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picked up one of these badboys from bell. so far, it's pretty solid. windows phone 8 is as good as i was expecting, with few annoyances. the 8x is a nicely built device, but the issues with the power button being too flush with the phone are right. it's hard to push. i'm not sure how it compares to the 920, as i haven't actually seen or used a real one, but the 8x is solid, and extremely fast, which should be the same on the 920. any questions, ask away

How much better is the Nokia 920?

I just cannot bet on windows8 mobile. Our IT guy has one, it seems nice. Certainly speedy and responsive, but I just cannot be an early adopter in that arena, not worth the risk at all. Nice to see HTC can still churn out something nice.

Genuinely curious, what do you see as the "risk" - what is the worst case scenario?

I haven't seen the 8X yet but it looks super awesome. I'm thrilled with the fleet of 920s I bought for the office but the 8X was tempting...

i haven't seen the 920 in real life, but spec wise the camera, screen, and storage are all higher. it's a nicer phone, but it's heavier and thicker. the 8x is pretty darn thin, and pretty darn light. i would have gone with the 920 easily but it's rogers only in canada. I managed to get unlimited everything for 65$ with bell, so i picked up the 8x for 0$. first contract i've ever had.

it's pretty darn solid. it's easily the nicest htc device i've ever seen. build quality is great.

I'd call the camera a wash between the two. The low light is nice but otherwise its pretty normal (hoping for some software fixes). The screen, storage, and color choices (business friendly matte black) were bigger factors for me. The size and weight are perfectly acceptable - a lot of fuss being made over nothing IMO. However, I love some of the comments I've read about it, "the only thing you have to worry about if you drop your 920 is what it killed when it landed" and when talking about the new Otter Box case you can get for it, "does the 920 need protection from the environment or does the environment need protecting from the 920?" I have NO problems with this tank of a phone - wish it was a little grippier though - its fairly slick but I haven't dropped it yet.

I got the 8X last Wednesday from Verizon. Moved up from a Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S)

There's a short learning curve of going from android to WP8, but it's been painless. The power button on the top took a little getting used to, but after a few days, it seems perfectly normal. So far, I have nothing bad to say about it. In fact, it's a very impressive piece of hardware and OS. However, my Zune HD is a great piece hardware too, but we know how that worked out.

I like the live tiles and the ability to move them and re-size them easily.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm extremely happy with my 8X, and I hope WP8 is a huge success, for many reasons.

I'm deciding between the Lumia 920 and a Galaxy S3 right now. Using a Galaxy S2 now, and just going to a beefier but similar phone just seems so boring, and I would love to try out WP8 as well.

Anyone tried the different suits of the 920? I've read that all but black and cyan are slippery as hell, is that right? I've only played with the Lumia 900's, and among those, the only one being a bit "sticky" was the white one..

cyan and black are matte, the others are glossy. i'd like the matte myself.

drfish wrote:

Genuinely curious, what do you see as the "risk" - what is the worst case scenario?

I haven't seen the 8X yet but it looks super awesome. I'm thrilled with the fleet of 920s I bought for the office but the 8X was tempting...

I don't find their current track record in the phone arena very appealing. I'd be worried that it'd go the same route as the zune or win7. Maybe an unfair comparison and things have certainly changed but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market. That said, if anyone can pull it off, it's microsoft.

the zune was well supported, i owned 2 and they were well updated. wp7 will continue to get updates, as ms has confirmed.

I gotta hand it to HTC with the 8X. I was very skeptical at first given HTC's first attempts at WP7 but the 8X is a very, very well built phone. I'd probably chose it over the 920.

steelcity_ballin wrote:

but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market.

I think we're VERY ready.

RickyTick wrote:

steelcity_ballin wrote:

but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market.

I think we're VERY ready.

And why would that be? New doesn't mean good anymore. With the complexities of a modern OS there's going to be a lot that MS's offerings just can't match from the other two, and I expect that it will stay that way for some time as adoption (hopefully) picks up. I have to say, their marketing for it is near vaporware. I've seen almost no online ads, and certainly not a single commercial on the tv or web to demonstrate it. It's going to lag behind for some time before it becomes trendy enough that the everyday Joe will want one. I see them as a niche alternative at the moment and nothing more. It's nice to have the integration into windows that I suspect it will have, especially in a corporate environment. We'll see how it fairs.

steelcity_ballin wrote:

RickyTick wrote:

steelcity_ballin wrote:

but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market.

I think we're VERY ready.

And why would that be?

Wouldn't the competition from a 3rd player help further drive innovation and creativity, not to mention keep prices in check?

really, for in real world usage, for almost ALL the market, i can't think of a single thing it's behind the other OS's in EXCEPT number of apps. with almost all of the top apps, it's pretty darn close for realistic users. wired recently did a review of their claims and found them fair: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/ ... -top-apps/

sweatshopking wrote:

really, for in real world usage, for almost ALL the market, i can't think of a single thing it's behind the other OS's in EXCEPT number of apps. with almost all of the top apps, it's pretty darn close for realistic users. wired recently did a review of their claims and found them fair: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/10/ ... -top-apps/

To be honest SSK, I don't use a lot of apps, but the ones I WANT are in the app store and work great. You don't really need 3000 flashlight apps, do you?

sweatshopking wrote:

i haven't seen the 920 in real life, but spec wise the camera, screen, and storage are all higher. it's a nicer phone, but it's heavier and thicker. the 8x is pretty darn thin, and pretty darn light. i would have gone with the 920 easily but it's rogers only in canada. I managed to get unlimited everything for 65$ with bell, so i picked up the 8x for 0$. first contract i've ever had.

it's pretty darn solid. it's easily the nicest htc device i've ever seen. build quality is great.

This is a banner day, I've trolled the trollmaster (for fun) and he didn't know I am glad you like the phone SSK How much was it and how much is the service? Did you have to get a contract?

steelcity_ballin wrote:

RickyTick wrote:

steelcity_ballin wrote:

but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market.

I think we're VERY ready.

And why would that be? New doesn't mean good anymore. With the complexities of a modern OS there's going to be a lot that MS's offerings just can't match from the other two, and I expect that it will stay that way for some time as adoption (hopefully) picks up. I have to say, their marketing for it is near vaporware. I've seen almost no online ads, and certainly not a single commercial on the tv or web to demonstrate it. It's going to lag behind for some time before it becomes trendy enough that the everyday Joe will want one. I see them as a niche alternative at the moment and nothing more. It's nice to have the integration into windows that I suspect it will have, especially in a corporate environment. We'll see how it fairs.

The Kin was a silly desperation move after MS had lost a ton of their mobile market share. Didn't MS just buy it prepackaged in its entirety? I think Windows Phone will stick around, PMPs like the Zune have become more niche and are being superceded by phones, but I don't see phones becoming a niche that will be replaced by something else for a long time - cell phones have been around for ages, they've just morphed over time. MS knows this and will stick with it. Even though some people would like to declare the mobile market as set and won, the consumer smartphone market is still fairly young at 5 years. ~50% of phones in the USA are smartphones, not to mention other countries, that leaves a lot of market. And as much as people love to hate Windows 8 on PCs, having a full range of devices with the same look and feel is a unique advantage MS has, whether they can exploit it is the key.

i thank you for the trollmaster comment. it's nice to master anything! i did take a 3 year contract with bell. so far they have only made one mistake, telling me my plan included call display (3 store staff did this over 2 days) only to have it not. i told them i wanted it, waiting to figure out what the bosses decide.

i'm currently paying 65$ cad for unlimited canada calling, unlimited messaging and 1gb of data. extra gb's are 10$. plan was supposed to have call display right now everyone is unknown. they want 7$ a month for it, and i don't wanna pay it. jerks. they've been difficult to deal with beyond the store level. so far they've told me too bad and i should go back to virgin, but i canceled my old plan, and i can't get it back. i'm pretty annoyed with bell (normal bell behavior, should be used to it by now). love the phone though. got it for 0$ on a 3 year.

What's call display, Caller ID? (shows you the phone number of incoming calls) I can't believe that's actually an add-on, wow.

steelcity_ballin wrote:

I don't find their current track record in the phone arena very appealing. I'd be worried that it'd go the same route as the zune or win7. Maybe an unfair comparison and things have certainly changed but I'm not sure the world is ready for a 3rd giant in the mobile market. That said, if anyone can pull it off, it's microsoft.

My biggest complaint regarding WP7.x has been AT&T holding out on updates. Hopefully that problem is solved on WP8. They say that carriers aren't involved in updates anymore, but I'll believe it when I see it. WinMo was successful enough to have Google copy it, slap a touch interface, and then rename it "Android".

@mmo yeah, and they want 7$ a month for it. that's over 1/10th of my total plan costs. it's ridiculous. welcome to canada.

as far as updates for windows phone 8, the new agreement is that if they DO go ahead with updates not approved, they can't call in for support. seems ideal to me. carrier support is garbage.

What color is your phone, SSK? Are all the colors available in Canada (or with Bell, at least)?

Ryhadar wrote:

I gotta hand it to HTC with the 8X. I was very skeptical at first given HTC's first attempts at WP7 but the 8X is a very, very well built phone. I'd probably chose it over the 920.

It's funny, the first real review of the 920 I read was the Engadget one; it linked to their 8X review, which I hadn't previously known anything about. After reading both, I decided the 8X sounded like the phone (of those two) that I'd rather have. And I had always had a bit of bias against HTC, mostly irrational, based on that awful clock display they used on their Android phones (eventually somebody who owned one pointed out that you could remove that, which changed my opinion though a lingering distaste remained).

sweatshopking wrote:

i'm currently paying 65$ cad for unlimited canada calling, unlimited messaging and 1gb of data. extra gb's are 10$.

I'm currently on Bell - $67.50 month-to-month with 6GB of data. I went through 3.71GB last month. A 1GB plan would kill me.

Good to know that if I switch to a Windoze Phone it will cut down on my data usage.

it won't touch your data usage. server side compression comes out early 2013. i had unlimited data on my virgin plan that i dropped when switching to bell. i rarely went over 1gb, so i wasn't worried about it. I do use a few thousand minutes of talk a month, so that was more important to me.

Whoa whoa. I just saw this SSK. You talked up Lumia's for the last 6 months and you buy an HTC?? Son I disappoint.

dashbarron wrote:

Whoa whoa. I just saw this SSK. You talked up Lumia's for the last 6 months and you buy an HTC?? Son I disappoint.

Carrier exclusivity can trump all sorts of things.

dashbarron wrote:

Whoa whoa. I just saw this SSK. You talked up Lumia's for the last 6 months and you buy an HTC?? Son I disappoint.

yeah, uber is right. I couldn't switch to Rogers, and so I settled for what I could get. That being said, I sure would love for Rogers to give me 25k with this contest!
https://www.facebook.com/Rogers?sk=app_103139599851953