Nokia tears wraps off new Windows Phone Lumias on steroids From a distance, Nokia's new Lumia 920 flagship smartphone looks identical to its current flagship handset - but on a diet of performance-enhancing steroids. The Lumia 920 The Lumia 920, unveiled in New York today, is the first proper Nokia Windows phone, and is powered by Windows Phone 8. Its looks may be misleading: behind …
What Andrew said. And then there's PureMotion HD+ (mouthful, granted). The upshot is that the Lumia 920 has a 1280 x 768 curved glass display, which gives it a PPI of 332 compared to the iPhone 4S’s PPI of 330. Android has nothing even close to that (the SIII comes in at a PPI of 306).
Sour grapes maybe, Bob?
PPI is a pointless stat - it favours phones that are *smaller* - Apple only do well because of their teeny 3.5" screen. If you took my Nexus screen and made it smaller, the PPI would go up, but I'd consider it worse. If you also reduced the resolution, but such that the PPI was still higher, that would be even worse. P/I is a useless stat, if anything, I care more about P*I. Still, given how many Apple fanatics seem to have lapped up Apple's marketing "Retina" speak, it's nice for Nokia to beat them :) And not only that, to do so at a screen size that isn't tiny.
This Nokia phone wins out on resolution - 1280x768 is a tad higher than the S3 (and only beaten by the Galaxy Note, which is perhaps too large for many people). So don't get me wrong, I agree that the Nokia resolution specs are great, and better than anything in both IOS and Android land, but it's not down to "PPI".
"which gives it a PPI of 332 compared to the iPhone 4S’s PPI of 330. Android has nothing even close to that"
So the HTC rezound with 342PPI exceeds it by enough to not be close I guess? Same for the Sony Xperia S and SL.
But, hey what difference does a 300dpi and a 500dpi screen make in a phone? Personally I couldn't care less.
Does it shatter your dreams now you know about Android phones with higher PPI or does it actually not make any difference?
Is there anything more pathetic than a hater who hates something so much he has to be the first to comment?
You don't like MS/WP Bob, we get it, but it's no skin off your nose if a punter decides to buy a Lumia. Unless you have no life and nothing better to worry about, that is.
Dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 1.5 GHz
1 GB RAM, 32GB storage
5.11 x 2.79 x .42 inches, weighs .41 pounds, and comes in White, Black, Yellow, Red, Gray
4.5 inch display (1280 x 768 pixel, 332 PPI IPS LCD)
UMTS, LTE, EDGE, HSPA+, HSUPA, HSDPA, GPRS (1900, 1800, 900, 850)
Max WWAN speed: 100 Mbps down, 50 Mbps up
Wi-Fi: 802.11n, 802.11g, 802.11b, 802.11a
Bluetooth version: Bluetooth 3.1
NFC support: Yes
1.2 Mp front camera, 8.7 Mp PureView rear camera
Video out, headphone jack
Micro USB
2000mAH battery good for 10 hoours of use, wireless charging
I'm typing this on my Nexus 7 where I've been recently incredibly impressed with the new MS Sky drive app. If WinPho works as smoothly as this then coupled with my free 25gb of storage and a top notch camera I'm feeling pretty tempted. My only concern is whether WinPho is quite ready yet, first one was interesting but flawed, this generation is looking better but it might make sense to wait for the next one.
"Give me a quality stabilized 8MP camera over some lousy 12MP noisy blur-fest any day."
If you understood anything about photography you would know that optical stabilization on a lens this size is an absolute gimmick - the lens on a camera has to be 100mm at least before camera shake could possibly be an issue
So the great camera and amazing screen I was hoping for is in the 920. Ok. But the microSD slot is in the 820. Ok, I like the size of the 820 more anyway. And look at this, the 820 has a removable battery AND the wireless charging! My my, the 820 looks grand, I think I will get this one then. What's that? The 820 doesn't have the great camera or the amazing screen...Nokia, whhhhyyyyyy?
Now down almost 11%
Guess the bankers weren't that impressed?
My opinions of today: nice hardware, the camera app has some nice features acquired from Scalado IP, but over all not that impressed as the OS hasn't progressed significantly beyond supporting a higher resolution and an extra core.
Nokia can only bang on about their display, trying desperately to make it sound great when frankly most mobile phone displays are plenty good enough and hardly differentiators these days, but also tragically devaluing the PureView brand by claiming an 8MP sensor will perform better than any smartphone camera available (suggesting Nokia have forgotten completely about the 41MP PureView 808, or don't consider it a smartphone).
Nokia Maps is nice, always has been, but the other apps are just gimmicks - City Lens? Purlease.
Great to see someone going large on wireless charging - hopefully Nokia can keep it on the market for longer than Palm.
Overall, nice hardware, perfectly usable phones, but unfortunately using a rather dull OS. Pass.
It's worse. All of them are things IOS,Android,Blackberry (and probably Symbian and Java feature phone) users have been able to download of their respective app stores for a long time. Free downloads apart from offline maps.
Seems the only innovation in the phone is from Nokia hardware and it's not enough to survive today's market. Or maybe Nokia will pre-emptively sue Samsung before they can drown Nokia in similarly featured phones ;)
Paul,
It's worse than that, too. Download an up-to-date Google maps on Android and you get the ability to stop offline maps, too- and it works stinkingly fast locally. No doubt iOS 6 will have something similarly good in the new Apple mapping setup also.
(The Nexus 7 having a proper GPS receiver was a really nice surprise, Google maps on it is pretty wonderful as a pocket mapping thang)
Firstly, I'm not sure how Android and Nokia WP having the same features is a down point for Nokia - let alone the idea that IOS might get something at some point in the future, 6 years after Nokia were doing it.
But Android's offline support is atrocious - you can only store a handful of city-sized regions at a time that you manually have to select, despite me having more than enough space to store the entire world. With Nokia maps, you can store countries or continents at a time. Don't get me wrong, I love my Samsung Galaxy Nexus - but the offline maps is something that Nokia got right years ago, and after waiting for ages for this on Android, I was disappointed to see how it worked. (E.g., if I'm travelling to another country on roaming fees, I want to just select the entire country, not have to worry about which blocks of the map I might visit. Or maybe I'll just store the entire world and not have to worry about it again.)
I agree 100% about the maps. Nokia's map app was wonderful on my last phone (N97, and no, don't knock it, it worked just fine for me).
When Nokia announced they would drop Symbian for Windows I was so disgusted I went out and bought an Android phone, which I was/am very happy with... except the maps. The Nokia map app beat the Google one hands down. I want the whole country on my phone, without having to be online.
There are some map apps for Android that do this, but they're just not up to snuff, IMHO,
@anonymous coward
WP8 actually supports up to 64 cores. Your claims that WP8 is not advanced are just plain laughable, because if you do your research you will see huge advances in this operating system. Many of the features have been revealed weeks ago, but there are many more still to be announced. Let's put it this way - even based on the current known features of WP8, it has already caught up and surpassed the competition.
As for the camera, I guess you have no clue about image quality. The Nokia 920 features a floating lens, which gives real optical image stabilisation. It has an F2.0 aperture - that's best in class and allows 5-10x more light to enter than any other competing smartphone camera. The BSI sensor is the same type as used in the iPhone 4S. Early hands on reviews have already shown just how awesome this camera is. And it's just the beginning!
"if you do your research you will see huge advances in this operating system."
I think AC was looking for something that's advanced *to use*, not to have geek bragging rights.
I mean there's zero advantage to the user if the OS supports 64 cores, but only has 2 to play with. If that was such a big advantage they'd have fitted a quad core to the phone wouldn't they?
If you read the details, you would know that the dual core processor is 30% more efficient than the quad core. Since battery life is a key factor in smartphones, and Windows phone is known to be highly optimised for performance anyway, then it makes sense to opt for dual core and get better battery life, especially since not having quad core won't compromise the performance of this phone.
The iPhone 4S has an f2.4 aperture. f2.0 lets in 44% more light, not 5-10x more light. (By the way, the new HTC phones also have f2.0 apertures.)
What Nokia is clearly referring to is that their image stabilization system allows for shutter speeds that are a few times slower for the equivalent amount of image blur. Independent testing will confirm whether or not this is true, but personally I'm skeptical. Personally, if I concentrate, I can keep my hands still enough to get reasonably sharp photos with my iPhone with shutter speeds of 1/20th of a second. Nokia seems to be claiming that I can keep their camera still enough to allow for exposure times of 1/4 to 1/2 of a second, which seems like a really long time.
The hands-on tests showed that it clearly does work and blows away all the other phones. But this is mostly aimed at low light conditions and for situations where you don't want to (or can't) concentrate to take a still picture. In bright light conditions, I suspect the difference won't be as big.
The floating lens clearly works for video too, and it's probably the floating lens which makes the biggest difference here.
But the point about PureView is that it's the combination of all the new technologies that delivers the quality of the pictures - the floating lens, the F2.0 aperture, the BSI sensor, and the processing algorithms. It's a solid foundation on which to build further improved image technologies in future handsets.
This smells like usual Microsoft/Nokia hyperbole, where statements like this:
"The moving image results are dramatic. For stills, it beats smartphone cameras offered by rivals. Cloudy weather and nighttime images are excellent."
suggests someone has actually used one, but the reality is, the phone doesn't yet exist, and it's Microsoft/Nokia saying it....
The reality is, you can sum this up in a single sentence.
Failed Windows Phone in a new dress and attempting to fool idiots by using terms like PureView.
In reality if you care at all about taking photos you carry a camera and just use a cameraphone for fun. Any improvement is welcome but honestly, how many people choose a phone based on it's camera (*) and haven't all of them already bought an 808?
(*) I'll confess the presence of a front facing camera does sway my choice but that's a whole different thing! ...and rapidly swaying me less since confirming just how poor video calls over 3G are ;)
Carrying a separate camera around is a pain, though I still keep on for special occasions. So being able to completely replace a separate camera would certainly be an important criteria for me.
I don't think everyone who cares has already bought an 808 - the 808 isn't available in many countries, and in some is only available if you pay full price, nor has it been marketed much. Plus some people may want to run WP8 instead of Symbian. And as much as I liked the look of the 808, the specs are nowhere near what this phone has, let alone future phones - many people might want high end specs, and care about the camera.
Shame the Lumia PureView ads are faked this time round. It wasn't necessary to do that with the 808.
Sure its nice (some will say, I don't, but hey, we all like different things), but realistically it is going to have to blow the socks of the opposition to wrestle out a decent market share... and I just can't see it doing that.
Alternatively, Microsoft will have to throw billions at the market, undercutting everyone else, and muscle in that way which it might well have to, as no way will they want this to fail.
Why? Other platforms haven't had to "blow the socks of" to get decent market share. Rather each has their pros and cons, with many people not caring about OS and going by other features. WP is a low market share atm, but it's a relatively new platform - Apple's share was low for years (until the Iphone 4, really), and the growth of the new Nokia WP phones seems to have been doing as well as Apple's when they started with their new platform, despite Nokia/MS getting none of the absurd free advertising and hype that Apple got. There's probably a fair comment to wish we should have had Symbian phones with specs like these the last couple of years, instead of the rocky transition to WP, but I don't see anything problematic about WP's performance as a new platform. (I run Android, and couldn't care less about WP btw, but let's be objective.)
Yes I'm sure they will spend billions. As do companies like Apple. I'm not sure why this thing known as "marketing" is seen as okay for everyone else to do, but a failing if Nokia or MS do it. We get nothing but constant Apple hype and reporting from the media all day long, but heaven forbid if MS try to market their products.
> Why? Other platforms haven't had to "blow the socks of" to get decent market share.
Because to beat the emcumbants, you have to be much better than them or at least give them some motivation to try something unfamiliar. People generally stick to what they know.
Android and iOS arose when there wasn't a dominator in the smartphone market such as we have now. RIM don't count because most of their phones were not what we would class as smartphones now.
Er yes there was, Symbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Historical_sales_figures
I look forward to your definition of smartphone that includes the original Iphone, but not BlackBerry. And sure, a phone from years ago wouldn't count as a smartphone if released today, but that's true of the early Iphones and Android phones too - "smartphone" in that sense is a moving target.
More generally, smartphone is ill-defined, just a marketing term. Phones have done Internet and apps for years, but people happily bought the next ones that came out, mostly not caring about OS. Meanwhilst the original Iphone wasn't even a feature phone by any objective definition, since it didn't even do apps.
The dominator now is Android by far - so I guess we should be demanding Iphone 5 "blow the socks of", to get decent market share. I don't know, I just find it funny that market share is important when it's WP that's new, and Iphone struggles above 10% - but in all the years that Apple sales were a joke, no one seemed to mind (and indeed, the media spun it as if it was amazingly successful anyway - remember "one million sales in 76 days"? The first Lumia did that too).
Why? Other platforms haven't had to "blow the socks of" to get decent market share.
Err... are you familiar with the expression: "The cat is out of the bag"?
We're not 5 years ago you know, those WP8 phones have to compete with mighty iOS Phones that can get away with murder, and rabid all-form-factor-you-can-imagine Android industry.
Did he face the cameras, instead of facing sideways??
Criticism over (Pot! Kettle on line one! I'm not exactly silth-like myself.*) doesn't sound so bad. Markets disagreed, but maybe - just maybe - this might be Nokia's new "Satan-phone" (Jesus' place has already been taken by the 'fruity-firm').
* Too much writing crap like this in the pub.
> but maybe - just maybe - this might be Nokia's new "Satan-phone"
Agreed. If it restores the user control of data transfers that WP7 took away (bluetooth file transfers, hot-swappable microSD cards), then I might forgive Nokia. Oh, and provided they also don't ruin the nice impression with stupid bugs and stability problems. In the past, Nokia has all too often put out flagship products that look good, until real users get their hands on them, and find the last round of quality control was obviously skipped. In its glory days, Nokia used to be able to shrug off such situations with updates, but this time it would be fatal.
Just asking...Has anyone noticed that there always seem to be a multitude of AC's commenting negatively about any new smarthone/tablet that is not Crapple (tm). Now especially prevalent since there are Nokia/WP8 phones finally at the forefront?
Is this how big brave Apple spins competitors product announcements these days? Paid AC's whose only job it is to write some derogatory comment on a blog somewhere?
Never was there a better description of an "iposters" handle than Anonymous Coward.
At least have the courage of your own convictions and use your actual handle. Or do you actually make your living off Nokia or Microsoft oh chicken hearted one.
Is there any room for an objective viewpoint anymore or has the whole tech world polarized themselves into a proverbial corner just like US politics has?
It's a sad day when comments sections become infected by shills.
How can they announce a PureView 41MP sensor with pomp and ceremony yet not get the things out there in any great number, then a few months later announce that they're flogging the dead WP horse with an 8MP sensor and calling it PureView when the competition are on 12MP?
My two-year-old N8 is also a PureView then.
If there's no shareholder revolt after this then there never will be.
Get Real.
Have you seen the size of the frigging lens on the back of the original PureView? Not exactly "pocket friendly" is it?
They're not going to slap the 41 mp beast on the back of a mainstream mass-market phone, and they never will. You want a high-quality photos? Go buy a DSLR.
IIRC the reason was that it takes more time to get low level driver code ported to WP - PureView was in development for years. Yes it's a let down they haven't done it yet, but it's absurd to call it therefore a flop - no other phones have 41MP either, but that doesn't mean they sell less than the 808. I like Symbian, but stop grinding that axe against WP.
There's far more to PureView than MP. Here's a good explanation on the 808 vs this new phone: http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/15636_Whats_in_PureView_on_the_Lumia.php - in summary, there's not much in common, but there are nonetheless new important things in this device. So it may well be better than an N8 (though even being comparable to the N8's camera isn't bad, since no phone other than the 808 has yet to beat its quality, apparently). Which phones have 12MP? Not that that necessarily makes them better - the key thing about the 808 wasn't the 41MP, but the way that was used to improve the quality of the final picture.
Plus it's good they have more tricks up their camera sleeve than just what was in the 808. Now imagine a phone that combines the 808 sensor with the new camera features in the Lumia 920...
This is Nokia we're talking about, they've always been good for cameras but now it seems they're struggling to keep up with the N8's two-year-old specs. Currently the S3 has 12MP and there are also HTCs con 16MP. If PureView is a brand for high end camera phones then don't use it for a camera which is obviously deficient. I know that the 808 is more than a 41MP camera and also includes interpolation and noise reduction, but an 8MP camera simply doesn't need as much of those as a 41MP camera,
Yes it's nice that the Lumia has got image stabilisation but it's a shame that the ads are faked. Yes it's nice that the Lumia PureView can cope with low light conditions, but maybe that's because it doesn't have Xenon flash.
What set the 808 apart was the camera that nobody else could match, I'm sure the N8, the S3, or the HTC could receive a software update to improve image stabilisation and low-light performance (I know that on the Lumia PureView the results are achieved by hardware), but none of them can receive a software update to give results like an 808.
As an aside the Samsung WP8 phone also has a 8MP camera. Is this the maximum that WP8 allows in software and therefore Nokia were forced design around software limitations with hardware?
El Rel is pretty much the only place that keeps on whining about the "sharp corners" of the N9/L800/xx models. I use the N9 every day and have yet to have complaints. If at all, the corners make the phone more grippy. They certainly do not hurt – and I don't have a coal miner's hands.
Anyhow, nice show for Nokia. It's a good bundle of very cool stuff and usefull additions and innovations and all looks stunning.
Apple will have to show up with something very nice in order to truly surprise. "Look, we made it even thinner but hey, you now need an adapter to use all of your old stuff and hey, we also make you change your SIM yet again for no good reason" may just not cut the mustard.
They never managed to get any Lumia phones out here in Dubai - still peddling the old Nokia stuff. And they didn't manage to get the same phones out in the US and Europe at the same time as I recall, so the 'selected markets' bit sounds rather ominous.
Not a fan of the iphone, but you have to give Apple credit for being able to deliver essentially the same product in a huge number of markets in very short order. They even have a dedicated Apple online store for the UAE which is a pretty small market; and the prices are somewhere between the inc tax and ex tax prices in the UK, which is more than reasonable considering. So much for Nokia's much vaunted established sales channels.
I don't think we'll see these Nokia phones here for at least a year or maybe never. So much for Nokia's much vaunted distribution channels we keep hearing about.
Phones look excellent, but I gave up waiting in the summer and got a Galaxy Nexus.
I've recently taken a personal decision to boycott Apple Products (Litigation and snobbishness are two things I seriously hate) so If the build quality in this is up to their old models it could be a winner. My 5250 is still going strong despite 4 years of hard knocks, ugly and the GUI is as quirky as sin but you eventually got used to it.
Still in two minds about Windows on a phone though, I'd prefer someone else to take the gamble on that.
Nice hardware. Very tempting. But I sure as heck won't be touching it if it's running windows. Here's hoping that Nokia start spreading their eggs among different baskets and look at bringing out an Android version.
It would be very interesting if they were to launch an Android & Windows version together in a way in which performance of the phone and consumer appreciation could be measured separately. I wouldn't mind betting though, that they sold their souls to MS and pledged exclusivity to MS.
Still, there's always Samsung, HTC, etc.
I really don't understand the timing of this. 'Nokia wouldn't reveal prices or launch dates, except that "selected markets" would get it in Q4.' So with potentially months to go before anyone can buy one, there's still something the vapourware about it. And we don't get full details of its capabilities because MIcrosoft want to have their own hullabaloo at some later date.
Thus by announcing it this week, Nokia ensure that that this pretty nice bit of kit gets cast into the vast shadow of next week's iPhone 5 announcement. I guess the clueful marketers in Nokia must have jumped ship already.
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