Windows Phone 8 arrived with two fascinating new phones: the Nokia Lumia 920 ($100 with a new AT&T contract) and the HTC Windows Phone 8X ($200 from AT&T, Verizon or T-Mobile). HTC 8X is available in India for Rs. 35,023 while Nokia Lumia 920 is available in india for Rs,25600/..
Nokia was the world's largest cellphone maker for 14 years straight; not anymore. At the moment, it's in seventh place among smartphone makers. It has shed tens of thousands of employees. HTC is struggling, too, having sold 36 percent fewer smartphones this year than last.
The two new phones have a lot in common - for one thing, they're both awesome. For another, both have bigger, sharper screens than the iPhone's famous Retina screen. (The HTC and Nokia phones have 4.3- and 4.5-inch screens. That's 1,280 by 720 pixels, packed in 341 and 332 to the inch.)
The HTC Windows Phone 8X is the smaller of the two new phones, but even so, it dwarfs the iPhone - it's wider, taller, heavier and thicker. If you get the Verizon model, your Internet experience will be faster and better in more cities than on the Nokia phone, which is available only on AT&T.
The back panel is faintly textured, so you're less likely to drop this phone than you are the shiny-backed Nokia. But the buttons - power, volume, camera - are skinny and utterly flush with the phone's body; you practically need an ice pick to push them in.
There's another hardware concern, too: no memory-card slot. The basic $200 model has 16 gigabytes of storage, and that's all you'll ever have. (AT&T also sells a $100 model with an even sillier eight gigabytes.) What's an app phone with no room for apps, photos, music or videos?
The 8X's battery is sometimes gasping by the time you get home for dinner (it's rated at eight hours of talk time). And, of course, it's nonremovable.
First, speech. These phones respond to basic commands - "Call," "Text," "Find" (on the Web), "Note" and "Open" (an app) - but crudely; they don't even recognize punctuation. Worse, you can't talk-to-type, as you can on Android and Apple phones. Dictation is a core feature on phones that have no keyboards. You can't just leave that out.
Second, apps. Microsoft says that its phone store now stocks 120,000 apps. That's great progress - but soooo many important apps are among the missing.
Microsoft and its partners are teetering on the edge. Excellence has been attained; now it's up to market forces. If the wind blows one way, they'll rack up a few percentage points of market share (now at 4 percent). If it blows the other way, though, Windows Phone will fade away. It will join the Zune, the Kin phone and other hardware efforts in the Great Gadget Graveyard of Too Little, Too Late.
Nokia was the world's largest cellphone maker for 14 years straight; not anymore. At the moment, it's in seventh place among smartphone makers. It has shed tens of thousands of employees. HTC is struggling, too, having sold 36 percent fewer smartphones this year than last.
The two new phones have a lot in common - for one thing, they're both awesome. For another, both have bigger, sharper screens than the iPhone's famous Retina screen. (The HTC and Nokia phones have 4.3- and 4.5-inch screens. That's 1,280 by 720 pixels, packed in 341 and 332 to the inch.)
The back panel is faintly textured, so you're less likely to drop this phone than you are the shiny-backed Nokia. But the buttons - power, volume, camera - are skinny and utterly flush with the phone's body; you practically need an ice pick to push them in.
There's another hardware concern, too: no memory-card slot. The basic $200 model has 16 gigabytes of storage, and that's all you'll ever have. (AT&T also sells a $100 model with an even sillier eight gigabytes.) What's an app phone with no room for apps, photos, music or videos?
The 8X's battery is sometimes gasping by the time you get home for dinner (it's rated at eight hours of talk time). And, of course, it's nonremovable.
First, speech. These phones respond to basic commands - "Call," "Text," "Find" (on the Web), "Note" and "Open" (an app) - but crudely; they don't even recognize punctuation. Worse, you can't talk-to-type, as you can on Android and Apple phones. Dictation is a core feature on phones that have no keyboards. You can't just leave that out.
Second, apps. Microsoft says that its phone store now stocks 120,000 apps. That's great progress - but soooo many important apps are among the missing.
Microsoft and its partners are teetering on the edge. Excellence has been attained; now it's up to market forces. If the wind blows one way, they'll rack up a few percentage points of market share (now at 4 percent). If it blows the other way, though, Windows Phone will fade away. It will join the Zune, the Kin phone and other hardware efforts in the Great Gadget Graveyard of Too Little, Too Late.
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