Nokia’s Lumia Windows Phones are often praised for their design, possibly because they don’t look like every other phone on the market, but they’ve always been a little large and made of plastic. The newest from Nokia, the Lumia 925, breaks that mold. While still looking distinctly Nokia-like, the overall design is less chunky and less curvy and includes a bit of metal along with plastic. This Lumia looks more like the competition than others in the family. But is that a bad thing?
Design
The first thing we noticed when picking up the Lumia 925 is how much lighter it feels than the 928 or 920. The difference isn’t vast, it’s just notable. We also found this Lumia more comfortable to grip due to the rounded edges. Though it has the same size display as the Lumia 928, the 925 comes off as more compact and we hand no trouble using it one-handed during our short hands-on time.
A metal band encircles the edge of the Lumia but does not encase the back – that’s still plastic. This is a nice aesthetic touch, we’re just not sure the material gains the Lumia the premium air Nokia is going for. It doesn’t have the solidity of the HTC One, for example. Neither does it have that phone’s heft.
Camera
We couldn’t test the Lumia 925′s camera extensively; that will have to wait for the full review. It’s similar to the one found on the 928 and 920 but with a more advanced lens. The xenon flash isn’t on board, instead it has dual-LEDs. This isn’t as big a blow as it may seem since the xenon’s performance on the 928 hasn’t lived up to the hype.
We took a few experimental shots and found the images pretty crisp when zoomed and color accurate. The shutter responded well to the hardware button on the side. It’s not as fast as the iPhone 5, faster than the Galaxy S4. The resulting pictures aren’t as good as the ones we’ve seen from either of those phones, though. It looks like the Lumia 925 won’t be a big upgrade from either the 920 or 928.
Performance and T-Mobile LTE
Like most Windows Phones, the Lumia 925 runs speedy and smooth thanks to the dual-core processor inside. Navigating the interface, opening apps, and loading web pages all happened without a hitch. On T-Mobile’s LTE network we noted speeds around 12Mbps.
Is Incremental Okay?
The Nokia Lumia 925 doesn’t represent a huge leap forward for the handset maker despite the relative newness of the design and materials used. This is not out of line with Nokia’s overall strategy. The 800 Series Lumias are all slightly different on the outside and the same at their core. The 900 Series appears to be going that route as well. Each carrier gets a little differentiation and everyone is happy. At least, that’s how it used to work.
With Apple and Samsung pursuing the same phone across all carriers strategy, will consumers find the subtle differences between the Lumia 925, 920, and 928 helpful or annoying?
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