It’s no secret that Nokia and I are friends from way back. Just look at that advert on your right, go ahead do it. What does it say? That’s right, it says somethingsomething NOKIA somethingsomething.
Such is my relationship with Nokia that even their top brass over in Finland has read this site. True story (that I’ll get into another time), but despite this I still try to retain some integrity when reviewing their phones.
That’s why I’m calling this a HARDLINE REVIEW. I’m not going to pull any punches here people, I’m going to tell you straight up what I think about the Nokia Lumia 920 I’ve been using for the past month.
Let’s start from the start, shall we?
Courtship:
For about four weeks before I got the actual phone to review, Nokia faithfully sent me a whole variety of drops of all kinds of shit stuff like a travel journal, an old school disposable camera, a cactus in a pot made from old stiffy disks, that sort of thing.
The idea was to highlight how technology has changed over the years in a “Hey, remember when we used stiffy disks?! How nuts were those! Look at how far we’ve come, sho!†kind of way.
I thought the drops were a nice idea, except the poor cactus, which got all battered up by the couriers and came out looking like it had fought a war (and lost).
All this built up to the big moment itself, when the final drop arrived and KAPOW! It was the Lumia 920! And a chopping board! Which was very useful… for chopping… stuff…
Form Factor
In my previous in-depth reviews of the Nokia Lumia 900 I’d mentioned how much bigger it was compared to the Lumia 800, something that took a little getting used to at first.
Well, the Lumia 920 continues this trend – size-wise it’s actually slightly thinner than the 900 (10.7mm vs 11.5) but width and height are both considerably more (130.3mm x 70.8 mm vs 68.5mm x 127.8mm).
It’s also one heavy-ass phone, weighing in at a hefty 185g in comparison to the 160g that the Lumia 900 weighed.
I was given the red Lumia 920 to review and holy shizit-balls does this phone look sexy! A shinier, smoother, more scratch-proof, slicker piece of technology you will NOT find.
Sure, it was a little hefty, but the second I fired it up and was bathed in the warm glow of no less than three hundred and thirty two pixels per inch on a 768 x 1280 PureMotion HD display, any reservations I had about it’s large size vanished instantly.
Display
I don’t really know what to say here except wow.
The colour on the display is so rich you can practically taste it. It’s one of those things where at first you’re like “Huh, the display looks nice…†but after a week or so of using it, especially when you start using the camera, you really come to appreciate what a 332ppi 768 x 1280 display can do.
Videos play like magic, images are incredibly vivid, even webpages look pretty sick. It’s a big step up from the Lumia 900 AND you can use the touch-screen whilst wearing gloves (apparently. I never tried this, not much of a glove-wearer…)
Operating System, Speed, All That Good Stuff
Processor-wise, Nokia has seriously upped their game when it comes to the processor speed of the Lumia 920.
What am I talking about here? I’m talking about a Dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor bitches! That thing FLIES! And when combined with a solid 1GB RAM you must know, the last thing you’ll be doing is sitting around waiting for the phone to crunch apps, games, videos or webpages (connection dependant).
As for Windows 8, it’s just as much of a pleasure to use as Windows 7.5 was and operates according to the same tile logic. I have no issues with the OS on new Windows phones. I use a Windows laptop in my working life, so it makes sense to run in on my phone as well.
I had ONE instance where the phone froze which was a little disconcerting as my Lumia 900, in the 6 months I’ve been using it hasn’t frozen once. The screen got stuck displaying the Nokia logo and I had to hard-reset it (hold down volume down and the lock buttons) to get it up and running again.
Battery Life and WIRELESS CHARGING!
This is always a tricky one to review over a mere month. The standard charge you get out of a smartphone these days is roughly a day of using it at medium-intensity for calls, internet browsing and taking pics.
My Lumia 900 used to give me just more than a day on regular battery (not power-saving) mode but that came down drastically over the time I used the phone. Now I take it off charge at about 7am and by 7pm it’s dead to the world.
With the Lumia 920, I can easily get nearly a day and a half out of the battery before it snuffs it, but who knows what the story would be six months down the line.
As for the wireless charging, at the time of writing this I was unable to confirm whether you get the Fatboy Wireless Charging Pillow bundled with Nokia Lumia 920s or not – what I do know though is it’s not included in the Lumia 920 box at all.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the charging pillow is sold separately and probably isn’t cheap, but it’s totally worth it to just place your phone on a pillow and magically have it start charging right before your very eyes!
Yeah. Not really. Essentially there is no difference between plugging your phone in to charge and plugging a charging pillow in to charge and putting your phone on it. One thing I will say though is that the charge the phone got from the pillow seemed to be pretty legit – charging time was minimal and the battery lasted just as long as if it had been plugged into the wall.
It’s a start though. The day they invent something that broadcasts electricity to my phone the same way wifi is broadcast is the day I’ll really be impressed. And also the day THE ROBOTS TAKE OVER, RRARGRGRAHGRAHGRHAGRARAAAA!
Camera
This was my biggest gripe on the Lumia 900. Despite being a pretty solid phone I found the camera took blurry pictures unless held in a vice-like, unwavering grip and it performed shockingly in low-light conditions.
They’ve rectified both of these problems with the 8.7-megapixel PureView (with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens) primary camera the phone comes packing.
It brought back fond memories of the 12MP camera my old Nokia N8 used to pack in terms of image quality and general reliability. The only thing I struggled a bit with was zooming, which you can only do by pinching the screen.
Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but touching the screen when on camera mode instantly takes a picture so unless you get your pinch perfect, you’ll end up snapping an unzoomed pic of something random and who the hell has time for unzoomed pics?! (#1stworldproblems).
On every other front, the camera was a vast improvement though and with 1080p video, the next random gig you go to and film with your phone knowing full well you’ll never actually watch the footage will never look better.
I could go on…
There’s still a lot more to cover with this phone – apps for example, how does it fare on that front? And what about my socials? Will it handle my Twitters and Facebookings like a pro?
And how about the built-in LTE antenna, how that that bad boy work (VERY flippin well if you’re in an area with coverage – Twitter and Facebook both opened and updated pretty much instantly, boosting my show-off factor considerably).
And mapping? What’s the mapping like (beyond awesome. That’s one thing the new generation of Nokia phones has got so right it’s not even funny).
But yeah, if you want my final verdict then here it is:
Final Verdict:
The Lumia 920 is the Lumia 900 on steroids. Despite its increased bulk, I really enjoyed using the phone and only had one minor glitch when it froze solid about three weeks after I started using it.
What would really boost the hell out of this review would be any comments from people who have used this phone alongside an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy or HTC. I can only review this phone in comparison to Nokia’s previous phones and when viewed in that light, it’s a great phone.
My view in the end of the day is this: if you are a Windows user, you’d be retarded NOT to try out one of Nokia’s new Windows phones of which the Lumia 920 is by far the best (until the 925 is available…).
-ST
