This year has definitely been an interesting one for Nokia (and now Microsoft). A topsy turvy sort of year resulted in an acquisition of the Nokia Devices & Services by Microsoft in April this year with thousands of employees moving to Microsoft aaa(although around half were subsequently made redundant).
Yet throughout this upheaval for the fallen telecoms giant, the pride of Finland continued to churn out new devices although there’s only been one flagship so far; let’s take a closer look at the new Lumia 930, which brings style and impressive specs in a smaller package.
Lumia 930 Key Features:
Here’s a few key features, taken from the Lumia 930 specs list:
- 5 inch 1080p AMOLED display (~441 ppi pixel density), Gorilla Glass 3, ClearBlack display
- LTE Cat 4 ( 150 Mbps DL, 50 Mbps UL), DC-HSDPA
- 32GB internal storage, 2GB RAM, no microSD card
- 20MP camera, Carl Zeiss optics, Optical Image Stabilisation
- 1/2.5″ sensor size, 1.12 µm pixel size, Pureview Technology
- 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Windows Phone 8.1 OS
- 2420 mAh battery (Up to 14h talk-time, 432h standby)
- Colours: Bright Orange, Bright Green, White, Black
Design:
The Lumia 930 looks just as a Lumia should – vibrant colours, a striking display and three capacitive touch keys beneath the display (although Microsoft is now allowing for on-screen touch keys). The bezel around the display provides the perfect frame for the colourful and very personal Live Tiles interface, with a range of accent colours offering additional customisation options.
If there’s one thing that is striking about the Lumia 930 (at least on the Orange variant we had), it’s the rear cover. Over the past few years, Nokia’s range of Lumia devices have all centred on being different and offering vibrant colours including Bright Orange and Bright Green on the Lumia 930. Nokia have always known how to make good hardware and a design language that began with their first Windows Phone, the Lumia 800, has blossomed into stylish devices that stand out from the crowd.
One of our favourite Windows Phone devices is the Lumia 925, a slim polycarbonate and aluminium device that was released in the time of much larger devices such as the Lumia 920 and Lumia 1020. The Lumia 925 offered an unbelievably good experience which ticked all the boxes and the Lumia 930 definitely has some of the same traits. The combination of materials has allowed Nokia to pack the handset full of features whilst keeping the overall size slimmer than an alternative polycarbonate build.
Nokia’s forays into metal have not been completely successful due to concerns that the Lumia 930 is overheating. As with all our reviews, we aim to be completely fair and although they released a software update which improves and somewhat fixed the overheating, it’s worth noting that the handset can get quite hot.
Overall the Lumia 930 manages to pick up where the Lumia 925 left and continues to have a dual-material build that allows Nokia to pack a lot of features into a small space. Let’s take a closer look at some more of the Lumia 930:
Windows Phone 8.1 OS
Back when the Nokia 930 was announced at Build 2014 in April earlier this year, Microsoft decided to launch the handset alongside its new Windows Phone 8.1 OS. Announcement to release took approximately four months in the UK and as the first handset to run the new OS, we’re arguably as interested in the software as we are in the hardware. The new OS brings a few very interesting features which we’ll take a closer look at below.
Cortana
Any discussion about the Lumia 930 wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Cortana. Since Apple launched its personal assistant Siri, we’ve seen a number of companies attempt to rival Apple’s offering. From Samsung with S-Voice to Google with Google Now and now Cortana on Windows Phone, conquering the voice assistant market requires being different.
Cortana is not just a personal voice assistant – in a bid to be different, Microsoft have designed her to be have a more personal touch, but how does she compare to the competition? Let’s first take a look at Cortana:
Like any good personal assistant, Cortana comes with a few nifty features and one of them, Quiet Hours, is designed to give just that – time away from the constant vibrating and pinging of your device as notifications flood in from a variety of sources. Let’s take a closer look at Quiet Hours:
So that’s all well and good but what about Cortana vs its chief rivals? First let’s take a look at Cortana vs Siri on the iPhone 6:
Now let’s check out the major assistants in a head to head with each other in a bid to be best for general knowledge:
So that’s Cortana – a personal assistant that offers the human touch with an array of features. In the initial set up process, Cortana says it is absorbing the internet and in practice, it seems that it really does this. Let’s move on:
Transparent live tiles
In a bid to make the Windows Phone 8.1 OS even more customisable, Microsoft introduced new transparent live tiles that take on the custom background picture set by the user. This greatly improved the Live Tiles concept on Windows Phone (as previously each was a block of colour or a custom picture set by the developer) so let’s take a closer look:
Multi Tasking
Multi Tasking has also been updated in Windows Phone 8.1 with the OS now offering a handy way to shut down apps by tapping the X in the top right corner of the card when in the switcher view. Let’s see the new mutli-tasking in action:
Word Flow:
The Windows Phone keyboard has always been impressive and has gotten better with each new OS version and WP8.1 sees the introduction of Word Flow, a feature that allows you to swipe from letter to letter without lifting your finger whilst typing. The keyboard is arguably the fastest input on a mobile device so let’s see if it lives up to that claim:
Action Centre:
We did say that there were a lot of features to get through so well done for watching the way through and we’ve saved the best until last – just as Cortana is important for Microsoft’s OS, Action Centre is crucial. Windows Phone finally has a unified notifications centre, which satisfies a major criticism that a lot of people have had of the platform. Let’s take Action Centre for a spin:
So Microsoft’s new OS brings a few refinements and features that improve an already-impressive experience. Windows Phone 8.1 is Microsoft’s way of showing that it does take user comments on board and the only other criticism some people may still throw in the direct of Microsoft is the Windows Phone Store which some say can’t rival Android and iOS. Whilst the store certainly isn’t as large, the majority of popular apps are now available on the platform and with Windows 10 arriving next year offering a unified marketplace, the ‘Apps issue’ should soon be forgotten.
Performance
It’s not just the software that’s had refinements and improvements – the hardware has as well. Windows Phone already offered an impressively fast interface when powered by a dual-core CPU but the new breed of devices, including the Lumia 930, are now powered by quad-core devices with ample amounts of RAM. In the case of the Lumia 930, the CPU is a 2.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 with 2GB RAM and together they offer a rapid experience with very little, if any, signs of slowing down with usage.
Nokia Lumia 930 4G Speed Test result (EE)
As we’ve already mentioned, the aluminium and polycarbonate combination resulted in the handset overheating and one potential reason for this is Qi wireless charging. Despite a somewhat refined handset design, Nokia still managed to include Wireless Charging without the need for a separate cover. We found that the wireless charging performance is satisfactory and works as expected, although the handset did overheat a little when charging (as all metal devices do).
The endless list of features doesn’t end there and everything from NFC and Bluetooth to LTE and Wi-Fi worked as advertised. During our mandatory 4G LTE testing, we found that the Lumia 930’s LTE performance is better than the LG G3 and HTC One M8 but not as good as the Samsung Galaxy S5 or Apple iPhone 6.
Battery Life
Under the hood, the Lumia 930 has a non-removable 2420 mAh battery that Nokia claim offers up to 432 hours battery life, Up to 11 hours 30 minutes talk-time on 2G and up to 15 hours 30 minutes talk-time on 3G. For music lovers, the Lumia 930 is slated as being capable of playing music for 3 days and 3 hours from 100% charge to a flat battery and whilst those figures from Nokia make for impressive reading, how did the actual battery life fare?
We performed six types of battery tests on the Lumia 930:
- Standby/no usage (screen turned on a few minutes every so often during the day, no usage of device)
- Low usage (Calls, Texts, Browser, WiFi, IM/Chat, 4 Email Accounts)
- Medium usage (Low Usage + Music Playback, Speed Tests, Video Playback, Social Media)
- High usage (Medium Usage + GPS, Navigation, Video Streaming and Gaming)
- Music Playback (nothing but music playback from 100% to empty battery)
- Video Playback (continuous video playback with no other usage from 100% to 0%)
Let’s see the results:
- Standby/no usage: 5 days 22 hours
- Low Usage: 1 days 23 hours
- Medium Usage: 1 days 07 hours
- High Usage: 9 hours
- Music Playback: 2 days 16 hours (music stored on device), 14 hours (when using Spotify music streaming service)
- Video Playback: 4 hours 17 minutes
Overall, the battery life on the Lumia 930 does seem satisfactory. Like most smartphones, it does begin to struggle with being used heavily constantly throughout a day but it doesn’t take more than a few hours to charge to full which means you can always top the battery up when needed. For most people, this level of battery performance will be more than satisfactory to get through a day.
Camera
If there’s one area of a mobile device that Nokia have an abundance of knowledge about, it is the camera. From as far back as the Nokia N95 through to the Nokia N8, Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 1020 last year, Nokia’s pedigree of smartphone cameras will remain unquestionable but how does the 20MP PureView snapper on the back of the Lumia 930 perform? Essentially the same unit as the camera module in the bigger Lumia 1520, the snapper brings the quality of the 41MP camera on the Lumia 1020 but reduces the resolution whilst also slimming down the size. Here’s some camera samples capture on the Lumia 930:
Now let’s move on to the video camera – the Lumia 930 can record 1080p Full HD video at 30 frames per second and the benefit of optical image stabilisation becomes abruptly clear as videos captured are stable and vivid. With Nokia Rich Recording, not only does the Lumia 930 capture great video but it also picks up great audio to go with it.
Here’s a 1080p video sample captured on the Lumia 930:
Here’s a couple of other Lumia 930 video samples (from around the web):
Overall both photo and video quality on the Lumia 930 is impressive – as the saying goes, the most important camera is the one you have with you and in the case of the Lumia 930, you can rest assured that it will capture the scene exactly when you need it.
Conclusion
When creating the Lumia 930, Nokia set out with a target in mind – to bring the specs of the Lumia 1520 to a smaller package whilst providing a credible global variant of the Nokia Lumia Icon, which is exclusive to Verizon USA. At the same time, the Lumia 930 forms the flagship hero device for Windows Phone 8.1 and coupled with the impressive hardware, the Lumia 930 delivers an excellent Windows Phone experience that ticks a lot of boxes.
Whilst the handset certainly isn’t perfect – and the lack of Nokia Glance Screen is one big negative for the Lumia 930 – the handset does deliver the best Windows Phone experience to date and combine both style and substance to deliver an excellent smartphone experience. It’s not the perfect Lumia we’re all asking for but the Lumia 930 comes very very close.
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