The #WindowsPhone #HolidaySwap Challenge

Not long ago, I received a box in the mail.  The box had a sparkly ribbon and a little note from Microsoft on it.  I knew that the time had come… I was going to be swapping my iPhone (aka my second baby) for a Windows phone for the duration of the holidays.

The idea behind the holiday swap was that we’d be swapping out our own smart phones for Windows phones — in this case, for the Nokia 920 Lumia phone.  The Lumia has the following stats:

• 8.7 megapixels - Camera sensor (main camera resolution)
• Nokia PureView Camera
• 4.5″ - Display size
• Snapdragon™ S4 - Processor name
• 10.8 h - Maximum 3G talk time
• 460 h - Standby time (3G)
• 74 h - Maximum music playback time

(If you look closely, you can see my sad iPhone lying in the distance!)

When I was first approached for the idea, I was hesitant because my iPhone is a staple for me.  Food, water, sleep, iPhone is my day to day existence.  However, I opened my mind up and decided to jump in with both feet.  Even though they sent me a temporary SIM card, I started out with my own SIM card so as to not fall back on the iPhone.  I wanted to really be thrown into this and figure it out, for better or worse.

After setting up the phone and getting some help from my Twitter friends (thank you!), I began to see the differences in the two phones and began to see what I loved about the Windows phone and what I missed from my iPhone.

Some of the features that I love on the Windows phone:

• Pinning – I love being able to pin whatever I want to the home screen.  Sure you can organize and arrange your apps on your iPhone but pinning and using larger icons gives the phone a different dimension.  For example, if I pin my Facebook app to the home screen and make it larger than the smallest icon, it will auto-update with information from my news feed.  Helpful for me to see what’s going on without loading the app.
• Messaging – I love that the messaging area is not just for text messages.  It pulls your instant messages from Facebook and your Windows phone groups.  For me, it creates ease and flow in my conversations and I don’t have to jump in and out of multiple apps to have a conversation.
• App Trials - one thing that is excellent about the Windows phone app store is that it allows you to download trials of most of the apps.  This is particularly useful because you get to try before you buy, which doesn’t exist in the iPhone app store.  I’ve purchased apps in the past, expecting them to do certain things, and have been disappointed so this is a great feature for me.
• Contacts – the contacts and people areas are really, really robust on the Windows phone.  Instead of just showing you information you put in yourself, it pulls from that contact’s various connected profiles to give you a rich and dynamic contact experience.  You can see people’s Facebook updates and Tweets without having to login to those apps.
• Free Music - this one just blows me away.  I subscribed to the music service, which also has a free thirty day trial, and with the service, you get unlimited streaming and downloadable music.  I downloaded many of the top 100 hits at absolutely no cost to me and I can stream them or play them from the phone any time, anywhere.

I do find that I miss my iPhone for certain things but all in all, this is a fantastic phone backed by an awesome platform.  As someone who is 100% Apple for all of my technology, I find it surprising that I am enjoying the phone as much as I am. The phone is perfect for someone who is social and who has a lot to keep up with.

In the weeks to come, I’m going to share with you various aspects about the phone and let you know what I love and don’t love so much.  I’m also going to do a post that shares with you the apps I used the most on my iPhone and what I’ve replaced them with on the Windows phone when the same app wasn’t available.

Leave a comment below if you have a Windows phone and have any apps to recommend, features to try out or things that will just blow my mind as it relates to this phone!