Nokia Lumia 930 Review
by Brett Howse on September 8, 2014 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Mobile
- windows phone
- Lumia
Wi-Fi
The Snapdragon 800 SoC supports 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac wireless, and the Lumia 930 implements all of them, which means it supports 5 GHz as well as 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. There is only single band Wi-Fi though, so on the typical N network you would be limited to a maximum connection speed of 150 Mbps. If you own an 802.11ac router, connection speeds will get bumped to the maximum of 433 Mbps.
I was able to achieve peak transfer rates of around 55 Mpbs with the Lumia 930 on a Wireless N router with just the 930 attached. Due to only having 802.11n available, the maximum transfer speed is going to be reduced compared to 802.11ac.
Cellular
Cellular connectivity on the Lumia 930 supports category 4 LTE for maximum download speeds of 150 Mbps, with 50 Mbps upload. LTE bands on the 930 that I was sampled were 1, 3, 7, 8, and 20, which prevented me from testing LTE at my location. DC-HSPA is also supported for up to 42.2 Mpbs downloads if available in your area.
Speedtest.net did not give me great numbers on the days I tested it, but that can be typical of HSPA depending on cell tower usage.
GNSS
Again, with the Qualcomm silicon at the heart of this device, we’re working with well known, and well tested parts such as the GNSS. The Lumia 930 supports Cellular and Wi-Fi assist and supports GPS, GLONASS, and BeiDou for location, and it locks quickly. Hopefully the days of poor location tracking are over.
Speaker
The 930 has just a single rear-facing speaker. Both volume and sound quality are surprisingly good with this speaker, but there is certainly no sense of stereo sound. For notifications, this speaker is adequate for the task but if you are going to watch a movie, you would be happier with a set of headphones.
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Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I am honestly not certain why they are getting these results. I use my Icon all day every day and it has the longest battery life I've had on any phone since I had a flip phone. Better than my previous HTC 8X, better than the HTC Trophy before that. I get at least a solid day out of it, and I've gone two days before while out of town (although I was much more careful in my usage).I think there is something wrong for this test to be getting the results they are, whether with their hardware or with the test itself.
AlexOwliver - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Made an account just to comment on this review - I'm really happy that you guys are reviewing more WP handsets, even with the frustrating hardware stumbles that seem to accompany each generation.While the base WP isn't skinned by manufacturers, the Nokia firmware and software tweaks - glance, double tap to wake, sunlight readability, etc - are awesome and have been, up until the M8/Moto X, have been unique to WP.
The 801 is an up-binned 800. The 805 is an up-binned 801 with a (significantly) better GPU and Qualcomm themselves has said that clients are expected to pick one or the other rather than use both as an upgrade path. This doesn't excuse the 930 shipping with an 800, but it's a bit of an overstatement to say it's shipping 2 or 3 generations of chip behind.
What I would have liked to see was the 930 come in at a Nexus price. Position it like the Moto X (features, not specs) and introduce more people to the platform. Unfortunately, they pulled a typical Nokia, used cheaper components, focused on features, and then charged a premium price. Hopefully a US-centric version of the 830 will come out with an 800 at around $350. That would be a phone worth reviewing.
tuxRoller - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The 805 also has vastly more bandwidth.tuxRoller - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
What's going on with the web battery life? The N5 has the same size screen and a smaller battery but far better battery life. Also, when did you start including basemark battery tests (I don't recall seeing that test on other reviews)? What do they measure, exactly? The basemark site isn't very forthcoming.Slightly surprised about winos generally poor performance compared to like silicon on Android. I thought it was supposed to be a more efficient platform?
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
"Also, when did you start including basemark battery tests"We've had the data for some time now.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/992
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thanks! I hadn't seen that part of the site before.Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I contacted the authors of Basemark just the other day to get a better feel for how their score is calculated, but have not heard back yet.As far as the web battery life, the AMOLED panel in the Lumia 930 appears to be the same generation as the Galaxy S4, which also had terrible battery life http://www.anandtech.com/show/6914/samsung-galaxy-...
The Galaxy S4 has a slightly larger battery, and gets slightly longer battery life. Without pulling the phone apart, that is the best conclusion I can make based on my time with the device. Battery life on dark scenes is much better than our worst case scenario with the web test of white web pages.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thanks for the comments.Might I suggest a more transparent (is, open source) test platform? They exist, even for mobile, and you can see exactly what they do.
For instance, linaro has released the benchmarks they use for internal testing of commits.
randomshinichi - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
How did you measure the shot latency with such precision? In my experience, the iPhone 5S has the best shot latency, even more than the HTC One M8.notposting - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I set a Favorite in IE labeled "-jump to top", the target is: javascript:scroll(0,0) -- it works great.Also I get the same mobile NY Times site in IE10 on WP8...I believe a better example is supposed to be Twitter.