Nokia Lumia 930 Review
by Brett Howse on September 8, 2014 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Mobile
- windows phone
- Lumia
Final Words
I feel like Nokia (now Microsoft of course) has done a lot right with the Lumia 930. The 5” 1080p display is a nice addition, and every time I use a larger phone it makes it hard to go back to one with a smaller display. I do not find it too awkward to use, and the increase in real estate on the home screen is a welcome change.
The design of the phone is also striking, especially when equipped with the more vibrant green or orange backs. The aluminum frame around the outside certainly gives the phone a premium feel. The Corning Gorilla Glass has a fantastic coating applied to it which makes it very easy to slide your finger over, and the curved edges of the glass really make the display feel like is part of a single cohesive unit.
The performance of this device is also spectacular, and finally gives Windows Phone some hardware parity with Android. Everything feels so much quicker on this phone than older models. While not quite the latest and greatest SoC from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 800 is a huge step forward from the Snapdragon S4 as clearly seen in the benchmarks. Benchmarks are not how we use the device of course, but they quantify how the phone responds to our actions.
Nokia has built a reputation on its phone cameras, and the Lumia 930 is a solid camera. While not as outright ridiculous as the Lumia 1020, it can still capture fantastic images and has decent low light performance. The new ISP helps here too, with much faster focus and capture latency. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Lumia 930 sports a 20 MP camera, when the Snapdragon 800 supports up to 21 MP using the built in ISP. Unlike the Lumia 1020, no custom silicon was required, and the result is a much faster camera. The Nokia Camera application also sets the benchmark in the mobile phone space with regards to manual control. If they would just add HDR, 4K video, and more FPS support on the video capture they would pretty much have the gamut covered, and it looks like that is finally coming later this year with the Lumia camera update and Lumia Denim firmware.
Windows Phone itself has also come a long way since the 8.0 release, and while there is certainly an app gap between Windows Phone and iOS/Android, it is less of an issue than it used to be if you can live without Google services. Microsoft spent so much time re-inventing the underlying operating system that it found itself in the unenviable position of being behind in not just apps, but also features and hardware. They have a lot of work to do in order to catch up, but Windows Phone 8.1 GDR1 is a big step in the right direction, and only a few short months after 8.1 was released.
There are of course some detractions from the Lumia 930. The form factor, while visually appealing is not a perfect fit in the human hand. With sharp sides and almost no taper to the device thickness, it really does feel somewhat unwieldy. The one missing feature which is most missed is Nokia Glance screen. Perhaps if you are new to Lumia phones you would not miss it, but as someone who is used to having Glance, not having it anymore is very difficult to get used to. We are used to progress moving us forward, and any regressions are difficult to cope with.
When evaluating an evolutionary device, we need to compare it against the previous version. Other than Glance support, the Lumia 930 is a fantastic upgrade over the 920/925/928 of the previous generation. The camera is good, the display is larger and crisper, and the design is a new take on the polycarbonate unibody design. But we also have to compare it with other devices in the same market, and here things are not so clear. The Lumia 930 has a camera which is one of the better cameras put into a smartphone, so that is a win, but with its thick body, it is less comfortable and possibly less appealing than something like the HTC One (M8) which is now available with Windows Phone as an option. If the Lumia 930 had Glance support, this would likely be an easy win for Microsoft, but right now the battle comes down to individual aspects of the competition and what you value more.
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pjcamp - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Not a dev. THE dev. Marcus Duarte himself claimed that users find two storage locations confusing.How we've muddled along with multiple storage locations on laptops all these years must confuse HIM to no end.
Besides this is Linux. It is possible to make a single file system spanning multiple devices. There's no reason Android couldn't clear up the "confusion" that way.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
This ^I guess they've never heard of lvm/MD/btrfs.
Alexvrb - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That's not limited to Linux. I mean heck there's multiple approaches, some are completely software agnostic.Anyway, MS tried something like that with Windows Phone 7. It creates another problem when the user wants to REMOVE the memory card any time they want (users are stupid, this was a common complaint with WP7 I kid you not, result was WP8 separating the two again). WP 8.1 has a better middle-ground solution. Keep the spaces seperate but make better (and easier) use of the memory card.
BMNify - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Then get Lumia 1520 or 1320 or 630 or soon to be released Lumia 830 and 730, loads of options for MicroSD fanatics.jimbo2779 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The issue is that this is meant to be the flagship phone at a reasonable size, the 1520 and 1320 are too big for the majority of users, the 830 is running a far inferior SoC, less RAM, poorer quality screen and camera, everything lower is in the same boat as the 830 or even worse so really the lack of SD card support here is it's main disappointment.I was looking forward to this phone so much only to find out it had no SD card support, any user of a Lumia (or other WP phone) with SD card support knows that it is so easy to use and allows for much more space than is available in a phone.
Would you rather have a phone with 32Gb or 96Gb? I know which I would prefer and I definitely would have bought a 930 outright to replace my 925 as this is an upgrade in every way but for some unknown reason they decided to make it the only phone in this years line-up without SD card support meaning it is a no go for me.
Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The question is what feature would you drop in order to gain that MicroSD slot? Because the 930/Icon is packed very tightly, it has everything that is in the 1520, yet in a full inch smaller package. Furthermore, it is barely larger overall than most 4.5" phones, so they really packed it tight.I am not willing to go with a larger phone. The features they did include are all very useful to me, I'd be pissed to lose, say, Qi charging, for a SD slot. I get that you want it all, but there are tradeoffs. Either you get the 930 with SD but without something else that takes up space, or you get it without SD support, or you get a larger phone that has all of it included (1520). The reason the 1520 exists is because there are some who are not willing to compromise. Quite frankly the 1520 is the phone you should be looking at, it was made with you in mind.
Also, the 520 has a SD slot not because its a high end feature but because it permits them to sell a phone with very little integrated storage, putting that part of the cost in the hands of the buyer.
Samus - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Most SD cards are slow, the controllers are slow, both add complexity and space to the PCB, most people rarely, if ever, use them, and most importantly, they drain the battery.If I were designing a small phone, I wouldn't put in external storage, either. Phablets and Tablets, sure...but with everything (especially WP8) becoming cloud-centric now, I don't see the need for physical media in a phone.
ummduh - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The cloud this, the cloud that, cloud, cloud, cloud cloud cloud.Do none of you people ever go outside the city you live in? End up in the mountains? The woods? A back country road that just happens to not have a signal?
I spend sometimes weeks on job sites out in the middle of nowhere with no signal. No wifi, either, since, ya know, it's a job site.
The cloud is 100% useless in those situations. Yea it's a neat toy, and can be handy when you never ever lose service. And you're willing to pay more and more for less and less data service.
Otherwise, you need storage on the device. 16GB, 32GB doesn't cut it. An endless supply is 64-128GB mSD cards, however, does. After apps are installed, I can only put a couple GB of music on my phone before it's filled. And then I get nagged to death by low storage warnings.
The cloud can go screw itself.
Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
And in your situation that makes sense. However that is an edge case and the market really isn't, nor should it be, tailored to edge cases. Also, as someone who has compared coverage between carriers, I strongly suggest Verizon which tends to work just about everywhere, even in the backwoods, at least in the northern half of the country.ummduh - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
So, I should pay extra amounts of money, every month, to stream the same data over and over to my phone, instead of carrying said data on my phone to begin with, and not keep incurring ever increasingly exorbitant monthly fees? What sense does that make?Pay to have the amount of data I'd need monthly (10GBish), over, and over, and over, and over.. etc. Or, $25 mSD?
It's not market tailoring, it's data fees extortion.