back to article 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 …

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  1. Stoke the atom furnaces

    Android

    Great phone. Does it come in Android?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Android

      "Great phone. Does it come in Android?"

      No - Nokia are amongst other things focused on performance and security - so Android wouldn't be a good fit.

  2. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    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.

    1. Pie

      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.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Erm, if Android users didn't keep posting about things behind "behind" in terms of specs then it would be possible for everyone to release one phone a year in each price bracket.

    3. Squander Two
      WTF?

      Quantity.

      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?

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: Quantity.

        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.

        1. Useless User

          Re: Quantity.

          Still waiting for the triangular or heptagonal killer device...

      2. Useless User

        Re: Quantity.

        yes, Yes, YES

      3. Ian Watkinson
        FAIL

        Re: Quantity.

        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...

  3. Jack Project

    Maybe, maybe not.

    I'm not sure whether I should get one or not, I will wait until Eadon tells me what he thinks.

    1. sabroni Silver badge

      Re: Maybe, maybe not.

      He says "buy a mediocre android". Shouldn't be tricky to find....

    2. dogged
      Meh

      Re: Maybe, maybe not.

      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.

      1. DutchP

        Re: Maybe, maybe not.

        Right...and using an article about some phone to tell everybody how much you hate Eadon is something else entirely of course, eh?

        1. dogged
          Thumb Up

          Re: Maybe, maybe not.

          Well played, sir.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Maybe, maybe not.

        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.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Maybe, maybe not.

          "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...

        2. Useless User

          Re: Maybe, maybe not.

          Most local, regional and national administrations in Germany that supposedly danced with Linux in 2010 never took the girl home in the end and have instead almost entirely remained at the Windows party.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The definition of an idiot....

    ..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 :-)

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: The definition of an idiot....

      What are you on about? How is releasing new phones "the same thing"? How is growth in market share "the same result"? I think they don't want a different result!

  5. Andrew_b65
    Thumb Up

    I just knew...

    ..it would be Andrew O.

    Keep it up. Single-handedly attempting to 'turn' the mass of El Reg towards the light, or the darkside depending on your faith.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @Andrew_b65

      "It is no surprise that every man has his price. What is disappointing is that, in so many cases, that price is so low." -- Disraeli (or was it Hobbes?)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Looks good

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And as far as I can see all the apps I need are available.

      It does indeed have a browser.

    2. Getriebe

      Re: Looks good

      Snap, same here. And as our software is/has been written to use 8 and live tiles its starting to get interesting.

    3. David Black
      WTF?

      Re: Looks good

      "And as far as I can see all the apps I need are available."

      Really? Wow I wasn't aware there was a shill payments app.

      Seriously, Win 8 may be many things but a world of 3rd party support and apps it isn't.

  7. Simon Rockman

    I love mine but..

    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

    1. Disco Dance Donkey
      Happy

      Re: I love mine but..

      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?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I love mine but..

        If you have it on Flickr I wouldn't mind seeing the image? Have a link? Obviously that means you are tieing a Flickr account with your El Reg user, which you may not want to do....

        1. Disco Dance Donkey

          Re: I love mine but..

          Here you go, this should leave my anonymity intact too.

          This one:

          http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5326/9093080294_940ab564a1_o.jpg

          However my wife prefers this:

          http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3801/9093079972_97d752b686_o.jpg

          1. Kristian Walsh Silver badge

            Re: I love mine but..

            Nice pic. Interesting how the lens-flare actually adds to the image :)

          2. Mike Taylor

            Re: I love mine but..

            I think you wife is right, if you're after a picture of a cow. Gorgeous!

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I love mine but..

            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.

          4. Squander Two
            Coat

            Re: I love mine but..

            I'm with your wife. Er, I mean, I think she's right. About which photo is better.

      2. Pie
        Thumb Up

        Re: I love mine but..

        Sounds a great picture any chance of a link to it?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I love mine but..

      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.

      1. David Simpson 1
        Devil

        Re: I love mine but..

        So spend £500 on a device with a built in satnav but don't use it, buy another GPS instead - LOL!

  8. Buzzword

    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.

  9. Tom7
    WTF?

    What I learnt from this review

    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???

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: What I learnt from this review

      On the plus side, Eadon doesn't like it.

    2. Mark .

      Re: What I learnt from this review

      "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.

  10. Felix Krull
    Paris Hilton

    Cor, that's one fugly statue. What's wrong with bikini babes?

  11. Cosmo
    Mushroom

    At sea, things move slowly...

    ...unless you're on one of Elop's burning platforms in the North Sea. In that case you have 30 seconds and things move very, very quickly

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: At sea, things move slowly...

      Yes, ships do tend to sink pretty damn fast.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

    I was in the market for a WinPho8 until the Prism revelation. Now I have my FirefoxOS phone. It does everything that I want without reporting back to Big Brother.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

      Are you running your own ISP and mobile network too?

      You do realise that even if your phone isn't collecting data, the mobile network is.

    2. Tapeador
      Black Helicopters

      Re: I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

      "...without reporting back to big brother"

      So you think...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

      But you do want a Polly in your Pocket...

    4. David Simpson 1
      FAIL

      Re: I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

      Your network still reads all your data - on the bright side you can do so little with Firefox OS that they have nothing to report!

  13. David Hicks
    Stop

    Wasn't this the problem with Nokia's last generation?

    "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?

    1. Mark .

      Re: Wasn't this the problem with Nokia's last generation?

      I was a bit confused by the flagships comment - it's pretty normal for previous flagships to still be on sale (S3 is still on sale I believe; multiple iphones are on sale for years even though they're all classed as "flagships").

      Unless Nokia are claiming something more specific, but what they say isn't quoted directly in the article.

  14. Peter Storm
    Happy

    Twas worth reading

    just for the word "dandled".

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The only thing putting me off getting the Nokia 925 is the leaked Lumia EOS. The Lumia's main selling feature at the high end is the camera so putting £400-500 down for a high end phone knowing its going to be replaced is not going to happen.

    The best thing Nokia can do at the moment is officially announce the EOS, announce availablity and price point so the potential customers torn between the two don't hold off buying the Lumia 925 if the EOS model is too expensive or too far away for them.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't want a US spy in my pocket.

    I was in the market for a WinPho8 until the Prism revelation. Now I have my FirefoxOS phone. It does everything that I want without reporting back to Big Brother.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No removable battery and no expansion is an immediate loss of for me. Then I read it's got an easily scratched screen and a camera that will soon be superseded. Add to that plenty of features missing in the os as well as apps, and the fact that I'm not aware of any way by i can remove all ms apps and services like i can with my rooted android, in light of prism revelations, i wouldn't touch this with a barge pole.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Few phones have these features.

      The glass is the same as on most phones, Corning gorilla glass 2.

      There is another unit coming out with the superb pureview camera, but this isn't a "general purpose" phone. It will be bulkier and heavier, so suited more to photography enthusiasts who don't mind a bit more heft.

      The pureview 808 still has the best camera on a phone around.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        iPhone has shown expansion and so on are not features the general public consider critical. It makes no sense to cram every feature into every phone when more people would be put off the bulkiness than are turned on by those features. They have phones with these features for the (apparently niche) market who require them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Few phones like, for example, the best selling Samsung Galaxy and Note series? None of which are also particularly thick might I add.

          1. JDX Gold badge

            They are not best-sellers because of those features.

  18. Andy Hards
    Thumb Up

    I got mine about a month ago

    Only problem is that you must enable the screen lock before putting it in your pocket or strange things happen. I have made a few calls to people I haven't spoken to in years and quite a few time the screen seems to have zoomed in by quite a lot with no way to zoom back out other than a restart.

    Positives are the wireless charging, the camera and the Nokia Music mixes

    Negatives - the music app seems to have a thousand screens but I can never find the one I want

  19. Aoyagi Aichou

    Yes, yes....

    The camera is a miracle, I get it. But what about the OS, is it getting itself fixed? Before the next ice age? The number of those "little problems" one might run into with it is very alarming.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yes, yes....

      I've just sold my Nokia 920 after about 10 months with windows phone. While I liked the interface and features the pace of development is just stupid. Microsoft are still 2 or more years behind Android and iOS yet there doesn't seem to be any urgency.

      There were a number of apps I really wanted which didn't exist (niche ones, but they exist for iOS and Android) and i've been getting PPI calls quite often but there's no way to automatically reject calls from a specific contact.

    2. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Yes, yes....

      I'm still on WP7.8 and that seems pretty OK to me! I agree the music app is a PITA though.

  20. Steve 76

    I'm waiting for that Windows XP Phone

    Or, Windows 3.1 would be cool retro

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    it was stated that there can be only one "Flagship" per fleet therefore the idea of 3 different phones being a flagship makes no sense. I disagree. Since a navy can have multiple fleets and each of these has a flagship, that would carry over to the analogy presented by Nokia. I would propose that the 3 major USA carriers are each a 'fleet' each with their own flagship phone: 920 for AT&T, 928 for Verizon and 925 for T-Mobile.

  22. M.

    Key Words: "Best *Windows* Phone..."

    Because it's "a Windows Phone" it is doomed to the dustbin of irrelevance.

    On this side of the pond the word "Windows" is a swear word. We work (fail, actually) with Windows at our day jobs. We get bad customer (dis) service from technicians using Windows computers that constantly fight the agent, fail, or are nebulously "down right now". Our drive thru screens (Windows CE based) display the (stuck) Windows graphic, or blue screen - eventually papered over with a rain-soiled cardboard sign saying "We'll have your total at the window". Microsoft-powered subway ticket machines just sit there, unresponsive. Kiosks display Windows internal failure messages.

    Yeah, we Yanks see lots of examples, and almost daily, of how "Windows" sucks in our digital lives.

    Why the hell would we want to pay our own hard earned money to participate in more of this disappointment and agony on a (should be stupid-simple) telephone!?!

    The only thing worthy about it might be that Nokia's competitors (Apple, Google) might take a cue from what looks well done on it, and take a stab at introducing the same feature(s) on their offerings. (An omage to Microsoft's "embrace and extend" gameplan.)

    NOBODY on this isde of the pond cares *what* Microsoft phones do... we just don't care.

    1. David Simpson 1
      FAIL

      Re: Key Words: "Best *Windows* Phone..."

      So you're a dutchman abroad ?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Key Words: "Best *Windows* Phone..."

      Interesting then that Windows Phones are outselling Blackberries by 8:1 in the colonies as of the end of April 2013....(0.7% versus 5.6% market share)

    3. Useless User

      Re: Key Words: "Best *Windows* Phone..."

      "NOBODY on this isde of the pond cares *what* Microsoft phones do... we just don't care."

      Well, you seem to.

  23. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Nail on head

    Even though we know Mr O. loves these phones he identifies the two problems facing Nokia: it's confusing the market with too many "flagships". Samsung can afford the spraygun approach, Nokia can't. It should be adopting a very clear Apple-like approach: entry level, last year's and extremely desirable. But at the end of the day there is only so much Nokia can do: if Microsoft doesn't pull its finger out and update the OS then the fleet is sunk. And, even if Microsoft does come up with the goods, who's to say that Windows Phone 8.5 (presumably to avoid confusion with the x86 only version of Windows 8.1) will run on all the current hardware.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      who's to say that Windows Phone 8.5 ..... will run on all the current hardware.

      Precedence would say possibly, but 9 won't and won't run the same apps.

  24. Anomalous Cowshed

    Let's handicap the phone to give the competition a chance

    I'm not a power user, I have one of the smallest and weakest smartphones available, but my basic spec was this: open file system, SD card slot and removable battery. Without this, how can you expect to be taken seriously? I don't know about the file system of Windows Phone 8, so I won't comment. But why, when you are struggling to be taken seriously, why come up with a phone, albeit magnificently designed and specified, with just 16 Gb of storage, which cannot be upgraded, when this thing is supposed to be able to record magnificent videos in full HD? How many minutes of full HD will users be able to record before they must quickly remove the files from the machine in order to continue using it? It must be a self-destructive streak from Nokia. Or sheer magnanimity towards the competition. As a former owner of a model 8300 Communicator, I witnessed this strange attitude years ago. I could only explain it as "Let's handicap the phone to give the competition a chance", and I reckon they still feel the same way then.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Wow and Flutter"? ( 3rd page)

    Clipping, intermodulation distortion, mechanical distortion in the microphone capsule and AGC level pumping ( as a start) .I would expect in overload from high SPL`s.

    Not mechanical frequency stability problems.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/coat_32.png

  26. tony2heads
    Trollface

    Seems like a good camera that can phone as well

    There is a lot about the camera quality in the review.

  27. Mike Brown

    Id buy one....

    if it had stock android. I diont want samsungs bloatware and plasticky build. HTC are virtually dead. Moto is a non starter. And i dislike the stylings of the nexus. So Sony it is. But if this or the 720, had android, id be all over it.

  28. IGnatius T Foobar
    FAIL

    Decent hardware, crap software

    Nokia still knows how to build a quality handset, and this one is no exception. Too bad they loaded it with Windows Phone, an operating system so bad it makes the handset practically unusable.

    1. Squander Two

      To each their own.

      While recognising that the iPhone represented a veritable revolution in usability, it never worked for me: I have tried and tried and tried, and I find the damn things clunky and unhelpful and awkward to the extent that I want to throw them against a wall. I took a gamble on Windows Phone -- got a Lumia 800 because of an insanely good offer on Quidco, thinking, hey, for that sort of money, I'll risk a second-rate OS -- and was pleasantly surprised to find that it is the single best OS I've ever used on any device. It may not suit everyone, but then what does? I'd hardly call it "unusable". Which bit can't you use?

  29. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    "Years of Madness"

    What, when they made a range of phones to meet different price points which had different USPs, good hardware, and an OS which was back on track (as Belle demonstrated despite the internal turmoil), the biggest app store, finally had MeeGo out and a transition strategy to it, the biggest market share and delivered phones like the N8 which is only now, 2.5 years later, finally being equalled in other flagship phones?

    And then the burning platform memo came out.

  30. Zack Mollusc
    Meh

    Tempting

    Looks nice, I would be tempted to consider one if the last Nokia I had (N95) had not been so annoying and the last few Microsoft OSs had not been so annoying. To heck with them both.

  31. Christian Berger

    Fascinating

    Fascinating how those "reviews" and "tests" always focus on features also commonly found in feature phones. However on a feature phone I can simply connect it to a PC and get my pictures out again that way. No special software required, no facebook account required.

  32. meanioni

    It's not that bad

    For my sins I've got an iPhone 5 from work, a Nokia 920 as my main phone and an Android phone as a spare. I replaced my Galaxy SIII with the Nokia.

    I wouldn't say I'm a fan of any specific phone, but the Windows phone and UI is not as bad as many people make out once you get used to it. In some ways it's quite intuitive. The Galaxy SIII promised great things but I got rid of it after 3 major faults (and understand that I am not alone in this respect): cracking bezel, rebooting randomly or freezing and random times when the sound was distorted/crackling. It went back to Samsung and they said nothing was wrong with it.... hmmm

    Liking the 920 more - robust, well made. Sure the OS needs tweaking but day to day I don't notice any major issues and all the apps I use frequently are there.

    When I switch from the 920 to my iPhone, the iOS interface does feel a bit dated - particularly the one button approach.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Re: It's not that bad

      Interesting how my S3 (and now my S4, and previously my Nexus One) never exhibit the so-called flaws that these "switchers to WP" "users" go on about. My (now the wife's) S3 bezel is still perfect, it doesn't reboot or freeze, and the sound is clear and nice.

      On the other hand, my Lumia 800 has long been relegated to "feature phone, calls only" status due to its complete inadequacy for anything else. Not that it crashes, but the screen got scratched very quickly (my N1, S3 and S4 still have a pristine screen) before I had even time to put a protector, and the OS is too limited to be called a smartphone OS. Incomplete bluetooth, no access to the filesystem, one volume control for everything, slow and limited browser, no way to organize apps, no notifications unless a tile is visible, etc.

      I must say I do like the mandatory camera button, and wish all smartphones had it. But if it implies also having a mandatory useless bing button, then I can live without it.

      1. meanioni

        Re: It's not that bad

        "so called flaws"??? just google the three I mentioned and you will find thousands of people having the same issues.

        If you had a good one - great, you were lucky. But I'm b*ggered if I am paying for a supposed top of the range phone which has such flaws and which Samsung refuse to do anything about.

  33. Stuart Ball

    I have the Navigon software from Garmin on my HTC 8x and it does run hot, although they seem to have improved the consumption so that it doesn't consume power faster than it's getting from the charger.

    Perhaps Garmin should ask for an override so that power doesn't go to the battery to charge it when Navigon is running, and just bypasses that "switch" into the circuit. (not tech engineer) that should reduce heat generated for that purpose.

    Navigon does seem to generate a lot of heat in the phone, but it's got an awful lot going on. Not looked at a CPU trace whilst its been running to see.

    However Navigon is by far the best GPS software I have come across for mobile phones. Not cheap, but very good. If they could sort out the heat.....even better.

  34. Juroen

    Just wondering

    I'm still a bit amazed at some of the comments; it's not that you have to use a Nokia with Windows Phone.

    Over the years I used al kinds of phones, from Symbian, to IoS and Android.

    Who cares what OS is on it, as long as the phone meets your requirements. Might be an android device, an iPhone or a Windows Phone.

    For me the Nokia's work out fine; especcially because of the build quality. For another person there seems to be different thoughs about the matter, so get another phone. Must be able to pivk a phone without insulting other people, though...........

  35. Tom 35

    But is it good enough to win back the market?

    No.

    Oh and what is this "back"?

    The couple percent they lost since they launched Winphone?

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