My world at large.

So the other day I had another meeting with a Blackberry rep who's soul purpose is to convince people like me that not only is BB still relevant, but they are also cutting edge. Well I am just going to come out and say that they did not.

        Working with Verizon Wireless has some perks, my favorite being getting to use basically every device in the VZW war chest. The past few days I have zeroed in on the HTC 8x. As Verizon’s flagship Windows Phone 8 device the 8x has all the accoutrement you would expect (LTE, Dual core processor, 8 mp camera) from any flagship device and is thankfully without any of the hardware compromises that came with past Windows Phones.  

            When first picking up the 8x you realize that HTC has put care into the device. The matte finish is attractive and makes the curved glass screen pop from the phone. My 8x is a very tasteful black, but if you are just starving for attention the 8x does come in some pretty loud colors that match the WP8 palette to a tee. 

The phone is all round edges and the result is a device that I always find myself reaching to pick up and hold – though not necessarily to use, but that’s not HTC’s fault. It reminds me of my old iPhone 3G with its round back that seems like it was molded to perfectly sit in my hand. As an iPhone 5 user I really do appreciate using a phone that was designed with human usage in mind.

WP 8 and the 8x both seem to be built around the idea of making a smart phone that was simple to use for anyone. In some regards Microsoft and HTC both did a great job but as with every other WP device that I have come across there are still some pretty big caveats.

Live tiles are as awesome as they always have been and WP is still a very beautiful OS to play around with, but the issue is all I ever want to do is explore. Actually using the damn thing for anything outside of the built in features is clumsy and feels like a chore.  People – the live tile used to aggregate your social media – is awesome in theory and at first glance. But say you’d like to post a status update, or see a notification that you may have you don’t do that in People. Nope, you have to stroll yourself over to the Me tile to do that. Not a huge deal, but it is just silly that you have one tile to see all of your social media feeds but you can’t use this Swiss-army-knife tile to actually contribute to your social feed.