The Lumia 800 was a great phone without an ecosystem. The Lumia 900 made that phone bigger, without significantly improving on the software or specifications. The Lumia 920 came with a massively improved camera, and the updated Windows Phone 8, but it was too bulky for many consumers.
With the 925, Nokia thinks it's perfected the Lumia formula: It’s essentially the same phone as the 920 in a vastly thinner and lighter aluminum shell. Nokia's also made some improvements to the Lumia 920's camera, both in hardware and software. Is this finally the Lumia that can go head-to-head with the HTC Ones, iPhone 5s, and Galaxy S4s of the world? Read on to find out.
Low-light photos never looked this good.
Award-winning PureView technology, Carl Zeiss optics and six physical lenses. The Nokia Lumia 925 lets you capture the great moments, day or night. And the beautifully crafted design will turn heads wherever you go.
As good as it gets (for now)
Unlike thLike the Lumia 920, the 4.5-inch display runs at a resolution of 1280 x 768 and the result is a really pixel-dense display. It's no match for the 1920 x 1080 resolution on the Galaxy S4's 5-inch display, but until Windows Phone supports 1080p displays it's one of the best you're going to get for now.
I found readability in sunlight to be very good, and Nokia has included its usual high-sensitivity options to enable glove use for the less sunny days. A new Glance option is also enabled for the first time with Lumia 925 display. Like Symbian before it, Glance enables a clock on the standby screen. While this might seem like a cause for battery concern, the AMOLED display only lights up and uses the pixels for the white parts of the clock, which are very minimal. It will time out after 15 minutes, but it provides quickly glanceable information including battery charge state and silent mode. There’s also a night mode that you can set to trigger at a certain time that turns the text red so it doesn’t light up your bedroom.
Design
Rumors have been circling for months now that Nokia has been toying with the idea of using metal in its phones. Those rumors, it seems, were bang on the money as the 925 is built with metal at its core. The chassis on which all the crucial components are mounted is metal, with thick metal banding present around the edges of the handset.
Rather than opt for an all-metal design though, the 925 has a polycarbonate back plate. It's a shame not to see a single-piece metal construction. We've already seen this on the HTC One and iPhone 5, both of which are unquestionably stunning phones.
Some of Nokia's previous Lumias -- particularly the Lumia 920 -- boast single-piece bodies, albeit made from plastic, which do have a certain luxurious feel to them. If Nokia could have mimicked the slick, rounded body of the 920 in metal rather than plastic, I'd be extremely happy.
That's not to say the 925 doesn't look good though. Far from it. The metal edging feels firm and curves nicely to join the rounded edge of the screen. The back panel doesn't give much flex when you press on it, making it feel much more solid and secure than the plastic body of the Samsung Galaxy S4. In my brief hands on with the handsets, I found the 925 felt a lot nicer than the all plastic 928. Neither, however, offer the same luxury feel of the HTC One.
Camera
Nokia has given the 925's camera a couple of small tweaks, too. It uses the same 8.7-megapixel sensor as its predecessor, but Nokia explained that it's improved the optics in front of the sensor. As well as the lightweight plastic lenses -- low weight is needed for the optical image stabilization -- the 925 uses a sixth glass lens which Nokia reckons gives better clarity, especially in daylight.
Nokia has also apparently improved its camera firmware to give better noise reduction in low-light situations. Until I can give the camera a thorough test, I can't comment on whether these tweaks are worthwhile. The Lumia 920 was already an excellent low-light performer, so let's hope Nokia hasn't messed around with that too much.
You will find some new camera software on board, chief among which is called SmartCam. This app (also integrated as a camera lens) takes a burst of 10 images that you can then edit into an action sequence, change the faces, or choose the best image from the bunch to save. We've seen these functions already on the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4. Unlike the Galaxy S4 though, you choose how to edit the images after you've taken them, rather than choose a setting to shoot in beforehand.
I've played around with the action sequence modes on other phones and found them to be a lot of fun -- so long as you have a particularly exciting scene to capture. Nokia's effort seems to work in much the same way, but with what seems to be a more stripped down, easier to use interface.
You can set the camera to automatically load in SmartCam mode, or you can pin the icon to your home screen to get access to it quickly.
Specifications
Display
Display size: 4.5 PureMotion HD+ ''
Display technology: AMOLED
Touch screen technology: Super-sensitive touch
Photography
Main camera sensor: 8.7 MP PureView
Power management
Maximum 2G talk time: 18.3 h
Maximum 3G talk time: 12.8 h
Maximum 3G standby time: 440 h
Music playback time: 55 h
Wireless charging: Yes, with accessory cover
Processor
Processor name: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4
Processor type: Dual-core 1.5 GHz
All the action in a single photo.
Capture more of the action than your eyes can see. The Action Shot feature in Nokia Smart Camera lets you snap once to get a sequence of movements in a single high-quality image.Display size: 4.5 PureMotion HD+ ''Display technology: AMOLED Touch screen technology: Super-sensitive touch Main camera sensor: 8.7 MP PureView Maximum 2G talk time: 18.3 hMaximum 3G talk time: 12.8 hMaximum 3G standby time: 440 hMusic playback time: 55 hWireless charging: Yes, with accessory cover Processor name: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 Processor type: Dual-core 1.5 GHz Display size: 4.5 PureMotion HD+ ''Display technology: AMOLED Touch screen technology: Super-sensitive touch Main camera sensor: 8.7 MP PureView Maximum 2G talk time: 18.3 hMaximum 3G talk time: 12.8 hMaximum 3G standby time: 440 hMusic playback time: 55 hWireless charging: Yes, with accessory cover Processor name: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 Processor type: Dual-core 1.5 GHz
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