I'd really like to like my new work phone, a Nokia Lumia 820.
Thing is, though, I can't.
I like its size, the mildy oversaturated colours look good and the phone has a nice weighty feel. I really appreciate wireless charging.
Nav is fast.
The ringing is loud
I really like "Alarm 1" as a wakeup tone.
I quite like that "back" means that, and not "ARGH! ESCAPE" like it does on 'droid.
But that's all I do like.
So, let's go through the bugbears:
- I want to be able to hit a message - and I don't care where it's from - and go to the message to see the details. I think I saw this work today for the first time with an SMS, but it wasn't clear and - the annoying part - it brought up the sender's contact card. I want a question: "call this person?" and it should automatically choose the number from which the SMS was sent.
- WHY CAN'T I CHANGE TILE COLOURS?! What the hell? I want lots of different colours for different apps to make a nice homescreen experience. Limit me to three or four, I don't care. Just not one.
- Why can't I continue to swipe from the right, get the start menu, and then the details and then CONTINUE and get back to start?
- Tapping the time does nothing. Why? Whatever happened to "more details" appearing when you tap on the networks and such?
- What is this with the sound for appointments? Where is it? I can't find it. It's fucking annoying. I want to change it and can't. Why? Did I miss something? Any help from readers?
- I can't set up my Google mail. I have two-factor set up. It simply does not work. I can try to add a "different" account, but Google is noticed and that's it.. no dice. I am not turning two-factor off.
- I want / need my calendars synched and *I can't do it*. What's going on here?
- Why do I need yet another email address?
- Why can't I set multiple maps to be downloaded at once? Why is every single country listed seperately? It used to be BeNeLux, for example, and that was exceedingly practical. Now? .. <sigh>. I must go through the list and deal with every single map individually. Thanks, that was excessively time consuming because I want DE, FR, Benelux, UK, SWE, FIN, DK and a bunch of others. Each one needs to be individually started.
- What is this with the 10 reboots when the phone is new? Updates, etc... It was a true "Windows" experience and I didn't really care, but for others? ohboy.
- I think I get a day's worth of battery at the moment with light use. We'll see, I've just updated the "battery" app (again!) and now I can no longer turn the background tasks off.
- Why the fuck does a phone in 2013 not support FLAC? Oh wait, you want me to use your own formats. Thanks, but no thanks, I don't want to re-encode for the phone ... which is what I ended up doing anyway. Meh.
- Why *must* I drop the songs I want to listen to in the "correct" directory and have them listenable from there? Yes, album art is nice, but hell, I wanted to use the phone as an oversized USB stick and it's not possible. Why? What's wrong with the correct USB protocols? Or is this another "Win8 only" thing?
- Why can't I wallpaper the "rest" of my phone, but only the lockscreen?
- Why is speakerphone so quiet if the tones are so loud?
- Why did the protocol for headsets change? This is the biggest disappointment for me and probably the single biggest reason I will be avoiding Nokia for
To clarify a bit: I'm paid to understand how to use my company's software on pretty much any device for which we create it. That means iOS, Android, MacOSX, Linux and many flavours of Windows (I've been using it since 3.1, which is quite some time ago). I've used Nokia for a long time. I'm sad to say I will be discouraging my wife from an 820 - she was considering it - in favour of an S 3 Mini, I think.
It may well be that I will hit the same problems as above on the next phone. I need to go through the N9 and see just how much of this is also valid there. But at least some of this wasn't valid then - and that's a two-year old device. Now, if I can get a new shell for it... (I dropped it. Once. Onto concrete. Shell broken. €200 repair. Nice.)
Unhappy. I will stick with this, I have to.
- Bret
