… which is really annoying because until last weekend I was perfectly happy with the phone I have and I had no plan to upgrade it for ages, despite coming off contract last month. But a few things happened that have changed my mind. Firstly, my brother showed up at my place with his new Galaxy SIII and I discovered that the 4G reception down here on the water is good enough to absolutely smoke my 3G modem. Then this morning I found out that the forthcoming Nokia Lumia 820 will support 4G/LTE, which was the only box it wasn’t ticking in my mind. This prompted me to do some more research on-line and now I am really excited. Here are some details in words and pictures:
This is the Lumia 820 on the optional desktop charger. Of course, it uses inductive charging so there is no need to plug it in, just sit it in the cradle and it will start charging. Pretty cool, eh? The other features of the phone that I am impressed with are the microSD card slot, which should allow me to expand the memory from the standard 8Gb to 72Gb, which means my entire music collection will fit. That is a big tick that I wanted for my next phone, along with 4G/LTE. Other features are nothing special but they are all at least as good as the phone I am happy with now, which is all that matters.
Here we see the “rugged” backplate that Nokia will be making available in a range of colours. I like orange but I’ll settle for black or grey, red at a pinch.
This is when I got really excited. This is the JBL Power Up speaker. It is not just a Bluetooth speaker, it is also a wireless charging station and it uses the Lumia 820’s NFC to pair with it. You can pair it mid-song and the transition is seamless, at least in the on-line video I watched.
OK, so it is all positive so far but there are a few catches. Inductive charging doesn’t seem to be a standard feature, you need to have the special backplate for it, which seems to be an extra, at extra cost. I also think that the standard inductive charger (shown below) is also and extra, which is OK because it is built into the other things I’m interested in. On the positive side, it appears the Lumia820 ships with several different coloured backplates so you can switch them around to match your outfit, your mood or whatever. There is also no word on the price of the JBL Speaker but I’m not expecting it to be cheap. Still, this set-up will work for me well into the future, whilst also greatly enhancing my capabilities.
Just make sure that Bluetooth speaker carries Apt-X, otherwise be prepared to be disappointed in sound quality.
I’m a cowon BBE fan myself, I can’t see me ditching stand alone mp3 players yet (not when irl i need smaller compact players than a phone anyway).
Camera is more important feature on the phone than sound for me. Excited for you, look forward to yer feedback.