10:35 AMIn late March 2012, the tide seemed as though it was about to turn for
Microsoft’s (
MSFT)
Windows Phone
platform. After a year and a half of struggling, the “first real
Windows Phone” was about to launch in early April and change the
smartphone landscape forever. People got excited. I got excited. After
waiting so long for a true third player to emerge, this was it. The
surprisingly affordable
Lumia 900 flagship phone was released by
AT&T (
T) on April 8th and it was
initially free for new subscribers or $99 for AT&T customers.
What a deal! The phone was gorgeous, unique, fast and fresh, presenting
a genuine alternative in an industry dominated by two behemoths. But no
one cared.
That’s not entirely fair. Some people cared. In
Nokia’s second-quarter report,
the company revealed that it sold a grand total of 4 million Lumia
smartphones into retail channels during the Lumia 900′s debut quarter —
globally. Shipments of this awesome new smartphone, plus channel sales
of every other Lumia model around the world, totalled 4 million units.
In the U.S. where the Lumia 900 was a highly anticipated AT&T
exclusive,
Nokia (
NOK) shipped a total of 600,000 smartphones.
To put those numbers in perspective,
Samsung (
005930) shipped 10 million
Galaxy S III smartphones during the phone’s first 60 days of availability and
Apple (
AAPL) sold 5 million
iPhone 5 handsets in just three days.
The “first real Windows Phone” was a bust.
Now, here’s where things get complicated. Nokia was banking on
Windows Phone to reverse its heartbreaking downward spiral. The
once-great cell phone giant was now losing more than $1 billion each
quarter and Windows Phone was the platform that was supposed to save it.
Combining Nokia’s hardware and services expertise with Microsoft’s
software prowess certainly made sense on paper, but the end result just
couldn’t cut it with consumers.
So what did we learn from this painful ordeal? The unfortunate truth
was that gorgeous hardware, fresh new software and a unique user
experience simply aren’t enough to shift eyes away from the market
leaders and onto a third player. Nokia might have learned the same
lesson when it launched the Lumia 800 in November 2011, but apparently
it took one more try for the message to really sink in. Right?
Fast forward to November 2012, and Nokia is getting ready to launch a
brand new Windows Phone that it hopes will finally be the breakout hit
the Finnish cell phone maker so desperately needs. And what is Nokia
touting this time around as the key selling points that will help its
new smartphone find success in a market still dominated by the same two
players? Gorgeous hardware, fresh new software and a unique user
experience. Just like the Lumia 800. And the Lumia 900.
Third time’s the charm?
The Inside
Nokia’s Lumia 920 is among the first Windows Phone 8 handsets and as
such, it supports multi-core processors and other upgraded hardware. A
dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz powers
Nokia’s new handset, and 1GB of RAM helps keep performance smooth and
snappy. Nokia also included 32GB of internal storage and a 2,000 mAh
battery that easily got me through a full day with moderate usage.
Where connectivity is concerned, the Lumia 920 is packed to the brim.
Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, NFC, Wi-Fi and microUSB 2.0 connectivity are all on
board. In terms of cellular support, Nokia managed to pack 11 different
bands into its new Lumia: GSM 850/900/1800/1900, WCDMA
850/900/1900/2100 and LTE 700/1700/2100 are all supported. The Lumia 920
can handle download speeds of up to 42.2Mbps via HSDPA and 100Mbps over
LTE networks.
I covered some of my favorite things about Windows Phone 8 in my recent
HTC Windows Phone 8X review
so I won’t bother repeating myself. The new Lumia 920 ships with a
number of extras though, and they help distinguish Nokia’s offering from
other Windows Phones.
Among the included Nokia-branded apps are Nokia City Lens, which
helps users find restaurants, hotels, attractions and other things in
their immediate area; Nokia Drive+, the firm’s fantastic voice-guided
navigation service; Nokia Music, which allows users to stream music
stations for free or purchase and download tracks or albums; and Nokia
Maps, which is just like
Apple’s iOS Maps application except it works.
The Lumia 920 also ships with several AT&T-branded apps
cluttering it up but they can all be uninstalled, no doubt thanks to
some serious negotiating on Nokia and/or Microsoft’s part.
The Outside
Nokia’s high-end Lumia lineup may feature one of the most unique
hardware designs we’ve seen on a smartphone in recent years. Even
Apple’s
lawyers singled out a Lumia phone as the perfect example of a unique
smartphone that does not copy Apple’s protected designs. Of course
the Lumia 920 marks the third time we’ve seen the same design on a
flagship Nokia phone, so the look is slightly less novel than it was 12
months ago.
The face of the Lumia 920 is black plastic covered by Gorilla Glass
2.0. The phone’s 4.5-inch PureMotion HD+ display has three capacitive
Windows Phone buttons beneath it — a home button with a back button to
its left and search button to its right — and the ear speaker sits
directly above the screen with an AT&T logo to its left and a Nokia
logo to its right along with a front-facing camera.
The curved right side of the Lumia 920 holds a volume rocker, a
power/lock button and a dedicated camera button, and the left side is
bare. The bottom of the phone is home to a microUSB port, a microphone
and a speaker, and the top includes a secondary mic for noise
cancellation, a concealed SIM card slot and a standard 1/8-inch audio
jack.
The back of the phone carries only an aluminum plate bearing Carl
Zeiss Tessar branding, the rear-facing camera and a dual-LED flash. And
the camera, as it turns out, is a perfect lead into the next section of
this review.
The Upside
Wow.
Nokia was once the undisputed leader when it came to smartphone
cameras. There wasn’t even really any competition. I remember the first
time I examined pictures taken by the xenon flash-equipped Nokia N82 and
thinking to myself,
there’s no way camera phones will ever get better than this.
Of course, that clearly ended up being
a Charles Duell moment
for me because cameras on smartphones have gotten exponentially better
since 2007 when the N82 launched. Now, in 2012, the camera on Apple’s
iPhone 5 is often the standard by which other smartphones are measured.
While Apple’s camera may or may not be the best in the business, Nokia’s
new Lumia phone definitely gives it a run for its money.
The 8.7-megapixel PureView camera on the Lumia 920 is exceptional in
low-light situations, as Nokia claims. The F2.0 aperture, high-quality
Carl Zeiss lens and dual-LED flash combine to capture point-and-shoot
quality images in moderately low light. They’re not
almost as good as pictures captured on a dedicated point-and-shoot camera, they are
as good. In this area, the Lumia 920 puts the iPhone to shame.
In daylight, interestingly, the playing field is leveled. I found
that some images captured by the iPhone 5 in daylight were sharper than
similar shots taken on the 920, though the 920 is certainly no slouch.
Playing with scene modes and other settings also helps tremendously,
both during the day and at night. The new Lumia includes six scene modes
(Auto, Close-up, Night, Night Portrait, Sports and Backlight),
adjustable ISO settings from 100 to 800, adjustable exposure value and
five different white balance settings.
Complementing the phenomenal PureView camera on Nokia’s Lumia 920 is
the display. Nokia calls it PureMotion HD+ — I call it awesome. This
exceptional panel packs 1,280 x 768 HD resolution into 4.5 inches of
real estate, yielding a pixel density of 332 ppi. But that’s just the
tip of the iceberg.
Blacks are deep and the contrast on this screen is outstanding.
Colors definitely pop, though they seem a bit oversaturated at times,
and I find that Nokia delivers on its promise of a display that is much
more visible in sunlight than the average smartphone panel, as well.
Also incredibly handy is the fact that the touchscreen still responds
when the user is wearing gloves. After more than a week without power as
temperatures in the Northeast continue to drop, this is a feature I
sincerely appreciate.
The hardware itself is also a bright spot for Nokia. Once you get
past the fact that the Lumia 920 weighs about as much as a small
tractor-trailer and is nearly as thick as a tree trunk, this phone is as
solid as they come. I will note, however, that the review unit Nokia
sent me in red has a glossy finish like the white Lumia 900 did. I far
prefered the matte finish of the cyan and black models, which looks and
feels much better and doesn’t show oils like the glossy finish does.
Nokia’s latest flagship phone also shines when it comes to
performance. It’s not the quickest draw in the West but compared to
Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 devices, performance is dramatically improved.
This is thanks in large part to the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile software. As I noted in
my review of the HTC Windows Phone 8X,
performance issues that have plagued Windows Phone are less severe in
this latest build and while my Lumia 920 review unit did not have final
software installed, the performance benefits still shine through. Stock
apps fly on the Lumia 920 and well-made third-party apps show marked
improvement despite not yet being optimized for Windows Phone 8.
Poorly made apps still perform poorly, of course. And sadly, that
applies to a huge portion of the 100,000 apps Microsoft currently has in
its app store.
The Downside
In the smartphone market, first impressions can mean everything and
the unfortunate truth is that the Lumia 920 doesn’t make the best first
impression.
From across the room, the Lumia 920 definitely attracts attention and
the various loud colors Nokia is offering are sure to draw a crowd in
any carrier store. Once the peacock’s feathers have done their job and
attracted interest though, that’s where the trouble begins.
As I subtly hinted at above, the first thing you’ll notice upon
picking up the Lumia 920 is that it weighs a ton. At 185 grams, Nokia’s
new flagship phone is even heavier than
the monstrous Galaxy Note II despite the fact that Samsung’s phablet is 16% taller and 14% wider than the 920.
The next thing you’ll notice is that the Lumia 920 is surprisingly thick. In fact it’s 14% thicker than the
Galaxy Note II, 20% thicker than the
HTC (
2498)
One X, 24% thicker than the Galaxy S III and 41% thicker than Apple’s iPhone 5.
So, in a market where high-end phones are getting thinner and
lighter, Nokia’s new Lumia 920 is heading in the exact opposite
direction. It’s thicker and heavier than every other flagship smartphone
on the market, and though it is slightly thinner than the Lumia 900 it
replaces, it’s still 16% heavier.
And I include the Lumia’s wireless charging feature with this gripe.
Like NFC, wireless charging is a terrific feature on paper. The
thought of walking into your home or office and dropping your smartphone
on a pad to charge it is certainly appealing. When the technology isn’t
supported anywhere yet and you have to buy
one of Nokia’s wireless charging plates
for each location you hope to charge the phone — or carry a charging
plate with you along with a separate power adapter since it does not
have a standard microUSB charging port — the feature becomes far less
useful.
In fact, wireless charging in the Lumia 920 is actually a burden.
Why? The wireless charging coil Nokia included in the phone adds even
more thickness and weight to a phone that is already too thick and too
heavy.
The Bottom Line
History may be repeating itself, I’m afraid.
Nokia’s Lumia 920 is a wonderful smartphone in some ways and a
heartbreaking handset in others — just like the Lumia 900 that came
before it, and just like the Lumia 800 that launched ahead of the 900.
Smartphones powered by Microsoft’s mobile platform also have an app
problem that isn’t going away any time soon.
During its Windows Phone 8 launch event, which took place last week
even though Windows Phone 8 still hasn’t launched, Microsoft exclaimed
that 46 of the top 50 apps on rival platforms will soon be available for
Windows Phone. Yes, that’s 46 of yesterday’s top 50 apps. How many of
tomorrow’s top apps will be available on Windows Phone in a timely
manner? There’s no way of knowing.
Compounding matters is the fact that many popular apps that do come
over to Windows Phone from other platforms have performance and
usability issues, as I have
mentioned previously.
Apps on other platforms also offer far more comprehensive experiences
in many cases compared to their Windows Phone counterparts. Sometimes
it’s the developers’ fault and sometimes issues are brought about by
platform limitations, but in the end it really doesn’t matter. The users
suffer either way.
I hope the situation will improve. Windows Phone 8 offers developers
new tools to build apps and games using native code, and the results
could be great. Porting apps from other Microsoft platforms should be a
breeze now thanks to shared code and there are tremendous opportunities
for unique apps and games that offer an integrated experience across
platforms.
Will it happen? I don’t know. When will it happen? I can’t say.
In the meantime, we’re in a holding pattern. I’ve said it before and
I’ll say it again: Windows Phone is an outstanding platform and vendors
like Nokia and HTC are building gorgeous handsets powered by Microsoft’s
mobile operating system. Apps are still a huge barrier though, and more
importantly, there is
still no differentiation compelling enough to pry people away from Android and iOS.
This carries over to first-time smartphone buyers as well, of course —
subscribers moving up to a smartphone from a feature phone are unlikely
to choose a Windows Phone when everyone around them carries an Android
phone or an iPhone. It’s a catch-22 in the purest sense of the
expression.
While Nokia and AT&T haven’t yet announced pricing, I’m hearing
the Lumia 920 will undercut the competition yet again by at least $50.
And once again, we’ll see some serious advertising showing off this
great new phone. What we still won’t see, sadly, are truly compelling
reasons to buy the Lumia 920 over a market leader. And we also won’t see
truly compelling reasons to buy into the Windows Phone ecosystem over
Android or iOS.
The Lumia 920 is a great smartphone. It has its faults, and you might
have to hit the gym a few extra times each week in order to lift it,
but it is still a great smartphone. The design is unique and sharp, the
performance has improved dramatically from earlier Windows Phones and
the camera is amazing. Does that add up to an experience that outweighs
the platform’s many limitations? For the majority of consumers, I don’t
think it does.
