Nokia Lumia 925: The best Windows Phone yet According to Nokia, the new Lumia 925 is its "third flagship" phone at the moment. It hasn’t retired the other two Lumias (the 920 and the 928) which continue to sail proudly alongside the 925, with all their flags fluttering. However there are times when one must wave a pedantic arm from the back of the class where the …
Another Lumia? If they're not careful they'll be as bad as HTC are/were and Sumsung are getting with so many damn devices it's hard to know which are the turkeys and which are genuinely good devices for the money.
The build and specifications look good, and while I like some features in WinPhone as some are well thought out and work well, I find a lot of the basics extremely irritating.
As a designer and UI specialist I find (subjectively) that the interface is ghastly and there's too much "hidden" functionality than is not obvious and instead you're left searching around the interface for arbitrary ellipses (...) or swiping randomly in the hope of finding what you're looking for. But then the latest Android versions have gone backwards on this invisible interface of "..." front as well, which isn't good.
I wouldn't describe the ellipses as arbitrary they are always in the bottom right of the screen. If there is another screen to swipe to then a small part of that is shown on the RHS of the current screen, although some third party apps seem to break this rule. The main screen, this was taken away as it was considered to be a waste of real estate.
Regardless of what you think of the iPhone, I dislike the changes Apple made to the market. Back in the day, the fact that Nokia had so many different phones was considered one of their good points. Want a smart business phone? Nokia have one. Want a sliding phone with a camera? Nokia have one. Want a phone which unfolds in an esoteric way and can change colour? Nokia have one. Want a shock-proof phone because you keep jumping off mountains? Nokia have one. Want a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard? Nokia have one. I liked that, and, judging by their market dominance at the time, so did everyone else.
Apple have conditioned people to believe that there should be One Phone, to the extent that Nokia now face criticism for releasing a range of phones to suit different needs. This article, even though it's a glowing recommendation of the 925, is still immersed in that attitude. Not everyone likes the bright colours of the earlier Lumias? Well, no, but they all come in, among the other colours, black: there's choice. Shame they've got rid of the wireless charging? But they haven't: you can still buy a 920: there's choice.
Is choice really that bad?
When you describe it like that, I completely agree about having a good range of devices - that have differentiating features.
The problem I have is that we're left looking at a line of devices that are (superficially) very similar to look at and who's to know which ones are actually worth the money and which ones are more land-fill?
Take a look at this page: http://www.htc.com/uk/smartphones/
Aside from the two Windows 8 devices (proving that it's not just Nokia that make them), the rest of the phones on the page are distinguishable by small variations in size (don't forget, they're all scaled to one size), by name... err HTC One - One SV, One X+, One XL, One X, One S and One V... wtf? By the marketing tag rubbish such as "Simply stunning" or "Exceptional performance comes standard" and the inevitable near 5 star rating lies that we expect to see on a manufacturer's own website.
There's probably only one or two phones on that page that are worth the bother for the money, a couple that are penis extensions for those with money and the rest? Probably land fill.
Looking at a similar Nokia page: http://www.nokia.com/gb-en/phones/lumia/ the problem's the same. Other than a couple of more rounded, possibly smaller, devices they all largely look the same and feature the same baffling product numbers that seem to make little sense and there's no order to on the page.
What you're missing Nokia also used to do, was deliberately crippled their phones, and then say, aha if you want that, you need the model that's coming out in 6 months.
Look at the communicator series.
2 B&W ones, ok lets forgive them the first, as there was nothing else.
However, as the 9110 came out, colour screens were available, Nokia's answer, wait till the 9210.
9210, people were starting to use Wifi, however Nokias Answer, wait till the 9500....
Also Nokias software updates were rare, almost never gave you new functionality, and were almost always minor bug fixes.
Apples releases (and for that matters googles) add functionality to a device you already own, adding value to it.
If you think Nokia changed it's tune, just all those Windows 7.8 users, who had them sometimes less than 12 months before being told...want windows 8? Hah, buy a new phone, or get some of it (no apps though) with 7.8
For that, Nokia won't get any more of my money for their phones...
Eadon doesn't think. Eadon is Google's Hate Machine™. If it's MS or Apple, Eadon hates it.
If there's an article about a non MS or Apple technology, Eadon will use it to say how much he hates Apple and MS.
If there's an article about a Google technology, Eadon will post that Open Source cures cancer and that WP gives you crabs.
The algorithm is really very simple, and based on their fabulous webcrawling tech.
We should applaud Eadon for the technical achievement that it is, a testament to what can be done when guerrilla-marketers get to order engineers around.
Eadong gets his numbers wrong though. He claimed one of the German councils saved something like £4 billion using open source when it was actually £4 million.
Plus he conveniently forgot to mention the other big Linux deployment where they actually went back to Windows and Office as Linux and open office didn't cut it.
"He claimed one of the German councils saved something like £4 billion using open source when it was actually £4 million."
Actually it cost tens of millions more than it saved (IBM threw something like £50 million at the project), still hasnt been completed a decade later, and when they need to do real work, they have to access Windows sessions via Citrix...
..is to keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result.
As much as you like to harp on about the quality of the camera, I believe for most people that is just one of the things that matter. Most will be perfectly happy to use the camera on the iPhone, which is already quite good.
Now, if Nokia instead were to introduce a hifi audio version, then I might be interested. Sort of like a HiFi Man or Colorfly with a nice interface. Especially if they were to copy the styling of the Colorfly C4 :-)
At work we have always been given iPhones. Android is banned for security reasons. Windows phones are now being taken up by many as they are more interesting to most. WinPhone 8 looks good, feels good and you can choose your screen size and model...And as far as I can see all the apps I need are available.
Using it as a Sat Nav on a longish drive (120 miles), it got hot, very hot, so hot that it crashed and lost time and date. Pointing the car cooling vents at it prevented a re-occurrence, but something is not right.
I'm also having bluetooth pairing issues that may or may not be finger trouble or my Jawbone ERA but I had no problems with the Nokia 800. When it works the combination of the ERA and Windows Phone is wonderful.
Battery life is a huge issue, it's iPhone-like in that if you use apps heavily it'll be flat by tea-time.
I'm a bit snobby about cameras, and generally of the view that a mobile can't possibly rate against anything where the lens is four times thicker than a mobile phone but the snaps I've taken with it are astonishingly good.
Simon
I find that strange, mine has survived a good "beasting" of driving around the Scottish Highlands as my primary navigation device from Saturday - Wednesday. Apart from some interesting routes (chosen as they were much shorter, and graded an A road, but were a single track through a cow field, more on that later) that you can't blame on the GIS software. So I'm two weeks in to having the phone. Apart from the odd camera related restart (Swapchat), which I can live with it's not doing anything bad.
Now, to that cow field. Some background: I'm a semi-pro photographer, in the fact I've had photos published in design related publications in the UK, Netherlands and Holland. I have a nice array of cameras, D SLR, to Prosumer, to Compact and in this cow field the Lumia took the best picture I feel I've ever taken. Saturation is far higher than my Sony Alpha, but as we only have my Lumix and phone to hand (we weren't getting the SLR out of the boot with horned cows brushing our car), the Nokia was bounds ahead of a dedicated camera, the light conditions were challenging and it just performed. I'm quite happy to provide a picture if Mr Orlowski wants to put it up?
Nice pics... I often find that the spur of the moment pic, when you've only got a mobile or what have you, can sometimes produce the best pictures, whereas carting round a DSLR you can sometimes miss the shot in the whole "quick get it out of the bag", "why's everything black, oh sodding lens cap" type of panic.
ME: "Doctor Doctor it hurts when I do this!! What should I do?"
Doctor: "Don't do it."
Probably worth investing the £80 in a decent GPS, rather than burning out your £500 phone - no matter what the make. I use my phone's GPS to find out where something is if I'm walking nearby. If I'm going to take photos at my best friends wedding, I will take my camera, not pull out a phone, but I'm happy using it to snap a quick group photo on a night out. Horses for courses.
Bought one last week. It's a great phone, with a lovely screen, but marred by a mediocre OS.
There's no notification center. Multi-tasking is limited. The browser doesn't have a "forward" button (this sounds like a tiny detail, but in practice it's quite irritating). The status bar doesn't show the battery percentage, just a small icon. The status bar disappears most of the time (this is touted as a feature, but there's no way to disable it). You can't scroll through Youtube videos; you can only jump forward or backward 30 seconds at a time.
My biggest gripe is that the default font is massive. Using e.g. the Facebook app, you actually see less information on this phone's 4.5" screen than on an old iPhone's 3.5" screen. The email client has the same problem.
The lack of apps isn't so much of an issue: the important ones are there, and for most of the rest I can use the browser. Overall though WP8 doesn't stand up to iOS, at least for me. It's a shame as I'm quite the fan of MS otherwise.
It's a mediocre phone with mediocre apps, mediocre UI, rotten chance of getting updates and a screen that scratches to buggery. All of these things are admitted in the article in about as many words. Apple has a better app store. Samsung has a better camera. The UI needs 'dozens of tweaks'. The unlock screen feels like a beta. Nokia's history of updates is rotten. Nokia has a history of shipping the "latest" version of the OS only to have it completely replaced and made obsolete months later and anyone who got sucked in can go cry somewhere else. Microsoft kills months to years rewriting the OS with no visible benefit to the user. Get your screen protection organised pronto.
The only reason the reviewer can think of that you'd actually want to buy one is that, if you want to buy a Nokia, well, it's better than all the other Nokias. Yet, somehow, the tone of the review is positive???
"Apple has a better app store. Samsung has a better camera."
No, the Galaxy Zoom has a better camera is what it said - and that's a dedicated smart camera. Whilst it is another option for someone wanting phone+camera, it's less likely to fit the bill for something that fits in your pocket, and you carry around all the time.
The point about apps was more if you wanted complete app coverage - basically the problem is that there are still companies only catering to the minority of Apple users, not even with an Android app. (Though personally I'd rather simply not do business with a company if they want to lock me out, rather than having it dictate what phone I have to buy. And on a real smartphone, a web browser works just fine for websites anyway.)
So yes, it is a positive review if those are the only down points - and one of those down points will likely be challenged with the Pureview announcement now just weeks away.
"Nokia’s explanation is that all three, um, "flagships" sit at the top of the range, and each has its own USP."
Wasn't that exactly what destroyed their market-leading position in the first place? A whole bunch of models with overlapping features but no single 'top of the line' that had everything, so nobody knew what to buy?
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