The Nokia Lumia 920 has been heralded as the ultimate Windows Phone 8 device. When it was announced I was excited the range of colours and accessories. It captivated my imagination and made my wallet area hurt with anticipation of the upcoming cost.
When it came to it, I bought an HTC 8X as my daily phone and I thought “I’ll get my hands on a Lumia 920 at some point”.
Well today is that day. As usual with any new and exciting device we’ll bring you an initial impressions post straight away and then the review at a later date. In actual fact a couple of us have Lumia 920s at the moment so you should be seeing a couple of our reviews coming soon.
Starting off with my initial good and bad points…
Good Points
- Great range of colours
- Great hardware build quality
- Screen looks amazing
- Pureview stabilized camera is great
Bad Points
- Quite bulky
- Persistent WiFi yet to come to the Lumia range
- High comparative cost
Design
I have had my hands on quite a few different phones over the years and my previous top three gorgeous looking phones have been the iPhone 4S (I pretended to like for a few weeks), the cyan Nokia Lumia 800 and the HTC 8X which I bought recently. When the Lumia 920 in white arrived I was shocked at quite how good looking this phone was.
I really like the button arrangements on the Lumia range of phones, being left handed it is nice and easy to get to the power button on the side, the buttons are also nicely raised unlike the buttons on the HTC 8X.
Nokia have gone with a more conventional arrangement for the Micro USB port, it’s in the middle at the bottom. We are yet to know if this is a standard positioning for accessories. Nokia have also gone for a less fiddly SIM tray than previous models.
Nokia have also gone back to the slightly curved screen that comes out slightly from the surrounding frame. This all makes screen swipes easier as there is nothing in the way. Although any “face first” drops to the ground would damage the screen first.
We were sent the white model and it’s a great looking device. The super black screen and the white body make for a great contrasting device. Initially I wanted the yellow model now having used this I think my white obsession will continue.
Hardware
Here is the spec for the Lumia 920:
- Dimensions – 130.3 x 70.8 x 10.7 mm
- Weight 185 g
- Display – PureMotion HD+ ClearBlack display 768 x 1280 pixels, 4.5 inches (~332 ppi pixel density)
- Corning Gorilla Glass 2
- Dolby Headphone sound enhancement
- Storage – 32 GB storage
- RAM – 1 GB RAM
- NFC
- Camera – 8 MP, 3264 x 2448 pixels, Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilization, autofocus, dual-LED flash
- Video – 1080p@30fps, video stabilization
- Front Camera – 1.3 MP, 720p@30fps
- Chipset – Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon
- CPU – Dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait
- GPU – Adreno 225
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- Battery – Standard battery, Li-Ion 2000 mAh
- 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
- 3G Network HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
- 4G Network LTE 800 / 900 / 1800 / 2100 / 2600
- LTE 700 MHz Class 17 / 1700 / 2100
- Micro-SIM
Software
Windows Phone 8 is great. there I’ve said it. The app situation that people are always going on about is a rapidly disappearing problem. New apps and developers are joining the OS as the weeks go by. Nokia have continued the trend of publishing Lumia exclusive apps and you are offered quite a long list of apps from them, including Nokia Drive and City Lense both of which are great apps for the Lumia 920.
I did miss the clock tile though, having been using HTC Windows Phones for the last few weeks. Every app I tried performed admirably and the slight extra bit of resolution compared to the 8X made things feels a little bit more readable.
The camera on the Lumia 920 is astounding, when you’re taking photos in the dark or low light. The rest of the time it feels like any other high end camera phone and at times I found my other cameras took better shots. The image stabilisation helped when I pressed the shutter button (as normally pressing the shutter induces some blurriness).
I will be doing a more in depth photo comparison with the HTC 8X and the Samsung Galaxy Note II later this week.
Initial Conclusion
The Nokia Lumia 920 is my current favourite Windows Phone 8 device and not because of the camera either. It’s because of its gorgeous design, the way it feels in your hand and also the way I got a white one.
I was a little worried about streaming as the WiFi disconnects when the screen is off although Nokia have said this week that they are going to be pushing the persistent WiFi fix out very soon so it will be on a par with the HTC models.
I will be doing a full review fairly soon so if you want anything testing out or you have any questions please leave a comment below.
Lastly thanks to Clove for lending us this Lumia, if your interested in getting one for yourself head over to their website here.
Link – Buy Nokia Lumia 920 @ Clove