Microsoft's mobile OS refresh – is it more of the same?
theregister.co.uk: If you ever go down the pub and let slip you’re
a tech writer, you’re invariably asked for recommendations. With smartphones,
this is pretty difficult these days because they're all pretty good. No, scrap
that, today’s devices are just amazing compared to what you could get a few
years ago. They all do a job; you can't really recommend a ‘bad’ one.
Manufacturers and fanbois engage in a furious War of Small Differences.
With its new Lumia 920, Nokia has gone for ‘biggest and best’,
with one zinging USP. This is a hefty but impressive flagship, and undoubtedly
Nokia’s strongest all-round product in several years. In short, the Lumia 920
is a very strong contender for your money, once you can accept the device’s
formidable size and mass.
I'll start backwards, with a summary. The phone’s USP is the
camera. Nokia's 808 PureView aside, arguably, this is the most impressive camera phone on the
market, measured not in megapixels but in terms of practical everyday results.
Here’s a great example of a product team working on things that give users a
real world benefit; videos are smooth, and low light photography, without a
flash, is quite outstanding. This phone should be worth considering for the
camera unit alone. It’s that good. Nokia details its PureView tinkering on the
Lumia 920 here [PDF].
Windows Phone integrates basic social networking and messaging as
well or better than any other device, getting you set up very quickly out of
the box. The screen on this new phone is terrific – a 4.5inch IPS display 1280
x 768 although the WP design with Giant Text for buttons nullifies this
somewhat. This is a phone that can even be used with gloves. And the whole
things is built like a tank. The design resembles the Lumia 800 but bigger and
boxier, although simplified: USB at the bottom, headphone jack at the top.
There are three other features that aren't USPs to the new Lumias
– or even this new Lumia – but are still great things to have. One is the
blistering speed of the dual-antennae flavour of 3G, which this phone supports.
DC-HSPA+ delivers such data so quickly, running on 3’s UK network, it was hard
to distinguish a Wi-Fi connection from a cellular data connection.
Sod 4G, I thought. This speed boost is really noticeable in the
overhauled Windows Phone browser, IE 10 which can render a Reg page in a flash,
and most complicated newspaper front pages in three to five seconds. The page
just seems to flow into place. Browsing looks good too on the screen. The
second bonus is HD voice. Calls between the 920 and an iPhone 5 on the same
network were terrific. We're still experimenting with calls across networks,
but the story is good so far.
Reference:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/08/review_nokia_lumia_920_windows_phone_8/
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