In a fun from the forums thread, we have an interesting conversation about something even we’ve witnessed: the Nokia Lumia 920 slipping and sliding off of seemingly flat surfaces, often crashing to the ground.
Forum member Cheyenne Price started a thread and even posted a video on his Facebook documenting the phenomenon (video after the break). The video starts with this 920 placed faced down on his solid Dell laptop, firmly in the center and flat on a desk. Yet within moments you can see the 920 spin around and then slowly begin to creep towards the corner.
The phone is not vibrating due to alerts and there is nothing obvious that is causing the movement. What will eventually happen, according to the author, is the Lumia 920 will swan dive to the ground (almost always after he has left the room).
Assuming the Lumia 920 isn’t suicidal, what could be the explanation?
Forum member mparker offers up one that we agree with:
“This is simple physics. In your video (thanks for posting the link btw) the phone is face down, on a laptop. The screen on the L900 is a low-friction surface, and the plastic on those dells is also a low-friction plastic. This means that absent some mechanical restraint, the phone will slide at fairly low angles. Between the foundation, table, and laptop there's enough tolerance stacking going on that the top of that Dell is likely to be significantly tilted. Have you put a level on it to verify that it's as flat as you think?Here's another experiment for you: Put an ice cube on top of the Dell. See if it slides off on its own as it starts to melt. It's the same principle.”
Indeed, while it is far from obvious this most likely the reason why. The Lumia 920 does have a very low-friction screen and those curved edges certainly don’t help either.
The only reason we find this interesting is our Lumia 920, when placed screen down (even on the couch) is prone to skirting off the edge of surfaces as well, more so than our other 14 Windows Phones that we’ve owned. And going by comments in that thread, others too are experiencing the odd behavior. (For the record, we place the phone screen down because during our downtime, we don’t want the screen “lighting up” when a notification comes in—it’s often distracting during a movie.)
So your best bet? Don’t place the Lumia 920 screen down. Sure, the Gorilla Glass may protect it, but evidently it gives the phone a mind of its own. Have a similar, funny story about your 920 taking a pratt fall? Let us know below.
