The Nokia Lumia 822 Windows Phone, running on Windows Phone 8 has Bluetooth 3.0, a 4.3″ display, 800×480-pixel OLED WVGA resolution, 16GB onboard storage, 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens, Bing search with Voice Search, Visual Search plus smart scanner, sensible button placement for volume control and power on/off, 4G LTE speed on the Verizon Wireless network, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable. Easily write on your friends’ Facebook walls through the “People” tile. “Camera roll” stores all your pics and videos in one place. Includes: Office 2013, Wi-Fi, GPS, top-rated turn-by-turn spoken navigation with HERE Drive+ Beta, Nokia Maps, Local Scout, Verizon NFL Mobile and Univision, plus a way to track your usage and pay your Verizon Wireless bill, and a spotlight showcase for cool (and sometimes new) apps you might or might not have heard about. There are more than 60,000 apps and games for Windows Phone.
The “People” tile’s What’s New? column allows you to check your Twitter and Facebook content at the same time! Even new, real-time content. How cool, you don’t need to toggle between 2 social platforms. You can reply on Twitter directly from this column as well as read Facebook comments and press “Like” – all in the same column. And if you don’t want to see both at once, simply select the one you want to see. You can always go back. Setting this up was a breeze! Any social notifications (meaning people tweeting to you, new followers on Twitter, or folks writing to you on Facebook) show up under the “Me” live tile, then the Notifications column. I sort of feel this should all be under the People tile, but that’s just an opinion.
One of my favorite things about Microsoft Outlook is you can flag any of your emails so they always stay at the top of your inbox (on top, in its own section, with a white row underneath, to be precise – therefore you won’t get confused like maybe it’s some sort of unread email) for your convenience (for whatever reason you chose) regardless if it’s read or unread. Reading your emails via the Outlook tile on the Lumia 822 behaves a similar way! I’m so glad. Just touch the word “flagged” for the same convenience. Excellent! Taking pics and video recording were tricky because you need to press the touchscreen itself to snap a pic or begin video recording. I didn’t know this. I thought I had recorded 3 videos on the first day but recorded a grand total of zero minutes. I think this innovation of using the touchscreen as the pic & video activation mechanism is smart and ergonomic and I look forward to using it later correctly. Then I’ll upload something as a link later within this page, so check back. I think the mistake I made is one alot of people will make too, well sort of. Read the guide that comes with the phone so you don’t make my mistake too. (I’m not big on guides. I tend to jump in feet first) The big virtual keyboard on the Lumia 822 helps you stay accurate. The predictive assist above the keyboard, very useful as always, seems even better than the one on the Lumia 900, like maybe it was improved upon or something. Glide function on the Lumia keyboard would be cool, but I don’t know how to activate it, or if I even can. (The Android user in me forced me to say that! Because glide keyboards are all the rage on Android phones)
Videos rotated to landscape viewing locked to landscape til the video was done, which is nice for showing off without worrying about rolling back to portrait. The Lumia 822’s adjustable screen sensitivity allows you to use your fingernail or a gloved finger on the touchscreen without compromising responsiveness. Nokia’s ClearBlack filter helps cut down on glare. Support for 16 million colors means rich and pleasing to the eye colors and in my opinion this is where the wow factor steps in. Size: 5 ounces, 5 inches tall, 2.7 inches wide, and 0.4 inch thick. In my opinion it felt lightweight, which I like. With alot of use, it didn’t get any warmer than a normal human hand. This is a plus because I don’t know anyone who likes a hot temperature phone. I certainly don’t. Touching the upper left corner of the touchscreen with one hand (thumb, as you can guess) was a challenge for me, so I think two handed usage is best. CNET says: “If you’re of the mind that what’s on the inside counts most, then by no means discount this phone — just don’t expect a lot of visual flair when it comes to accents and contouring.” I assume they mean the chic accents of the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and other Samsung phones? Well with the Lumia 822, screen fluidity, attractive crisp default fonts and especially the on screen colors are what’s “chic” about this phone. But I agree with CNET that the Nokia Lumia 822 should be considered when you’re ready for your first ever smartphone or a new one. It also includes but isn’t limited to Music Search (song recognition and Xbox Music integration), Nokia Music, Zynga, ESPN mobile, CityLens (augmented reality app), Nokia Transit, NFC Tap + Send share method, wallet, kid mode (called “Kid’s Corner” setting), cloud content-syncing, free apps you can download such as WordPress, Evernote (my favorite!), SpeedTest.net, etc. You can recharge the battery wirelessly or use the micro-USB charging port on the bottom of the phone. The battery is removable and it’s 1650 mAh. Access the back cover to get to the microSD card slot for 64GB in external storage.
Disclaimer re: compensation received: None. Unrelated gift received at a later time, i.e., gift was not pre-arranged and not given quid pro quo.
