Nokia refined the design of the Lumia 920 flagship, but didn't
fundamentally change it - the Lumia 925 is, in essence, the 920S. The
number of changes might be small, but their magnitude isn't. With a
better body, screen and software, the Nokia Lumia 925 is a more
desirable device than its 920 sibling.
Let's break down the changes. The thick and heavy polycarbonate
unibody is gone, with an exposed aluminum frame and polycarbonate back
taking its place. The diet has shaved 36g and 2.2mm off the waistline of
the Lumia 925.
Part of that is the new AMOLED screen, which is thinner than the LCD
of the older phone. It has the same basic specs - a 4.5" diagonal, WXGA
resolution, Gorilla Glass 2, ClearBlack and Super sensitive touch. But
we believe that AMOLED is a better match for Windows Phone - LCDs just
don't do the interface justice . AMOLEDs simply render colorful squares
on a black background better.
There are some other changes too, like the added Nokia Smart Camera app and FM radio support.
The changes will make their way to older Lumia phones with the Amber update, but the Nokia Lumia 925 is leading the way.
Smart Camera is a Lens add-on for the stock camera app, though it can
fully replace it. You can even set it as the default camera app to
launch by long pressing the shutter key. So what is Smart Camera? It's
the result of the Scalado acquisition and offers features similar to
HTC's Zoe. We'll review it in more detail later on in this article.
The camera itself is the same as what the Lumia 920 has, which is to
say pretty good. It has a Carl Zeiss lens with f/2.0 aperture, an
Optical Image Stabilization mechanism and a 1/3" image sensor of 8.7MP
resolution.
The Lumia 925 is perhaps not as big of an upgrade over the 920 as we
hoped, but there's honestly little Nokia could have done differently.
Not with a screen resolution and chipset locked by the OS.
The camera software update sure is nice, but the Lumia 920 will get
it soon enough itself. So, will the new finish and new screen justify
the existence of a new model? Jump to the next page to find out!
Nokia Lumia 925 360-degree spin
Nokia has been favoring polycarbonate unibody as the design of choice
for its high-end phones lately, but the Lumia 925 is an exception -
it's the first Nokia phone in a while to feature exposed aluminum. The
latter, combined with the new AMOLED screen, has brought the phone's
size down - not width or height, but thickness and weight.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is 8.5mm slim and weighs 139g, down from 10.7mm and 185g for the Lumia 920.
Design and build quality
In terms of looks, the Nokia Lumia 925 is closer to he Lumia 720 than
the 920. It's a rectangular phone with rounded sides and a tapered back
to hide some of the thickness. The sides are made of bare aluminum,
while the back is polycarbonate.
Nokia Lumia 925 and 720 side by side
The metal vs. plastic debate has been heating up in Android land, but
the Lumia 925 is somewhere in between. It's not a bad choice as Nokia's
polycarbonate has always been top notch and the aluminum still gives a
solid, premium feel.
The aluminum also has another function - it serves as an antenna. The
external antenna design became infamous with the iPhone 4, which
suffered from the so-called "death grip". That's when touching the metal
bands would compromise reception.
Nokia has promised that the Lumia 925 is immune against it and,
indeed, we didn't experience any loss of signal. We'll try harder for
the review, just in case.
The polycarbonate on the back has a soft touch finish and will come
in three different colors at launch - White, Grey and Black. Such a
monochromatic color scheme is uncharacteristic of the Lumia line, which
offers bright colors like Red, Yellow or Blue.
Nokia Lumia 925
The Lumia 925 is wider than most phones with 4.5" or so screens - the
bezel is pretty thick and the the screen has 15:9 aspect ratio, making
it wider to begin with. It's also taller than usual, but at least that
leaves enough room around the capacitive keys to prevent accidental
touches (which are not uncommon on the Samsung Galaxy S4 and others).
That affects the handling - it's certainly not a deal-breaker (it's
on par with the Lumia 920), but narrower phones are more comfortable to
hold. Pocketability, however, has soared in part due to the reduced
thickness but mostly because of the lower weight. 185g is phablet kind
of weight, while 139g is virtually the same as the iPhone 4S which many
people carry in their pockets without complaint.
Nokia Lumia 925 in the hand
We should note that the Nokia Lumia 925 lost some body fat by
dropping the wireless charging support of the Lumia 920. You can add
that back with a thin back cover that connects to the three pogo pins
above the loudspeaker. Nokia has not announced the combined thickness or
weight of phone + cover.
Display
For its latest iteration of a Windows Phone flagship - the 925 and
928 - Nokia chose AMOLED over LCD. AMOLEDs have a number of advantages
over liquid crystals - deeper blacks and better contrast, lower power
usage in some scenarios (especially on WP, where most of the time the
background is black) and great viewing angles.
Nokia Lumia 925 has a 4.5" WXGA AMOLED screen • next to the 4.3" WVGA LCD of the Lumia 720
The display on the Nokia Lumia 925 is a 4.5" AMOLED of WXGA
resolution (768 x 1280), which is the maximum supported by the OS at the
moment. The display has 332ppi pixel density and its matrix has a
PenTile arrangement. That's not ideal, but the screen is slightly better
in terms of sharpness than the Samsung Galaxy S III (PenTile Super
AMOLED HD with 306ppi pixel density).
Windows Phone is the platform that suffers the least from low pixel
density – most of its interface consists of rectangles and large type.
It's tiny fonts and lines at an angle that go fuzzy on PenTiles.
The Gorilla Glass 2 covering the screen is slightly beveled at the
edges, which makes it fit better with the aluminum frame around it. This
makes swipes from the side of the screen (common in WP) more
comfortable.
The screen has excellent contrast thanks to the deep blacks. That's
typical for AMOLED but what isn't is high brightness. Nokia advertises
600nits, which is slightly higher than we measured, but this is still
one of the brightest AMOLED screens around.
| Display test |
50% brightness |
100% brightness |
| Black, cd/m2 |
White, cd/m2 |
Contrast ratio |
Black, cd/m2 |
White, cd/m2 |
Contrast ratio |
| Nokia Lumia 925 |
- | - | - | 0 | 522 | ∞ |
| Sony Xperia ZL |
- | - | - | 0.44 | 575 | 1294 |
| Sony Xperia Z |
- | - | - | 0.70 | 492 | 705 |
| HTC One |
0.13 | 205 | 1580 | 0.42 | 647 | 1541 |
| HTC Butterfly |
0.14 | 173 | 1200 | 0.45 | 501 | 1104 |
| Samsung I9505 Galaxy S4 |
0 | 201 | ∞ | 0 | 404 | ∞ |
| LG Optimus G Pro |
- | - | - | 0.41 | 611 | 1489 |
| Nokia Lumia 920 |
- | - | - | 0.48 | 513 | 1065 |
| Apple iPhone 5 |
0.13 | 200 | 1490 | 0.48 | 640 | 1320 |
Another common complaint about AMOLEDs is the colors - too saturated
for some people's liking. The Nokia Lumia 925 has an extra setting
allowing the user to choose one of eleven saturation levels.
The color temperature option is great too - it has 11 settings too
and goes from cool through neutral to warm. On LCD phones you're usually
stuck with either a cool screen or a warm screen, depending on your
preference it's either good or bad, it's a matter of luck hitting the
right one. Having control over that takes chance out of the equation.
Nokia Lumia 925's screen settings menu
The AMOLED display on the Lumia 925 is laminated to the Gorilla Glass
2 and that reduces screen glare (some of which is caused by the air gap
between glass and screen). Nokia's proprietary ClearBlack tech reduces
glare even further and the 925 has one of the best screens in terms of
sunlight legibility.
The screen on the Nokia Lumia 925 uses the Super sensitive touch
technology that debuted on the 920. It can respond to fingernails or car
keys, and will detect touches even if you're wearing gloves. You can
set the sensitivity to Normal or High and we found even the Normal
setting to be capable of working through thin gloves or with nails.
Nokia's tweaks to the display don't end here - there's a feature
called Glance, which displays a clock on the lockscreen while it's off
(like on the Symbians of yore). That doesn't waste a lot of energy due
to the nature of AMOLED and by default it's set to turn the screen
completely off after 15 minutes.
Nokia's Glance feature makes it easy to check the time
There's an option to leave it always on (or turn it off completely)
and to dim the clock's brightness in a certain interval (it makes it
more comfortable to look at in the dark).
Controls
The Microsoft requirements for a Windows Phone device mean there's
little variation in terms of controls across the product range.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is no exception. It has three capacitive keys
below the display - Back, Home and Search. At the bottom of the glass
covering the screen is the mic pinhole.
Above the screen is the 1.9MP front-facing camera, the ambient light and proximity sensors, and the earpiece.
Three capacitive keys below the screen • standard sensors above it
It's the right side of the phone where it gets interesting. Here are
the volume rocker, the Power/Lock key and the two-step camera shutter
key. They are all made of aluminum and have uniform width, all of them
are on the thin side but they project enough to make them easy enough to
use.
Camera shutter key, Power/Lock key and volume rocker on the right
The Power/Lock key can be used to wake up the screen, but you can
also do that with a double tap a la Nokia N9 (even the new Asha 501 does
this). Another way to unlock the Nokia Lumia 925 is to long press the
shutter key. There's an option to either start the stock WP camera or
Nokia's custom Smart Camera (which we'll cover later).
The top of the phone is quite busy with the microSIM card slot, the
microUSB port, 3.5mm audio jack and the secondary mic pinhole. The
microSIM card goes in a tray and you need an ejector to open it. There's
no microSD card slot here and the Lumia 925 doesn't have a third
microphone.
microUSB port and 3.5mm audio jack on top • microSIM card slot
The left and bottom sides of the phone are left completely bare.
Nothing on the left or on the bottom
We leave the aluminum side of the Nokia Lumia 925 to get to the
polycarbonate back. There's a round lens housing that protrudes slightly
- that covers the Carl Zeiss lens with f/2.0 aperture, the Optical
Image Stabilization mechanism and the 8.7MP image sensor.
To the side of the camera is the dual LED flash that is used as an AF assist light and video light too.
The positioning of the camera makes it easier to hold the phone when
taking a photo - with phones that have their cameras too close to the
top edge you always run the risk of your finger getting in the way.
The PureView camera on the back along with dual-LED flash, loudspeaker and pogo pins
Anyway, further down the back is the loudspeaker grille with a small
nub to raise the phone when you place it on the table and keep the
loudspeaker from getting muffled. Also around here are the three pogo
pins that feed electricity to the phone when you attach the optional
wireless charging cover or use certain car docks or another accessory.
Hidden below the polycarbonate back of the Nokia Lumia 925 is the
2,000mAh Li-Ion battery. It's the same capacity as the battery of the
thicker Lumia 920, but we've seen thinner Androids pack bigger
batteries.
Improved user interface
Windows Phone 8 is Nokia's only smartphone OS (with WP7.8 almost out
the door) and the Finns have taken care to add as much value to the
Lumia brand as possible. That means exclusive apps and services rather
than custom touches to the UI - Microsoft isn't particularly open-handed
when it gets to UI customizations.
The Nokia Lumia 925 comes with the new Amber update preinstalled but
it doesn't really change the interface itself, so it should be a
familiar sight. It does add a few features like FM radio support and a
new camera lens (more on that in a minute) but the rest is barely
different from the previous WP8 iterations.
A push on the unlock button reveals the lockscreen, which displays
the current time and date and shows calendar events, emails and missed
calls. Pushing the volume rocker in either direction will bring the
sound switch and music controls on top of the screen.
Swiping the lockscreen up unlocks the device or you can just press
and hold the camera shutter key to unlock the phone straight into the
camera app.
The lock screen • Music controls
There's a reasonable level of flexibility and functionality to the
lockscreen - the Live Apps service allows apps to display notifications
and images. You can set one app to display big notifications ("detailed
status") and up to five more apps to show less ("quick status").
The lockscreen wallpaper can also be controlled by apps - you can let
the music player change the lockscreen image to the album art of the
currently playing track or let one of the installed apps choose the
image (e.g. Bing's beautiful background images or photos from your
Facebook account).
Facebook can put photos and notifications on the lockscreen
The Modern UI is a vertical grid of Live tiles, which can be
reordered the way you like. Almost anything can be pinned to the
homescreen - apps, contacts, web pages and more.
The home screen and main menu
Windows Phone 8 lets you resize the live tiles. Upon a tap and hold,
you'll get an extra resize button, next to the unpin one. You can opt
between quarter, normal and double size. If you select the smallest one
though, the tile will be just a static icon (as is in the regular menu).
In our mind, the process of resizing live tiles could've been better.
In order to switch from big to normal and then small you have to hit the
same toggle - it would've made more sense if there were separate ones
to make a tile bigger and smaller or an option to resize by dragging,
like in Android.
Resizing a tile
Most Live tiles display relevant info such as the current date,
pending calendar events, missed calls, unread emails and more (third
party apps do it too). The Marketplace tile displays the number of
updates available, while the Pictures tile is essentially a slideshow of
your photos. It's nice to have all that info always available
at-a-glance. You can look at them as homescreen widgets of sorts.
WP8 can do multitasking - well, not true multitasking, but more along
the lines of iOS. Apps not in the foreground are suspended, but the OS
has ways to take over and carry out the task for them (e.g. continue
playing music). But just like iOS, if an app needs to run in the
background (sat-nav clients, messengers, etc.) it can. The WP offers
both kind of multi-tasking and it's up to developers to choose how their
apps behave.
The multi-tasking interface
To switch between apps you press and hold the Back key. You'll get
thumbnail snapshots of the apps, ordered chronologically left to right.
You can scroll the list horizontally to select an app and a tap will
bring you back to your running or suspended app. You can't "kill" any of
those apps from here - to exit one you must bring it to front and use
the Back key to close it.
If you keep on hitting the back key, you will effectively be closing
all of the open apps one by one, which is very unnatural, especially
when you've got an open Internet Explorer, which has to go all the way
back to the first loaded page before it closes. Overall, it's best to
let the OS manage the apps and not worry about which ones are opened or
closed.
Opening the settings menu displays two sets of options: like on the
start screen, you can swipe between System and Applications. System
covers all the settings you can think of like sounds, color theme,
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Accounts, etc. The Application settings let you
configure each app you have on the device.
We would've liked to see some kind of quick toggles in Windows Phone 8
to spare you the need to go all the way to the settings menu to enable
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and the likes.
Another feature we feel is missing is a place where you can see all
of your notifications from various apps. Live tiles manage to show
notifications from each app to some extent, but they don't really have
enough room for things like e-mail subject and such, while Android and
iOS notification areas do. Microsoft has confirmed that it's working on
just such a feature and that we should see it in a future update to WP
8.
Settings for the phone's storage • customizing the system's color
Windows Phone 8 can also be controlled by voice only - you can
dictate or have the phone read text out, you can initiate searches and
so on. Other OSes are doing it too - Android's got Google Voice Actions,
Apple has Siri and there are a number of third party "virtual voice
assistants" available. The Windows assistant though is still far behind
the competition.
Microsoft TellMe
One of the new features brought by WP8 is the Kids corner (HTC liked
it well enough to put a similar feature on the One). You can select the
apps and the types of media content that goes in and password-protect
it, so you can safely share your smartphone with your kids without
worrying that they will mess up your settings or access inappropriate
content. When activated, the Kids corner is accessible by swiping left
of the lockscreen. If you've secured it, your kids won't be able to
return to your standard lock and home screen without the password.
The Kid's corner
Microsoft is trying to appeal to business users too - a company can
create its own Hub where employees can find news, calendars and other
info relevant to their work. Companies can also create their own apps
that only employees can install.
The Nokia Lumia 925 uses the higher-end chipset of the two used by
Windows Phone 8 handsets - Qualcomm MSM8960 (1.5GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, Adreno
225). Naturally this means hiccup-free performance and smooth
navigation around the UI. Loading times aren't always perfect, but are
never too long to be an annoyance.
Smart Camera
The Nokia Lumia 925 has an 8.7MP camera that shoots 8MP photos (3264 x
2448) in 4:3 mode and 7MP photos (3552 x 2000) in 16:9 mode. This is
the special sensor design Nokia has used since the N9, which loses only
11% of the resolution when going from 4:3 to 16:9 mode instead of the
25% that traditional sensors lose.
Its primary advantage over the competition is the Optical Image
Stabilization. It improves low-light performance by allowing longer
exposure (the f/2.0 lens helps here too) and eliminates hand shake in
videos. The Lumia 925 brings another upgrade over the 920 - its lens is
has 6 elements over the 4 of its predecessor. In theory that should
result in sharper images with more detail.
The camera UI is pretty simple - you have your viewfinder and some
controls on the right. From top to bottom they are the still/video
camera toggle, front/back camera toggle, a flash mode setting and the
Lens button. On the left you have an arrow that takes you to the images
taken with the camera, alternatively you can swipe to get there.
Camera app • Camera lens
The camera app on Windows Phone has rich settings, ranging from
scenes and effects to white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpness and
ISO among others. You have a dedicated Macro focus mode but no face
detection. The flash can be set to auto, forced or off. A separate
setting allows the LED to work as an AF assist light.
In the latest camera software Nokia has raised the maximum ISO
setting from 800 to 3,200 and has tweaked image processing in low-light
conditions.
SkyDrive is available for photo auto-upload (it's turned off by
default), but you can install third-party apps to handle this
functionality as well.
ISO now goes up to 3,200 • SkyDrive or another app can handle photo auto-upload
Lenses is an interesting feature, allowing third-party camera apps to
enhance the core camera functionality without the need to access them
separately and get use to their different UIs. The so-called Lenses are
like plugins for your camera and they are available directly in the
native camera app. They show up in the list of installed apps too in
case you'd like to pin a Lens to the start screen, for instance.
The shutter key will wake the phone up with a single press and launch
the camera app. You can set Nokia's exclusive Smart Camera to be
launched instead.
Extra settings
So, we've mentioned Smart Camera several times already and it's time
to explain what it does. It's the next generation of Smart Shoot and is
based on technology developed by Scalado (now owned by Nokia).
It shoots a burst of 10 photos at 5MP resolution and allows you to
edit those photos later. When editing a Smart Camera photo you choose
one of several modes by swiping through their respective cards, each
with a helpful label.
The basic feature here is best shot - automatically selecting the
best photo out of the 10 (you can manually override the selection). You
can also select the best expression for each individual face in the
photo.
The multiple photos can be used to remove moving objects as well.
Smart Camera can pick the best expression for each face • or remove moving objects
Then there's Action shot - a moving object is overlaid on the photo
several times to create a sense of motion. You can pick which of the 10
photos are used to create the action shot and the multiple copies can
either be opaque or semitransparent.
The other mode that enhances motion is Motion focus - it locks the
moving object, but blurs the background around it. Imagine turning the
camera to track a fast moving object, that's the effect that Motion
focus simulates.
Action shot • Motion focus
We'll look at image quality in a later article, but we have to wonder
why Nokia chose to limit Smart Camera photos to 5MP. Sure, Smart Camera
shoots 16:9 photos, which eats into the resolution, but Nokia's sensor
can do 7MP in this mode. We suspect the midrange chipset is the real
answer. 5MP is not far ahead of HTC One's 4MP camera and without the
benefit of large sensor pixels. It's also no match for the fine detail
captured by high-end 13MP shooters either.
Anyway, Nokia has other Lumia-exclusive Lenses too. There's the
Panorama and Cinemagraph (creates animated GIFs), but also GlamMe (to
enhance self-portrait shots) and a few more.
First impressions
There's little doubt that the Lumia 925 is the best smartphone to
come out of the Nokia R&D center yet. It may lack the refined
seamless design of the Lumia 920, but its much slimmer waistline
certainly has the high-end vibe, which is all too crucial for a product
in this price range. The far lower weight also improves portability,
making the latest Nokia flagship less of a burden than its predecessor.
Nokia Lumia 920
If you have already fallen for the live tiles of the Microsoft
platform, the Nokia Lumia 925 is certainly going to become the phone to
get. In fact we can't help but wonder why this wasn't the flagship that
Nokia released last Fall. All the technology was available back then
(save maybe for the new 6-element lens) and a slim waistline would have
enabled the Finns to compete with the very best on the market.
Nokia Lumia 925
Now however, others have moved to quad-core Kraits, 13 megapixel
cameras and 1080p screens - hardware that is yet to be supported by
Windows Phone. The limitations of the Microsoft platform might prove
costly for the Nokia Lumia 925, which while packing the best specs in
its own camp, looks decidedly inferior compared to the latest crop of
Android powerhouses.
Then again, improving on an already solid shooter might be enough to
make the Nokia Lumia 925 relevant. Windows Phone 8 matures quickly and
as its Store gets filled with more and more apps, it's becoming a viable
alternative to many users, who wouldn't have even considered it back
when the Lumia 920 was released. And if you are still sitting on a
fence, then the best OIS-enabled camera on the market, coupled with a
great AMOLED screen might be more than enough to nudge you in the
direction of the latest Finnish flagship.
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