Nokia Lumia 920 Review

It is the high time for Nokia where it cannot care less. The time when Nokia decided to start pushing out Windows Phones, it was a big deal for the company and the company did not do it half-heartedly either. With the Nokia Lumia 800, the company came up with a beautifully designed phone that was generally well-received.

The new Lumia 920 follows in the footsteps of the Lumia 800 with some big leap forward in key areas. One can compare it with Android’s most popular high end the Samsung Galaxy S III that offers a quad- or dual-core processor, depending on the region, and a high-res AMOLED display, flaunting camera of the same resolution as the Lumia 920.

With the Lumia 920, the company tries to stay relevant on top of the heap of other smartphone makers making it big in the industry. But, we need to see if is good enough despite the fact that company claimed it to be a flagship device. Well let’s see whether this Lumia 920 is going to live up to the expectations.

• MicroUSB cable
• Wall charger
• Quick Start Guide
• Product and Safety Information Guide
• NFC tag

With the Nokia N9 and the Lumia 800, the company proved that it has what it takes to vie with the top competitors in terms of design. The Lumia 920 continues with that aesthetic and tries to perfect an already great design. Idiosyncratically, there is nothing predominantly new about the design of the Lumia 920 for the reason that it keeps more or less same design as that of the previous Lumia 900 model.

The Nokia Lumia 920 measures 130.3 x 70.8 x 10.7 mm and weighs 185g. Naturally, the optical image stabilization on its own contributes toward the size and weight both however thickness on the side, the screen bezel is a bit too broad. Anyhow, before making a buying decision one needs to make sure that the Lumia 920 is something that they can easily handle because this is definitely not every pocket or hand smartphone.

The diversity of Skittles-like colors that are available with the Lumia 920 is the most noticeable amongst its look, and it gives the handset an exceptionally elegant edge over other things out there. And, it is very heartening to see that the Lumia 920 is setting itself apart with its vibrant color selection and solid construction.

The Lumia 920 impresses its users with its larger 4.5-inch IPS LCD PureMotionHD+ display, which is one of the key selling points of smartphones. This display happens to employ a resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels with a pixel density of 332 ppi that makes Nokia Lumia 920 screen one of the most detailed screens available out there.

The phone comes with brilliant viewing angles and a strong iridescent glow it’s more than visible in outdoor conditions with the sun present. And while there's notable brightness loss when you go to extremes, everything on the screen remains legible. Moreover, the sensitivity to touch is worth mentioning here.

We have seen so far that consistency of the Windows Phone is something that is persistently found in almost all Windows Phones that we have reviewed so far, and with Lumia 920, there is no exception.

With an improved user interface and Windows Phone 8 on a Nokia Lumia, the phone is noticeably different from others thanks to its deal with Microsoft. A number of exclusive features are there as well to give you a nice user experience. The company has made a number of improvements in the user interface as the look and feel of the Windows Phone OS is mostly unchanged, on the other hand, in spite of everything there are some much-needed improvements needed to bring it up to the level of its contemporaries.

The multi-tasking interface is the same as in WP7 - to switch between apps you press and hold the Back key. You'll get thumbnail snapshots of the apps, ordered chronologically left to right. You can resize the tiles by tapping and holding them and choose between quarter, normal and double size. Majority of Live tiles display relevant information – which is nice that you get all the relevant information at a glance.

The Nokia Lumia 920 unlike other Windows Phone 8 smartphones has its wildcard of pure experience apps to catapult its offering that includes Nokia Maps, Drive, City Lens, and Music. This is something that you will not get in any other Windows Phone 8 smartphone except Nokia’s Lumia – this is truly worth mentioning here.

The Nokia Lumia 920 is armed with a dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus processor coupled with 1GB of RAM which is for sure more than enough to bring forth one responsive performance. With such a processor, the phone undoubtedly is capable of handling a wide range of basic tasks as well as adept in maintaining a tolerable level with more intensive processes that you may need for playing 3D games.

Unfortunately, there is no storage expandability with this beauty putting on a closed design with its unibody polycarbonate body. This indicates that you have to be careful with monitoring its 32GB internal capacity. Overall, performance wise the Lumia 920 is a typical Windows Phone 8 smartphone.

The Lumia 920 boasts good call quality with no hearing issues. You will not come across any instance of its signal strength fluctuating intensely when you use the phone in high coverage areas.

Audio quality is also above the par and the loudspeaker is loud enough that for most of the time, you want to keep the volumes below 2/3’s of the maximum.

The new Lumia 920 comes with a 26mm wide-angle lens by Carl Zeiss and a dual-LED flash that is quite unique in the mobile phone world. Furthermore, true Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) has been featured rather than digital tricks. Apart from this stabilization system, the technological achievements provide Nokia enough grounds to market Lumia 920 as PureView, despite the fact that it does not have 41MP sensor.

The Lumia 920 offers multi-aspect 8.7MP imager (1/3", µ 1.4 pixel size) that can take photos at 3264 x 2448 resolution in 4:3 mode and 3552 x 2000 in 16:9 mode (only 11% drop in resolution). Quality of still photos is good in daylight, however, not as good as you would expect. But, on the whole photos are worth framing.

You will particularly be impressed with its low lighting performance, which shows the advantage of its F2.0 lens and image stabilization. The lens is able to absorb more light, and the stabilization helps avoid the occasional blurring due to camera shake.

The camera user interface is simple and easy to use with the options such as still/video camera toggle, front/back camera toggle, flash mode setting and the Lens button. The Lumia 920 is preloaded with the Smart Shoot lens however, you can always download the Panorama and Cinemagraph lenses.

On the other end, is a 1.3 megapixel camera that’s capable of 720p video and should do just fine for the odd video call. Furthermore, watching videos on the Lumia 920, needless to say, is a fun and pleasant experience, thanks to the nature of its brilliant looking display. The phone also supports a wide variety of video codecs out of the box to appease enthusiasts.

The Lumia 920 offers complete connectivity that includes everything from quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support to quad-band 3G with HSPA and 4G LTE connectivity. The local connectivity is covered by dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct and hotspot, and stereo Bluetooth 3.1.

The Lumia 920 also has NFC connectivity, which is used in the Wallet app. Furthermore, with the help of Mass Storage mode for the internal phone storage, you will be able to upload files without needing to install any software.

There are some places where Lumia 920 needs to be improved such as its design and build is very thick and heavy, plus battery life is terrible. Talking about camera, noise cancellation on the camera can be a bit aggressive. Some other disadvantages that you should keep in mind are no FM radio and system wide file manager, there is also no microSD card and no shortcut to lockscreen, furthermore app catalog falls short of Android and iOS, audio output is also not worth of a flagship device.

The Nokia Lumia 920 more or less is a barnstormer, on the other hand, it is eventually let down by a few too many troublesome issues. Although, it is not one of the most cutting edge devices available in the market but generally it is a good device considering that the options for Windows Phone 8 phones are not precisely abundant. Despite the fact that its battery life is a big concern, Lumia 920 definitely is worth checking out.

Because of its solid build quality and stylish color range, one can easily neglect the fact that is somewhat awkward looking in size. Such elements alone can spray a dose of juvenility and energy to make people take notice of it from afar.

On the whole, the Lumia 920 can be attached with the notion of having a whole lot of value for the money.