Nokia’s bold new phone: the Lumia 920 reviewed

The Cinemagraph is one of the more unique features, created animated pictures with various sections that you can increase or decrease the amount of activity in the frame. This is one of those styles of photos that the internet and its memes helps to flesh out.

Sadly, the images are often well over a megabyte, so they don’t hold a lot of use outside of showing your friends, and are practically impossible to edit easily. Getting them off the phone is also difficult, as a wireless send or backup to the web always results in a still image, and you’ll need to plug the phone into a computer in order to take the massive animated images off.

Battery life is about average, especially for a 4G phone. We managed roughly a day of activity on a 4G LTE connection, which seems to be par for the course when it comes to this technology, though our bandwidth wasn’t shabby at all, resulting in speeds of just over 46Mbit.

System performance seems to be relatively high, though because we can’t really test the difference between Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, you can’t really be sure which is the overall faster device. Given that this is Nokia’s flagship Windows Phone, you can pretty much rest assured that any app or game you buy for WP8 will run on this without fail, at least until Windows Phone 8.5 or 9 drops on by.

Beyond the software and speed, there’s the look and feel of the handset, and if you’ve seen or played with the Lumia 800 or 900 and liked them, chances are that you’ll appreciate this handset.

The last generation of Lumia handsets were praised for their sturdiness, and here in the 920, it’s no different. The big body of the 920 is, well, big, with a solid heft to it that we haven’t seen in phones for a while.

We’re no stranger to sizeable devices, not since HTC, Samsung, and every other manufacturer decided that the 4.7 and 4.8 inch sizes were the new smartphone flagship size for 2012, and we are absolutely ok with that.

But the Lumia 920 has a 4.5 inch screen and yet manages to not only to be as big as the 4.8 inch Galaxy S3, but heavier than the 5.5 inch Galaxy Note II. That’s impressive, but not in a good way.

It’s also very thick, and that’s something you’ll notice the moment you throw it in a pocket. Make no mistake, you do not want to be wearing skin-tight pants or jeans with this phone, as it really stands out, almost in the same way as Samsung’s super-sized tablet-based Galaxy Note smartphone.

Different to the Lumias we played with in Windows Phone 7, however, is the finish on this phone: it’s glossy, and very slippery. To say it’s a fingerprint magnet would be an understatement. Even with the red finish, it looked as if we had the greasiest and grubbiest fingers on the planet.

Despite these issues, it’s still reasonably comfortable, though is obviously geared at people who like bigger phones.

There is one thing that bugs us about Windows Phone 8: the lack of apps, although that’s something which is changing. We’re missing a copy of Instagram and Dropbox, though we’re sure there are others that we’re not even considering.

From what we know, Microsoft is working on making the Windows Phone ecosystem a little better, though this will take time to improve, understandably.

Conclusion

For its first attempt at a Windows Phone 8 device, Nokia has reflected on its history and made an interesting product in the Lumia 920.

Like its older brothers, the 920 is a sexy little beast that exudes personality, thanks to its colourful exterior, and the extra functionality Nokia has included here – Nokia Music, Nokia Drive GPS navigation, Nokia City Lens augmented reality tourism app, camera “lenses” – as well as the awesome Windows Phone 8 staples make this a really nice phone to use.

The physical size can be a bit of an obstacle to overcome, as can Windows Phone 8’s lack of apps, but if you’re looking for solid integration with the Microsoft Office range, Windows, and Exchange, and don’t mind a device that has some heft to it, the Lumia 920 is an easy recommendation.