HTC Windows 8X Phone

I was recently selected by Crowdtap to host a party featuring the Verizon HTC Windows 8X phone. I must admit that I was thrilled to be selected for this mainly because the party kit included a free phone! That being said, I never would have selected a Windows phone because I'd heard negative things about the early ones and therefore dismissed them from  my phone selection process. So I began to research this phone - strongly doubting that I would want to give up my Android phone. However, the more I read about this phone the cooler it sounded!

                                                              Yay, the kit is here!!

 Now that I've been able to spend some time with it, I've found that the HTC Windows 8X phone is pretty sweet! Coming from an Android phone I thought there would be a learning curve for this phone but it is super intuitive and user friendly. The start page has the Windows 8 tiles which are fully customizable and allow you to move them around, remove and add them, and change their size.

The screen is large and crisp with bright clear graphics. This phone uses SkyDrive to automatically save and share your photos and documents between your phone, computer, Xbox, and other devices. SkyDrive is super cool and is one of my favorite things about this phone so far. With my other phones it has always been such a pain  to get my photos off of them and onto my computer but SkyDrive does it automatically! Sharing Microsoft Office documents between my phone and desktop is super easy and is proving to make my life much easier.

Internet browsing is SO fast and basically like a tiny desktop in my hands!
There are different "rooms" that I can set up and invite folks to where we can share calendars, documents, and pictures.

SmartGlass is an included app which allows interaction between my phone and Xbox 360 - it allows you to view what games you have, use the phone as a remote for the menu, and (my favorite) utilize the keyboard on my phone as a keyboard for the Xbox.

The camera on the HTC Windows 8X boasts an 8 megapixel camera and 1080p recording but what's super cool about it is the ultra-wide lens on the front-facing camera which allows you to fit a lot more people into the frame. The only downside about the front camera is that it doesn't have a flash, so low light pics don't come out wonderfully. 

 We actually fit 9 people in this picture (at my party) and could have probably squeezed a few more in!

          Front camera with no retouching!                          Taken in a completely dark room.

In summation - the Windows app store is sorely lacking many of the apps I rely on and I haven't found voice navigation but all the fantastic features of this phone have made me deem it worth losing those apps (for now - I hear they're working feverishly to offer a lot more apps) and make the switch. In fact, after my party my husband (who had recently given his phone a coffee bath) decided against buying an iPhone and purchased an HTC Windows 8X phone instead!
Thank you Crowdtap and Verizon!