Slimmer, lighter and more metal than the Lumia 920
Like the Lumia 920, the 925 is a sealed unit, but the design is significantly different. Instead of a solid polycarbonate shell, the phone's chassis is split into a coloured plastic rear and metal frame. We're not sure it feels as absolutely bombproof as the Lumia 920, but we're certainly fans of the metal frame; it's cool to the touch and makes the 925 more comfortable to hold for long periods than a phone with a plastic chassis.
The Lumia 925 has a 4.5in AMOLED display, with a 768x1,280 resolution. This isn’t up there with the 1,080x1,920 Full HD screens we’ve become used to seeing on top-end handsets such as the Sony Xperia Z and Samsung Galaxy S4, but it's an adequate number of pixels for the 925's slightly smaller screen. That's 332 pixels per inch (PPI), compared to 441PPI on the S4 or 326PPI on the iPhone 5.
It's not Full HD, but this is still an excellent display
The display has excellent image quality. As we normally see from AMOLED screens, blacks are properly black, and colours are beautifully saturated and vibrant. Side by side with a Samsung Galaxy S4, the Lumia 925 had whiter whites and more saturated colours, but couldn't match the S4 for viewing angles; tilting the screen away from vertical led to a slight blue cast on the 925's display. However, most people tend to use their phones straight on, so we can't see this being much of a problem.
Like the 920, the 925 has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and 1GB RAM. This is more than adequate for running Windows Phone 8, and everything is beautifully smooth. The phone completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark in 906ms, which is the fastest score we’ve seen, and renders complicated websites quickly.
However, we're not particularly keen on the browser, but this is mainly due to the way Windows Phone 8 works. While Android and iOS have browsers with dedicated back buttons, Windows Phone 8's version of Internet Explorer uses the phone's generic back button to go to the previous page. This is fine when you have the browser open, but if you go back to the main menu and then open IE again, it will go to the last page you visited, but you can’t then go back to the previous page. It's frustrating for those who do a lot of web surfing on their phones.
While we appreciate Windows Phone 8 as a slick and well-designed operating systems, problems such as that make it feel less flexible than Android. Another problem is the lack of apps. The situation is improving, but there's still nowhere near the range and sophistication available in other platforms' app stores. We're still missing Rightmove and Sky, but there is at least a decent BBC iPlayer app.
HERE Navigation gives you turn-by-turn navigation with both offline maps and search
Nokia sweetens the deal considerably, though, with its own apps. These include HERE Navigation, which gives you turn-by-turn navigation and, unlike Google Navigation, supports both offline maps and offline address searches, and Nokia Music, a large collection of free music playlists which can be streamed and listened to offline.
There were a couple we hadn’t seen before. Photobeamer is intriguing. This is a quick way to view photos stored on your phone in another device's web browser, without having to plug the phone in or sync with an online service. You load the app on your phone, go to www.photobeamer.com on the other device then scan the QR code presented on screen. Your photo will then appear in the other device's browser, and as you flick through the photos on your screen they also flick past in your browser. It's a very neat trick and a great way to show your photos on a bigger screen.
It's also the first time we've come across Nokia's Smart Cam app. This takes a sequence of photos every time you take a picture. You can then use this sequence to perform a number of fancy operations in the app. You can pick the best shot from the sequence (the phone picks what it thinks is the finest image automatically) and find faces, but the Action Shot and Remove Objects functions are particularly interesting.
Action Shot is for taking photos of people moving past the camera, such as a skateboarder, skier or a Beatles tribute at the Abbey Road crossing. It superimposes the sequence of images one of top of another, so depicting the subject's entire movement across the frame. You can toggle the option to make the images gradually fade out as they go back in time, for added artistic effect.
Use Action Shot to capture high-octane sports such as Office Walking
Remove Objects detects moving objects in an image, then gives you the option to remove them; as Smart Cam takes several photos of the same scene, it has enough information to fill in the background seamlessly. We found it particularly useful for removing cars, cyclists or people straying into shot.
We liked the Smart Camera features, but weren't blown away by the basic image quality from the 8.7-megapixel camera. Low-light images were reasonable, if not up there with the HTC One's, but daylight images from the standard camera were decidedly odd. Photos seemed over-processed, with overblown highlights and a turquoise rather than blue sky. It looked like excessive use of HDR, but we couldn’t find an HDR option to turn off.
Sunlight photos seem overblown and unnatural, and the sky definitely wasn't that colour
Photos taken with the Smart Cam app were better, with less wacky colours, but we found details were smudgy. It's far from the best camera we've seen; the Sony Xperia Z and HTC One's are significantly better for outdoor and indoor shots, respectively.
The Galaxy S4 (left) captures much more detail than the Lumia 925 (right)
The Lumia 925 improves on most aspects of the Lumia 920, which was already the best high-end Windows Phone 8 handset. We like the new, semi-metal chassis, the screen is superb and Nokia continues to impress with its innovative apps. If you're set on Windows Phone 8 this is the handset to buy, but, as with the 920, a lacklustre camera holds it back from an award.
Details |
|
|---|---|
| Part Code | Lumia 925 |
| Review Date | 17 Jun 2013 |
| Price | £500 |
| Rating |
|
Hardware |
|
|---|---|
| Main display size | 4.5in |
| Native resolution | 768x1,280 |
| CCD effective megapixels | 8.7-megapixel |
| GPS |
|
| Internal memory | 32768MB |
| Memory card support | none |
| Memory card included | 0MB |
| Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900 |
| Wireless data | HSDPA |
| Size | 129x71x9mm |
| Weight | 139g |
Features |
|
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows Phone 8 |
| Microsoft Office compatibility | Word, Excel, PowerPoint |
| FM Radio |
|
| Accessories | headphones, USB cable, charger |
| Talk time | 18 hours |
| Standby time | 18 days |
Buying Information |
|
|---|---|
| SIM-free price | £500 |
| Price on contract | 0 |
| SIM-free supplier | www.expansys.com |
| Contract/prepay supplier | www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk |
| Details | www.nokia.co.uk |
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