NOKIA'S LUMIA IS available from "free" in Vodafone Ireland shops, meaning a 60 euro monthly contract will get you a very capable handset.
Where I work, the monthly contract price is around 20 euro more per month than many legacy Nokia owners currently pay. I consider the extra money is the cost of being connected online while you're mobile. It costs a lot more to push data through 3G masts than it costs to run SMS texting across Ireland. The question for all the network operators is how to make data such a compelling service to attract tens of thousands of Irish to pay for it on monthly contracts. It's a tough sell.
It's also a tough sell to pull a happy iPhone owner back to Nokia. Tens of thousands of Irish who grew up with Nokia now own iPhones. Many of them are happy in an Apple ecosytem and they've paid for dozens of apps they use several times a week. Leaving those paid apps behind will be a big decision because in many cases, those iOS apps enrichen mobile experiences much more than intimate phone calls or conversations by text.
I have a lot of time for Nokia's Lumia and I've made it my primary phone largely because I can manage four e-mail accounts better with it than I can on my laptop.
I can manage direct messaging with the Lumia more efficiently through Rowi and the Metro UI interface. It's as good as Boxcar on iOS.
I can stay abreast hundreds of newsfeeds by using Wonder Reader on Lumia. It's snappier than any laptop or mobile feed aggregator.
Vodafone press releases tout the Lumia's injection-moulded polycarbonate because the handset feels good and solid when you hold it. I agree but I think I'm going to snap the phone into an Otterbox so I can hold it one-handed when I snap shots. The Lumia's smooth curves make it difficult to grasp in my fat hands.
The Carl Zeiss optics on the Lumia's 8MP camera are fine and its 720p HD video recording work well--but not in poor light. I've snapped and shared a dozen shots and videos from my Lumia. We revert to our Nokia N8 for camera moments and I use my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc for document imaging.
Nokia Drive works exceptionally well but Lumia has left dozens of my favourite pinpoints behind on the Nokia Maps server. When using Drive, I can't see spots I've marked at locations I've enjoyed through years of driving in Ireland and the States.
I'm surprised by the 25 GB of free cloud storage that comes with the phone. It's very nice having the ability to work with familiar documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) while saving them in Microsoft's Skydrive. It feels more elegant than Dropbox and it doesn't cost a cent. I'm collaborating with several colleagues by accessing Skydrive folders. This is clearly an enterprise service.
I've shown the Lumia to friends afte unplugging it 12 hours beforehand. The phone normally drops below 40% charge right around a 12-hour duty cycle. Then its battery saving kicks in and throttles all my data services. From personal experience during the past 45 days, I know I can get 16 hours of life between mains power charging with the phone. My usage normally involves 20 minutes of voice calls a day, reading and replying to five or six texts, reading 180 emails, writing 20 emails, reading tweeting 200 tweets, tweeting 25 times, reading 40 news items, taking two or three photos, listening to three or four half hour podcasts, and posting status updates four or five times. I can do all those things in 16 hours between recharging.
The Nokia Lumia works data well for me. But I pay O2-Ireland 60 euro a month while using 790 MB every four weeks of over-the-air 3G data to get a result.
See the Lumia in my Flickr photostream.
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