That preamble aside, the Lumia 's performance is remarkably smooth. Note we didn't say fast -- not that it doesn't display considerable speed when piloting through its live tile homescreen or app list. No, it's definitely speedy, but there's no arguing that the handset moves at its own fluid pace. It appears as if all WP navigation takes on a consistent cadence; it's a UI that favors the charm of its animations over the immediacy of loading applications.
Oddly, too, though it consistently scores higher than the Lumia in benchmarks, it feels like it's operating at a more leisurely pace: it doesn't launch apps quite as promptly, and scrolling isn't as brisk. Where that more diminutive phone zips, this one floats.
It may frustrate users accustomed to lightning-quick smartphone responses, but eventually the 's flow wins you over until you completely forget it was a distraction in the first place. Stacked up against its WP comrades old and relatively new, including mid-rangers and high-end handsets, the disappoints.
Web browsing on the Lumia is handled well by the native Internet Explorer app, although, as highlighted by that SunSpider result up there, full desktop pages can take some time to fully render -- about 30 seconds on average.
We pulled off pinch to zoom without a hitch, with no white spaces or checker-boarding. It was Andy Lees , Microsoft's former Windows Phone chief, who claimed late last year that the company's resistance to issue LTE-capable handsets stemmed from a desire to create longer-lasting, more power efficient handsets. Remember the Thunderbolt?
Sounds like it would be enough and it is Compared to all the Lumias that have come before it, the 's charge does nearly double duty, holding on a respectable four hours and 29 minutes -- hardly an impressive result. Under the duress of real-world usage -- that's with the brightness at its medium setting, Twitter set to sync at 15 min, one push mail account and GPS and WiFi connected -- we were able to squeeze just about two full days from one charge.
Make use of Mango's battery saver settings and we're convinced moderate to light users will enjoy nearly 72 hours of productivity. Like a beacon of hope shining in the midst of this less-than-perfect storm comes the Lumia 's 8-megapixel rear shooter.
Nokia's imaging know-how, cemented in the outing of its megapixel PureView , elevates this device beyond the flavorlessness of its workhorse performance and into a realm that quite nearly rivals the heights attained by Samsung's Galaxy S II and Apple's iPhone 4S. Hold down the dedicated camera key and you'll wake the phone from sleep directly to the camera app -- a handy shortcut when photographic inspiration unexpectedly strikes.
And while the shutter can easily be triggered by this very same hardware key, you can also tap onscreen, hold to focus and snap, allowing the sensor to adjust for the scene, white balance, ISO and exposure. Or you can manually tweak these settings, as well as swap out the , 8-megapixel resolution for , 7-megapixel shots. The 's imaging software doesn't quite match the superior optimization on the N9, but it certainly outranks the As you'll see in the gallery of sample shots, the phone's module displays a knack for depth of field, crisp replication of detail and balanced color.
While you won't be able to appreciate this astonishing performance on that x display, you'll sit back and smile when those pics stream across your desktop. Video on the performs just as admirably, with the phone set to record at p. A few hiccups did surface during playback -- you'll notice the sensor occasionally adjust the focus as we pan degrees.
Audio clarity also suffers slightly, but we'll chalk that up to the high winds howling in the background as we filmed. Users familiar with Mango's underpinnings our full Windows Phone 7. But even as Tango's suite of UI improvements wait in the wings, prospective Lumia owners can still savor this older, slightly over-ripened software. Clean design abounds in this mobile phone OS for dummies -- and that's a compliment. From the wide-blocked live tile homescreen to the easily accessible and alphabetically categorized app menu, all the complicated and unnecessary bits that would confound the less nimble smartphone user are tucked out of sight.
All told, the experience is amazingly intuitive and fluid, as we've said before, though it could frustrate power users with its lack of personalization options. To Microsoft's credit, the never lags or stutters, defaulting instead to that measured, graceful flow we described earlier. Certain applications load appreciably quicker than others, particularly native ones, but thanks to that pristine, visual uniformity decreed by Microsoft, even the slowest of apps manages to dazzle.
Gone, too, are the days when WP critics could deride Redmond's smartphone ecosystem for a paucity of these pinnable tiles, as there are now over 40, 80, apps available in its Marketplace. Blessedly, 80 percent of these are removable, so while this handset may ship with a plump software load, users at least have the option to clean it up and make the most of that allotted 16GB of storage.
In a welcome turn of events, Nokia is also releasing the to the public with Internet Sharing enabled from the outset; an option that was sorely missing on T-Mobile's Lumia and the unlocked This is Windows Phone's first dance with LTE and, despite being late to the ball, the Lumia still gets to surf along those radio waves -- they're just no longer as incredibly blazing.
Wayne Lam, another IHS analyst, said IHS believes that Microsoft substantially discounted its software licensing fees on the Lumia to match the overall lower manufacturing costs. IHS said that Nokia kept the Lumia hardware costs down primarily with the use of a single-core processor and limited DRAM, while still achieving competitive performance with the Skyrocket.
Source: iHS Suppli. IHS compared the Lumia with an Android phone, partly to note how it might compete in the low-cost smartphone market now dominated by Android. Even lower memory densities are possible for use by Windows Phone, IHS said, which would allow production of even more cost-competitive smartphones in the future.
Regarding the full range of components in the Lumia , IHS said Qualcomm was the biggest single supplier, providing the applications processor, baseband processor, power management and radio frequency transceiver.
Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. His email address is mhamblen computerworld. I went into the Lumia expecting an excellent photo experience, but it's really simply mediocre.
That's too bad, because there aren't many phones on the market that can snap great looking photos, and given Microsoft's insistence that Windows Phone is a pro at quickly capturing important moments, this is a place where this phone could have shined.
I was very pleasantly surprised by the battery life of the Lumia. Going into an LTE phone review, I tend to have fairly low expectations for battery performance, but the proved itself as a viable option for a full day's work. According to Nokia, you can expect about 7 hours of talk time on the phone.
Now, I don't really spend that much time talking, but I was happy to report that getting through a typical day of calls, lots of email, Twitter, and web browsing was no problem — even on a fairly constant LTE connection. Furthermore, in our brute force rundown test continuous YouTube while connected to both Wi-Fi and LTE, max screen brightness, and max volume I got 4 hours and 43 minutes. In good coverage areas, I saw download speeds as high as 19Mbps, with upstream hovering around 3 or 4Mbps.
It probably also doesn't hurt that almost no one is using the company's "real" 4G network. Phone calls were crisp and clear on the handset. I'm happy to say that during my testing, I didn't have a single dropped call. That could be luck, but I'm hoping it's not. The speakerphone worked well on the Lumia , though I thought it sounded a bit sharp for my ears, and not quite as loud as I would have liked.
Compared to my annoyingly quiet Galaxy Nexus, however, it might as well have been a PA system. As far as general performance is concerned, as I said in the hardware section, the Lumia is more than capable of handling anything you throw at it. Of course, what you throw at it is tightly bound by the Windows Phone way of doing things, which all but ensures that there's never too much going on at once. If I had to speculate, I would say it's the stringent methodology of this OS that allows it to seem smooth and stable during the majority of use.
Quite simply, Microsoft isn't letting these phones bite off more than they can chew. Let me just put this bluntly: I think it's time to stop giving Windows Phone a pass. I think it's time to stop talking about how beautifully designed it is, and what a departure it's been for Microsoft, and how hard the company is working to add features. I am very aware of the hard work and dedication Microsoft has put into this platform, but at the end of the day, Windows Phone is just not as competitive with iOS and Android as it should be right now.
Before you cry foul, keep in mind that I went into this review wanting to fall madly in love with this phone. But like a book with a beautiful jacket and a plot full of holes, I found myself wanting more. A lot more. The problems with Windows Phone are myriad, many small. But it's a death by a thousand cuts. And all those little problems were once again immediately apparent to me the moment I started using the Lumia The most glaring issues also happen to be some of the oldest issues — things you think at this point would have been dealt with.
Scrolling in third party apps, for instance, is still completely erratic. I would blame this on developers, but given that this platform has been around for nearly two years, I think that's a cop out. In new Twitter apps like Carbon, lists of messages will sometimes disappear or skip weirdly when scrolling.
I first complained about this in version 1 of Windows Phone, and I thought it had been squashed — it has not. Elsewhere there are missteps.
Though Microsoft has added some form of multitasking to the OS, there is nearly never a feeling that apps in the "background" are actually still waiting for you. In fact, many apps still deliver a splash screen to you when you reenter them — if this is a developer issue, then I guess most of the hardworking coders on this platform never got the memo.
In short, it kind of sucks to use. Where iOS and Android at least feel responsive in packing and unpacking background apps, Windows Phone often comes across as broken and limp. Other issues nag me. In the browser, webpages are often displayed incorrectly as IE seems incapable of rendering certain web elements properly.
The Verge, for instance, lacks its colored panels in the top stories section, and TypeKit fonts aren't properly displayed. Neither iOS nor the new Chrome browser for Android have this issue. Then there are menus to consider — in many applications, options to navigate are often hidden beneath long presses, meaning that most users will never know how to do simple things like delete a single text message from their inbox.
Microsoft offers Twitter integration, but it's so clunky, it would almost be better to not include it at all. The phone will show you that you've been Tweeted at, but in order to view the actual Tweet you have to tap into your "Me" tile, swipe to your notification list, then tap on each individual message to see it.
How anyone at Microsoft thought this would help you get "in, out, and back to life" is a mystery to me. And all of this is to say nothing of the third party app offerings on the platform. Besides the fact that there is a serious dearth of good software for the OS, even in places where you would expect Windows Phone to excel, it lags.
Gaming for instance. At this point, one would think that the Xbox Live offerings would hold their own against game titles for Android or iOS, but even the most advanced games seem at least a generation behind other platforms in terms of complexity.
Furthermore, there's still slim pickings when it comes to titles, with launch offerings from October of still topping the charts in the Marketplace.
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