Nokia Lumia 925 Review

Introduction

Ever since the introduction of the first Lumia phone, Nokia has been improving and refining its Windows Phone-powered line-up with each new model. Feature by feature and app by app, we've finally arrived at the Nokia Lumia 925 – an ambitious smartphone that attempts to offer a well-rounded experience to customers, for whom plastic just won't cut it.

Not to be considered a direct successor to last year's Lumia 920, the Lumia 925 is more of refresh that adds a new and largely improved design, a slightly better camera and an AMOLED screen replacing the IPS LCD panel. Read on to learn if all of these changes have been for the better, as well as if the Lumia 925 is the Windows Phone smartphone that can easily replace a high-end Android model or an iPhone.



Design

The Nokia Lumia 925 has a lot to offer in the design department. Most previous Lumia models simply looked good, but weren't necessarily anything extraordinary. Most were heavy and bulky, and all of them were made of high-quality plastic. With the Lumia 925, however, Nokia has decided to aim a bit higher, as it has added a small, exquisite element to the handset's design – the frame surrounding the phone is made of (real) aluminum, giving the phone a more premium look and feel. The back side of the device is still made of polycarbonate, though, and while we can't say that it feels great, it's not bad either.


The metal frame is not the only asset of the Lumia 925's design. The handset is also the thinnest Lumia yet at 8.5 mm. We're happy to report that it's also much lighter than the Lumia 920, which was quite heavy at 6.53 oz (185 g). In comparison the Lumia 925 is about 25% lighter at 4.90 oz (139 g).

Positioned on the right hand side of the Nokia Lumia 925 you'll find the volume rocker, power/lock key and camera shutter. Thankfully, all of them work well and feel good when pressed. However, the buttons are protruding from the surface and have some sharp edges, which may make them feel a bit unpleasant for some people, when they are holding the phone.

All in all, the Lumia 925 is definitely among the better looking smartphones currently available, and while it doesn't really blow us away, we can't deny the fact that it looks and feels good to use a Lumia 925, with some small exceptions like the sharp buttons on the right hand side.


Display

One of the major differences between the Lumia 925 and Lumia 920 is the fact that the former uses an AMOLED display. This is surely one of the better AMOLED displays we've seen, with a reasonable color balance and temperature, although still far from perfect. Sadly, brightness peaks at about 280 nits (comparable to that of the Galaxy S4), which makes the display a bit hard to view under bright daylight.

Other than that, the characteristics of the screen have remained the same, with a diagonal measuring 4.5 inches and a resolution of 768 x 1280 pixels. While definitely not 1080p, this resolution and screen size combo make for a pixel density of 334 ppi, which is still great. Aside from the smallest text in the web browser, everything else will look perfectly clean.

When it comes to viewing angles, the Lumia 925 isn't the best performer out there. While its image quality is very good when viewed straight on, colors quickly get greenish once you tilt the phone at just about 20 degrees. Most things are still readable, but image quality degradation is obvious.



Interface and Functionality

Don't hold your breath for a change of pace with the Windows Phone 8 UI. Everything is exactly the same as what you'll find on any other smartphone running the same OS.

You have your homescreen with Live Tiles that are very basic-looking, yet providing live info about relevant things. For example, the Calendar tile will show you your upcoming appointment, while the People tile will display the profile pictures of your contacts.

The Windows Phone 8 main menu is still a simple list of all the applications on your phone, which absolutely isn't the most convenient way of organizing your apps, especially if you have lots of those. Sure, you can always pin the most important ones to the homescreen, but if you do that for too many apps, the homescreen will also start to look as one big app list. At the end of the day, it would be cool if Microsoft comes up with some different main menu layouts as alternatives to the current list view.


The Nokia Lumia 925's (and every other Windows Phone's) customization options are limited to rearranging the tiles on the homescreen, switching between their available sizes and changing the color theme. It's definitely not the most customizable experience, but that's how Microsoft guarantees consistency across the Windows Phone portfolio.

Messaging

While you can't replace the default on-screen QWERTY keyboard with a third-party one, that's not really a problem, because Microsoft has designed a great keyboard. Typing feels easy, while the button press sound is quite satisfying.

Our only gripe with this keyboard is that doesn't take advantage of the whole screen width when the phone is in landscape orientation, as there is a lot of empty space left around the left and right ends of the keyboard.

The Hotmail email application works very well. You can easily switch between all email, only the unread mail, flagged or urgent. We had absolutely no problems with the the setup of various types of accounts, but one thing we'd like to see Microsoft do is to come up with some form of easy switching between inboxes, because right now you either have to work with a unified inbox, or return to the homescreen and open a new inbox from there.

Organizer

The Nokia Lumia 925 and Windows Phone 8 in general provide a powerful set of organization options. We like the Calendar application for its simplicity and speed, which makes the creation of new appointments and quick and easy process. It isn't perfect, though, because it lacks a 'week' mode, which is quite the omission. The Live Tile functionality of the calendar is on the right track as it always shows what your next appointment is and when it's scheduled to occur, but even with that, the calendar Live Tile still has a lot of empty space that could be used for another couple of upcoming appointments.


The Office Hub will be the favorite place for the heavy Office users out there, as it will probably give you the most seamless Office file compatibility and functionality. That is one area where Windows Phone 8 will understandably excel (pun not intended) in, though you can easily find more than adequate Office viewer and editor suites for other platforms as well.



Processor and Memory

Windows Phone 8 isn't the most exciting place for silicon aficionados, as Microsoft has established strict hardware guidelines for device manufacturers, which do not allow companies to put cutting-edge chips in their handsets. Even if they do, the platform is not optimized to utilize all that computing power, so it would be pointless.

Either way, Windows Phone 8 performs perfectly well with the Lumia 925's Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus dual-core processor, which ticks at a clock rate of 1.5 GHz. The built-in grpahics chip is the Adreno 225, so that's not exactly next-gen technology, but it will do the job. The Nokia Lumia 925 is a high-end device so it should be able to run everything that can be found in the Windows Phone application store.

System memory is sufficient at 1GB, while the built-in storage is the healthy 16 GB. Still, the Lumia 925 lacks a memory card slot, so we guess that users who like to keep a lot of big apps/games and storage-hungry content like HD video on their phones may find the 16 GB insufficient.

Internet and Connectivity

Being a proud Windows Phone 8 handset, the Nokia Lumia 925 packs Internet Explorer 10 for mobile, which is a pretty decent browser, though we find it to be a bit slow to load pages, compared to the high-end competition like the HTC One, Apple iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S4. When the pages do load, scrolling and panning is generally smooth, but you can experience some instances of slowdown when browsing heavier web pages. That's either due to Internet Explorer 10, or the dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus processor. Anyways, the experience isn't that bad as a whole.

The Lumia 925 is equipped with everything needed to ensure a fast internet connection with LTE and HSPA+ (42.2 Mbit/s down / 5.76 Mbit/s up) support. In addition, you have standard stuff like A-GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, DLNA, mobile hotspot functionality and Wi-Fi 802.11 a, b, g, n and n 5 GHz. Nothing earth-shattering, but still a solid list nonetheless.

Camera and Multimedia

Equipped with a refined 8.7 MP PureView camera, here comes the Nokia Lumia 925! So, what's so new compared to the Lumia 920, which also had an 8.7 MP PureView shooter? Well, you once again have the beloved Optical Image Stabilization system with floating lens and all, but this time Nokia has added a sixth lens element, which has enabled the use of ISO 3200 when taking pictures. Theoretically, this should allow you to take better images in places with insufficient lighting, though be warned that results may vary. You can take a look at the pictures we took of our test scene using ISO 3200. As you can see, the end results are relatively bright, but incredibly noisy photos.


Additionally, Nokia has developed a new app for shutterbugs, called Nokia Smart Cam. The application enables the use of some cool effects similar to those in Samsung's Galaxy S4. The app takes a series of pictures of the same scene and then allows you to remove unwanted people from the shot, choose the 'best faces' of the people you've been photographing, or produce a kind of an 'action shot' image, where you can observe the different stages of a quick movement. We really like the interface of the Smart Camera application, as it lets you quickly switch between the different effect-modes and check them out after you've taken your image.


During the unveiling of the Lumia 925, Nokia reported that it has improved its image-processing algorithms, so we were eager to see how the Lumia 925 camera is going to perform.

Fortunately, Nokia has nailed it this time, as we were consistently treated to good-looking photos coming from the Nokia Lumia 925's PureView snapper. It's true that we were taking the samples for the review on beautiful, sunny day, but we've seen many ambitious smartphones mess their camera shots up even in such ideal conditions, so the Lumia 925 did really well here. The photos exhibit some pretty decent sharpness, which means that they look good even when viewed at higher resolutions. Exposure is very good, although the camera tends to increase it a bit more than needed in auto mode, probably trying to achieve a more vivid and eye-catchy look. Colors are mostly fine, though we noticed that the reds are a bit overblown, which can be easily noticed in some of the photos below.


Indoor shots came out mostly fine. Although being just a tad washed out, indoor images taken in decent lighting conditions manage to retain the natural colors of the scene, without introducing too much noise. As the lights get dimmer, though, you can see how the colors and overall image quality quickly start to deteriorate. Using ISO 3200 will definitely not save you in such situations, so your best bet will be to try and get as close as you can to your subject and hope that the LED flash will be enough to illuminate it/them.


The 1080p video recorded using the Nokia Lumia 925 is more than decent, though it could definitely use a bit more detail and a bit less exposure. The frames-per-second count stays high at about 29, so the video is mostly fluid, with some rare instances of lag.

Nokia Lumia 925 Sample Video:



Nokia Lumia 925 Indoor Sample Video:



The Lumia 925 sports a sizable 4.5” display, which makes it very suitable for all kinds of multimedia activities. Watching video and playing games will not be as fun as on the 5” 16:9 display of the Galaxy S4, of course, but it's still a great experience.

On top of that, Nokia adds its Nokia Music service, which offers great features such as Mix Radio, Gigs Near Me and free offline music playback.

Call quality

Unfortunately, the Nokia Lumia 925 turned out to be quite poor in the call quality department. The earpiece of the handset is quite weak and sounds somewhat muffled, which will make hearing your callers a pain, especially if you are at a noisy place. The microphone tends to perform a bit better, as it captures some high frequencies that at least make the sound a bit easier to comprehend on the other end. Add a pinch of digitization to the character of the sound, and quality is still quite low, though.

The loudspeaker is also a disappointment, as it is also quite weak and completely deprived of low frequencies.

Battery

Windows Phone 8 smartphones these days can't say that they are proud of their operating system, but if there's one area where being a WP8-powered handheld helps that's battery life. Indeed, with its 2000 mAh battery, the Nokia Lumia 925 is rated to achieve an impressive talk-time of 12.80 hours on 3G, while stand-by is rated at 18 days, though we'd advise you to not leave your Lumia 925 without a charge for 18 days, even if you aren't using it very actively.

Conclusion

With the Lumia 925, Nokia has created a charming device. It's a good-looking, thin and light smartphone that even features an aluminim frame to give it a premium taste. But thankfully, there's more than great design that the Nokia Lumia 925 can offer you. The handset features a sizable display of above-average quality, as well as a wonderful camera that will not only take great photos, but will also let you play with some fun features courtesy of the Nokia Smart Cam app.

Speaking of which, if it wasn't for Nokia's exclusive deals and bonus software content, Windows Phone 8 would still feel like a good foundation for a real operating system. However, with great features such as Here Maps/Drive+, Nokia Music, Nokia Smart Cam and Creative Studio, the Lumia 925 manages to feel like a complete package. Sure, it's still not as feature-rich as some other platforms, but if we consider the needs of the majority of consumers out there, it's safe to say that the Nokia Lumia 925 has you covered.