The Nokia Lumia 920 is the ultimate Windows Phone, thanks to its jaw-dropping HD screen, fantastic PureView 8.7 MP camera and wireless charging capability...mannnn, this phone really is made for humans. Nokia’s Lumia 920 has a breakthrough PureView camera that promises to wipe the floor with the iPhone (and everything else). And only this device has wireless charging capability built in, plus access to exclusive apps like City Lens for turning the handset into an augmented reality tour guide.
The Lumia 920 also has Windows Phone 8 inside, which means you get all-new features available on gorgeous 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ display protected by Gorilla Glass and offers outstanding visual performance. With a resolution of 768×1280 pixels, the screen has a ppi of 332 (higher than the 306 of Samsung’ Galaxy S III) and looks fantastic, providing an excellent stage to showcase the sumptuously designed Windows Phone 8 software, that Nokia says is better than HD. The screen is an IPS model. It’s significantly better than the display of the copy cat HTC 8X, with very high contrast and deep blacks, leading to some seriously vibrant colours. The extra horizontal pixels, compared to the 720p we normally see on high-end smartphones, are particularly useful when viewing web pages in landscape mode.
In terms of touch sensitivity, offering a responsive and fast experience which only serves to further exaggerate the smooth and fluid way in which WP8 runs.
Photos are bright and clear on screen and videos look very good indeed, with colours across both still and moving images proving to be bold and high in contrast.
I loved the design of the Nokia Lumia 920, with its polycarbonate unibody. It’s a single piece of tough moulded plastic with a slightly convex screen, and looks fantastic. The phone will be available in black, yellow and red, and in white- a nice change from the staid black and white options of most smartphones.
Lumia 920 is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, and is just as blazingly fast as other leading Smartphone rivals. With 906.9ms in the Sunspider JavaScript test, which makes this handset even quicker than our previous speed champion, the iPhone 5.
Web browsing is as snappy as you’d expect.
Windows Phone 8 itself has some notable improvements over Windows Phone 7. You can now choose how large Live Tiles are, so you can allocate more space to those with interesting information to show, such as Photos, and shrink those that don’t need so much space, such as Messaging or Internet Explorer.
One complaint surrounding earlier Lumias was that the battery life was somewhat below par, but this is something that Nokia has addressed in its latest handset. The Lumia 920 features a 2000mAh battery which reportedly offers up to 10 hours of talk time over a 3G network and up to 67 hours of music playback
Nokia already had made headlines this year with the launch of its 41 megapixel camera-toting 808 PureView device. The technology that debuted with the handset has been carried through to the Lumia 920 but, sadly, not in its 41 megapixel form with the new device featuring a more standard 8 megapixel sensor.However, features such as physical image stabilisation (IS) have been utilised here, something which gives the Lumia 920 a big advantage over other leading handsets which mainly employ digital IS. IS allows a camera’s shutter to remain open for longer, meaning that more light can get in to the sensor – something which will improve performance in low-light conditions.
The Lumia 920’s camera certainly performs well under low lighting and electric lighting, conditions which camera phones often find difficult to operate in. With Nokia’s long running collaboration with lens-maker Carl Zeiss continuing the Lumia 920 is well-equipped to work as an all-rounder.
As far as audio capabilities go, the Lumia 920 delivers excellent sound quality through headphones with high frequencies coming across clearly and low end sounds suitably deep and powerful. Nokia’s music player is versatile and easy to use, and album artwork looks great on the Lumia’s display. Audio can also be tailored to taste with included EQ controls and a number of presets customised for different genres of music.
Performance and Verdict
Overall, the Lumia 920 is one of the best phones in quite some time. Whilst its dual-core processor may seem slightly old-fashioned compared to the quad-core flagships currently in circulation, it causes no problems with the handset’s overall performance and Windows Phone 8 runs like a dream.
Nokia’s new device looks fantastic, with the minimalist unibody design that was seen on the Lumia 900 having been evolved very slightly and widened to suit the larger display. This, coupled with the incredible visuals of Windows Phone 8, makes for what is possibly the best looking handset around at the moment.
With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft is making a serious push towards taking a bigger share of the smartphone market and from what we’ve seen here, the software giant certainly has the platform to do so. The firm’s long-running collaboration with Microsoft has borne further fruit with the Finnish manufacturer having created an excellent handset that offers a great vehicle for Microsoft’s OS and embellishes the new software with just a few touches of its own.
While Nokia could still face stiff competition from the likes of HTC and Samsung as it vies to re-establish itself as the premier Windows Phone manufacturer, the Lumia-creator has set the bar high for what can be done with the new OS and those other manufacturers have a lot to live up to.