Windows Phone 8 has been launched and now Nokia won’t be alone in this ecosystem and this might prove to be a helping hand for them. Some might find the Lumia 920 too big and bulky, while others might enjoy its unibody design, innovative camera and wireless charging. Early reviews of Nokia Lumia 920 will help you decide.
Nokia Lumia 920 reviews
DIETER BOHN, THE VERGE
I’m just going to say this bluntly: the Nokia Lumia 920 is a tank of a phone. It’s a big and heavy device, weighing in at 185 grams and 10.7mm thick — compare that to the 112 gram, 7.6mm sliver that is the iPhone 5. It helps that the Lumia 920 has standout industrial design. Like the Lumia 900 and the Lumia 800 before it, it’s composed of a polycarbonate unibody shell that wraps all the way around the device. The Lumia 920 isn’t quite the revelation in phone design that its predecessors were, but it’s in a class above the vast majority of smartphone models on the market today. You know that guy who walks into the coffee shop and unapologetically slams down a gigantic, 17-inch monster of a laptop on the table, declaring “This thing is a beast, but I don’t care.” That’s the Lumia 920. It’s a muscle car. It’s a monster truck. The new addition is “PureMotion HD+,” which is Nokia’s branding for reducing latency and guaranteeing 60FPS on animations — with scientific papers backing it all up. Well, the phone seems to live up to those marks: swiping around in Windows Phone 8’s various screens yields sharp transitions with crisp motion. There are two major categories in which the Lumia 920 excels: low-light performance and image stabilization. A legitimate criticism of Nokia’s 808 PureView camera is that while it can take amazing shots, it really requires the hands of a very knowledgeable user to pull them off. I benchmarked the browser’s javascript ranking with Sunspider and got ridiculously good results — around 920ms, which puts it in the same class as the iPhone 5 in terms of browser performance. I have no complaints whatsoever about battery life. Even running LTE full-bore, I was able to get a full day’s use out of the Lumia 920.
JESSICA DOLCOURT, CNET
Nokia’s Lumia 920 is sculpted, but also heavy and bulky. The side buttons rise above the surface and are easy to find and press by feel. All you really need to know is that the Lumia 920’s screen looks terrific at multiple brightness levels: deep blacks, rich colors, bright whites, sharp text. If you set screen sensitivity to high, you can navigate around using a fingernail and even gloves. The wireless charging dongle charges phones fairly quickly and eliminates where’s-my-charger anxiety. Accessories like this Fatboy pouch give wireless charging a different look and feel. True to Nokia’s promise, the Lumia 920 pulled a lot of color and definition from low-light shots. The camera achieves this by turning on the flash, metering, then turning off the flash to take the picture. It takes longer this way, so a little patience is necessary. Video on the 920 looked great. Colors were natural, and the 1080p HD picture was crisp and smooth at 30 frames per second.
STUART MILES, POCKET-LINT
The Nokia isn’t svelte, it’s a slab of polycarbonate and glass wrapped around a mammoth battery that doesn’t seem to offer anything much over the competition in terms of performance. The Nokia Lumia 920 is a sealed phone. There is no access to the battery, and no microSD slot to expand the storage capabilities beyond the 32GB included, although with SkyDrive successfully baked in, many of your photos and documents will be automatically stored in the cloud. It’s a phone as well, of course, and we’ve had no issues with the performance of the Lumia 920 in our time making and receiving calls. The microphone and internal speaker are good. Stunning. That’s probably the best word to use when describing the Lumia 920’s PureView camera, especially when looking at low-light shots – something the Lumia 920 specialises in. Where the Lumia 920 really shines however is in its ability to snap shots in the dark and make them still usable. In a series of tests against the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S III, the Nokia Lumia 920 out-performs other phones every time, giving you shots you can use with little noise.
MICHAEL PROSPERO, LAPTOPMAG
The 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ screen on the Lumia 920 is big, bold, and beautiful. Photos and videos looked fantastic. The Gorilla Glass display of the Lumia 920 also means it should be able to withstand scratches from keys and the like while the phone is in your pocket. The bottom mounted speakers on the Lumia 920 kicked out a lot of sound. At the max volume, Beyonce’s “Love on Top” easily filled our hotel room, but higher-end tones sounded a bit harsh. Although all Windows Phone 8 devices use Nokia’s maps, the Nokia Maps app on the Lumia 920 has a few extra features. For example, while both versions can show satellite and traffic views, the Nokia Maps app also has a layer for public transit lines, greatly appreciated for those who like in cities such as New York. On AT&T’s 4G LTE network, we measured average upload speeds of 16.3 Mbps and download speeds of 5.3 Mbps using the mySpeedTest app. The Lumia 920 loaded the desktop version of The New York Times homepage in an average of 11 seconds, and the mobile sites for CNN and ESPN in 4 and 5 seconds, respectively. All of these are impressive speeds.
WHAT WE THINK
Our conclusion is simple and similar to yours – Nokia Lumia 920 is indeed impressive, but its size makes it a “monster truck”. And just like a monster truck, it will have a limited amount of users. There are so many smaller smartphones that can offer slightly equal features that I’m not sure it’s worth to bet your money on the Lumia 920. But, then again, there are plenty Nokia fans out there and I don’t want to ruin your party with this babe. It has good camera, it has a distinctive design on the market, it has special features, it has good speeds, it has wireless charging and it seems pretty resistent. But it’s big. If you don’t mind that, then Nokia Lumia 920 is as good a smartphone just like the iPhone or Galaxy S3.
