First impressions: Lumia 920

The Lumia 920, in many ways the true successor to the original Lumia 800. Where the 900 was more of a supersized 800, the 920 should be the perfected design. After all, over a year has gone by since the original design first saw the light of day. So how does this new addition to the family stack up hardware wise?

‘No matter what age you are, the idea of a new gadget always brings out the child in you’

This past Friday it finally landed, a knock on the door and there was the delivery man with a much anticipated package from the lovely people of Nokia Connects. It contained one Lumia 920. No matter what age you are, the idea of a new gadget always brings out the child in you. And so it did, the packaging was quickly dealt with and the moment came to open the box. What colour had they sent me? Please don’t let it be the black one, please let it be a colourful one. Sliding the box open revealed one of the brightest of colours to ever grace a phone, a near neon yellow.

Colour is a very personal choice, even more so with the yellow of the 920. However, this really is a colour you should go and see in person. It’s actually pretty nice to look at and truly is a conversation starter, as I experienced over the past few days.

Upon picking the phone up out of the box I thought: ‘this isn’t heavy’ and ‘how can someone complain so much about it’ Yes, the flagship Lumia does weigh more than what you will find from the competition, but it doesn’t weigh nearly as much to make it uncomfortable to handle. What does make it uncomfortable to handle is the sheer size of it. This things is big, not so much in length but in width.  It took me a fair bit of time just to be able to navigate through the OS comfortably, but after a day or two of use you should get the hang of it.

‘Size and weight aside, this thing looks good’

Size and weight aside, this thing looks good. The attention to detail is astonishing and it really is a better made Lumia 800 in many ways. It starts with the SIM tray sitting flush with the body, the solid buttons on the side, the well placed USB port and speakers on the bottom and ends with the sinister black plate surrounding the camera. There are, however, some chinks in the armour of this beast. Most noticeable is the flex just underneath the camera strip which flexes inward when pushed and sounds hollow when you tap on it, unlike the 800 which sounds and feels like a solid chunk. This undermines the otherwise solid feel of the 920. Asking around a little reveals that this might be just relegated to the unit I have here, hopefully. What is a more common issue apparantly is the vibrate motor, it feels like it is broken when it is activated. It might be partly due to the OIS system in the lens as most of the noise stems from that area, but even taking that into account it still feels cheap. Not worthy of the luxury look and feel of this top end Lumia.

Nokia’s flagship Lumia does pack some great hardware to make you forget the negatives. The speakers were one of the things that performed surprisingly well. Considering the size they can push quite a loud sound without crackling or getting tinny. Couple the speakers with the excellent IPS LCD screen covered by that glorious curved Gorilla Glass (which is less curvy than that of the 800 though) and in a way you have a small mobile movie theatre on your hands.

‘Four days with the 920 and it is

already winning me over..’

As a first preliminary impression, the new Lumia 920 is an excellent follow up to the original 800 on the hardware front. There are some flaws, some related to size and are down to personal preference, others made by Nokia. All in all though it does feel good and is worthy of the title flagship. As some of you may have read, I was torn between the 920 and the 820. Four days with the 920 and it is already winning me over, lets see how it feels after the full two week trial.

 A special thanks to Jay for reaching out to Nokia Connects and creating the opportunity to trial a 920. And of course, many thanks to Katie from Nokia Connects to actually send me one, on a very short notice I might add. If there is anything you want to know about the 920 and how it is as a daily driver, feel free to ask me on twitter (@haranguemnb)

Category: Nokia