December 3, 2012
Feedback submitted!Unable to submit feedback! I had "Windows Mobile" and "Symbian" back before smart phones were cool. The iPhone came out and changed the world. I had an iPhone and loved it. Upgraded to a 3GS and was starting to get annoyed by it. The original "Motorolla Droid" came out on Verizon here in the US and I jumped on it immediately. Since then I have has the Droid Pro, Droid Incredible, Droid X, Thunderbolt, Droid 3 and Droid 4. I loved all my Motorolas and tolerated all my HTC Android Phones. But I started getting sick of all these new policies that Google was adopting about forcing me to use my real name. Eventually one of my Google accounts was suspended after 7 years of faithful Googling! That was the last straw. I looked at the market and really my only option was the HTC Trophy 7 on Verizon. I got it on eBay for under $200 and loved it! Enter the new Windows Phone 8 Nokia Lumia 822. Not having over all very good luck with HTC phones (namely call quality and antenna performance), the HTC Trophy included, when the new HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 822 hit Verizon I had to decide what I wanted more, a nice 720 HD screen or better call quality, removable battery, upgradable storage, Nokia Apps. I Seemed like I had already made my decision. I preordered the white Lumia 822. I will try and keep it short. If you are on Verizon, IMO, the Lumia 822 has way more to offer than the HTC 8X. As I mentioned before, the only thing it really has going for it is the 720HD screen. Also the soft touch plastic it is made out of seems grippy. I don't know if the 8X has good battery life or good reception/call quality. But I do know what the 822 has. A wonderful 800x480 AMOLED screen that the OS really makes good use of. Incredible voice call quality, really fast LTE radio, incredible standby time, even in weak LTE areas, or weak 3G areas. It has a removable battery and supports up to 64GB micro SD cards (SDXC?). Has the ultra sensitive touch screen so you can use gloves, I have the ultra sensitive thing turned off. Quick GPS lock, Qi Wireless Charging built in (you don't need to buy a different door!). 1.5Ghz SnapDragon dual core CPU (I think basically all the current WP8 phones have this, including the Lumia 920). And it has decent front and back cameras. And since its a Lumia, there are all kinds of extra goodies that Nokia gives you.This unfortunately brings me to the negative side of my review. I was excited about Nokia Drive and Nokia maps. I heard good things about them but in practice, they aren't very good. Nokia Maps is fairly fast, but the traffic data is hit or miss and is very slow to populate on the map. POI's are good though and finding business, houses and places to eat works pretty well. Nokia Drive was the biggest disappointment. It can be VEEEEERY slow to find an address. And even though I already downloaded the huge California offline map, it keeps saying I should download the map. It also seems to have no concept of clover leafs. It will just show a left into a freeway when you should be on the right to take the clover. Mapping to my house, it says I should take the street behind my house to get to it. It also doesn't tell you what your next turn is clearly on the phones screen most of the time. If you are on 880 North and need to get to 80 East, it will say something like "Merge to 80". 80 what?! East, West? While over all it is a big improvement to the very basic turn by turn built into WP7.5 it is a step back in some ways. For my trusty little HTC Trophy, I had the Garmin GPS app that I think I paid $40 for. I think I am going to go back to that. One other gripe I have about the phone is the built in loud speaker. The ear piece is perfect, but the loud speaker is VERY tinny and almost piercingly sharp. Its actually shockingly bad for a modern cell phone. If you like to listen to music with the built on speaker, the 8X may be the way to go for you. I havn't tried with the speaker phone yet, but maybe it will lend it self better to voice calls than music. Oddly the ring tones all pretty much sound fine.But for me over all Windows Phone 8 shines. I am a heavy e-mail and SMS user. I also browse the web a lot on my phone (a good reason for a 720 HD screen), but all smart phones are a compromise in some way or another to a mobile power user. Bottom line, the Nokia Lumia 822 is a wonderful phone with great ergonomics, call quality, reception and battery life. But I never see it anywhere. It is a very under appreciated phone. If you are a Verizon customer and want a Windows 8 Phone right now, weigh your options carefully when choosing between the 8X and the 822. They are both good phones for different reasons. To me, all the things the 822 offered far outweighed the HD screen and possible shortcomings that all other HTC phones I have ever owned have had. I am giving this review an 8 out of 10 because of the disappointing exclusive Nokia apps like Maps and Drive, at the time of this writing anyway. Hopefully they will get better. Thanks for reading. -JH