GADGETS AND GIZMOS SPECIAL...Encased In Elegance..Nokia’s Lumia 925

Encased In Elegance

Nokia’s Lumia 925 is a good looking Windows phone with a capable low-light camera

There are slabs and then there are beautiful slabs. Phone design and feel is so subjective, like any design. But for the few days that the Nokia Lumia 925 has lived with me, I’ve enjoyed picking it up, looking at it, feeling it in my hand. I like the materials used. The back is polycarbonate done the classy way and the sides are made of aluminum, giving the device a look of sophisticated solidity. Interestingly, the popping colours of the other Lumia devices are not available for the 925 which is white, black and grey — sort of elegant and understated.
 

The 925 feels just the right weight in your hand. Not as clunky and heavy as its predecessor, the 920. Your fingers go all the way to the opposite edge of the screen and the phone is very easy to hold except for the placement of the camera bump on the back, which seems positioned exactly where your fingers are going to touch the lens all the time.
 

This is a unibody design in which you can’t open the back. In a sense, the 925 is a refresh of the 920 which many people found too heavy, too colourful and sporting a camera that did not quite turn out to be the wonder it was purported to be. So, Nokia  has changed many things in the 925, but in the end, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Certainly, it’s not worth an upgrade from another high-end Nokia phone, definitely not from the 920. But if it’s a first-time Windows phone buy, you should consider the 925.
 

If you were to compare with top-tier phones from other manufacturers, the Lumia 925 actually has mid-range specs. The screen, for example, is now an AMOLED and hypes the colours and blacks a bit, but it isn’t the topmost available spec in screens. Nonetheless, it’s very pleasant to look at. Personally, I find the text while browsing a bit on the smaller side and the keyboard too tiny though letters are distinct from each other.
 

The operating system is Windows 8 and all Windows 8 phones look much the same on the inside. There isn’t a great deal to do on a Windows phone despite apps slowly on the rise. An Android or iOS user like me would feel readily bored with a Windows phone unless I was testing it out for something specific. On the other hand, for those who don’t want to be overly involved with their smartphones and to fiddle and customise all the time, Windows 8 phone offers a simpler experience.
 

Nokia has for a long while been differentiating from other phone makers with its cameras, having come up with the 41 megapixel innovation found on the 808 PureView and now the Lumia 1020.

The camera on these two phones is for those who really love taking photographs and want to use a powerful camera when they don’t have larger cameras around. But everyone doesn’t want that and the 925 is for, possibly, the majority who like taking pictures but aren’t serious enough to have to edit RAW images and otherwise fiddle. Quick snap and share on social networks — that’s what the 925 aims at. But there are other things that are nice about the camera. The optical image stabilisation makes for steadier pictures and more so videos.

A rearrangement of the lens and the addition of a sixth element to the assembly makes for better low-light pictures, but sometimes with noise. While it does not necessarily beat the Galaxy S4 or iPhone with its camera overall, the 925 does do a good job of low-light snaps. It also has a lot of software tricks, thanks to Nokia’s Smart Cam which lets you take action shots and remove unwanted objects, etc. An upcoming update to the software will bring more features and apparently improve image processing on the camera.

Nokia 925 is priced at Rs 33,499.  

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