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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
115 Comments
View All Comments
kpkp - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
That's amoled, maximum brightness and static display for longer periods will leave the mark.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSw1hYzLtCg
foxingworth - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Brett, judging from page 7, it sounds like you're not adequately equipped for measuring the performance of any of these components. You tested the WiFi on an arbitrary N router and compared it to phones that were clearly connected to AC routers. You tested the cellular performance in an area without LTE and gave a single speedtest result on an unnamed carrier in an unnamed location. For sound, you gave a two line description which didn't have any quantitative results.It seems like if you can't accurately measure the performance of these aspects, you should really just explain that and leave the section out. Comparing a phone operating in poor conditions to other phones operating in optimal environments seems a little misleading.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Thanks for the feedback.I addressed the Wi-Fi in a previous comment. As for the network connection, the 930 shipped to me for review did has no support for band 4 LTE which is the primary band for North America. The location I tested in does have LTE support.
With the exception of the Wi-Fi I did not make any comparisons to other phones based on HSPA+ nor the speaker levels.
just2btecky - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Nice try, Brett Howse, but these graphs are dubious. I'm drowning in tech mumbojumbo...rwei - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
*Thank you* for mentioning the omission of Glance! None of the other reviews brought it up, and after I bought an Icon I was startled to see it wasn't included. Going from an 822 it never even occurred to me that the new flagship would omit it.The device is still so shiny and sleek that I'll keep it, but I was pretty peeved for a while.
jimbo2779 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Is it still not available with the latest update? My wife's 620 even had Glance.If it doesn't or is not possible to be added in future then it is a shame.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The shame is that of all of the Nokia phones announced this year (530, 630, 730, 830, and 930) only the 830 supports glance. And with the next firmware update, additional features such as weather will be able to be displayed on glance.Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
It is not possible to add, unfortunately. Glance relies upon a technology called "Display Memory" which the display on the Icon does not have. As a result it cannot utilize Glance with any firmware or software updates.jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That is a real shame, I wouldn't say it is a deal breaker for most but MS have this decent feature and do not plan for it in most of their new line up of phones.maximumGPU - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Agreed. It is very frustrating that a nice and differentiating feature gets shunned from most of their handsets.I assume it was to save pennies from the cost of the handset (since it requires a certain kind of display), which is ridiculous. Reminds me of laptop manufacturers implementing only single band 2.4GHz wireless on high end machines.