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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milroy - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
"The power button placement is certainly in the right location when compared to a phone with the power button on the top which gets awkward to use especially on a larger phone such as this."This is actually one of my main gripes with Lumia designs. The power button is so easy to access it is difficult to grip the phone without accidentally activating it. I have inadvertently turned my phone off countless times. With the current design you have to be very careful how you hold it by the sides Otherwise you need to hold it glass to back.
I’ve had the 925 and now the 1520 and both have been excellent.
siberstorm - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
It would be great if you added some sort of camera consistency benchmark for future reviews. It's something most reviewers don't do. Actually I don't think I've ever seen it before. Take a dozen pictures of the same scene back to back. Mark off the ones that you consider "good" and give the percentage. Also do the same test when changing scenes quickly. The biggest reason why people like the iPhone's camera is because of its consistency. Nokia's camera's are technically better, but most people aren't looking for max potential. They want the first shot to be the only shot. This is also a problem for camera's that use their inbuilt OIS too liberally. The shutter speed is too slow and a moving subject, which is often the case, will just end up a blur. A noisy shot is much better than a smeared blurry shot.croc123 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The more I read about the newer phones with good-ish cameras, the more I am tempted to get a new Nokia 808... While I still can. (Maybe two.)saliti - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The battery life test of Anandtech is horrible and not representative of real life battery life. I don't even use it as reference. GSMArena's battery life test is more balanced.leopard_jumps - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Shoot a video with passing cars (i.e. fast moving objects) , go to some flowers , buildings . We need to know the quality of the video abilities .boostern - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Sorry but this is one of the worst review ever made on anandtech.I really hope that is not the course that anandtech will take with the departure of Anand, because even a week ago a page like that of WiFi tests would be never been published.
boostern - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The more I read this review the more i found it flawed.Even in the battery life pace I see flaws, the subjective comments at the end where you say that in your tipical day the battery life was OK, what does it mean? How is your tipical day? What kind of activities you do in your tipical day?
Finally, there is too few data in this review compared to the Anandtech's standard...and too few comments on data outcomings.
Brett I don't want to attack you, but please read carefully one of the review made by Anand, Brian or even Joshua...
Brett Howse - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Hi Boostern,First off, I don't take it as an attack. Our readers demand a high level from us which is fantastic. If we don't meet that then we need to get better. Let me address a couple of your points:
The Wi-Fi was clearly a mistake. Without an ac router (which I am working on obtaining now) my options were test 802.11n, or not test. I chose to test n because I'd say the vast majority of people have n anyway, so they aren't going to see the huge speeds from ac. Clearly that was an error, and may people have pointed it out. In the future, I'll likely do both n and ac testing.
As for the battery life, our battery life test is really a worst case for this phone. I had to make the point that even though in the chart it shows < 6 hours, the average person on an average day is not going to need to charge the phone in 6 hours. The white backgrounds really hurt this AMOLED generation. My typical day and your typical day are not the same of course, which is why we can't test a "typical day". Perhaps we can look at doing some sort of different battery life testing and it is something we can discuss internally.
Also, not all of the benchmarking tools we use on other platforms are available on Windows Phone. It's just a reality of 3.5% market share and two dominant players in front. We are working on our own tools, but they take time and they are not available yet.
As for the comments on data, Anand had 17 years of experience and this is my second phone review, so I'll try better next time.
Thanks for reading - we all do appreciate the readers of the site. We know you expect the best and if we don't deliver it, then you have the right to ask for better.
boostern - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thank you for the response.Regarding the battery life page in the article, I think you should also take into account the differences in Snap 800 vs Snap 801 and the inherently power differences of these two SoCs. If you compare the 930 with other phones you should also explain the differences in the results, the majority of phones you compare against the 930 are based on Snap 801 platform that brings some optimizations in power comsumption. Nonetheless you should also compare the 930 with phones based on the same platform (for example the Nexus 5) and point out that the optimization job done made by Nokia was bad and is not the state of the art. The bad result are not only due to the display adopted (surely this is a reason), but also these results comes from the adoption of the Snap 800 and the not so good job in the optimization. Another advice: are the good result obtained in Basemark battery life a result of the worse performance obtained in this test VS the competitors? As Anand and Brian showed us in the recently past this could be an explanation of the results, in that the CPU stays in lower states for a longer amount of time. Take it only as an advice ;)
snoozemode - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Also, why not use a EU -> US wall plug converter so that you could use the included 1.5A charger? Now the battery charging time is irrelevant.