Nokia has done what we asked: released a Windows Phone handset in metal. Except it's not all metal. And it's very similar to the Nokia Lumia 920. And it's in the high-end price bracket... but does a stunning camera warrant the extra cost?
Last
year's Lumia 920 was a decent handset. It married striking looks to a
quality screen and an even better camera. However, while it was
undeniably good there was still some room for improvement, as being a
flagship phone many hoped for better specs, less weight and a more
premium build.
Now the Finnish phone-smiths are back with the
Nokia Lumia 925. It's only seen a small number boost in its name, and if
you assumed that meant that not much had changed, well, you'd be right.
While
Nokia has equipped the Lumia 925 with a similarly brilliant camera and
gone some way to addressing the build of its flagship, it hasn't really
improved the specs, leaving the Nokia Lumia 925 in the curious position
of feeling more like a tweaked handset than an all new one.
This could be a problem, since it's priced at a wallet-bothering
£500 (around US$785/AU$820) SIM free, while the Nokia Lumia 920 can be
had for around £150 less.
With a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and
just 1GB of RAM the Nokia Lumia 925 matches the Lumia 920 for horsepower
and trails some way behind the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 or Sony Xperia Z - both of which have double the RAM and quad-core processors.
Arguably
Nokia didn't need to go all out, since it doesn't have a huge amount of
competition in the Windows Phone space - only the HTC Windows Phone 8X
really poses much of a threat. But it seems like a missed opportunity
to compete on a level playing field against the wider phone world.
At
first sight you might almost not recognise the Lumia 925 as a Nokia
handset. It has the same sharply rectangular shape that the Nokia Lumia
920 has, but where that was all brightly coloured plastic, the Nokia
Lumia 925 has a shiny aluminium band running around the sides. It gives
it a premium edge that is sorely lacking from other Nokia handsets, and
it looks good for it. Unfortunately Nokia hasn't gone the whole hog and made a completely metal handset like the HTC One,
and instead made the back from polycarbonate. It still looks decent and
the fairly conservative colour options (black, white or silver) mean
that it looks a lot classier and more grown up than the Nokia Lumia 920,
but it doesn't come close to the premium look or feel of the HTC One.
Despite
incorporating metal into its design, the Nokia Lumia 925 is actually
lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920, coming in at 139g (4.9oz) compared to
the 185g (6.5oz) Lumia 920. The weight was one of our key qualms with
the Nokia Lumia 920, so it's good to see that it's been addressed.
At
a sleek 8.5mm (0.33 inches), the Nokia Lumia 925 is quite a bit thinner
than its 10.7mm (0.42-inch) predecessor too, while the length and width
remain almost identical at 129 x 70.6mm (5.08 x 2.78 inches).
It
feels nice in the hand and it's generally quite comfortable to hold,
though there are a couple of caveats to that. Firstly the position of
the camera lens on the back makes it very easy to accidentally put your
fingers over it, which is uncomfortable and could leave marks on the
lens. And
secondly, the corners aren't very curved, which means they can dig into
your hand if you hold the phone in a certain way. On the plus side, the
polycarbonate back feels soft and warm against your palm, which is a
comforting sensation.
The front of the Nokia Lumia 925 is
dominated by the 4.5 inch 768 x 1280 AMOLED screen. It's not quite edge
to edge but it's not far off at the sides - although there's reams of
plastic above and below, which seems a trifle unnecessary. It's a good
size too in our opinion, big enough to use easily without becoming
unwieldy.
At
332 pixels per inch it also has a pretty good pixel density, though not
one that will bother the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4. And in fact it's
exactly the same size and resolution as the previous model, which is a
little disappointing. However it does use the same impressive PureMotion
HD+ ClearBlack technology as the Nokia Lumia 920.
Above the
screen there's Nokia's logo, the earpiece and the 1.3 MP front-facing
camera, while below the screen there are three soft touch buttons with
icons for Start, Back and Search. Flip
the Nokia Lumia 925 over and you'll find another Nokia logo stamped
across the middle of the polycarbonate back, while above that there's an
8.7MP Carl Zeiss camera lens and flash, and near the bottom of the
handset there's a speaker.
The plastic around the lens is raised,
leaving the lens itself slightly indented. That gives it a little
protection when putting the phone down, but it also makes the phone less
comfortable to hold as your fingers will often stray over the raised
area.
The
left edge of the phone consists of a strip of metal with no real
features on it, while the right edge has the power button in the middle,
a volume rocker just above it and the camera button near the bottom.
The buttons are all quite raised and responsive, making them easy to
press and easy to find by touch alone. They're also spaced out enough
that there's no confusion over which is which.
The top of the
Nokia Lumia 925 houses the micro SIM card slot at the left, the micro
USB port and 3.5mm headphone port near the centre and the microphone to
the right. The bottom edge is left unadorned, with just the metal band running along it.
You
can't remove the back cover so there's no getting to the Nokia Lumia
920-matching 2000mAh battery and there's also no microSD card slot, so
unlike some lower-end Nokia handsets (such as the Nokia Lumia 520),
the storage isn't expandable. This leaves the Nokia Lumia 925 with just
16GB of memory, which is half what the Nokia Lumia 920 offers -
although 32GB options are apparently going to be available.
The
Nokia Lumia 925 is slimmer and lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920. It also
has a more premium build and a slightly improved camera (more on that
later) but with the same core specs, less storage space and a much
higher price tag it's got an uphill struggle on its hands.
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