Nokia announced the Lumia 925 at its May 14, 2013 event in London, and the phone was brought to the stage as “the most advanced smartphone” on the market. The buzz-word of the day was aluminum; the company emphasized the advantages of using aluminum for the phone’s body, granting overall better reception and antenna performance. However, the Lumia 925 is not made completely out of aluminum. The back panel, non-removable, is still made out of polycarbonate: this time, a very soft-touch version of it.
Nokia also slightly tweaked the design of the Lumia 925. While one can still instantly recognize it as a Nokia phone, it is somewhat different from the Lumia 920 and Lumia 928. It is no longer the tank its predecessor was; instead, we’re looking at a thinner, more elegant, slicker version of the phone.In addition to some design tweaks, Nokia also improved its PureView camera (stage-two, OIS and low-light version) over the unit on the Lumia 920 by throwing in an additional sixth lens, for better overall sharpness, color reproduction, and image quality.
So what does the Nokia Lumia 925 have to offer and should you be rushing out to buy this latest Windows Phone 8 handset?
Nokia Lumia 925 - Design
Internally, the core of the Nokia Lumia 925 is fairly similar to the Lumia 920, but externally it’s a completely different proposition. Rather than a chunky, heavy and colourful curvy block of glossy plastic, it is a non-unibody monochrome device.This is all down to the phone’s anodised aluminium edge. A strip of metal runs around the Lumia 925’s sides, and there’s no attempt to hide the seam between these sides and the contoured polycarbonate (plastic) plate on the rear.
The two parts are intended to complement each other, and that’s why Nokia has opted for white, black and grey rear parts, rather than colourful ones. After having been lauded for the curvy polycarbonate bodies of phones like the Lumia 800, this new style is a risk. But it works.
Build quality is excellent, with none of the clicking or flexing you might see in a phone like this from a less-capable mobile-maker. The seam between the plastic rear and metal sides is a little wider on one edge – visibly so – but Nokia says this is to help professional repairers fix the phone in future, giving them much easier access to its innards.
In-hand comfort is great, thanks to the curves of the aluminium sides and that the Lumia 925 is a good deal less wide than top phones like the Samsung Galaxy S4 - mainly due to its mid-size 4.5-inch screen.
There are some hardware inflections that some won’t like, though. The camera lens housing is large, a bit too easy to obstruct with a hand, and it sticks out ever-so-slightly from the Lumia 925’s back. This is because of the mechanical image stabilisation components that have to fit in – the phone is just 8.5mm thick, so too skinny to avoid this. The Lumia 920’s camera doesn’t poke out, but that phone is 2mm thicker - a lot in mobile terms - and 40g heavier.
Where the Lumia 900 was conspicuously huge and heavy, the Nokia Lumia 925 appears ‘normal’ in the world of super-slim phones in which we live.
These charging shells supply the traditional Lumia series splash of colour too, although muted black/white ones are available. The shells cost £25, and Qi wireless charging pads start at around £30. For a full wireless charging setup, you're looking at an extra £50-odd.
Hardware and performance
The Lumia 925 is a departure from Lumia series norms in some respects, but other design elements remain. On the top edge of the phone is a microSIM slot accessed using a paperclip-like tool included in the box – classic Lumia. There is also no memory card slot in the phone, just 16/32GB of internal memory (32GB exclusive to Vodafone), so the only sockets on show are the headphone jack and microUSB port – which sit next to each other up top.All other edges are left blissfully free of ports. It’s good for the look and feel of the Lumia 925. There’s just the Lumia-standard trio of buttons on the right edge – volume, power and the Windows-mandated shutter button.
As only the edges of the Nokia Lumia 925 are made of metal, it doesn’t have quite the hard, cool impact of holding an HTC One. But it is one of the more attractive, recognisable phones of the year.
There's a 2000mAh battery inside powering the whole thing and thanks to that sealed body, you won't be able to access it for a quick change. The standby times are pretty impressive, but like all top-tier smartphones, if you're a heavy user, you'll soon find yourself looking for a charge before the day is out. We managed to get most of the way through a working day, but found the battery levels were looking alarming mid-afternoon, as is often the case on devices of this size and power.
Those clip-on charging covers, so you can drop your device onto a wireless charging pillow, look attractive but, ironically, once you've added one you're back to a thicker device again.
All the connectivity you'd expect is here, including NFC, Wi-Fi, GPS and so on, along with LTE for those who have the network support for faster mobile data. Nokia has made pains to point out that this is its first metal-bodied phone, but also to state that reception hasn't been affected. We found that to ring true, with no problems connecting to wireless networks.
When it comes to calling, the quality it good, with plenty of volume and no reported problems from callers. We did encounter a SIM problem, however. At first we put this down to a faulty device and called in a second device as it wasn't recognising any SIM card. The second device accepted one SIM card, but complained about others - all of which work across other devices. It may be nothing, but it's worth keeping an eye on other reviews to see whether this is an isolated case or not.
Arriving with the same hardware as the Lumia 920 means that the performance and the experience of using the 925 is very similar. In fact, it's similar across Nokia's range of Windows Phone 8 handsets, however the Lumia 925 arrives with the latest software, which is yet to land on other devices, so it feels like there are now more options and more control, with the option to tweak the display colour profile, for example.
Display and Camera Performance
The display, while still at 4.5 inches in diagonal, is now a PureMotion
HD+ ClearBlack AMOLED screen, with the same 768 x 1280 resolution. This
results in a PPI rating of 334, more than fine enough for everyone’s
eyesight, definitely enough for Windows Phone’s graphics.
The camera, while still an 8.7-megapixel, PureView (stage two)
construction, is improved, at least on paper. Nokia added a sixth lens —
in addition to the five lenses on the Lumia 920 and Lumia 928 — which
should further improve picture quality in both low-light and bright,
optimal, conditions. Optical image stabilization (OIS) is present as
part of the PureView package, and the low-light sensitivity is as good
as it always was. The camera specs also include the 1/3-inch
sensor, f/2.0 aperture, 26mm focal length lens, and a minimum of 8cm
focus range. The main shooter is accompanied by an f/2.4 1.2-megapixel
wide-angle front-facer.
Software experience
The Nokia Lumia 925 is a Windows Phone 8 mobile. Although recent updates
to Android have closed the gap between the two systems, Windows is
still the snappiest mobile OS around. It is also the most aggressively
stylised.
Like Android, it is split into two main sections, the apps menu and the home screen. Both scroll vertically in Windows Phone 8, ready to give your thumb a workout.
As Windows Phone 8 doesn’t allow manufacturers to brand the interface with their own look or style, the software of the Lumia 925 looks much the same as it does on any other up-to-date Windows phone. And, despite several enriching updates, Windows Phone 8 is a system that tends to attract and repel with some severity.
It’s taut, it’s rigid, it’s fast – but it is also restrictive and, in some ways, malnourished.Like Android, it is split into two main sections, the apps menu and the home screen. Both scroll vertically in Windows Phone 8, ready to give your thumb a workout.
As Windows Phone 8 doesn’t allow manufacturers to brand the interface with their own look or style, the software of the Lumia 925 looks much the same as it does on any other up-to-date Windows phone. And, despite several enriching updates, Windows Phone 8 is a system that tends to attract and repel with some severity.
What used to define Nokia phones among their Windows peers was their inclusion of Nokia Maps apps. But the company’s deepening partnership with Microsoft has seen this app suite rebranded as HERE Maps, letting it spread to other Windows phones.
It’s no longer a Nokia USP.
However, they remain great apps if – like the rest of Windows Phone 8 – arguably a bit too keenly stylised.
HERE Maps is your equivalent to Google Maps, letting you navigate while on foot. HERE Drive is an in-car GPS navigator and HERE City Lens is an augmented reality app that lets you find nearby attractions, such as restaurants.
Their main bonus over their rivals is that HERE lets you pre-install maps to the phone’s
memory so you don’t have to stream them on the fly. Whole countries and
continents are there for the taking if you have the storage. And the UK
plus a few chunks of Europe should only take around 10 per cent of the
phone’s 16GB .
If these apps are no longer specific to Nokia, what does the Lumia 925
have to shout about, apps-wise? Its key software benefits are largely
restricted to minor tweaks and the camera app Nokia Smart Cam, which
we’ll cover later.
One small software extra the Lumia 925 provides is called Glance Screen. This is a mode that displays a clock when the phone is in standby. This may prove distracting at bed time, but you can also switch it off or change the standard white font to red to reduce the light pumped-out by the screen.
This Glance Screen feature is viable battery-wise because of the way AMOLED screen work, consuming much less battery when only part of the screen is non-black. It will cause a minor battery life hit, though.
One small software extra the Lumia 925 provides is called Glance Screen. This is a mode that displays a clock when the phone is in standby. This may prove distracting at bed time, but you can also switch it off or change the standard white font to red to reduce the light pumped-out by the screen.
This Glance Screen feature is viable battery-wise because of the way AMOLED screen work, consuming much less battery when only part of the screen is non-black. It will cause a minor battery life hit, though.
In all, the Nokia Lumia 925 is a capable, high-end smartphone and we
enjoyed our time with it. It crams all the core componentry from the
Lumia 920 into a slimmer, lighter chassis, and has a slightly improved
camera along with some fun extra features. It sports the full package of Nokia extras, including Here Maps and Drive, Nokia Music and Transport.
Specifications:
- Software: Windows Phone 8
- Processor: Dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm SnapdragonS4
- Memory slot: Yes
- Display: 4.5in PureMotion HD+ AMOLED touchscreen,1280x768 pixels
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0
- Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
- Camera: 8.7 megapixel PureView with Carl ZeissTessar lens, auto focus, 4x digital zoom, dual LED flash; 1.2megapixel front-facing camera with F2.4 lens
- Video playback: MP4, WMV, AVI, 3GP, 3G2, M4V,MOV
- Audio playback: MP3, AMR-NB, WMA 10 Pro, GSM FR,WMA 9, AAC LC, AAC+/HEAAC, eAAC+/HEAACv2
- Radio: Yes
- Battery: 2,000mAh
- Size: 129x71x9mm
- Weight: 139g
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