Nokia Lumia 920 - back side
Background
At the moment, Nokia is holding a contest for the best review on the Nokia Lumia 920 phone. Despite the fact that the right to rate articles has been given to users of the Habré, not all reviews fall into the contest. A week of waiting, three attempts to send for moderation, and I gave up. But reading the moderated reviews prompted me to publish the review out of competition.
Instead of joining
A lot of good can be said about the Lumia 920, but all this, by and large, has already been said, so I will try not to repeat it. If you wish, you can find many reviews that talk about the pros, find out the technical specifications, look at the beautiful pictures from this unit. But when buying any product, we are guided not only by the pluses. When choosing a new piece of iron, it is important to know the weaknesses. It is about them that I will tell today.
First impression
Looking for the first time in the technical characteristics of the device, I was somewhat disappointed. In theory, each next stage of development should be somewhat better than its predecessors, which is why we always strive to buy the latest models from store shelves. Unfortunately, the developers even took a step back, judging by the result.
Compared with my previous phone (Nokia N8), the Lumia 920 didn’t have: a rugged case, AMOLED display, MicroSD card slot, xenon flash, FM radio, FM transmitter, composite TV output, HDMI output, USB-host support, HID support devices.
Instead, it was suggested: a large and bright screen, 32GB of internal memory, the processor is 4 times more powerful, 4 times more memory, 1.5 times more weight, optical stabilization, NFC.
Natural curiosity prompted us to understand whether an equivalent replacement was proposed in the new advanced model in comparison with what was abandoned. Maybe we don’t understand what the charm of this world is and now they will teach us to see the world in the right light.
First of all, I decided to see how the camera works, and was simply shocked. Of the 10 photos taken, eight were blurry. What kind of optical stabilization is there? Later it was found that the phone is much better, in comparison with other models, it shoots in low light conditions than in daylight. That is, the developers tried to adapt it to poor lighting conditions. But why did the quality of frames suffer in good light? Unclear.
In the first few hours of communicating with the phone, there was no Internet access, I had to count on what was offered in the kit. I frankly disappointed the set of applications installed out of the box. Many installed applications, in fact, turned out to be stubs, upon launch of which it was proposed to download them from the store.
It did not work to connect a mouse and keyboard to the phone via USB or via Bluetooth, but it's a pity. Actually, it was not possible to connect the phone to the computer ...
Two months have passed since the first acquaintance with the device, a mountain of messages was written to Nokia technical support, to which exactly one answer was received, to the question: “Why Windows cannot find the driver for the device“ RM- 821 | Nokia Lumia 920 ", but I can not find them on the Nokia website."
The answer was by phone, and in short, according to the assumption of technical support, the cause of the problem lies in: the Chinese USB cable, the wrong USB port selected, not licensed Windows, the old version of Windows Media Player and the firewall turned on. In general, the technical support engineer tried to help with all his might, but could not. Starting from the “Nokia Care 1-13559082960” ticket dated 12.12.12, I was only answered by a vending machine, which promised that they would deal with my issue in the near future.
When connected to a computer, the phone is defined as a camera. Under Windows XP, you can only download files from your phone. Under Windows 7, it becomes possible to upload them back, though only from the number of allowed ones (photos, videos, music, documents), the rest simply cannot be found on the phone, because there is no file manager.
Apparently, the developers followed the path of other brands, "simplifying" the life of phone users. And the truth is, why should they upload all kinds of “unnecessary” files to their phone, and even in different places, it’s easier to decide everything in advance and prohibit freedom in this important issue.
Nokia Lumia Portico
It would seem that the time has come to finally bury the idea of making the Nokia Lumia 920 its main and favorite phone. And here came the first firmware update. Joy knew no bounds. The camera began to photograph normally in the afternoon! In addition, they updated the appearance of the progress bar, and, it seems, tweaked the algorithm for working with the light sensor. Fixed issues with fast battery drain and accidental reboots. It seems that all the changes are useful and joyful, but there are still problems that may be considered chips, but they are even more inconvenient. It is hoped that the developers are in the process of eliminating the "chips" and will introduce us to the result in the near future.
Push notifications
And finally, the strangest thing: "single task". Despite the 21st century, a processor with two cores of 1.5 GHz, a gigabyte of RAM on board, this device can only execute ONE application at a time.
We describe a typical situation: we launch the client on the phone ICQ, Skype, the client VKontakte, we turn off. We send messages to ourselves in ICQ and Skype, VKontakte - the phone is silent. We deploy any application - messages come to it. In order for the application to be able to receive messages in a minimized state, it must support Push notifications, and despite the fact that the applications listed above support them, a miracle did not happen. But, having once launched an ICQ client on my phone, I have never gone offline since then. And when I restart the client, and on the phone, I receive all the messages sent to me during the time the application was not running, even though I already received them in another ICQ client.
Browser
The browser as a whole is not bad, scores 320 out of 500 points on html5test and passes the Acid3 test completely. Pages loads and scales quickly. Flash and Silverlight do not support. But there is one trick. There is no “Exit” button in the browser, you can exit it by pressing the “Back” touch button. Moreover, you need to click exactly as many times as the number of clicks made on the links in the browser, i.e. go all the way through sites in the opposite direction. You can download files to your phone using a browser, but only in strictly defined formats. You cannot upload files from the phone using the input type = file tag. A field for selecting a file with the corresponding button is displayed, but no actions are performed. Before the page address, it is advisable not to forget to write “http: //”, otherwise the browser may say that the address is not supported and you will have to retype it.
Navigation: Nokia Maps
Unfortunately, there are no maps from Navitel under Windows Phone 8 and, most likely, will not. But there are maps from Nokia, and an offline navigator built on their basis. It is wonderful that there is at least such a solution, but there are some problems with it. To see house numbers, you need to zoom in so much that manual search for house numbers in a given quarter becomes difficult. In addition, not all homes have rooms. The navigator cannot stick a finger at the map and tell him to get directions to the place (this can be done only from the HERE Maps application), only find the place through the search. By the way, the search does not work without the Internet.
But what then? After all, in advertising they showed how Nokia cards work perfectly without Internet? In fact, not everything is so bad. Offline search in maps allows you to find large cities and streets. But house numbers or small villages cannot.
Notes from life: When driving along the M5 highway towards Chelyabinsk, I noticed a strange feature. Immediately after Miass, when the track became two-lane, at certain intervals (several minutes), the navigator offered to “keep to the left”, then “keep to the right”, then again “to the left” and so on until I stopped navigation. So I did not understand what it was connected with.
Particularly attentive, pay attention that the GPS module activity icon will light up even if no application is running. This is due to the fact that the phone periodically starts determining the location in order to update information about satellites in order to provide the user with the current location in a matter of seconds at any time. Disable this feature can only be turned off GPS in the settings. The navigator also does not know how to work in the background. If you lock the screen or minimize the application, it will immediately be frozen, the GPS signal will be lost and, accordingly, voice prompts will stop. Maps are updated separately from application updates, so there are no notifications about the release of a new version of maps.
Housing
At first glance, the case seems powerful and monolithic. Judging by the description - it does not scratch. Judging by the reviews - it does not play and does not creak. But I was not lucky - it scratches, backlash and creaks. And judging by the reviews, I'm not alone. The backlash was noticed quite by accident, when in the dark, with the backlight on, I noticed that to the left of the left touch button, light breaks between the case and the display. He pressed in and felt that the body was squeezing and creaking quietly. This effect is also easy to notice when photographing, if you hold the phone in landscape orientation, put the index finger on the camera button, and hold the phone with the thumb below, in the area of the "Back" touch button.
For four months of use, the back cover of the phone was covered with many small scratches, but if you do not look closely, you may not notice them. The display during the same time received only two scratches, but they can only be seen at a strictly defined angle. The protective glass of the phone’s display is very slippery, if you put the phone with the display down on the surface, with a slight tilt, the phone will roll.
The touchpad is very responsive, responds to touch when wearing gloves and mittens. But it only does well if they are thin. The phone lies perfectly in the hand, but it is very bad in gloves - it constantly tries to slip out and hide in the snow or burrow into the asphalt. The problem is solved by buying a silicone case with ribbed sides.
Battery
An even more mysterious side of the phone is the battery. You never know how quickly it will be discharged, and at what percentage it will turn off. After updating the firmware to Portico, the situation improved slightly, but problems still remained. One of the strange tricks is that the phone cannot be charged while it is turned off. More precisely, if you put the phone on charge, it will turn on automatically and will not let you turn itself off. Just the other day, I forgot to put the phone on charge, it turned off itself, the night lay there. In the morning I put it on charge, it does not turn on. I waited half an hour - turned on. But instead of the desktop, the blue screen of
Camera (photo and video)
The Lumia 920 is awesome. The colors in the photos look natural. Optical stabilization allows you to take photos with a faster shutter speed without a tripod, due to which an increase in brightness is achieved. In third-party applications, you can choose a shutter speed from 1/8000 to 4 seconds, use manual focus. You can turn on the camera in a couple of seconds, even if the screen is locked by holding down the camera button.
A few photos (left with Nokia N8, right with Lumia 920)
Probably everyone remembers an advertisement from Nokia, showing an example of the optical stabilization system. And the subsequent exposure. Despite the fact that, in fact, stabilization does not work as it was shown in advertising, but still, this is an achievement. Hand shake from the video is almost completely gone. Although there is a downside. If you photograph the stars from a tripod with a shutter speed of 4 seconds, then the photo shows a jitter from the stabilizer itself.
The sound on the video is high-quality, you can hear both quiet sounds and loud ones. But, despite the fact that there are as many as three microphones in the Lumia 920, the sound is recorded in mono format.
Embedded MS Office
There is an office, it works, but calling it a full-fledged language does not turn. He is able to view and edit Word and Excel 2010 and higher files. Files from the 2003 office can only be viewed. Files with a password cannot even be viewed. Files with complex elements, such as formulas, cannot be edited either, and the formulas themselves are not displayed. In addition, you can view and edit presentations. But editing is limited by two functions: text editing and changing the order of slides.
Other chips
The language switch on the keyboard displays the currently selected language (as in desktop Windows), although it would be more logical to display the language that will be switched to when clicked. Perhaps you just need to get used to it, but somehow it has not yet succeeded. For example, if characters are displayed now, and the language button shows ENG, then the logic tells that when clicked, the English layout will turn on, but not. The dialer does not search the phone book, performing only the function of a dialer. And third-party applications that implement this functionality constantly ask for permission to call, and do not allow sending USSD requests. There is no way to record a telephone conversation. The only option at the moment: speakerphone + voice recorder.
Many settings are missing, for example, in Bluetooth you cannot change the visibility or change your name from “Windows Phone” to something else.
The entire filling is compactly located at the top of the phone, which is why it is noticeably heated, under heavy loads on the processor or Wi-Fi.
There are always two windows on the main screen: a desktop with tiles and a list of applications sorted alphabetically.
After changing the SIM card, you must restart the phone. Even if the same SIM card was inserted.
The NFC module does not read information from the Moscow metro cards, although it reacts to their presentation.
Vibration with an incoming call works only once, at the beginning of the melody. In silent mode, you can very easily skip a call. To work around this problem, you can put a very short ringtone.
SMS notification ringtone can be selected from a specific set of sounds; you cannot set your own ringtone.
And, probably, the most incomprehensible feature that many hate most in this device is the touch search button. It cannot be turned off. It works from a single touch and opens the browser, no matter what you do. The number of random clicks on this button just rolls over.
Total
As always, Nokia was on top in terms of iron. Although the software this time somehow did not work out. One can only hope that the problems will be fixed someday - it is not for nothing that the phone sends up to 10 megabytes of error reports to Microsoft every week.
In the end
Some photos taken by Nokia Lumia 920 All photos and screenshots are clickable. UPD : Two weeks later, after being sent for moderation, the article was published at the competition: Nokia Lumia 920 - the reverse side .
