My 5 cents about the Lumia 900 review

Posted by Dreayz on April 4, 2012 08:55 am 41

Hi, this is my first post & thread I signed up to raise my concerns with the review and to get some input from the userbase and hopefully the staff of theverge.

I would like to start out with saying that I've been using the Lumia 800 for around 3-4 months as my main device, I upgraded from a Iphone 3Gs. I've also used most new phones and gotten a lot of feedback from a variety of different users, ranging from power-users to less adapt users.

Since I personally have not touched nor used the Lumia 900 I really cant say anything about the hardware aspects of the review but it seemed fair. What really bothered me was the software evaluation, there are quite a few concerns.

The first thing I really noticed in the video review was that the application listing on your device didn't even have the "App list keyword capability". What this means is that once you install specific number of applications, all applications are sorted in to groups and listed by their first letter. You can at that point swipe to the left then select the first letter of the app to instantly get directed to the relevant matches.

The amount of applications needed to get this feature enabled is not a massive number at all.The thing I find weird about this is that if you've truly tried the phone and given the OS a solid shot should there not be enough applications to enable this feature?

This is also an feature that I as a pretty advanced user find vital to the "flow" of the OS, this feature is in my eyes an improved version of groups of applications on the iPhone. The more you use the phone the faster accessing applications actually gets. I would also like to point out that all the AT&T applications seemed to be present in the list meaning the number of applications needed should not have been far off.

I highly suspect that the browsing of applications was one of the concerns you had with the OS, this also leads me to believe that the number of applications you tried must have been very very modest. I do however get that since if your a new user you simply do not know what alternatives there are. I don't really get how you can downplay the majority of applications when you clearly didn't try even a fraction of them.

The review also seemed really keen on pointing out weaknesses on the software side but hardly any of the strengths.

You didn't mention the Facebook integration at all, one of the features that's just brilliant but you where very eager to point out that twitter was just not doing the trick.

Is there any reason for that maybe your not just using Facebook that much in general? I really do believe this one of the platforms biggest strengths, the People hub normally refereed to as the Contact list on other platforms is a really strong point of the system. It fetches things such as latest updates, the ability to chat with them through facebook/windows live without any 3d party applications, it also enables you to parse pictures from your contacts facebook.

The ability to communicate with friends through threads is simply brilliant this for me plays a MAJOR role with the OS, it also allows me to always be available on Facebook in case I simply do not want people to know my number or just to keep my phone-bill in check. It also allows me to switch between Facebook chat, SMS & MSN without the need to start a new conversation. You can also pin specific functions in applications as Live Tiles, such as Stock, Travel routes and various other things.

There are quite a few other perks such as Live tiles and vice versa but I wont go in to them since that's really not the point. What is important however is the feedback I've gotten from actual WP7.5 users I've spoken to. Mainly Lumia 800 users.

The software in other words WP7 got a 5 this would lead any one to believe the system is vastly inferior, but when I speak to realtime users their feedback points out that they feel that the experience is an equal or better compared to competing platforms (mainly IOS) depending on their needs.

The concerns I've heard is mainly one or two missing applications and with the Lumia 800 sound quality (but I got a clear confirmation that it got solved when they got their firmware upgrade last week) battery concerns where also one of the issues I heard about the Lumia 800. But other than that most of them actually prefer WP7 to IOS.

They really seem to like the Facebook integration (Chat, Picture Hub, Grouping friends & family together as Live Tiles to get updates).

I do get that everyone has different needs but rating the software that low implies that it's vastly inferior to IOS & Android and I really find that strange. I get the feeling that your looking for an IOS or Android experience while not seeing how the system really works in Wp7.

I really don't consider myself a fanboy but seeing review on a new device running the OS I use on a daily basis getting presented in such bad manner, sparked me to write this post. I run what I believe fit my needs the best and I consider all options when I set out to buy a device not doing so would be foolish. However posting a review that focuses on the bad points then avoiding all the good points along with obviously not testing the device and it's services fully quite frankly unprofessional conduct. Your one of the major tech sites on the web and you influence millions of people.

I just tried multitasking between several applications and I really didn't share the same experience as you none of them actually started from scratch when I resumed them by holding in the Back button. I do however agree that there are some downsides to the OS but on the other hand that's also relevant for IOS & Android.

You also seemed to forget to mention any of the Nokia applications that where bundled with the phone.

This got pretty long but I really feel the review of the software was unfair/poorly done.

Could you be more specific on what you found lacking in regards to the OS since it's pretty unclear in the article.

I would like to point out that English is not my native language, meaning that if anything is unclear feel free to ask.