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Comment by outside1234 | Hacker News Reader

I have a Nokia 920 and its solid, really solid. I went back to my iPhone over Christmas (I do mobile development) and I was thankful when I got back to the 920. Its very fast, very functional, love updating tiles.

The only gotcha is music - the iPhone still crushes everyone on music apps / syncing / acquisition. Otherwise, the 920 was equal or better - even apps are coming along. Only missing Strava now for me.

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I never understand when people say the iPhone is better for music. I'll grant you the Windows 8 Music app sucks on the desktop, but Zune was solid on Windows 7. The WP8 music app is great, the Zune Pass/Xbox Music Pass is basically the biggest reason I can't seriously consider switching platforms. $8/mo for 10 songs DRM-free and streaming/caching all other songs in their database is huge! Nokia Music playlists are huge, and free! The speakers on the Lumia 920 are much better than iPhone speakers in comparisons with my coworkers.

What music apps is WP missing in your experience?

> $8/mo for 10 songs DRM-free and streaming/caching all other songs in their database is huge

Just FYI, it's $10/mo now, and the "10 free songs per month" deal is gone. If you had a Zune pass, you were grandfathered in, but new signups get the new deal. Still a good deal given the catalog size, but perhaps not as good as it once was.

Good point, I did not know the new deal. I personally never really used the DRM-free songs part of the bundle, I have software that watches my music folder on my hard drive and when a new song comes in it exploits the "analog hole" to strip the DRM from it and drop in a replacement MP3. It's pretty comparable to Spotify, and if you have mostly Windows devices there's not much incentive to look further than Xbox Music. iOS and Android support has been announced but not given a firm date for launch.

Maybe I'm missing something - how do you sync music to your WP8? Or get the latest podcasts on your phone automatically?

You can use windows phone software in Mac to sync your itunes playlists - https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/windows-phone/id415571499?mt...

I'm in a similar boat. I've had every iPhone except for the 5 since the first one (Yes i got bit by the 62 day $200 price drop) and I'm very impressed with the speed and quality of the Lumia 920.

My favorite part of the Lumia is the social media integration. It reminds me of what it felt like to switch from Windows to OSX in 2005. But yeah the music experience is lacking, They finally fixed some bugs in their Windows version of iTunes so at least you can still sync songs, but I'm really just waiting for Spotify and Instagram and then I'll be set.

Zune Pass, no wait it's now called X-Box Music Pass.

Oh heck I don't know what it's called.

The music rental thing, is actually pretty damned good. However like spotify it is missing some artists.

Except that on the desktop it only works with Windows and not on a Mac.

Their catalog size is 30 million songs IIRC, which is a lot more than Spotify.

For what it's worth, off the top of my head I picked RunKeeper as an app I'd need before switching platforms. They stopped supporting WP last year (http://wmpoweruser.com/runkeeper-calls-its-quits-on-windows-...).

It's becoming apparent that the app data can provide more lock-in than the OS itself. (I don't want to find an alternative and lose 2 years of data -- just for the first app I thought I'd need!)

RunKeeper mentions Caledos as an option on their site. I haven't used it, and don't know how seamlessly it integrates with RunKeeper, but it has largely good ratings.

http://runkeeper.com/apps/activity-tracking/caledos-runner-o...

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/caledos-runner/0...

"the iPhone still crushes everyone on music apps / syncing / acquisition"

I'll give you "acquisition", but if you are for a moment suggesting that iTunes is anything other than a steaming turd, then I must respectfully disagree.

I personally prefer the plethora of music apps available for Android and that Google Music cloud thing ain't too shabby either.

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