Nokia Lumia 900 and LTE networks -- good and bad

Ok so I’ve had a chance to use the Lumia on an LTE network for most of a week here in LA.

The obvious good – data services are fast, it is hard to tell you are not on WiFi. This kind of speed is addictive, it is going to suck going back to slower nets in Seattle.

The downside – the battery drains fast. I was also using the phone a lot for nav so I’m not sure how much of my battery drain was due to LTE and how much for nav but the phone couldn’t last a day without recharge.

I also had to reboot the phone twice. Once, MSFT services quit working – bing search, Msft map app. Google worked fine, Nokia maps worked fine, but everything MSFT would just hang. Reboot fixed. (btw, the Nokia Maps app is much better than the MSFT maps app).

Secondly, at a location with so-so LTE service, where the phone kept dropping back to lesser data services and rates, the texting app hung. I could open it but could never type in text and the phone generally was unresponsive. Reboot fixed maybe but it may recur, the phone is feeling a little wonky again right now.

So how am I generally feeling about the device after a month+ of use?

* solid physical hardware, feels good and looks nice * generally solid OS with some nice design touches * some real problems with back button behavior. Most times the back button causes you to leave an app. Sometimes it causes you to go back in an app. And if you leave an app and then click on its home screen tile, the app restarts and forgets your place. So you have to learn to hold down the back button and use the task switch interface to get back in your app. This is all a pain in the ass. The back button shouldn’t sometimes quit and other times go back in an app. And reentering an app from the home tile shouldn’t forget where you are. Super annoying. * solid 3rd party apps when they exist * pathetic marketplace of apps – marketplace design and marketplace contents both are very poor