Before you even take the Nokia Lumia 920 out of the box you can tell it’s a standout device. The first Windows Phone 8 handset to hit the market, the smartphone has a distinctive look that extends past the characteristic design of the Windows Phone operating system.
The successor to the Lumia 900 released earlier this year, the 920 represents Nokia’s third stab at Windows Phone. With the 900 getting rave reviews but lukewarm sales earlier this year, both Microsoft and Nokia have a lot to lose with the Lumia 920, as well as a lot to gain.
Does Nokia have a winner on its hands, or should Windows Phone shoppers steer more towards HTC’s 8X or Samsung’s ATIV S? We spent a little over a week with the Lumia 920 to find out.
Different by Design
The Nokia 920 is a big phone, in more ways than one. One of the first things you’ll notice when you hold it is how heavy it is. It weighs 6.5 ounces (by comparison, the iPhone 5 is 3.95 ounces), so you’re not going to forget you’re carrying this bad boy around.
Chunkier than the Lumia 900, the phone sports a similar, although slightly different design. Made out of polycarbonate, the handset has a 4.5-inch Gorilla Glass display sculpted inside shell, and has rounded corners that give the phone a distinctive look that makes it stand out against its competition.
Its relative obesity aside, the smartphone looks like a larger, more polished version of the Lumia 900, and it feels great to hold.
A Camera That Loves the Night Life
The Lumia 920 comes packing an 8.7-megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss lens, and is hands-down one of the best smartphone cameras I’ve ever seen. In the week I’ve used the phone I’ve taken quite a few photos with the handset that rival what I'd be able to achieve using a digital SLR camera. The camera carries Nokia's "PureView" label, which the company reserves for phone cameras with standout features.
While not specifically impressive in brightly lit situations, the Lumia 920 performs well in low-light settings, where most phones’ built-in cameras fail miserably. Even photos taken at night look like they were taken with either a lighting kit or with some sort of lighting present. Excellent night photos are also easily captured on the fly from the built-in camera app, with no need to manually change any of the settings in order to do so — a huge plus if you find yourself trying to snap photos quickly.
Check out some low-light and night shots in the gallery below. I had previously done a comparison of daytime shots taken with the Lumia 920, Samsung Galaxy S III and Apple iPhone 4S.
Nokia Lumia 920 Low-Light Photos
Great in Low Light
All of the photos in this gallery were taken using the automatic settings in the Lumia 920 at night.
The Lumia 920 has a dedicated shutter button for taking photos, making it feel more like a point-and-shoot camera when using it. Much like other smartphone cameras, tapping on the screen allows you to focus on a subject. Unlike other smartphone cameras, the 920 actually snaps the shot as soon as that focus is achieved –- a feature available on other Windows 8 handsets as well — ensuring you capture your picture in focus.
With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft incorporates camera-specific apps as "lenses" (read: extras) within the camera app itself. Nokia has a few of those available, the most interesting of which is probably “Smart Shoot,” a feature that has you take 5 different versions of a group shot and then select the “best faces” from each to create the perfect picture. Panorama and Cinemagraph lenses are also available.
Perfectly synchronized floating lens tech
You’ve probably heard that the OIS in Lumia 920 uses floating lens technology. However, whereas typical DSLR stabilization solutions have only one moving lens, within the Lumia 920 the entire optical assembly works in perfect synchronization with the camera movements. Which means less camera shake than ever before.
Higher-powered flash
The Lumia 920 doesn’t just have a Dual-LED flash, it has a next generation high-power Dual-LED flash. This gives you a significantly more powerful flash of light for those darker environments and ensures you can take fantastic pictures even further away from your subject.
Low Light Night Mode photo,Etc. are courtesy of Nokia
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