Nokia Lumia 925 review

Nokia's long hard road back to relevance continues with the Lumia 925, a premium Windows smartphone with classy metal body, stonking-great camera and a host of extras.

It's on sale now for around £500.

Design
At first glance, the Lumia 925 doesn't appear very much different from its previous 920 flagship: same all-Gorilla Glass front, same gently curving edges, and same size when it's viewed face on. But look a little closer, and that casing is aluminium rather than plastic, plus it's a little thinner and considerably lighter.

There are a few other changes too. The micro SIM slot has now been moved to the top of the handset to join the 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB port. On the side there's a volume rocker, power/sleep button and a camera shutter button. The speaker that was once on the bottom has now slid round to the rear where it joins the camera's Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, which protrudes by a millimetre or so.

Screen quality
There's been no change to the 4.5-inch Amoled screen, which was lovely to begin with and has lost none of its sheen. The 1,280x768-pixel resolution boils down to a perfectly acceptable 334 pixels-per-inch (ppi) -- not quite up there with the HTC One's 468ppi perhaps, but it still looks beautifully sharp and vibrant, with Clearblack technology delivering rich, deep blacks whether you're browsing web pages or viewing HD movies. Usefully, you can adjust the sensitivity to suit yourself, so you can navigate when you're wearing gloves.

 

The standard model comes with 16GB of memory on board and Vodafone has the exclusive on a 32GB version for now. This could be an issue since there's no way to add more via microSD card.
Performance
It must be said though, that the processor is a bit of a disappointment. It's not that it's slow, far from it. It's pacy and plays HD videos and games without a hitch. But it's the same 1.5GHz model backed by 1GB RAM as we saw in the 920. And at this end of the market, we want to see advances. 1GB RAM is beginning to look a little underpowered these days too, when handsets like the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and Sony Xperia Z are all packing 2GB RAM.
Surprisingly, the 925 doesn't come with wireless charging as standard, like the 920. Instead you'll have to invest in an additional cover that connects to three metal contacts on the back. Perhaps that's how Nokia got the weight down. Wireless charging may not be a deal-breaker, but it was nice to have it in addition to Nokia's other goodies.
Apps and operating system
It's no surprise, but the Windows Store still lags way, way behind the Apple and Android app stores in terms of the number of apps available. It's getting better, with over 140,000 apps to choose from, and it's good to see key names like Spotify and Netflix on there now, even if you still have to pay for Angry Birds.
It's running Windows Phone 8, which is steadily building up an armoury of live tiles to add to the usual colourful static ones. So your People tile shifts and changes constantly to show different views of your friends, the message tile tells you how many outstanding messages you have, the weather channel gives you instant climate updates and more.

There's a short learning curve if you're more used to Android or Apple devices, but Windows Phone is exceptionally easy to use, with a clear, intuitive interface, and it's fast too -- it may only have a dual-core processor, but for opening apps and navigation it easily keeps pace with its quad-core Android rivals.

 Data Sense allows you to track your data so you don't go over your limit and there's a very capable edit suite for your photos with Creative Studio which gives you plenty of options to enhance and edit your pics, so you can colour key elements while leaving others monochrome, blur backgrounds, adjust focus and more. Kids Corner allows your offspring access to games and movies, for instance, without them being able to get into your emails or Facebook.

 And there's more. Nokia knows it has a lot of ground to catch up, and so it's offering more freebies as standard than you'll find on any Android or Apple device. So you get Nokia Music, with free playlists of tunes you can play whenever you like, even download them so you can play them when you're offline.

 Maps has also had some useful and fun additions. It's now called HERE Maps (no, we're not sure why either) and includes City Lens, which allows you to view the scene around you augmented with business and tourist information. Click on a link to bring up additional info and reviews if they're available and there's onscreen travel information too. There's also free satnav with HERE Drive and you can download maps of every country in Europe if you want them.

 This being Nokia you also get 7GB of free cloud storage via SkyDrive. The Me hub allows you to see all your social network updates in one place and there's Office for creating, viewing and editing Word and Excel documents (but not PowerPoint) -- you really do get an awful lot of bang for your buck with a Nokia handset these days.

 Cameras and photography
And then there's the camera. It's only 8.7 megapixels, but Nokia reckons it's added enough elements to it to make it one of the best camphones on the market. It could be right. There's the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens with an extra glass element designed to achieve sharper pictures, a large F2.0 aperture, a dual LED flash and autofocus.

 As with other Nokia cameras it also has the growing range of "lenses" -- software elements that add additional functionality such as Panorama for widescreen views, and Cinemagraph to let you animate elements of a picture, plus many others that you can download so your camera's capabilities aren't limited to what comes with the phone.

There's also Smart Cam, which takes ten shots in quick succession and allows you to edit them in different ways. So you can photograph a moving figure, and show the range of movement across the same background. Or edit out background elements like passers-by that you don't want.
But all these gimmicks would be useless if the picture quality wasn't good to start off with. They are though -- edges appear sharp, colours are accurate, and it stands up well in low light conditions -- this is a very good camphone, and there's a 1.2-megapixel snapper on the front for video calls too, capable of recording video at 720p.

 The large 2,000mAh battery held its end up fairly well delivering a good day and a half of regular use before needing a recharge.

 Conclusion
The Nokia Lumia 925 is a step up from its predecessor the 920 with its thinner, lighter casing and its improved camera. Screen and processor are largely unchanged and the Windows Store is still thinly stocked compared to its rivals, but Nokia compensates with a strong range of freebie apps and features. All this at a sensible price too.