The Nokia Lumia Icon is Verizon’s new flagship Windows Phone

Finally, with the Nokia Lumia Icon, Verizon Wireless has a $199 flagship Windows Phone 8 that can go head-to-head with the best Android smartphones out there. Hoping that the Icon will be an iconic smartphone that stands out from the pack of coveted modern smartphones available today, both Nokia and Verizon are gunning with the best specs available–a 5-inch vibrant full 1080p HD display, best-in-class quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, and blazing fast 4G LTE speeds.

I really wanted to love Nokia’s Lumia Icon phone. Right now, after two-plus days of continual use, I can say I like it. We Windows Phone users on Verizon have had very limited phone choices, as Nokia’s flagship models have tended to debut first on AT&T and secondly on T-Mobile. I currently sport an HTC 8X phone and continue to find it to be a solid performer. I bought it a year and a half ago because I found it to be far more to my liking, size-wise, than the Lumia 920. I’d been hoping the Lumia Icon might be my first Nokia phone. Here’s what I like about Nokia’s newest Lumia (codenamed the Lumia 929), which will beavailable on Verizon only starting this week, February 20, for $199.99 on contract: I like the five-inch 1080p screen, the ability to adjust brightness and color saturation, and the three columns of tiles it allows me to display.