Nokia's Jo Harlow, head of Smart Devices, and Stefan Pannenbecker, Nokia's design chief, reveal the new Lumia 925 smartphone at Nokia London
Tech journalist from around the globe were guests at the Nokia London event this week - in central London. We were there to witness the unveiling of Nokia's latest Lumia smartphone, the 925. You may be asking why a photography site like ours was invited; well, the 925's main value-added feature is its camera and its photographic capabilities.
The Lumia 925 itself is not that far off in specification from the Lumia 920 launched at the end of last year. The screen is the same 4.5 inch size but instead of an LCD panel Nokia has gone back to AMOLED, originally seen on its Lumia 800 and 900 models. You get Microsoft Windows Phone 8.0, like the 920, and the CPU and GPU specifications are the same as before, too. We understand that the 8.7 megapixel 1.4 micro pixel pitch camera sensor is the same as the 920 as well, along with Nokia's unique optical image stabilisation system. The battery is not user-replaceable and there is no way to expand the 16GB of flash memory (32GB on Vodafone-supplied examples only).
But there are some differences; the plastic unitary body has been replaced by a lightweight metal alloy frame and this makes the 925 feel noticeably lighter. A backward step, though, is the relegation of the 920's wireless charging capability to a removable external jacket. However, the biggest changes are arguably photo-related; the camera's Carl Zeiss lens moves from a 5-element to a 6-element design and considerable software work has been achieved to improve image quality, both in low light and normal shooting conditions. Bundled software for photo creativity has also been beefed-up and packaged in Nokia's new Smart Camera offering.
Like on the 920 you can do clever things like swap heads in photos, and the 925 can also recommend the best quality frame in a sequence of shots.
Nokia's new Smart Camera features also enhance creativity in action photography. Above is an example where a sequence of moving subjects can be superimposed. There is also a feature called 'motion focus' which can isolate a moving object in the frame and motion-blur the background.
The aesthetic design of the new 925 is undeniably classy, both in detail and overall appearance. The 925 is a very desirable-looking phone and stands out from its key competitors from Apple and Samsung. The large circular window near the centre of the rear of the body protects the new 6-element Carl Zeiss lens. Although no detailed technical information is yet available for the lens, we suspect that it's a wider aperture design. That's because, as we will explain further down the page, the 925's low light performance is extraordinary. But Nokia says that overall sharpness of the new lens has been improved.
One drawback of the 925 is that if you want to use wireless charging you must attach a charging jacket (above). This can be left on the phone as a simple protective case but it does increase the thickness and bulk of the 925.
The 925 has a sculpted gorilla class touch screen and as you can see above the detailing is excellent.
Nokia is selling the 925 as a photographer's smartphone and there is at least one solid reason why that claim is credible; low light shooting capability. Nokia purposely set up a tough demo room reproducing a dimly lit bar and invited us to see how good the 925 is under these conditions and to compare it with our own cameras and smartphones. We weren't able to take 925 image samples with us, but we could examine shots on the 925 and zoom in and out to examine detail and noise. The 925 results were very impressive.
Above is a shot I took with an Olympus OM-D E-M5. I chose iAuto mode and the camera decided on ISO 1600, f/4 and 0.8 second exposure - the E-M5's image stabilisation was pushed to its limits but hung in there. Thus compares quite closely with the picture the 925 took and displayed on its screen.
Above is what my Samsung Galaxy Note managed and the camera on that is not too shabby at all.
Finally, this is the Galaxy Note again, this time using flash.
During my live blogging from the Nokia London event at one point rather dejectedly implied that the event seemed a bit larger than the product that was being unveiled. There was no reference to exciting technologies that Nokia has plans for, like their investment in Pelican Imaging, and nor was there any reference to the immensely impressive 41 megapixel camera used in their Symbian 808 PureView phone last year. But Nokia is promising us a summer of further exciting announcements, so patience is the name of the game.
At the bottom line the 925 is a fabulous looking phone and its inbuilt photo software is very impressive, as is the camera performance. The good news if you already have a Nokia Lumia Windows phone with version 8 of the OS; you will soon be able to get the Smart Camera functionality as a free upgrade via something called Amber Update.
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