In any market, there is an organization which has an upper hand in everything. Such an organization would control at least some of the inflow and outflow of goods to the market. In the case of smartphone market right now, it seems Apple. Given that Apple is to release their new smartphone on the 12th September 2012, we were able to see several other companies pushing their products in to the market. As long as these products are mature, it wouldn’t cause any problems, but due to the pressure exerted, if a company releases a premature product, then problems are to follow. I do not know that the smartphone we are going to talk about today was revealed prematurely, but as far as we were able to fathom, it is. This is probably because Nokia and Microsoft wanted to grab customer’s attention to their new Windows Phone 8 smartphone before Apple does and somehow retain their attention in the Lumia 920. They may well have been under the pressure of Samsung revealing the first ever Windows Phone 8 smartphone, as well. In any case, this has caused Nokia to reveal this smartphone prematurely because Nokia hasn’t even mentioned the date of release nor the price it will be offered.
That was only a part of the problem. After the reveal of the smartphone went online, there were reports claiming that Nokia had faked the event photos and videos that were supposed to be shot with Nokia Lumia 920. Although Nokia released an apology explaining the situation where the images and videos weren’t shot with Lumia 920 just yet, and the videos and images were only for demonstrating purposes. However, they have also accepted that the video stabilization capabilities they boasted Lumia 920 would have also doesn’t exist just yet. This verifies the fact that this smartphone was released prematurely without proper demonstrations that could take it up to higher levels. However, the low light performance of the camera was verified to be superior by a team from Verge which might have been a sigh of relief for Nokia. When we take the whole set of events in to consideration, we have to say that Nokia and Microsoft have let Apple determine their introduction dates unknowingly, and that has led to a disastrous situation if Nokia hadn’t taken measures to issue an international apology. Enough about the controversy let us compare the Nokia Lumia 920 with its immediate predecessor Nokia Lumia 900.
Nokia Lumia 920 Review
Nokia Lumia 920 is important for Nokia due to a list of reasons. It is the first smartphone featuring 4G LTE connectivity in Window Phone 8 for Nokia, and it is also the first smartphone from Nokia which runs on Windows Phone 8. The handset is powered by 1.5GHz Dual Core Krait processor on top of Qualcomm 8960 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM. Our first impressions about Wndows 8 managing the handset were good. Nokia Lumia 920 has 4.5 inch IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332ppi which unofficially qualifies it as a retina display, as well. It comes with Nokia’s PureMotion HD+ display technology and is reinforced with Corning Gorilla glass, to be scratch resistant. One interesting feature this display offers is the Synaptic touch technology which enables the user to operate the touchscreen with various objects. Essentially, any object can be used as a stylus, to scribble on top of this screen.
It is not the thinnest smartphone in the block scoring a thickness of 10.7mm, but it sure is thinner than its predecessor. We like Nokia’s Unibody design that takes well thought ergonomics into account forming a polycarbonate body. Scratch proof ceramic was used to make the buttons and the rear camera module claims Nokia. However, what worries us is the weight of 185g which is towards the extreme heftier side in the smartphone spectrum. Nokia is usually very strict about the camera they include in their smartphones. They have included 8MP camera with optical stabilization, autofocus and LED flash which can capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second. This camera features Nokia’s legendary PureView camera technology that is said to use floating point optics to minimize the blurring occurred by camera shake. The Verge team has taken the smartphone for a ride in the dark and claimed that Lumia 920 outperforms the cameras of similar smartphones. This may be because it has an aperture of f2.0 to let the sensor absorb more light in resulting in sharp images even in dark situations.
Nokia Lumia 920 is also the first Nokia smartphone to feature the Windows Phone 8’s expandable storage featuring an internal storage of 32GB and having the ability to expand it using microSD card. It comes with 4G LTE connectivity which Nokia claims can achieve speeds up to 100Mbps and gracefully degrades to HSDPA when the signal strength is not enough. Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n ensures continuous connectivity while Lumia 920 also features Near Field Communication. Another interesting feature that caught our eye is the ability to charge this handset wireless. Nokia has included the inductive charging technology in this smartphone enabling customers to use any charger in compliance with Qi Wireless Charging Standard to be used to charge the smartphone. This is a pretty nifty piece of technology, and we are glad Nokia took the initiation to put it in their flagship product. It is worthwhile to note that Lumia 920 would only support microSIM card support. Nokia claims a maximum talk time of 17 hours (in 2G networks) with the 2000mAh battery.
Nokia Lumia 900 Review
Nokia undoubtedly came up with state of the art mobile phones, and what they lacked was a proper OS. Windows Mobile 7.5 Mango has given them a perfect platform to integrate their hardware with a cutting edge OS. Lumia 900 comes with 1.4GHz Scorpion processor on top of Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 205 GPU and 512MB of RAM. We would have loved Lumia 900 to have more RAM, but even in this set up, it would multi task seamlessly. The real bottleneck in multi-tasking comes when the user tends to use high-speed LTE connectivity to browse or stream from the internet while making a routine call, and in that scenario, Lumia 900 may well lag behind in switching due to the performance issues in the RAM. However, rest assured, this is only an extreme scenario and it’d hardly occur, so we can ignore that for the time being. Besides the LTE connectivity, Lumia 900 also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity.
Lumia 900 boasts 4.3 inches AMOLED Capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels at 217ppi pixel density. We have a good feeling about this screen, although it could have done more with a better resolution and pixel density. We suspect the text and image reproduction would be slightly blurry at the particle level, but then, average user won’t feel the difference. It has 16GB of internal storage without the option to expand the memory using a microSD card which may be a problem if you’re into keeping multimedia content with you. Nokia had the reputation for good cameras back in the golden days and 8MP camera in Lumia 900 continues the tradition. It has Carl Zeiss optics, autofocus and dual-LED flash with geo tagging while the camcorder can capture 720p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. The 1.3MP front camera can be used for video conferencing.
Nokia is fond of manufacturing multi colored mobile phones, but in this case, Lumia 900 only comes in Black and Cyan. It has square edges and fits into your hand perfectly scoring the dimensions of 127.8 x 68.5 x 11.5mm and a weight of 160g. Indeed, Lumia 900 is on the hefty side of the spectrum and might be somewhat uncomfortable to keep in hand for extended amounts of time. Nokia Lumia 900 boasts a talk time of 7 hours with the 1830mAh battery.
A Brief Comparison Between Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 900
• Nokia Lumia 920 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM while Nokia Lumia 900 is powered by 1.4GHz Scorpion processor on top of Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 205 GPU and 512MB of RAM.
• Nokia Lumia 920 runs on Windows Phone 8 while Nokia Lumia 900 runs on Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.
• Nokia Lumia 920 has 4.5 inch IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen display featuring PureMotion HD+ display technology and a resolution of 1280x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332ppi while Nokia Lumia 900 is equipped with 4.3 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels at a pixel density of 217ppi.
• Nokia Lumia 920 has 8MP camera with PureView technology with autofocus and optical image stabilization that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 fps while Nokia Lumia 900 has 8MP camera with autofocus and dual LED flash that can capture 720p HD videos @ 30 fps.
• Nokia Lumia 920 features 4G LTE connectivity while Nokia Lumia 900 only features HSDPA connectivity.
• Nokia Lumia 920 is bigger, thinner and heftier (130.3 x 70.8mm / 10.7mm / 185g) than Nokia Lumia 900 (127.8 x 68.5mm / 11.5mm / 160g).
• Nokia Lumia 920 has 2000mAh battery while Nokia Lumia 900 has 1830mAh battery.
Conclusion
We can only conclude that the newer smartphone will be better for these two smartphones are a pair of successor and predecessor. Looking at the performance, you can clearly notice that Lumia 920 has the upper hand featuring a dual core processor. It also runs on the new Microsoft Windows Phone 8 which is bound to be better than Window Phone Mango. The display panel is also better and offers more versatility like Synaptic touch technology enabling the customer to use any object as a stylus. The camera is undoubtedly better than its predecessor and Lumia 920 also offers 4G LTE connectivity compared to the HSDPA connectivity of Lumia 900. Unless you need a smartphone right now, I’d say I will wait until the Nokia Lumia 920 is released and will buy one rather than going for Nokia Lumia 900. After all, Lumia 920 has cool features like Wireless Charging, which is really an eye candy. We are hoping the prices would fall in the same range, and the smartphone to be released by the end of November although there is no official indication as such.