry level devices that had their limitations i.e.: in terms of storage capacities or processing power, I couldn’t say that I had given Android a fair chance in comparison to iOS (since then I acquired a 7’’ tablet running on Android 4.0 and it changed my perspective of that OS). My iPhone didn’t age well e.g.: the pictures taken with it were all blurry after less than one year apparently because of too many scratches on the lens. With the release of Mango/Windows Phone 7.5 and the eye catching Nokia Lumia 800, I started to follow again what Microsoft was doing on the handset field. As I was starting to get bored with my iPhone and had already passed a first replacement opportunity: the iPhone 4S (couldn’t see how to justify an upgrade from the 4 to the 4S). Then Windows Phone 8 was announced. Microsoft’s new mobile OS looked nice, and despite wishing them success with it, I was waiting for the iPhone 5 to come out. I had grown accustomed to iOS but it was no longer a love match, habits/convenience had set in. However the iPhone 5 once again turned out to be a disappointment: only incremental changes and apparently made of shoddy material (I am thinking Scuffgate here). It made it at best uninteresting or unexciting as a replacement and at worst look like a rip off in any case it seemed Apple was taking its customers for granted. I didn’t like that so I decided that I would ditch the iPhone and move on to something new: the renewed version of the mobile OS I had been familiar with a couple of years before: Windows Phone 8. At first I was hesitating between the Samsung Ativ S and the Nokia Lumia 920. But the reviews, the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft and ultimately the availability made me choose the Lumia, my first Nokia ever. I ordered a black one in November, not my first choice: wanted a matt one but the gray seemed to exist only on pictures and the blue one exclusively sold in the US. However a delivery issue meant that I had to leave for weeks to Indonesia on a business without my new smartphone which was frustrating. It’s only shortly before the holidays that I could finally lay my hands on my Lumia 920 and it felt like Christmas came (several days) early! First impressions of WP8 Finally something fresh, it’s a mobile OS that is very user friendly and intuitive yet still exciting to discover and to use also for long time smartphone users. I instantly liked to “look and feel” of the OS, even the fonts look great, special attention to details had obviously been given. If you choose Bing as a lock screen, you will get a beautiful daily updated background picture. And every day I eager to see what it will be. The “Live Tiles” interface is absolutely brilliant. It is a smart and original way to combine icons and widgets and it makes every one’s Windows Phone unique. Yet personalization didn’t come at the expense of aesthetics and ease of use. Kudos Microsoft ! I noticed that even die-hard fans of competing mobile platforms are impressed or even jealous when they see WP8’s home screen. It is also the first time I get to experience the benefits of the ”Cloud” on a mobile. Skydrive enable eamless synchronization with my PC, my Android tablet or even my old iPhone. My pictures are automatically uploaded/shared, same thing goes for the notes taken with OneNote, or with the documents I wish to place on it. On my PC, Skydrive is actually a drive of its own right, appearing on Windows Explorer just as clearly as the local drives (C: D: ect.). It is a great experience, it’s very convenient and I told that this is just the beginning, that Microsoft is working hard a developing a fully integrated ecosystem Admittedly, Apple has the iCloud, tried to use it and couldn’t see the benefit of it. Teething problems with WP8 that will need to be addressed: ...