My adventures with the Nokia 920 continue and I used the phone quite extensively while away on holiday as we were away from our normal phones and Internet access. The phone was particularly awesome as it allowed me to keep on top of my emails as well as keep up with the news events.
I’m liking
I like how the home screen is customisable, I’ve changed it a few times to move the features I use more often to the top of the screen and it’s working nicely for me now.
• As a phone, it works well although I’ve been caught out a few times having turned down the music only to miss a call because the ringtone had been turned down as well.
• Sending texts and pictures works nicely – the predictive text looks at what you’ve already typed and suggests following words. This means you can often write much of a sentence with only a single tap per word- a lot faster than other texting I’ve done. I especially like the ‘text my position function’- while on holiday, my brother got lost on the way to where we were meeting, so I texted the position to him.
• I’ve just recently discovered the speech function and this allows me to convert text to speech. It seems to work pretty well, despite my kiwi accent.
• The web browser worked well despite the limited screen size, zooming in and out was smooth and easy. While on holiday I had to check my bank balance and had no problems. Which brings me to one small issue- the application market has a bit of a catch up to do compared to the Apple and Android market. For example, my bank doesn’t have a Windows Application, which is something I hope they rectify soon. That being said, after accessing LinkedIn with the phone, the website emailed me to advise me of the LinkedIn application, so some organisations are up with the play.
• The music player works well.
• Over our holiday we were travelling with young children to a number of places we didn’t know well. One morning, to prevent waking other Motel guests, I took the kids out searching for a playground without a lot of success until I thought to use the GPS to find somewhere to entertain the kids. It directed me to a nearby park and the other guests got a good sleep-in while we got to enjoy one of the worst slides I’ve ever seen.
• I have very quickly gotten used to the size of the phone; so much so that my work phone, a Nokia C-05 feels like a toy when I use it now.
• Our eldest child is 4, so we don’t want her playing games too much; however the application store has a bunch of neat games for her including dress-up games and colouring in games which are particular favourites. I’ve only recently discovered the Sesame Street applications, but they look good and are relatively cheap. Our youngest is one and a half so games are a bit beyond her but she does love a game we found that involves squashing ants but mainly because she likes squashing the bees which ends the game.
Things that made me go hmmmm
I haven’t been able to work out why but one of the game apps that I downloaded seems to cause the phone to freeze. It happens randomly, sometimes shortly after starting, other times when I’ve been playing for a while. It’s occurred four or so times and once it’s frozen I have to restart the phone, which is a bit of a pain.
The conclusion
This phone rocks. It’s easy to use, has great functionality and I’m enjoying exploring how to use it more effectively.
Note: This phone was kindly provided for review by Telecom New Zealand
