Finally
After an interminable wait, the ice suddenly broke when I was invited to the grand opening of the Microsoft store in Troy June 2013. There I met a helpful person who works for a West Coast PR firm contracted to promote Microsoft events.  Through them I got to the right person in less than a week and had a Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 arrive in another week.

Heavy Enough to Cause Damage
My fire engine red Lumia 920 came out of the box swinging like a heavy weight.  It is one of the heftiest mobile phones you will ever carry but…it feels strangely lighter than its older sister, the Lumia 900.  This is perhaps because of the tapering of the edges on the phone which gives it a markedly more comfortable grip on the device. Unfortunately the bright minds that designed the Lumia 920 felt that the external surface had to be as slippery as possible!  In the first hour of having the device out of the box it squirted out of my hands no less than a half dozen times.  If you are going to make this your next smartphone, invest in a rubber protector that wraps …