Lumia 920

In the lastest post “Is the iPhone still the coolest phone around?” I was giving a more emotional view of the Lumia 920. The view of who just read all the reviews and saw all the youtube videos of the Lumia 920 and is looking forward to touch it and start playing with it for real.

Now that time has come, since a couple of weeks, and I can give my honest point of view of what this phone can do.

As mentioned in my previous post, I don’t really need 1 million apps to fulfil my needs, I just need 10 that are well done. Surely it’s nice to have a lot of apps to download and test, but at the end of the day, they will be part of my app graveyard on the phone.

Physically the phone is a great device! From the design point of view it is beautiful: the touchscreen is nicely curved on top of the polycarbonate body to create an harmonic shape. The polycarbonate is not a simple piece of plastic! This was my idea before having one in my hand. You should touch it to understand.

On top the phone feels good in your hand, feels solid and it’s unbelievable fast. If you use always only 1 hand and you want to reach all the corners of the display with your thumb then it could be too big.

From the software point of view, Windows has done a great job.

All main sections of the phone are greatly integrated with the social networks, mainly twitter, facebook and linkedin:

- in your messages you have the facebook chat integrated

- in the “me” section you can find your last tweet or update on facebook, update a status on one or more social networks at the same time and you can also see the history of your social networks actions.

- The people section is great with all the updates from your social network’s accounts and with the groups and rooms features. You can create a group with your best friends and see only their news and pictures. And more interesting is the “rooms” feature, where you can chat, share a calendar, share notes, pictures with the people you like. “Rooms” works only with other windows phones.

- SkyDrive is the Microsoft cloud solution. I find it good as you have more freedom to create folders and to manage the cloud space as you like. It’s similar to dropbox. SkyDrive allows you to share your pictures immediately after taking them, like you do with Apple’s photostream.

After celebrating the upsides, there are unfortunately also some downsides. The default twitter, facebook and linkedin integration is great, but the official facebook and twitter apps are not so good. Linkedin much better.

The official twitter app, sometimes, when you refresh the feed page just brings you back to the same place in the queue. And if you have a lot of tweets coming in this is a bit annoying. You loose control over what you read and what you didn’t. You cannot see how many retweet or favourites a twit has, you cannot see a full conversation at once. In fact I downloaded the Mehdoh twitter app which I think is the best available so far.

The Facebook app is very slow and some obvious actions are not so obvious. It’s not at the same quality level of the iOS app. The alternative Facebook apps available in the store are no good in my opinion.

The integrated facebook chat in the messages sometimes doesn’t sync to other facebook chat clients. This is a microsoft issue and there are many discussions open on the windows phone forums but never a decent answer from microsoft.

So to summarise I am very happy with my Nokia Lumia 920! It’s is a great device, fast, great camera, Windows Phone 8 is an excellent mobile OS but there is some work for the developers to do on the apps and microsoft has to do something to solve quickly issues like the facebook chat integration. It’s unacceptable that there is people asking for explanations since months and didn’t get an answer.

Nokia Lumia 920

A couple of years ago I was the kind of guy that would have never bought an iPhone. One of those guys that was more into the specifications of the phone rather than the user experience.

I remember when one of my friends bought the first iPhone, I was shaking his hand, “hey, cool phone!”, but wasn’t impressed by the functionalities. It had a big touchscreen so I thought it would be good to watch videos and to scroll web pages up and down the fastest I could. But as a phone it was not even able to take a picture and send an mms. So I was a bit skeptical and I was sure in saying “I will never buy a phone other than a Nokia!”.

Then a couple of years ago, so much noise around Apple and on top a magnificent Steve Job’s keynote presentation on the iPad pushed me to be, probably, the first customer in Switzerland to own an iPad. All of a sudden I became a huge Apple fan. iPhone, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, iPad 3, MacBook Pro, Apple TV.

It was kind of magic! Unpacking those devices was emotional! I was like a 5 years old child in front of the Christmas tree!

Of course I bought also all the accessories, from the car chargers to the iPhone docks, etc.

I was, and still am, very happy with the products. They look gorgeous and they work great. But now that my iPhone 4 is starting to collapse (due to all the times I let it fall on the floor, not because of the device’s fault) I am questioning myself if the obvious choice of buying an iPhone 5 is the right choice.

And the reasons are:

1) The connector has changed. So now I’m supposed to find adapters or other solutions to make my new iPhone work with all my accessories.

2) The nano SIM. I just got a micro SIM from my provider, and now I’m supposed to find a nano SIM. Not so simple when your SIM card is a company SIM card.

3) No surprise. I know what I will get. It will be the same phone I already have, just a bit lighter, faster, a bit longer. So nothing so cool to look forward to…

The last point is probably the most important. At the time when Steve Jobs was presenting a new Apple product, that product was surrounded by a sort of magic. You could not wait to put your hands on those creations.

But now? My personal opinion is that the iPhone 5 doesn’t have that magic aura.

So I started to check on the internet for alternatives. Other stuff like Android phones, a bit predictable, then I got to see some pictures and reviews of the Nokia Lumia 920 and I actually found it pretty cool! Windows Phone 8 seems to be an excellent mobile OS. Not many applications yet, but who cares having a store with 1 billion applications that I will never care about? Probably better to have those 20 applications everybody needs, but well done!

On top there are rumours that soon an aluminium body Lumia, thinner and lighter will appear on the market. It’s called “Catwalk”.

I find this much more exciting than the iPhone 5.

Am I back to “I will never buy a phone other than a Nokia!”? Probably not, but for sure there is more people out there happy to see Nokia back in the game with the head straight up and with a great product! A company that has always played fair, also when sliding down so badly in the last years. I am a happy Apple user, but I am also extremely happy to buy a Nokia as my next phone!

There is somebody like me out there: #SwitchToLumia

Cookie loves to run! Specially when there’s good music in the background!

It was fabulous! Rock n’ Roll is still alive and it’s changing form, and this is happening with Jack White.

He can be aggressive, sweet, bluesy and still sound like Jack White and no other.

Two hours of great entertainment and surely I will go watch him again whenever I have a chance in the future.

In a time when I was moving my musical tastes away from electric guitars and loud drums, here we are again and at home they have to deal with my renewed Rock n Roll enthusiasm! Watch out!! The Wiremaster and his Gibson are back!!!!

Sometimes I compare their jobs to mine. I have the responsibility to help my customers with their mobile networks problems. When they call I have to analyze the problem, find a solution together with my experts, test the solution and then apply it and this solution has to work!!! People will not be able to make phone calls if I fail!!! I have a responsibility and I take that seriously!

This is what I would like to see from the Italian leaders. I would like them to bring back the excellences of Italy to the right place in the world! Design, food, art, engineering, sports, etc. There’s a lot to save, but it has to be done quickly! More time without actions would let the fire of excellence slowly shutdown and be lost forever.
Once there was the mafia which is probably not there so strong anymore in the old form, but there is more corruption on the highest management floors, which at the end means that normal people is heavily affected when getting services and rights.

My message to those people that have power and that are in the position to change things is to wake up their Italian Pride and but their skills in saving such a beautiful Country and don’t let it go down the drain.

It’s interesting to see that this question has an obvious answer through the engineers of the economy and a radically opposite answer in the common people. It’s about knowledge and perception. Common people doesn’t have the complete knowledge of the financial mechanisms behind the scene and lives with the perception that the Euro didn’t bring benefits compared to before.

I’m not an expert but I like to listen daily to the discussions experts have over this topic. According to the experts, the exit of Greece would have catastrophic consequences on Greece and also on the other Countries of the eurozone. So the mission is to do everything possible to keep Greece in.

But does it make sense? Are we sure that keeping Greece in the eurozone is the spring of a new economic growth? Ot will it make Greece’s death slow and painful? And on top of that, will generate new tensions within the Countries of the eurozone because of mismatching ideas?

I see 2 solutions to put the pieces in the right place:

1) Europe becomes a single Country and really supports itself.

2) The Euro rolls back completely.

Every Country will go back to it’s own currency and will start finding economic strategies for itself. Will this solution be so dramatic? Does it make sense to have 1-2 Countries ruling the others? Is that really fair? Are those decisions really made in the interest of the weakest?

On top I really believe that if there’s a problem it has to be solved immediately also if this causes some problems. Waiting makes the problem only bigger and bigger.

The exercises of the financial intellectuals forcing this system to hold on to itself it’s not really the final solution. I would love to believe that, but I have a gut feeling that this path will lead to very unpleasant times.

I missed the first 2 series, I was generally skeptical about the quality of TV series. The latest one I watched with interest was MacGyver so for me all TV series were something for kids or for bored people. But the world was talking about Lost, everybody was talking about Lost. So I put away all my concerns and decided to watch the first episode of the 3rd series. And that was a wow moment! A wow TV moment! Monday night was untouchable… nothing could have ever pulled me out of home. I watched the 3rd and 4th series but then I moved to another Country and I didn’t have a chance to watch the next series.

Then a few months ago I decided to start all over again and watch all 6 series since the beginning. It was a long journey but what a journey!!! So much looking forward to the end, but now that I reached the end? What to do next? I now realize that I miss my adventure friends Jack, Kate & Co. After my friend MacGyver I lost my Lost friends. I have no more TV friends anymore. Quite sad…

But there is hope! I just red that J.J. Abrams is working on Revolution! A new NBC TV series which could potentially become my next Lost. Coming this fall.

So my question is… are TV shows better than what I thought or am I becoming a boring person? I’m pretty sure it’s the first option.

It mainly consists in taking the freshly fished octopus and smash it on a stone for several minutes. Without such a procedure the polpo would remain very chewy and not allow you to fully enjoy the taste of the octopus.

It can challenge your patience… chew chew and chew and nothing! And we know that the Wiring readers don’t have patience.

So if you meet an octopus on your way, don’t hesitate! Cazz it…

A video is the best way to explain this magnificent process.