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Bought my orange Nokia Lumia 930 from MobyShop on the same date as the official launch (Saturday, 12th July 2014) for S$699 (RRP is S$789). I traded in my old HTC One (32GB) for S$250, so I ended up paying S$449 for the Lumia 930.

Specifications

• Operating System: Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Cyan
• Processor: 2.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor
• RAM: 2GB
• Internal Storage: 32GB with 15 GB free OneDrive cloud storage
• Display: 5″ Full HD ClearBlack OLED (1920×1080, 441ppi, 16:9)
• Screen: Corning Gorilla Glass 3, Sunlight Readability, Super Sensitive Touch for glove and nail usage
• Main Camera: PureView 20 MP with Optical Image Stabilisation, dual LED flash and ZEISS optics
• Front Facing Camera: HD (1280 x 960) 1.2 MP wide angle with f/2.4
• Network: LTE 1, 3, 7, 8, 20. WCDMA 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1900 MHz, 2100 MHz. GSM 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz
• Wireless: Bluetooth 4.0, WLAN IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, NFC
• Sensors: Ambient Light Sensor, Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Gyroscope, Magnetometer
• Battery: 2,420 mAh BV-5QW battery with integrated wireless charging
• SIM card type: Nano SIM
• Dimension (L x W x T): 137 x 71 x 9.8 mm
• Weight: 167g

Hardware
I was contemplating between the Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520 because both of them have similar specifications. Lumia 1520 has a bigger 6″ screen, MicroSD Slot expansion and the an IPS screen while Lumia 930 has an AMOLED screen with Gorilla Glass 3. In terms of handling, I think the 5″ Lumia 930 is just nice. The 6″ Lumia 1520 might be too big to hold comfortably in your hands. I also love the build quality of the Lumia 930, it feels solid in the hands. Having said that, it is a little heavy at almost 170g.

Lumia 930 uses an AMOLED which makes it visible under direct sunlight. However, the disadvantage of that is that AMOLED requires power to be activated and hence there is no Glance Screen feature in the Lumia 930.

Windows Phone 8.1
My last Lumia phone was the Nokia Lumia 900 running on Windows Phone 7.5 and after using the Lumia 930 for almost a week, there are a heaps of improvements between Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8.1. There are a lot of people (including me) that are still pissed with Microsoft for not letting Windows Phone 7.x users upgrade to Windows Phone 8.x despite it being a hardware limitation. I hope Microsoft will not repeat the same mistake again with Windows Phone 8.x.

I love the Action Center aka Notification Center. It seems that push notifications from apps are faster but I have problems of lock screen app being stuck in the sense that the lock screen image doesn’t refresh.

Apps
Official apps like Twitter or Foursquare doesn’t get updated frequently and hence most of the time third party apps does a better job than the official one. Case in point, 4th & Major does a better job than Foursquare and Flickr Booth does a better job than Flickr.

I love universal app regardless whether it is on iOS or Windows Phone! You just have to buy the app once and you can use it on multiple platforms. For Windows Phone, universal app means you can use it on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.

Discovering apps on Windows Phone is pretty difficult because not much coverage is given to them on major tech sites. Nokia’s AppSocial which offers “an exciting way to discover great apps for your Windows Phone 8 device” doesn’t really meet my expectations. Even the recommended apps in the store is boring as well.

For me, when I first got the Lumia 930, I read through Windows Phone Central’s Apps Page to find out which app to buy and to download.

So far I have bought Package Tracker for tracking packages, Plex for playing movies hosted by my Plex Server, MetroTube for playing YouTube videos and NextGen Reader for reading my Feedly feeds.

I wish there are more official apps from Google like Gmail, YouTube and maybe even Chrome.

I hope Dropbox and 1Password to be available on Windows Phone soon!