We finally have our very own Nokia Lumia 920 to play with, right on the heels of our Lumia 820 review. The Lumia 920, for those who haven’t been keeping up, is Nokia’s new flagship Lumia device for the Windows Phone 8 platform. As such, it should pack more of a punch than the Lumia 820 and impress us enough to offset its higher price and top-dog status.
Visually-speaking, the Lumia 920 is a bit of a mixed-bag for us. It’s reminiscent of the Nokia Lumia 900 which, while not a particularly bad thing, feels a bit like Nokia didn’t really put too much effort in. The design is still quite striking for the brightly colored models, but the black handset we received did feel a little pedestrian when compared to the vibrant yellow Lumia 820 model we received a few weeks ago. Although, we must admit, the black does seem to allow for a greater variety of themes to be used, as it doesn't clash with any of the available color schemes.
The overall size is also quite large compared to the screen size. It’s true that the Lumia 920 is similar to the Galaxy S3 in overall dimensions, but with only a 4.5 inch screen that’s a bit of an issue. There’s quite a bit of unused space around the edges of the display; something that we’re becoming unaccustomed to in the higher-ends of the modern smartphone market.
Still, it’s by no means an ugly or unappealing device. We still like the look and feel of the matte polycarbonate finish and the unibody design feels incredibly sturdy.
When held in the hand the Lumia 920 does little to hide its size and mass. Its profile is not particularly thin, nor is it very light. In fact, compared to the Lumia 820, the 920 is a very bulky device. It almost feels as if they were designed by two different companies. Once again it’s not enough to put us off the handset, but it is a bit surprising.
The AMOLED ClearBlack HD display is incredibly crisp and vibrant. Colors are refreshingly bright and blacks, as we have come to expect from Nokia, are nice and stark. As always this last virtue lends itself well to the black background chosen by most WP users. We haven't watched any HD videos yet, so we'll go in to more detail with regards to the display when we do the full review.
The WP8 UI is still simple and smooth. The new Home Screen is so much easier to use than the WP7 version. Like we said in our Lumia 820 review: it feels as though Windows Phone has graduated from a fledgling UI to a fully finished and operational mobile OS.
The Lumia 920 has so far handled everything that we’ve thrown at it with incredible ease. It’s not surprising, considering that it sports very similar operating hardware to the Lumia 820 and we never had any trouble there.
We’ve only taken a few initial shots with the PureView camera, so it’s a bit early to make any judgements there. We will say that initial photos were rather impressive, although there does seem to be a bit of light-bleeding in low-light shots. This, however, has so far been totally offset by how clearly our night time photos have turned out when compared to other smartphone cameras.
That’s it for now, we’ll be back in the new year with a full review (we’ll be shutting down for a while over Christmas). For now we’ll just say that our early impressions are quite positive, although we think Nokia could have done better with the external casing. Still, we don’t think its bulk should be enough to really deter any potential buyers.
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