Since Microsofts take over of Nokia, the Lumia brand has been kind of quiet but that's not to say the technology giant has been slacking. They've been working hard on making a smart phone to rival the giants in the mobile industry that is Samsung and Apple. The biggest challenge for Microsoft is trying to get mobile phone users to adapt to their Windows platform as many are used to Android OS systems or iOS.
Research has shown that 90% of computer uses have Microsoft Windows as their primary OS and many are comfortable with it, hence the company felt that their mobile OS had to be more streamlined and similar to that used on the bigger machines. Hence Windows 10 was released with much hoo-ha in the industry as many wondered what happened to Windows 9?
The beauty of Windows 10 is that it's pretty much the same on your phone as it is on your personal computer, so this is provides the uses almost seamless symmetry with devices and one such device is The Lumia 950XL. The XL is not just a bigger version of the 950 but practically a PC in the palm of your hand. It's large 5.7" Quad HD LCD screen is perfect for ease of use for office work. The device comes with a years subscription to Microsoft Office 365 with rich formatting Word and Excel, so you can edit or create complex spreadsheets from your phone!
The phone has a lightning fast Qualcomm Snapdragon, Octa-Core processor which ensures the device runs smoothly with almost zero lag when running memory intensive applications. Speaking of apps, the Windows Store has everything in one convenient place, be it apps, music or games. Need a personal assistant? No problem, say hello to Cortana, think of it as Siri on steroids. While many would copy a competitors idea, what Microsoft have done here is quite brilliant, they made it much better and customized it to suit every ones needs. Whether it's to remember your appointments to track your morning run, Cortana can do it all. Cortana isn't available yet in South Africa but here's hoping it arrives soon.
The device comes with a 20 megapixel ZEISS optics lens, with a triple LED natural flash, ensuring you capture the perfect picture every time. With the various options on the camera, one can manipulate the settings to suit or if you're not a pro, just leave it on auto and it would do a pretty good job. The camera also has 4K video recording capabilities for ultra clear videos. The phone also features USB-C fast charging with an extra large battery, which I would love to put to the test.
Like other Lumia's, the phone is made in an enclosed aluminum case with a non-removable battery with a single sim and memory card slot capable of housing a maximum 200Gig microSD card. Overall the phone looks like a good competitor to the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Note and Apple's iPhone 6+. It would just be a matter of swaying the consumer to go for a device with a Windows based OS, but like I said with seamless integration with Windows for PC, it shouldn't be that hard.
When Nokia told me they were sending the Lumia 930 to me to test, I immediately thought it would be much like all the other Lumia's I've been sent in the past. The things I liked about them are, the build quality, it is second to none, the user interface is simple and easy to use, the range of apps is forever increasing and the Nokia feature apps were brilliant. But with the current market being flooded with smart phones, the stand out favourites were always going to be the Android based makes with the iPhone coming in second thanks to their faithful support, so it was always going to be hard for the Nokia Lumia range to take on these brands as there phones seed foreign and lacked appeal, well that was until the 930 came out.
Now I'm not saying that all the other Lumia's are rubbish, they were excellent phones but relatively speaking they weren't going to catch the eye of any would be cellphone buyer. However, when I received the 930, it was evident that this phone is going to be a game changer. It came smartly packed in a nice slim line box with just the essentials in it. The phones design for me is what struck me the most, yes it is much thicker than most of its competitors (9.8mm) on the market but for some reason that didn't bother me that much. With the 930 range you get to choose from a few variants of colours for the back cover, the test unit was a bright orange, perfect for me so I can't lose it. Other colours include, bright green, black, white and gold.
Dimensions
The size of the phone is just right, measuring 137mm X 71mm it feels comfortable in the palm of your hand and isn't as bulky as the other phones out there. The thickness helps you be at ease as any thought of the phone bending and cracking in your pocket is eliminated, also Corning Gorilla Glass 3 is pretty tough as I demonstrated to many in horror with the coin test. The phone is fully enclosed like all the other Lumia's, with a removable slot for the Nano sim. The device comes with 32gig built in memory and 2 gigs of ram, the disappointment has to be the lack of a memory card slot, 32gigs is a lot but as I'll explain later, it isn't enough.
Performance
Windows 8.1 is the OS that runs this beast with a planned upgrade to Windows 10 in the future, it has the preferred Qualcomm, Snapdragon chipset with a Quad-core 2.2 GHz Krait 400 CPU. The phones performance is smooth and real time responsive with out delays or freezing noticed during my time even when memory was 90% full. The various apps available on the Windows Store rivals that of iTunes and Google Play, with even more apps that are based on Windows 8 for PC.
Display
With a 5" screen which is roughly 71% to its body ratio, boasting an AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colours, covered with the before mentioned Gorilla Glass 3 it is quite a sight. Easy on the eye and picture realistic. Once again Nokia got it right with their multi touch screen keyboard, there is no better keyboard touchscreen keyboard than this. Even when typing fast and not looking at the screen, chances of making a mistake are very rare.
Camera
It comes with a 20 megapixel camera as it's primary, capable of taking pictures are maximum resolution of 4992 X 3744 pixels. The lens made by Carl Ziess optics is a step up from the previous devices as it features optical image stabilisation which comes very handy during moving shots and the colours it captures are fantastic! It videos in two times full HD at 2160p@30fps , the video quality is brilliant but recording at such high quality is where we experience memory problems, a short 5 minute video can take up as much as 700mb! Also the camera saves pictures in two formats, regular and high resolution, so you will also have two of the same photo on your phone. But I suppose with the phone being built mainly for the US and Europe market, cloud storage of 15 gigs would be the answer to that trouble but sadly for us here in SA, we still have to fork out an arm and a leg for data. The front facing camera is pretty decent at 1.2 megapixels and has that wide angle lens effect which makes for cool selfies!
Features
Other stand out features of the phone are it's senor, namely the accelerometer, gyro, proximity, GPS and compass. The browser is also capable of browsing in HTML5 and the phone can charge wirelessly provided you have the charging mat. Nokia has a host of features for its phones such as Nokia maps, HERE maps, Here City lens, Nokia Camera and photo editor which have been discussed in previous posts. Up till no, now other manufacturer has come up with rivals to these, in fact only this week Google announced that it was going to have detailed maps of shopping malls on Google Maps. Nokia have had this for over 2 years now...Welcome to the late show.
Battery
Whilst I did use this phone as a secondary phone, all my social media accounts were still linked to it so that meant always connected at 4G or WiFi where ever possible and receiving notifications the entire day. I also made good use of the camera whenever I could so with all of this the phone still gave me at most 3 days standby time, so the claimed 11 hours talk time is believable.
Verdict
Like I said from the start, this phone seems to be the game changer for the Lumia range. It's more appealing and looks attractive, the functionality is great and the camera is stunning. You're not missing out on anything as most of the applications are now available for Windows OS and as mentioned the Nokia featured apps are a step ahead of everyone else. Whilst the other Lumia's were great phones, this is the one that would make me say "I want that phone!"
Specifications
Processor: Quad-core 2.2GHz Krait 400
Memory: 32gig onboard with 2 gigs of RAM
Screen: 5" HD LCD, 16 million colours, 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution. 441 ppi
Camera: Primary- 20 megapixel with optical image stabiliser, lens by Carl Zeiss Optics, Front - 1.2 megapixel with 720p recording
Battery life: Talk time - 17.9 hours, Standby - 16 days
41 megapixel camera, let that sink in for a bit. Most DSLR camera's have 24 megapixels, that's a little more than HALF of 41! and they managed to put it in a PHONE! Like anyone I was skeptical at first, "ooo phone with such a big camera, bet the pictures are still shit though", boy did I shut my mouth after taking the first picture. I cannot begin to tell you the quality of the pictures that I was taking and that was just in normal point and shoot mode!
Sure there's more to this phone than just the camera and just my luck, the day I received it was the same day my phone decided to go through its mid life crisis. So I had enough of its shit, tossed it aside and used the Lumia 1020 as my primary phone which was probably a good thing since I could see first hand how the phone performs. Like the Lumia 925, the phone comes loaded with Microsoft Windows Phone 8 which is up gradable to WP8 Black. In fact, the phone isn't that different from the 925 as it is practically the same phone with a big ass camera!
The user interface is dead simple to use, the app store is straight forward and within a matter of minutes all my favourite apps were installed and ready to use on my phone. Nokia has made some changes with some of their apps, fusing the camera apps into one which makes a major difference. The contacts feature allows you to access all the info of the contact you select, whether its their contact numbers, latest facebook update or their last tweet. It's pretty cool how everything is integrated into one. The music player is also another nifty app which does so much more than just play your mp3's, it can search for other music by the artist, tell you where their are playing next and buy music. Nokia HERE has more info loaded onto it as they have people populating maps on a daily basis, added new places, reviews and pictures.
The phone size is relatively the same size as any other smart phone on the market, (130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4) the only snag is the camera protruding a bit but its not a major inconvenience as the phone is milled quite well to accommodate it but again like the 925 is a bit too smooth so you can easily have it slip out of your hand, it also makes taking pics with one hand kinda tricky but seems the guys at Nokia HQ either heard me but also had the same problem as the phone also came with "the grip". Its essentially a cover the phone snaps into that makes it more user friendly with one hand as it is shaped like a camera and gives you a better grip. The plus side to the grip is that it has a battery pack in it so it charges your phone while connected.
The camera settings offer the auto function which for novices its great as it adjusts the light, white balance and everything else for you in a jiffy, it also has a flash focus which focuses the lens with use of its Xenon * LED flash (that shit is bright!) so you don't have a picture with the flash ruining it. Yes I know most cameras have this feature but add to the fact it has a 41 megapixel camera and almost every picture you take is close to perfect. Night shots are incredible, want to get a pic of the night sky? Turn off the flash, have it on night more and snap, no more worrying about steady hands and worrying about movement.
The big worry about the 41 megapixel camera was the picture sizing, with the rate social media is growing, how can one share such a large file over these mediums? Your data bundle would deplete faster than it gets loaded at the beginning of the month. Nokia were sharp though, when a picture is taken, it saves it in 22 formats, normal and high resolution. The normal pic is the same size as you normal phone pic which is a few hundred kilobytes but the High Res can range from 10mb up wards. The is a way to take RAW pictures with the phone which means the picture will be full 41 megapixel but with the internal memory being just 32gigs, this could pose a problem since that's all the memory you have.
Coming back to the camera, some friends of mine actually managed to snap Orion's Belt! With a camera phone! That is unbelievable! One can divulge deeper into the settings of the camera set up where one can make detailed adjustments to the lens and balance settings. It has additional apps to the camera, like panoramic lense and city view.
Overall, there isn't much difference from this phone to the Lumia 925 apart from one glaring you in the face. Yes it really is that tremendous and there's no words to describe what Nokia have done here, one can simply stand and applaud. It truly is a wonderful piece of technology and whoever has it will know this ....and they'll also take the best Instragram pictures form all their friends!
Nokia South Africa gave us one of their latest smart phones to "test" for just under a month, the best test would be everyday use of the phone to see how it could cope with our needs and preferences. When I got the phone I was quite surprised at how slim and light (only 139g!) it was. As usual with Nokia, build quality is damn good as the phone has a solid feel to it and I did drop it (by mistake) a few times, in my defence and what could possibly my first dislike about the phone is that its too smooth! I know it sounds silly but there's virtually no roughness to give it some grip on your hand. I'm not saying its like a bar of soap but if not held properly you could be seeing gravity take over. Major part for the user to like the phone is its OS and here's to review that is guest writer Darshik Garach.
A new contender…
With Microsoft a contender in the very saturated smartphone race, we’ve got to ask the question, “Can they Really Compete?” In these times (last 5 years) of smartphone evolution, we’ve seen Apple create thee most distinctive and sort after phone in the world (my opinion) and Samsung create thee most feature filled phone in the world (fact). Nokia stumbled in a non-developmental stage at the time of Apple’s phone release. Samsung saw the market shifting, and adapted. The fact is that Nokia waited too long, and “decided” that near the potential end of their legacy, they would make a comeback.
Nokia decided to go the route of Windows phone, which people love and hate, as they do with every other OS. Androidians (Trolls) will say iOS is too restrictive and costly, iOSians (Fanboys) will say that Android is too gimmicky and slow, and both will say the Windows Phone Store is too small. Then you hear Androidians say they would buy a Nokia if it had Android as the OS platform – I for one am happy it doesn’t…it’s kind of like having an iPhone with Android - think about that.
How it competes against the others
Getting back to the matter at hand – Windows Phone, or specifically Windows Phone 8 and it as a mobile software platform. Is it good? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Does it have room for improvements? Yes. Funny enough, these questions will probably yield the same answers for both the other majority platforms, but due to establishment of those, WP8 will take a lot more heat.
What do you/don’t you get with Windows Phone 8?
Feature wise, you get almost everything that iOS has and more. Its system is in-between that of iOS and Android in my opinion. I can transfer music and files to it as a mass storage device. I can’t set a different tones for different emails or message systems. This is an in-between example of windows phone existence in the mobile world.
There are a couple of issues I have found, and these are the majority:
When WiFi and data are both on, WiFi is prioritised, but 3G does not switch off. This is silly, and eats battery, as I got 30% more battery life when I put off my WiFi and left 3G on. If it was vice versa, I would probably get even more battery life as 3G generally requires more power usage than WiFi. And make it conditional, as in IF WiFi and 3G is on and WiFi has internet connection THEN put 3G off ELSE keep 3G on but give me a pop up saying WiFi but no internet found.
Give me the ability to change ringtones for anything that needs ringtones. Blackberry got this one right! A bit too right actually.
Notifications should be a live tile, or a slide left. I prefer the latter. Like Windows 8, where you have the charms menu, a similar concept should be applied to WP8 so that you can access notifications or toggles with a quick slide from the edge of the screen. Or, holding the back button takes you to the open app list and notification centre – that may be an even better option.
Are you left handed or right handed. This should be an addition in display settings. That will change the layout based on the hand usage. Easy toggle on/off in display.
The settings menu should not be a list, it should be the translational movement like every other aspect in the phone. Each settings option will be on its own display, allowing for settings categories’ rather than a single list with all options.
Windows 8.1 has groupings for the start menu. This would be great for WP8, with sliding to the left or right for the other personalised menu. The “all apps slide to the left from right” current layout must then be put somewhere else, like pressing the windows capacitive button to go in or out. Makes sense, and consistency between phone and pc.
Lastly, battery saver mode should have overrides to allow certain apps to be in communication IE. Battery saver on, but let Whatsapp work. I know have increased battery life while still keeping in contact.
Allow users to change individual tile colours over the default theme colour. (and a reset option in Settings>Theme)
Timed Wifi and Bluetooth – This would be one of the single greatest options. I drive for 40 minutes a day, 20 to work and 20 back. I use my Bluetooth in my car between 6am and 7am going to work and 4pm and 5pm. Why can’t I schedule Bluetooth to be on only during these times? Then if I go somewhere else, I put it on manually. Similarly, with Wifi.
These to me can redefine the operating system. The last operative option to me will be consistent OS updates rather than milestones. Instead of releasing major updates once/twice a year, do weekly/monthly updates. Here is how I see it. In Settings, Phone Update, there should be an option that has off, get list, auto update and auto update over wifi only. Then an option that allows auto allows scheduling, say between 2am and 4am. Updates should then happen during this time. And as with windows 8, new features should be added to these updates, say some from the list above, rather than making it milestone updates once a year, make it continuous updates over the year, with milestones needed for core updates. This will redefine the phone update scene, giving your phone new features and fixing issues with a high turnaround time. Users can have their input and changes can be made that adapts the OS to the user, rather than the waiting game that everyone is so familiar with.
Nokia HERE
Apart from that, I find the OS appealing, different, fun to use and very efficient. The app ecosystem as many will argue is underpopulated. Yes, it is. It has the major apps that I use, and some that I could not find on the Android store, with much better quality. If you are the app person with a collection of large apps and continually downloading apps, then maybe this phone isn’t for you. I use around 10 apps, and only 1 consistently (Whatsapp). Even on my Android tablet, I have down scaled my app library as I had apps that I just stopped using.
WP8 is very well integrated with social media, more than I thought it was, and easier too. Navigating to a contact can be cumbersome, but I haven’t found it more cumbersome than Android. Sharing images or files is very easy… Menu>Share. Closing apps is an issue, and personally, Microsoft should add the close “X” in each app at the bottom menu of each app. This will save me time by not pressing “back” a million times or always going to the “open app menu” and closing apps individually all the time as in iOS and Android. This will be a good convergence between mobile and pc OS as well.
Nokia HERE Maps
Conclusion
My gripes with the OS do not ruin it for me, but makes me feel that the OS has so much potential to be a major contender rather than a gradually adopted platform. I love the layout, the integration, the uniqueness of my layout, the speed, the app quality, the keyboard dictionary, changing lock screen image option, the office/outlook integration and the colour changing keyboard based on app selection. The Photo’s hub is very easy to use and logically designed. The People hub has everything I need and more, and I find it easier to access people on WP8 than on Android. Kid’s Corner is perfect for parents who let their kids use their phone. And Microsoft gives the option for companies to add their own app store for their employees separate from publishing to the Windows Phone Store.
Windows 8 vs Win8 mobile
I can “Pin” almost anything to the start, contacts, apps, specific photo albums, and even direct Whatsapp contact or groups. I haven’t tried, but apparently I can even pin websites as a tile. That’s cool! A lot of apps are phone specific, so when I get to reviewing my Lumia 925, more on specifics will be discussed.
back of the phone
So, where have Microsoft come in 2 years? FAR! That’s for sure. In the 1 year of existence of WP8, they have almost matched all of the software and hardware capabilities of android devices and surpassed some Apple specifications. In GDR3 (to be released early next year), there is Full-HD and Quad-core support. They currently have 2 gigs of ram on some phones with the current release. Their platform works smoothly on devices running 512MB ram unlike both Android and iOS, with iOS 7 struggles even on an iPhone 4S, and the low end Android devices can’t even get new updates. The Lumia 520 performs the same as a Lumia 925. And with GDR3, it’s been rumoured that it’s even better with more battery life – I really do hope so.
Keep it up Microsoft, and If you like my ideas, hire me and we can implement them ASAP and get this OS to its full potential ;)
3D Buildings on HERE Maps
Although the app store may be under populated as mentioned by Darshik, the apps that Nokia have developed themselves are quite cool. One of the best things to come out from Nokia was their maps and with the integration of HERE it just took the app one step further from the rest. Apart from having pin point accuracy, Nokia Maps has added features such as 3D buildings and floor plans of major malls. How cool is that? No need to search for those information boards when you cannot find a shop, whip out your phone and search from that! Also ever find yourself out of town but need to know places around you? Open up the HERE app and hold the phone up like you would in camera and point it around to see whats around you. You can refine your search to food places or services so that your phone screen isn't overpopulated with info.
Mall floor plan on HERE Maps
The verdict will never be reached on which smart phone is the best to get, simply because there are just too many to choose from and each one is catered for various preferences. While the market does seem to prefer iPhone, Samsung and slightly less than before Blackberry, when people do find a need to venture away from these "safe options", they might be surprised to see what they find like this Nokia Lumia 925, as Darshik said, if Microsoft keep this up they could bring Nokia back to its glory days of the past.
The camera it comes with is pretty decent, an 8,7 megapixel pureview lens by Carl Ziess, here are some pics we took with the phone.
