Nokia’s best yet: aluminium-clad Lumia 925 reviewed

In the flesh, Nokia has crafted a looker here, with a design that retains that Lumia look we’ve seen on most Nokia handsets this year, but downplayed a touch.

There aren’t any eye catching red or cyan colours here, and our review unit was more of a two-tone device, with a gunmetal aluminium frame sitting around the black charcoal polycarbonate on the back and big screen on the front.

While not as loud as the Lumia 920, it’s still quite lovely to look at, and makes us believe this is closer to Nokia’s interpretation of the black HTC One, even though the two probably have nothing in common with each other and were designed and built at the same time.

Picking it up, the handset is even easier to hold than the heavy 920.

That loss of 50 grams might not seem like much, but when you’re dealing with a smartphone that you have to carry with you, it’s a huge amount, and is more like the difference between carrying a can of soft drink and a large bottle. It’s not quite as exaggerated as that, but jumping between the handsets, it’s entirely noticeable.

Switch the phone on, though, and it’s more or less the same Lumia as what we checked out last year.

There’s the bright and colourful Windows Phone 8 interface greeting us, and it looks even more striking on the AMOLED screen Nokia has gone with in this iteration.

We liked the screen on the 920, mind you, but comparing them still, the display feels stronger on this one, with more punchy whites, and just as strong blacks.

Operation of the phone runs at exactly the same pace, hardly surprising given the identical hardware underneath. Jumping between applications and services reveals very little lag, though you do get a hiccup every now and then.

Mobile broadband performance is also excellent, and we managed speeds on Telstra 4G between 18 and 55Mbps down as we travelled around the city.

Battery life is also very similar, and heavy users will find roughly one day of life if they’re using the phone often, or a little between one and three days if the phone is used less.

As an example, we use our phone often on weekdays and managed a day of life, but rely on it far less on weekends and found a little over two days was possible.

Over the course of a work day, we get a day of life from the battery in the Lumia 925.

The camera is the next area where things have changed, with Nokia bringing in a slightly different sensor to the Lumia 920.

The megapixel count still reads at eight, but with a better sensor, the camera aims to be just as good if not better than what the other smartphone players are offering in their new handsets.

From our tests, quality in daylight is excellent, with better metering than the 920 and more balanced colours across the results.

In low light, the image quality is quite good, with a little detail in darker areas and a fair amount of balance, once again. Up close, the detail loses its clarity, with edges going soft, so don’t expect to make massive crops.

One area where the camera falls over is the speed of which you take a clear shot.

While you can fire off any shot quickly and within a second, that’s not always enough to prevent motion blur, it seems. In fact, our testing revealed that holding the shutter down to focus often means waiting for between one and three seconds for the camera to pull the right focus point, and it doesn’t even always nail it.

The flash also seems to fire when it’s not always needed, drowning out colours when scenes should have enough light to work with.

We would have also liked to see a microSD slot in this handset, as if you run out of memory, you are – just like in the 920 – stuck and forced to delete music, games, apps, and photos.

We didn't think the cake scene was too dark, but the camera disagreed. We like the image without the flash more.

Conclusion

From the design improvements alone, the Lumia 925 is a much better handset than the Lumia 920, which had more in common with a colourful brick than a sleek smartphone.

Even though Nokia hasn’t exactly made many improvements here, this is exactly what the Lumia 920 should have been, a feeling we noted when we went hands-on with the handset last week. As such, it’s easy to say the Nokia Lumia 925 is the best Nokia handset right now, but our question is how long will it be the best for?

Right now, Nokia’s next smartphone has already been announced, with the world’s first smartphone packing a 41 megapixel camera arriving in the form of the Lumia 1020. While Nokia were quick to say that the Lumia 925 was the flagship at the launch of the product, the question we have is how long this will be the case, especially since the 1020 is expected within the next two months locally.

Until the Lumia 1020 turns up, this is the best Windows Phone we’ve seen, but with a new handset that promises to be so much better just around the corner, it probably won’t be the best for long.

Overall
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Value for money
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Ease of Use
Design
Reader Rating0 Votes
Excellent design; Built very well; Lovely screen; Removes most of the weight from the plastic brick that was the 920; Decent 4G speeds;
Flagship for now, but close to being superseded upon release; Specs aren't an upgrade from previous Lumia 920; No microSD slot and a fixed amount of storage; Camera flash doesn't always fire at the best of times;
4.4