Sony Arouje

I moved to Lumia 920 a month ago from iPhone. I felt like I did a good decision of choosing Windows Phone 8, especially Lumia 920. Nokia Lumia 920 is an awesome phone with superior built quality. WP8 got a fresh new look with live tiles. I got really bored with the icon interface I deal every day in my iPhone or Android tab. In this post I will go through the features I feel very important to me in Lumia 920 WP8 Phone.

People hub

People hub in Windows Phone is not just an address book, it’s integrated with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. I can see my friends Twitter or Facebook updates just looking at the ‘What’s new’ tab. Some times I might lost in the updates from so many friends and miss updates from my close friends or family members. To overcome that I can categorize my contacts as groups and see the updates only from the contacts belongs to that group. For e.g. I have a family group where all my family members added to it, that way I don’t miss any update from my wife or little sister or bro.

Another important feature is I can write to the Facebook wall of my contact directly from the People hub, I don’t need any Facebook client. Just select the contact and tap Write on wall and enter what ever I need to post. Same way I can tweet to my contact from People hub.

Photos Hub

Photos hub is the place I can see all the photos taken using my phone, as well as the photos I uploaded to Facebook albums and sky drive. It’s a great feature for me, I can easily identify which are the photos I need to upload to Facebook. Another feature I like is syncing the photos I uploaded to Facebook from my tab or laptop with my phone. Just go to the Photos hub and open the Facebook album then open the photo I wanted offline, from the menu select ‘save to phone’, done, I can see the photo in Saved picture album/folder.

I can also see the latest Photos from my friends by just going to ‘what’s new’ tab. I don’t need any third party apps, it’s all built in.

I really care for my photos and wanted to backup regularly. With built in Skydrive integration I can directly upload it to Skydrive, no need to wait till I get back home to sync with my Laptop. Also I feel more secured syncing to skydrive, because my laptop can crash any time but skydrive won’t.

Music Hub

The Music + Videos Hub is where I can play and manage my music. I use Winows Phone app to sync my music. The biggest advantage of Windows Phone app is, it can sync playlist from iTunes or Media player list.  I prefer iTunes sync as I organized my music library in iTunes and I cant afford reorganizing it again.

Email

One of the feature I like in Winows phone 8 Email client is, the consistency in the user interface. I configured my two gmail accounts, my MS account and my office exchange email. All the mail client behave the same consistent manner and I really like that consistency. I have an Android tab and it has two email clients one from google and another one for exchange mails. Both has different type of interface and need different type of user interaction, It’s a pain.

Another feature I feel very important is linking inbox, means I can link different email accounts and show it in single inbox.

Calendar

I like that Calendar tile pinned to my home even though the Calendar app’s look and feel is not that great. But it does it’s job very well. My calendar is synced with my office exchange mail, facebook events and birthdays, gmail events, etc. It’s really help me to keep track of my schedules. Most importantly I don’t miss any of my friends birthdays 🙂 as it synced with Facebook birthdays.

Camera

My passionate hobby is Photography and I own a DLSR. But carrying my camera every where is difficult and my Lumia 920 solves it. Lumia 920 has an awesome camera and is capable of taking low light shots. In DSLR 99% of the time I shot without flash and Lumia 920’s low light imaging capability helps me to shot without flash. You can find a great review of Lumia 920 Camera in wpcentral. I also have a great control on other setting like Whitebalance, exposure compensation, focusing, etc. I feel like I got every control I need for a better shot except the light metering :). To get full control of your camera you need to buy app like Proshot, it’s topic for another post.

You can find the photos taken using Lumia920 in my flickr set, don’t forget to leave your comments :). Some of the photos I shot using Lumia 920.

App store

I could find all the apps I regularly use in my iPhone or android. Check it out yourself.

What I need

Dialer: I wonder why WP8 is not equipped with a dialer like Rapdialer (not expecting all features). I like the idea of pinning contacts or groups to home but I really don’t want to clutter my home screen with so many tiles. To ease my calling experience I bought RapDialer app. What I really wanted is a favorite contacts and should be able to access it from the default dialer, like the one available in iPhone.

Close Apps from Task switching window: I can see all the apps opened by doing a long press of the Back button. But it will be good if I can able to close it manually from the task switching window. I am not sure whether it’s achievable.