I bought this phone primarily to have a badass camera at all times. In that regard, this phone delivers. The camera is great, especially for nighttime shots and indoor shots. Daytime and outdoors are also high quality-- but the quality doesn't stand out versus competition like the previously mentioned categories.
I also love the home screen. It makes the best use of space of any camera I've seen, and allows you to allocate the proper amount of real estate to your various apps. Live tiles are an awesome feature which allow your apps to be widgets too. All very nice.
Badass camera notwithstanding, this phone is a horribly frustrating experience. Things that should be simple-- like syncing music-- are needlessly difficult. The software is buggy and often did not work for me at all. I don't know if that's because I'm using Windows 8 (sigh...) or if Windows Phone 8 simply hasn't worked out the kinks. Regardless, syncing was hit and miss for a long time, with inexplicable duplication and inexplicable un-syncable items, and album art weirdness, and seemingly random album names... Ugh. I could go on. Syncing, the most basic function of all, is needlessly difficult. This is the most egregious sin because it is the most basic functionality needed for every smartphone. (This counts against the ecosystem score.)
The next basic function that is lacking is in the navigation department. Luckily the phone seems to be getting better in this department, with the release of Nokia's HERE software. However, for inexplicable reasons, I am at random times unable to reach GPS... which is kind of a big deal. The reason why I bought my first smartphone years ago was precisely for navigation. Besides not being able to connect to GPS at random times, sometimes I would connect to GPS, and the phone would believe I was approximately 10 blocks forward and to the right. That makes navigation a bit harder. Usually a reboot would fix these issues, but that's awfully hard to do whilst driving in a car, especially if you don't know that your GPS is leading you astray. In addition, even when the GPS is connected, and knows your real location, the phone will give ridiculous routes; routes that are in no way optimal, and sometimes not even possible. Oh, and it doesn't know how to show what to do in a roundabout. Yeah, navigation is a fail. (This counts against the software score.)
The Breakdown
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Design
8
-
Display
10
-
Camera(s)
10
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Reception / call quality
6
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Performance
9
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Software
3
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Battery life
6
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Ecosystem
2
Show the rest of this review and the breakdown
