The Nokia Lumia 920 with its wireless charger. Apple keyboard optional.
by wterry507. gadget geek, toy model fetishist.
edited by yellowchilli
Buy, but know first what you’re getting yourself into.
It’s often all too easy to rush in and buy whatever phone qualifies as a Nokia flagship getting pumped out of Espoo’s factories. This has not been a bad thing in the past since Nokia has consistently produced triple-A quality, near-indestructible and practically-designed hardware.
While the Lumia 920– being Nokia’s second generation Windows Phone flagship- is filled to the brim full of firsts in innovations it has almost the same quantity of boo-worthy disadvantages in tow.
As a consumer you have to understand the shortcomings and decide whether you can accept them as a sort of price to pay for sampling some of the most cutting-edge and innovative mobile technology to date.
By all means it’s all very positive overall but read on to find out what the Lumia 920 is all about.
shinnny
symmetry= pleasing.
the usual suspects of buttons- volume, power and camera, Nokia style.
top of the phone to ya..I meant the top. noise cancelling microphone location visible
goods
+++++the new IE10 is blazing fast, scoring 9xx on Sunspider (synthetic javascript benchmark)! As a reference, the iPhone 5’s Mobile Safari is also in the 900s while the Lumia 900 (WP7) is er..6800.
+++capable of wireless charging- the phone itself is wireless charge-ready via the Qi standard. but you’ll still have to buy the optional charging dock itself. Ask your local Nokia store for bundle availability and pricing.
++++wp8 is user-friendly and has a simple UI
+++Pureview, enough said. It may not have the monstrous 41 megapixel sensor of the 808 PureView but the 920 soaks in a lot of light; takes near-noiseless lowlight photos. Daylight photography surprisingly is not spectacular but there is that never before-seen Optical Imaging Stabilization (as opposed to a crappy digital one) that helps eliminate motion blurs. This is done by employing a gyroscope to determine movements and then constantly shifting the optical lenses in the opposite direction to counter such movements up to 500 times per second. Read Nokia’s white paper for yourself if that all this sounds hard to believe.
+++++wonderful video quality, the optical Imaging Stabilization also helps here
+++++for its simple interface, even it’s just dual core performance is fast and smooth enough
++++super-responsive touchscreen; Gorilla Glass 2 is hard at work protecting the display while Puremotion HD keeps animations blur-free and the returning ClearBlack technology means the display is very much legible under direct sunlight.
+++++migrating from iOS devices is a cinch since Windows Phone 8 devices can now help you sync your media from iTunes on both Windows and Mac! not to mention wireless sync is also present
++++nokia’s built-in apps and customisations adds value and lifts itself up from the homogeneity of other current-gen Windows Phone devices. Of note, Nokia’s (offline!) maps; free life-time turn-by-turn; CityLens and such adds so much more on top of Windows Phone 8.
+sufficiently weighty and chunky in the hand means it feels solid but obviously this is subjective (and as yet i’ve not conducted any torture tests, if ever)
Camera samples- click to enlarge. [updated: night shots!]
daylight.
indoor, shrine of some kind.
indoor lighting macro.
more indoor macro
indoor puppy
night time scenery
and finally, the trickiest of all: night time motion
bads
—-4G LTE drains the battery like there’s no tomorrow but at least it idles well. if usage is kept light and left on idle then it could get through 24 hours
-batterylife isn’t great even on 3G. Considering the phone’s dimensions, you’d expect nokia to fit a larger capacity battery in there. As it stands, there’s a non user-removable 2000 mah battery in there. [update] 3G battery life is significantly better than 4G and could mean a near-24 hour day per charge but one would still have to be careful or even frugal with the usage- and this is not a good user experience.
—while this is WP8’s ecosystem-specific issue, it just has to be mentioned here: apps still lack in quantity.
—-google still doesn’t actively develop for Windows Phone although Maps can finally be accessed via Internet Explorer 10
—Panorama mode is very difficult to use
-filesystem is still not exposed, taking a leaf out of iOS’s book. Flexibility suffers as a result.
–ring volume is still linked to media volume and it doesn’t look like it’s set to change any time soon. This is a two-sided coin for those used to context-sensitive volume adjustments a la Android and iOS, this does not bode well. But for those new the smartphones, it’s a no-brainer- you want the volume up? turn it up. you want it down? you guessed it! it don’t matter where you are or what you’re doing.
—no bluetooth tethering; relatively speaking, wifi-tethering drains battery much faster
–no expandable memory for some reason
—price is steep but there’s much innovation in the 920 flagship
—display is an IPS LCD, not what Nokia fans have gotten used to- AMOLED. As a result, contrast levels take a hit.
