Christmas has arrived early this year! Today I received my white review unit of the Nokia Lumia 920, courtesy of Nokia Norway. Just to clear the air initially: It is a beautiful piece of hardware! Yes, it is big, and slightly “heavy”, but boy, is this a gorgeous phone. I have been using it pretty much non-stop since I received it. Tweaking the start-screen, downloading and adding apps, trying the camera a little and so on.

I will write up a more extensive review during the rest of this week, and plan on posting it here early next week. I believe that I should have at least a week of usage with a phone to give it the review that I think it deserves.

For now you will have to settle with these first impressions of mine after roughly a half day of usage.

My first impressions:

– Beautiful hardware!

– Sturdy – solid.

– Great screen, although the blacks on this screen is not as black as on the Lumia 900 (which has an AMOLED screen)

– Great call reception and connectivity – connects faster to Wi-Fi than the Lumia 900 did.

– Fast – snappy – quick (pick your set of synonyms)

– Fits nicely in my hands, although a little slippery. A little wider compared to the Nokia Lumia 900.

– Great camera – stunning low-light pictures and pretty good ones in normal light as well!

– Windows Phone 8 is a visual improvement over Windows Phone 7. Feels faster. Adds some nice touches. Need more time with it!

– There is a bug with Kids Corner – when I slide right and down from the Lock-screen I (my kids are supposed to go straight into Kids Corner – on my phone they have to enter (my) pin first

– Beautiful! (huh? I said that already?)

I have taken some pictures from the unboxing, and have also compared it to the Lumia 900 and my old iPhone 4.

More coming soon..

Until then enjoy the pictures and let me know what you think about the Lumia 920 in the comments below:

Today, Windows Phone 8 was launched onto the world by Microsoft at an event in San Fransisco. If you want to get a first look at this new and updated mobile OS, take a look at these two videos, courtesy of Microsoft. The first one is a presentation of Windows Phone 8 made by Joe Belfiore, head of the Windows Phone Program within Microsoft.

The second video is from the launch event itself. Enjoy!

What now remains, is of course for the carriers to announce their actual launch dates in different markets. As far as is known, a lot of European countries will see new Windows Phone 8 devices next week, but I do not know yet when the phones will be available in Norway. I bet Nokia, HTC and Samsung knows, and think it is about time for them to stop being coy, and actually provide us, their loyal customers, with some real information!

A reliable and great source for Windows Phone related news; WPCentral, yesterday posted three AT&T Lumia 920 training videos along with the news that AT&T in the US has a 6 month exclusive with Nokia regarding sales of the Lumia 920.

The videos give a very good impression of the Lumia 920, and I am reposting the first of them below:

The original article, with two more videos and some more details, can be found here.