Three weeks with a Nokia Lumia 925

In a rush to replace a dead phone, I bought a Nokia Lumia 925. At the time, I had two criteria, cheap and available.This met both criteria. Three months of service costs more than the phone itself. Three weeks in, it's been pretty good. It just works without getting in the way.

The phone itself is light and easy to hold. It easily fits in my pockets; shorts, jeans, dress pants the same. The buttons all work as expected and the finish seems to be holding up to daily wear as expected.

The big difference for me is Windows Phone. Here I am a donating member of the FSF and using a non-free phone; and frankly, liking it. I'm surprised by how well it gets out of the way and also, just works. It is really simple to figure out. It's nice to be able to just use a phone as a phone, and not have to spend a lot of time figuring out which app does what. No bugs encountered so far, nor crashes.

It's easy to reorganize the home screen to put what you want on it. There are no forced apps, no forced 3rd party apps, and you have full control over what's installed or not. This is the same reason I use Cyanogenmod over whichever version of Android comes with a phone. Remember desktops in the '90s and '00s? They came installed with a massive bundle of crappy apps you never wanted, and can't easily get rid of them. It seems phones are the new desktops these days. Ok, there was one way to get rid of the apps you hated, install your own operating system wiping out that which came from the factory. This is what I typically did to avoid the mess from the factory installation. However, it's not for everyone. The obvious statement is that the hardware is tied to Windows Phone, so long as you're ok with that operating system, it all works well.

As far as Windows Phone, so far so good. Microsoft pretty clearly states what it is collecting about your usage, and it's pretty obvious what is backed up/stored/synced with Microsoft. And as we've learned, if it's shared with Microsoft, a bundle of three letter agencies also can get access to your data. At least you know what's likely going to all of them.

The Windows Phone Store has many apps for free or cheap. I haven't tried many, as the base system does what I need (mostly to make and receive calls).

After three weeks, the phone just works. I mostly use it as a phone and nothing else. I'm as surprised as you.