Score: 9/10 (Fantastic)
Pros Beautiful design, feels sturdy and durable, great-looking display, fast and snappy, excellent camera. | Cons Only 16GB of internal storage with no option to expansion, T-Mobile's network still has room to improve, WP8 still lacks a lot of applications. |
Nokia's current line of their highest-end smartphones is the Lumia 920 series. Rather than creating one single flagship device and releasing it to all major carriers like most manufacturers do, Nokia has released numerous variants of the same phone to multiple carriers. AT&T got the ball rolling with the Nokia Lumia 920 last year, Verizon recently followed suit with the Lumia 928, and now T-Mobile has their version with the Nokia Lumia 925. All three of these handsets are essentially the same smartphone, but each has its own set of specific factors and features that still make them unique. The Nokia Lumia 925 is the latest in the Lumia 920 series, and with a 4.5-inch 720p HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, an 8.7MP rear-facing camera, and a beautiful design, it certainly has what it takes to be a true flagship device. The Lumia 925 is easily the best Windows Phone 8 device you can currently get on T-Mobile, but what about the best Windows Phone in general? Let's found out in our full review!
NOTE: Since the Nokia Lumia 925 has some hardware and software specifications that are identical to the Nokia Lumia 928, parts of this review have been taken from our review of the 928.
NOTE: Since the Nokia Lumia 925 has some hardware and software specifications that are identical to the Nokia Lumia 928, parts of this review have been taken from our review of the 928.
Design/Build Quality
The most striking feature about the Lumia 925 is most definitely its design. With its aluminum frame and polycarbonate back, the Lumia 925 is a phone that you want to look at. The rounded aluminum frame gives the phone a nice flare of elegance, while the polycarbonate back makes the phone comfortable to hold in the hand. Although it may not be the thinnest or lightest phone at 5.08 x 2.75 x 0.33 inches and with a weight of 4.9 ounces, the 925 is far from feeling like a brick.
Hardware
At 4.5-inches, the Nokia Lumia 925's screen is relatively smaller when compared to other flagship handsets. The screen resolution is also lower to, at 1280 x 768. Despite the lower resolution, the display on the Lumia 925 looks darn good. The 925 uses an AMOLED screen, and also takes advantage of Nokia's ClearBlack screen technology which allows for really deep blacks on the display. The color-filled world of Live Tiles pops on 925's screen, and with 332 ppi, text is razor sharp and Web pages, pictures, games, and video all look fantastic. Along with it's good looks, the 925's screen is also a Corning Gorilla Glass 2 panel, so you won't have to be worried about scratching up your oh-so pretty display.
Even though its 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU and 1GB of RAM don't sound impressive on paper, the Nokia Lumia 925 isn't a slow phone by any stretch of the imagination. In my time with the device, the Nokia Lumia 925 never seemed to want to slow down. Whether I was scrolling through my Live Tiles, streaming YouTube videos, browsing the Web, or playing a game like Temple Run, the Lumia 925 always felt like a processing powerhouse. What's great about Windows Phone 8, is that it doesn't require nearly as much processing power to run fluid and smoothly like Android-powered handsets do. Because of this, you can get excellent performance without having to have the absolute latest CPU and/or a high amount of RAM. The Lumia 925 also comes with 16GB of internal storage, but lacks an option to expand it via microSD card. This is a bit of a downside, considering that it isn't too difficult to blow through 16GB of storage when download apps, games, music, etc.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is packing in a 8.7MP rear-facing camera, along with a 1.3MP shooter on the front. The front-facing camera takes fine pictures, but the real magic lies with the main camera on the back. Along with having 8.7MP, the camera also has a Carl Zeiss lens with Nokia's PureView camera technology. What does this mean exactly? It means that the Nokia Lumia 925 takes incredible photos. Colors are accurate without being washed out or over-saturated, details are sharp, and the depth of field is amazing. The Lumia 925 also utilizes a dual-LED flash for taking low light photos. While not quite as good as the xenon flash found on the Lumia 928, the dual-LED was able to produce some pretty good looking photos when using it in situations when there was little-to-no light.
The Nokia Lumia 925 is an exclusive to T-Mobile, and although their 4G LTE coverage is still expanding, there are a lot of areas where T-Mobile's service just doesn't work. Where I live, I am able to get 4G LTE with Verizon, 4G through AT&T, and 3G when on Sprint. When using T-Mobile, however, I only get 2G service, and usually 1-2 bars of service at that. When I ventured to areas where T-Mobile's service was stronger, I got great call quality when talking on the phone. People I talked to were loud, audible and clear. Unfortunately, due to T-Mobile's still-growing network, I was unable to test out the 4G LTE capabilities of the phone. If you live in an area where T-Mobile's service is strong, you shouldn't have any issues at all. Just be sure that you check out their coverage map if and when you do decide to purchase the Lumia 925.
To get you through your days of use, the Lumia 925 has a 2,000 mAh non-removable battery. Despite it not being the largest battery we've ever seen, the 925 impressed me with just how long it could last. From turning the phone out at around 7:00 AM and with moderate usage of texting, Web browsing, application usage, and picture taking, I still had about 18% remaining at 11:00 PM. I was always able to get though a full day of use with the 928, and never found myself looking for my charger before 8:00 PM, even with heavy usage throughout the day.
Software
The Nokia Lumia 925 is running on Windows Phone 8. Windows Phone 8 is the latest iteration of Microsoft's mobile OS, and personally, I love it. The biggest feature of WP8 is easily the Live Tiles. The Live Tiles are present on your Start screen, which is essentially your main home screen. As I've mentioned before in previous reviews of Windows Phone 8-powered devices, Live Tiles present you with live information that is relevant to that specific app. For an example, the IMDb Live Tiles shows the latest bit of movie news, and The Weather Channel Live Tile shows information based on the weather locations in your area. You can place the Live Tiles wherever you want to on your Start screen, and can adjust the size of them as well. One of the coolest features on WP8 is the Me Tile. From the Me Tile, you can see notifications, see what's new, and post updates to all of you social networking websites. You can also add Live Tiles for individual contacts as well. From these Live Tiles, you can see updates from all the social networking sites that that contact is on, write on their Facebook Wall, mention them on Twitter, and more. These features make WP8 a very unified operating system, and makes the OS feel clean and organized.
Since the Lumia 928 is manufactured by Nokia, you have access to Nokia's killer selection of Windows Phone 8 applications. These apps include Nokia Music, SophieLens, Nokia Cinemagraph, HERE Drive+, HERE City Lens, HERE Transit, and more. All of these apps work great, and really differentiate the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 devices from handsets such as the HTC 8X and Samsung ATIV Odyssey.
While talking about apps, let's discuss Microsoft's app store for Windows Phone. Microsoft's Windows Store is the application store for all Windows Phone devices, and while improving, there is still a bit of catching up to do. Sure, there are official apps for things like Pandora, The Weather Channel, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but there are a lot missing as well. There are no official apps for Vine, Instagram, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Cozi, and Trello, just to name a few. If Microsoft could ever get the Windows Store up to the quality of the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, they could have a winning mobile OS on their hands.
Final Verdict
So, is the Nokia Lumia 925 one of the best Windows Phones that you can buy? It sure is. At least for right now. Nokia is bound to show off some new hardware before the year is over, and with the inevitable release of Windows Phones with 1080p Full HD screens, it might now hurt to wait a few more months to see what both Nokia and Microsoft have up their sleeves. With that said, if you are a T-Mobile customer looking for a new Windows Phone 8 handset, you really shouldn't be looking any further than the Nokia Lumia 925. Although it does have its flaws, you'd be hard-pressed to really let those damper the overall experience of this sexy beast.
Author: Joseph Maring
Author: Joseph Maring
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