Nokia Lumia 920

Good

• Dual-core S4 chip
• HD screen
• 'PureView' camera

Bad

• Windows Phone has fewer apps than rival platforms
• May be pretty expensive

Windows Phone fans can finally exhale -- the Mighty Finn has unboxed its shiny new Windows Phone 8 flagship: the Nokia Lumia 920.
Packing a 1.5GHz dual-core chip, a 4.5-inch curved glass display, a version of Nokia's PureView camera technology and some very colourful case colours, Nokia is hoping it's done enough to tempt mobile lovers away from Android and iOS to Microsoft's Windows Phone.
Read on for my first impressions.

Design and screen

If you've seen the Nokia Lumia 800 before, you'll be familiar with the design of the 920. The front is dominated by a 4.5 inch curved glass display -- embedded in a slab of polycarbonate (that's plastic to you and me).
The curves continue all the way around the two sides, with rounded edges wrapping over to a gently rounded back -- with blunted lines only topping and tailing the slab. The result is a phone that resembles a giant block of candy.

The casing is gently curved around the sides and back.

Build quality is a focus, says Nokia, which claims the 920 is super tough and its case "nearly impossible" to scratch. So we'll have to wait and see how the 920 handles some rough treatment when we get it in for a full review.
As mentioned above, Nokia has not been shy about offering the 920 in some very bright colour choices -- including bright yellow and 'lipstick' red -- along with some more muted shades ('slate grey', plus black and white).

It comes in a choice of bright colours as well as your standard dull shades.

Screen resolution has been seriously bumped up on Nokia's previous Lumias -- thanks to WP8's support for higher screen resolutions. Nokia has dubbed the 920's 1,280x768-pixel IPS LCD screen PureMotion HD+ -- and claims it's a "better than HD resolution" pane.
It remains to be seen how eye-poppingly bright and colourful it is in the flesh but at the very least I expect it to look clear and flicker free.
Nokia has also added a new version of its ClearBlack screen tech to the 920 -- which improves the viewing experience in bright sunlight. Nokia says the 920's screen will adjust in response to glare to make it easier to see what's on screen. We'll be sure to test this feature when we get the phone in for review (assuming we can find a little sun in the depths of winter).
The sensitivity of the 920's touchscreen has been increased -- a Nokia exec demoed how he could still use the phone when wearing skiing mittens.

Touchscreen resolution and responsiveness have been turbocharged.

PureView camera

The Lumia 920 has been branded with Nokia's PureView camera technology -- previously only seen on the Symbian-based 808.
Don't get too excited, though, as this is a watered-down version of the tech. For starters, the 920 doesn't have such a massive sensor as the 808. You get an 8.7-megapixel rear lens -- instead of the 808's whopping 41-megapixel lens. So, where the 808 creates high-quality images by pixel oversampling -- thanks to its huge sensor -- the Lumia 920 presumably won't be able to offer that.
Instead, Nokia has focused on improving light capture and stability on the 920 so you can snap generally clearer, brighter shots even indoors in dingy conditions.
Nokia claims the 920's f2.0 lens can captures between five to 10 times the amount of light of other smart phone cameras. It's also attached tiny springs to the optics to kill off pesky hand-shake -- dubbing this its "floating lens technology".
The once Mighty Finn reckons the 920's spring-mounted lens "surpasses the optical image stabilisation systems of most dSLRs" -- although it says the improvements are most obvious when you're shooting video with the phone. As usual, we'll be sure to put these claims to the test when we get the 920 in for review.

The Nokia Lumia 920, sunny side up, with a snapper that claims to capture more light than other camera phones.

Elsewhere on the 920 there's a 1.2-megapixel front-facing lens for 720p HD videocalling. The camera software has also been tweaked, with support for pinch to zoom when you're taking a shot, and a new Lenses button that lets you take shots using third party camera apps by switching from the native camera view to the app of your choice.

Software and apps

The big news about the Lumia 920 is of course that it's Nokia's first phone to run Microsoft's all-new mobile OS: Windows Phone 8.
WP8 is a reboot, rather than an iterative update of the previous Windows Phone 7 OS. It's a complete break -- built on a different kernel and with no forwards compatibility for apps. So Windows Phone 7 apps will work on Windows Phone 8 devices but any apps built specifically for WP8 won't work on WP7 devices.
The key changes in WP8 are support for more powerful hardware -- including multicore chips, HD screens and NFC (all of which the 920 takes advantage of). But on the surface, the most obvious software change is a new, more flexible home screen. This lets you customise the basic look -- breaking it down from a grid of large squares that push info at you, to a grid of different size squares.
This means the new home screen lets you cram more (or less) in by allocating different amounts of space to different tiles. There are three sizes of tile to choose from: icon-sized (ie small), standard Windows Phone square, and widget-sized (ie big).

The tile-based Windows Phone home screen lets you cram the space with widgets of different sizes.

You could say the new home screen is basically a mix of widgets and icons -- a la Google's Android OS -- albeit, with a more regimented look.
One more thing: the new home screen isn't exclusive to WP8. WP7 owners can get this via their final OS update -- known as Windows Phone 7.8.
WP8 also introduces some new theme colours to Windows Phone -- including colours that match the 920's bright red and yellow case colours.
On the apps side, Nokia is talking up its software contribution to Windows Phone -- in a bid to make its devices stand out from rivals, such as Samsung's looming Windows Phone 8 phone, the Ativ S.
The Lumia 920 includes Nokia's City Lens augmented reality app. Nokia says this is being integrated into its Maps software so you can hold the 920 up at any time to switch into the City Lens view to track down local points of interest. That sounds pretty nifty.
Fully featured offline maps are also included -- with support for indoor maps and increased integration with other apps such as Nokia's turn-by-turn sat-nav app, Nokia Drive.
Nokia's Transport app -- which shows details of local public transport times and routes -- is also on board and is integrated into other apps, such as Nokia Drive, so the latter can prompt you when you need to leave to get to your destination.
Talking generally about apps, as with any Windows Phone, choosing the 920 means settling for fewer apps than rival platforms Android and iOS currently offer. Apps also tend to be more expensive on the Windows Phone platform. Happily the flagship Nokia apps all come preloaded, so there's no extra cost there.

Fully-featured offline maps are included and integrate with apps like Nokia Drive sat-nav.

Hardware, power and battery

The Lumia 920 is powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 -- a step up on Nokia's Windows Phone 7-based Lumias (which can't support multicore chips).
There's also 1GB of RAM, along with 32GB of on-board storage space -- plus 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage space. There doesn't appear to be a microSD card slot on the 920 so cloud storage may be the only way to expand storage space.
Nokia reckons the 920's S4 chipset combined with WP8 makes the 920 up to 30 per cent more battery efficient than quad-core smart phones -- such as the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3. Once again, we'll be sure to test this claim when we get the 920 in our testing lab.
Impressive sounding power efficiency hasn't stopped Nokia putting a beefy battery inside the 920 -- you get a 2,000mAh, which is only a smidge smaller than the Galaxy S3's capacious 2,100mAh cell. Expect to easily get a day's use out the 920 before needing to charge it.
And talking of charging, the 920 includes Qi wireless charging tech which can be used with a range of accessories to juice up the phone without actually having to plug in a charger -- including a gizmo designed to look like a pillow.

It features wireless charging wizardry to re-juice without having to plug in, like this gadget it's sitting on.

HSPA+ and 4G

Nokia says the 920 will be available in "pentaband LTE and HSPA+ variants" -- although it didn't specify whether the UK would be getting a 4G LTE version, or just plain old HSPA+.

Outlook

If you're a fan of Windows Phone looking to upgrade, the Lumia 920 looks like it'll tick the relevant boxes (more power, better screen) -- and the camera could be especially tasty. Folk already wedded to the Android or iOS mobile platforms will have less reason to be excited.
Nokia did not announce where exactly the 920 will launch or when -- saying only that it's expected to start shipping "later in the year". WP8 is due to land in November -- so wherever you live you should settle in for a little bit of a wait.
There was also no word on pricing, but the Lumia 920 is Nokia's new flagship so set your expectations accordingly.


Ref:

Related Items news technology