Hype and reality
by Volker Weber
Currently my #1 mobile device: Lumia 920. Reasons: excellent camera, outstanding display, quick. With quick I mean, I can get to stuff really quickly. When I am idle, I am moving more important stuff to the top of my front page.
But I find myself not using the features that Nokia touts as innovation:
- Wireless charging. It's great that you can put the phone on a surface and have it charge automatically. Why am I not using it? I don't have enough of those charging pads. The single charge pad I have lives on my desk. There is none on the coffee table or at my night stand. I do have a microUSB cable at these places so I just plug it in.
- NFC. It lets you pair Bluetooth devices and you can move stuff from device to device. Unfortunately, none of my favorite Bluetooth devices has NFC: Nokia BH-905i, Plantronics headsets, Jawbone Jambox. In theory you can move photos, videos, vCards etc via NFC. In practice this only works between devices from the same vendor: BlackBerry to BlackBerry, Samsung to Samsung, Nokia to Nokia. How do you share? You mail stuff to yourself (or other people).
- Supersensitive touch. Did you know this phone works with your gloves on? Or that you can use any pen? That's a really cool demo feature I have yet to use.
Most likely I just have to order more accessories. If in doubt, always white. ;-)
Comments
70 EUR for a charging pad is fairly expensive. Especially if you have already all those USB chargers lying around - and who hasn't?
UK and Ireland residents can pick up one for free at nokiafreecharger.com till the end of the year. It's definitely great for showing off in the office. ;-)
A friend from Ireland just offered to do exactly that. But I'd rather ask Nokia Germany. ;-)
I completely agree, the wireless charging pads are way too expensive the way you would need at least five around the house.
I am hoping that their price will come down with further adoption of the Qi wireless charging standard.
Besides that I love my Lumia 920 as well. Spoiled me, can not stand my ipad2 display anymore :-o
Yes, for the moment the cable has to stay in the rucksack. However, I can easily imagine that wireless charging will make it's way into our daily infrastructure. Do you remember when trains had no plugs at all? Now most trains have plugs all over the place. The same thing I expect for wireless charging. My guess is that in five or ten years we will have "charging spots" on trains, in restaurants, in the hotel room and in every office.
With NFC I am quite sure this is going to be the killa featr. Not only for music (remember those long afternoons with friends and lots of tapes?) but also as an electronic key in office buildings, a check-in-tool at the receptions of hotels and conferences and what so ever. Compared to bar code scanning or bluetooth configuration a simple touch is such a natural gesture and no brainer that I am quite sure people will adopt it extremely fast.
I red elsewhere that the good old palm touchstone works with the new Nokia 920.
Do you have one of those and can you confirm that?
No. I have returned all Palm gear. The touchstone would work, if the Lumia would not fall off.
Repeat after me: electronic devices do not belong on the night stand. None of them.
I bought the Philips DLP7210B/10:
http://www.philips.de/c/zubeh%C3%B6r-f%C3%BCr-mobiltelefone/dlp7210b_10/prd/
I use it in the office, syncing the Lumia via OWA-Webaccess and a Wlan cell via virtual router. Super-convenient setup, no cables in the office required.
At home, I can live with a cable since I return from the office with a fully charged device.
Great phone, very happy customer.
I use airplane mode to kill all radios. Let's me sleep very nicely and use the phone as an alarm without random telephon calls/whatsapp or other transmissions disturb me. Only have to remember to tun it on again in the morning. occasionally I forget that. Does make for a quiet working day, no interruptions!
