Initial impressions
Back plate is CHEAP. Like CHEAP, CHEAP. Like, what did the bird say when he went in to WalMart cheap (cheep cheep, for those that don't know the punchline). Now, obviously the phone is cheap, but I wasn't REALLY expecting how cheap that cover would feel. One drop from anywhere above 2 feet will probably crack it. But, they are only like $10 on ebay, and come in different colors, so I suppose there is that.
Feel in the hand is good. When I was first handling it, I thought it was pretty slim and small and comparable in size to an iPhone 5. Well... I pulled the case off my iPhone 5 to do some SIM swapping and that impression went away quickly. It's easily twice the thickness of an iP5, although it is just about as tall and wide. It's about the same thickness of my Droid RAZR HD at the thickest point of the top (the RAZR tapers). It's maybe 25% thicker than an iPhone 4/4S. Still, the rounded edges make ti feel good in the hand. The iPhone 3G/3GS design is still my favorite and this is very reminiscent.
The screen is kind of dim, and backlight bleed is visible at the sides and top. Viewing angles are decent. I can hold it at a pretty steep angle and still see everything quite well, both horizontally and vertically. Low-res screen, of course, but the WP interface masks that really well. It was most noticeable in IE when looking at full views of web pages.
One more thing about the screen, I don't think there's an oleophobic coating. The glass is a fingerprint magnet. It's not even trying.
Speaker is decent. Even at 1, it was loud enough to listen to music comfortably in my cubicle. Tried out some Nokia Music and everything sounded great.
I read a review of the 520 that said the two-stage camera button was hard to press down and so that would lead to some movement when you took a picture. I didn't find the button hard to press at all, but on a phone camera like this, any movement will affect your pictures, but the button was no harder or easier to press than the iPhone volume shutter button.
I had some difficulties getting my TMobile SIM in. I have a nano SIM so I can swap it with my iPhone 5 and I use a nano to micro adapter. Inserting it caused the device to detect tmobile service, but not data. I was able to call out fine. It took some work to get the SIM card adapter in there just right so that data would work, just something to keep in mind if you're using an adapter.
Phone is locked to TMobile, of course. Inserting an AT&T MicroSIM (from an iPad) resulted in the phone asking for the unlock code. I skipped it, and it asked me for my APN settings (from a list of three). I chose AT&T 3G and was able to navigate the phone but, of course, no service.
Speaking of service, there is something a little weird going on with data speeds. Here in my office, the Lumia only gets about 3-4Mbps down. That would be using the TMobile AWS network, presumably, which should be 42Mpbs capable. This is my first AWS-compatible phone, so I'm not sure if those numbers are normal. However, if I swap the SIM over to my iPhone 5 (original A1428 model, not AWS compatible), I pull between 8-10Mbps in the same spot. Now, obviously, you're talking two different systems here, the AWS HSPA network vs the refarmed PCS HSPA network, which isn't officially launched in Charlotte yet. I just expected the AWS compatible phone to kick my iPhone's butt and was just kind of surprised. I'm getting out for lunch so I'll be able to try it at a different location and see if it's just my desk area that has an issue.
Otherwise, phone is responsive and snappy, like I expected. I don't know if I'll have an issue with only having 512MB of RAM at some point in the future, but it doesn't seem to be a big hindrance right now. Just from playing with it for the small time I've had it this morning, I'd probably pick it up before I picked up the RAZR HD.
The only other thing I have is that I put a 8GB mSD card in it, and it's been stuck booting with the TMobile logo forever. I assumed it was formatting the card so I left it, but it's been nearly 45 minutes now. Figure I'll take it out and try a 2GB card. I know there was some issues with mSD cards and the initial WP7 release, but thought those had been resolved.
I'll post some more after I get some more time with it.
EDIT: I pulled the mSD card out and stuck it in my computer and formatted it for FAT32 and stuck it back in and everything seems to be going along fine. It was NTFS with a couple of files on it and I stuck in the phone like that just to see what happens.
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