i wish at&t has the 930. i probably would've gotten one instead of the 1520. i think the screen size of the 930 is perfect although i'm getting used to the large screen of the 1520. i installed the 8.1 preview the other day. boy, was that a mistake. i mentioned that to the store manager yesterday when i went in there with the person who bought my 920. we were there to get her up and running with the 920. anyway, i mentioned to the manager that i was sure my installed the preview voided the warranty. according to him, it didn't. i now have a brand new, shiny red 1520. this morning, i learned of the Nokia Recovery Tool which will revert any lumia or asha phone to an early os. i visited the store again to see if they wanted the new 1520 back since i can now 'fix' my original 1520. they didn't seem to concerned about it. i'm sure 8.1 will work fine and dandy when it is rolled out by nokia and the individual carriers although i'm sure at&t will disable Data Sense, which is a great feature. 

Yeah I updated both of our 920's to the 8.1 dev edition as well.  Mine seems to have gone smoothy, but something I've noticed on my wife's 920 is that the phone 'wakes' itself sometimes for no reason (ie.  phone just lying there and the screen lights up showing the lock screen and the screen 'bounces').  Also it seems like the screen sometimes becomes totally non-responsive.  Neither of these things were happening to my wife's 920 before the dev update to 8.1

Can I ask what your issues were with 8.1?

I'm first in line... seeing as you now have a spare 1520.

I am still using my original Lumia 820 and have had no real issues with it.  I read a few reviews saying it was a POS, but that's not my experience and I'm sure it has a few good years of service left in it yet.

my biggest issue with 8.1 was it bricked the camera. opening any camera app was a waste of time. noting worked. all i could see was a black screen. secondary was the battery drain. i put 8.1 on the 920 at first and that phone went from 100% charged to dead in the water within 4 hours and i the only thing i had the phone doing was trying to find my music via the music app. thirdly was the complete fail concerning the music app. that darned app could not find a single one of the songs i had on the the phone. number four was the non-integration of the games hub. i had only 4 or 5 games installed but i didn't like seeing them listed in the apps list. for some dumb reason, i then decided it was time to upgrade to something else. hence, the 1520 although i wish the 930 had been an option. once i got home and synced everything to the 1520, i decided i'd try 8.1 on it. the battery drain was noticeable right away but it was something i could live with until the 'official' release of 8.1 and the firmware update from nokia. it was at that time i restored the 920 to factory settings. you'd think that would roll the os back to an earlier version of 8.1 but no, it doesn't. it just gave me a empty installation of 8.1 well, i told the woman who was interested in the 920 about the battery drain but she didn't care. her android phone and taken a dump on her and she was desperate for a decent phone.  an hour or so later, i went with her to the local at&t store and you know the rest of that story. well, anyway, when i found that nokia recovery tool, i called her and explained that i thought i could restore the 920 to 8.0 and it would be better for her. she was game for that, to say the least. after a 15 minute drive to her place, i then restored the 920 back to 8.0 using their laptop and everything was fine.well, other than her calling me quite often wanting to know how to do certain things on the phone. she had never laid eyes on a windows phone before and to be honest, she isn't very tech savvy. actually, she isn't tech knowledgeable at all. i had to show her how to turn the phone on., make calls, edit a contact, write a text message, and how to use the camera withing 10 minutes of her getting it activated to use with her account.  

starkers, i don't have a spare 1520. i was willing to trade them my original 1520 with 8.1 for the replacement phone and pay the $35 restocking fee but they would not consider that.i tried to do what i thought was the right thing but failed in my attempt. i may be able to get an empty 1520 box for ya if ya want one.

anyway, i'm anxiously awaiting the official release of 8.1 and the firmware update. the 1520 is already fast but with 8.1, it seemed faster. i like the change in the call screen, the messaging emojis, the swipe keyboard, battery saver, storage sense, data sense (i'm sure at&t will disable that), and the transparent tiles are SWEET.

another bug with 8.1 and the 1520: the phone wouldn't turn off. tell it to shut down and it would restart instead

That'll do!  Then I can take it to a phone shop and complain they sold be an empty box... like "Where's my fechen phone?"

MadDeez,

Wow, sounds like the 8.1 dev update was a nightmare for you!  Sorry to hear that.

Like I said earlier for us the only issue was/is with my wife's Lumia 920, the screen becoming unresponsive (and/or lockscreen having a mind of it's own ie. waking up and bouncing) at times ever since the update.

You guys in the US haven't had datasense since the Amber update?   Up here in Canuck-I-stan we've had datasense on our 920's for quite some time now.

Datasense works on all of the past Verizon Windows 8 phones I owned in the last two years.

Stir up the pot a bit - how would everyone feel if Microsoft shifted from a Windows OS on the Nokia to a Android OS?

I would dump my Nokia and never look back....   Android is buggy, sluggish and just seems like an 'OS' that is in a perpetual beta state.  Windows phones with almost half of the hardware capability of droids run the Windows platform twice as fast!  No thanks.......I don't care to drive a Datsun again.  Not since I've been spoiled by that Ferrari! 

Windows OS is the perfect compliment to the Nokia hardware (and Nokia's exclusive apps etc.).  My Windows 8 tablet(s), Windows 8 notebook(s)/desktop(s) and my phone (also running Windows 8 obviously) are always perfectly in sync.  Now with the 8.1 update on my phone even when I have browser tabs open on my notebook/tablet etc. and leave the office those same tabs are open in my browser on my phone should I decide to continue where I left off.

Currently, there is no other such complete (and baked-in from the OS perspective) 'in sync' solution provided by any other device/software manufacturer.  MS has hit a resounding 'home run' for those of us craving such interoperability and there is absolutely no going back for me.

My Android runs faster than any Windows phone I have used and it's not buggy.

I respectfully disagree.

Oh and back in February I heard about this...

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/02/24/nokia-unveils-three-new-android-powered-smartphones

monk, i wouldn't say it was a nightmare. it wasn't all that much fun though. it made to not want to instal the official until after i've read some threads and comments from others who have installed it. i'm sure most if not all the bugs will be worked out by then. heck, ms has already stated a new music app will be released soon to correct the issues people are having with it.

A lot of people reported the battery drain issue but then after a few days it seemed to settle down...........

My Nokia Lumia phone is my first Windows Phone experience and I'm really enjoying it..............Android is so 'second rate' in comparison. I'm going to be getting a new phone from work and it will be an iPhone although I'm trying to persuade to let me have a Lumia. 

Being a consultant part of my job is to have extensively used devices of all flavours.  Once again, the following is not only my own personal experience, but that also of many of my clients etc.

Especially the underlined part has been proven to me time and again.

Ok......based on what exactly?  I have in various threads now given details of exactly how 'in sync' the windows platform + Nokia allows my digital life to be.  The interoperability offered by (baked into the phone OS) running real MS Office on the phone alone is leaps ahead of any competition, and that's before one begins to mention other things.

Go ahead and 'respectfully disagree', with no real world examples to the contrary I'm not sure how much that means...

the windows phone os is great. i admit it took some getting used to but after learning it, i love it. the live tiles are fantastic. to me, the notification center in 8.1 is there to appease droid and ios users who may convert wo wp phones. a new feature in 8.1 is the transparent tiles allowing a wallpaper to shine thru. i love that. i can put a pic of granddaughter back there and see that little gal every time i look at my phone......once i update to 8.1 again my son-in-law purchased an S5 two days ago and he may return it for a 1520 today. he was messing around with my 1520 yesterday evening. at first, he wasn't too thrilled with it because he hadn't used the os before. after i pointed out some things with the os and we compared photos of the same thing using the two phones, he started talking about the 1520 in a completely different light. my daughter may get one today, also. she is currently using an iphone 4S. she was using a 920 but she's in the IT department for the local schools and couldn't login to whatever she needed to with the 920 but the iphone could. she said it was app related. i didn't ask for details since i wouldn't know the app anyway. well, since her boss likes lumia phones, they wrote an app to do what they needed and she can now use a windows phone for work related business. another aspect she likes is the built in office app. also, she takes a lot of pics of Alayna with her phone and the 1520 has a better camera than the 4S. i'm hoping she gets one for a personal selfish reason. videos of the granddaughter taken on the iphone in portrait mode display on a windows phone in landscape mode with terrible distortion. i mentioned that last night and her husband said the same thing happens on his droid.

The W8 phone is the best thing to happen to mobile this or that since the wheel.  I tried Andoid and IOS phones and liked neither, so I opted for a Lumia 820 and haven't once regretted it, despite all the negatives people try to throw up about W8 phones. 

One of the biggest things people throw up is how Android and IOS have many more apps, but I simply don't care. The Windows platform has all the apps I want or need, with more and more being released all the time, so it matters zilch/sweet bugger all to me what the others have.  I made an informed and conscious choice to go with a Windows phone and I'm not jumping ship now because IOS or Android have bigger app stores.

So even if the latest releases are the end of the Lumia range, I imagine a more than adequate replacement will fill the void and serve us equally well into the future, if not better.

Oh yeah, can't remember where just now, but I recently read that Windows phones are outselling Android and Apple phones in several markets around the world, especially so in Middle-Eastern and Asian markets.