Nokia Lumia 920 review

As Windows Phone 8 is so locked down, Nokia is aware that it has to work to differentiate its Windows Phone 8 handsets from the competition. For this reason the Lumia 920 comes with some useful Nokia-specific apps. The excellent Nokia Music is still there, letting you stream a selection of music mixes for free or download them to your phone for offline play later. Nokia City Lens is an augmented-reality city guide, which uses an overlay on the phone’s camera display to show you food and drink and entertainment in the area, while Nokia Drive gives you turn-by-turn navigation.

Nokia City Lens lets you explore the city, augmented reality-style

Maps has had a significant update, and now supports offline content. You can download maps of the entire world to the handset, or pick and choose by country and region, so you can use maps abroad without spending a fortune on data. There’s one caveat with Maps, though – the search function relies on a data connection, but if you’re determined not to go online you can always find locations manually by panning and zooming.

Nokia has made a big deal about the Lumia 920’s imaging capabilities. The phone’s 8.7-megapixel camera has a lens with optical image stabilisation; a first for a smartphone. We found it was extremely effective at eliminating camera shake while filming video; we could walk around with barely any swaying motion. We also used an electric vibrating table to really test the system, but the image remained rock steady. When we filmed using other smartphones on the same table, the image wobbled all over the place. The image stabilisation led to some of the best mobile video we’ve seen. 1080p footage from the camera was well-exposed and clear, even indoors, and was significantly better than the video from HTC’s Windows Phone 8X.

We were less impressed with the Lumia 920’s still images, though. While these were well-exposed, colours were dull and photos weren’t as sharp as we would like. There was also a large amount of noise reduction, but this led to a loss of detail. We much preferred the HTC Windows Phone 8X’s images which, while overexposed, were much more vibrant and pleasing to look at.

Exposures are accurate, but colours dull – click to enlarge

Zooming in shows some excessive noise reduction – click to enlarge

Nokia has included one feature to liven up your pictures, though; Cinemagraph. This app takes a photo, then analyses it for movement. It then lets you choose which parts of the image you want to leave moving, and lets you scrub the image with your finger to increase or decrease movement. The animation then plays back in a loop, animated GIF-style. We found it amusing to create GIFs of friends or colleagues chewing, for example. Nokia claims that Facebook is working on a way to support these animated photos.

The Lumia 920 is another beautifully-made Nokia handset. It has a great screen, is hugely fast and has some excellent Nokia-only apps to enhance Windows Phone 8. The only disappointment is the lacklustre camera, but the phone records superb video. The handset is expensive, especially on an EE 4G contract where it will cost you £41 a month, and limited app support means it’s still a big decision to jump to Windows Phone, but if you’re willing to take the plunge the Lumia 920 is the handset to dive into.