Nokia Lumia 925 vs Lumia 1020
Mobile phone market is a highly evolving market segment that doesn’t stagnate like some other market segments. As such, the manufacturers do various things just to keep up with the market development. Certain value additions are far more noteworthy than others which give the smartphone a center place among the rest of the smartphones in the exclusive gallery. Few of these noteworthy features are the raw performance matrix, operating system, premium and elegant look, as well as the camera. The two smartphones we are going to compare today differentiate themselves with the latter; camera performance. They are uniquely made to handle extreme photographic conditions with an easy to use intuitive interface. Nokia Lumia 1020 was unveiled only two days ago while Nokia Lumia 925 was unveiled recently around one month back. Both are relatively alike and offer excellent performance in camera although Nokia Lumia 1020 takes it much further by offering a very high resolution camera with a bunch of very cool features to complement it. This setup has proven to be a successful candidate in the futuristic smartphone market, so it makes sense that Nokia is pursuing this track yet again with Lumia 1020. However, critics have some pressing issues about the performance of these smartphones which we intend to discuss along with a side by side comparison of these two candidates we have here today.
Nokia Lumia 1020 Review
Nokia Lumia 1020 is essentially a point & shoot camera as much as it’s a smartphone. As such, let us discuss its camera first before moving any further. Lumia 1020 offers a 41MP camera with six lens Carl Zeiss optics that can capture wide angles, as well. The camera sensor is ultra large and features Nokia’s PureView Image processing software along with a smaller LED flash and a Xenon flash. Interestingly the camera in Nokia Lumia 1020 offers both manual and auto focus; while the auto focus is fast, manual focus is certainly a nice option. It has 3X zoom with the super resolution sensor and offers to capture 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second. Nokia also claims that they have included enhancements to video capturing, which translates in to better and sharper videos in real life. Another interesting addition is the updated version of Nokia’s Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) technology with ball bearings surrounding the lens. It has proven to be very effective so all of us out there who has shaky hands can relax and take great photos with Lumia 1020. It has some serious low light photography options with the big sensor it has and we certainly are impressed with the camera. The layout of the camera app is revamped with an even more intuitive interface that gives you manual control of your camera to make it work just as you require it to work. The Nokia’s Pro camera provides us with an interesting opportunity to take pro shots with our smartphone not to mention the long exposure times it gives us. All these facts translate in to awesome photos, and we’ll be seeing a lot of them after the Lumia 1020 is released.
Now that we have established the optical greatness of Nokia Lumia 1020, let us look at what the rest of the smartphone can offer us. It inherits its looks from the previous Lumia smartphones with the squared polycarbonate cover and comes in White, Black and Yellow. It’s fairly thinner and lighter than the Lumia 920 and has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi. The Corning Gorilla Glass 3 reinforcement protects the screen against scratches while PureMotion HD+ technology reproduces deep blacks and naturalistic colors on your screen. Nokia Lumia 1020 is powered by 1.5GHz Dual Core Krait processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM. As you can see, there is nothing stellar about the hardware specs of this device because, in Android standards, this is pretty old school. However, this combination works well with Microsoft Windows Phone 8 operating system and that makes it tick. But, we think there may be a slight lag in the operations of 1020 although it’ll be hard to spot for any regular user. The beefy 2GB RAM can compensate towards a better user experience with acceptable graphics performance from Adreno 225. The internal storage stagnates at 32GB without an option to expand it using a microSD card, but we are more than happy with 32GB, so that’s unlikely to be a hindrance.
Nokia Lumia 1020 comes with 4G LTE connectivity along with Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n connectivity for continuous use. DLNA enables you to stream rich media content right from your smartphone to a big wireless DLNA display panel. Dolby Digital Plus sound enhancement is included which provides decent sounds with 1020. Other than that, it is pretty standard Windows Phone with all the value additions and drawbacks associated with Windows. It has 2000mAh battery that provides a talk time of 19 hours on 2G and 13 hours on 3G which is very good.
Nokia Lumia 925 Review
Nokia Lumia 925 was also a smartphone of recent times been revealed only one month ago. It is another sequel of Nokia Lumia 920 line with Windows Phone 8 and superior camera performance. But the main differentiation between Lumia 925 and the rest of the bunch is its build. Nokia used smooth polycarbonate bodies to encase their Lumia line but decided to make an exception for Lumia 925. It is also not a unibody device which may come in handy time to time. It is designed to have a monochrome polycarbonate back plate while been encased by two strips of anodized aluminum on either edges. It is beautiful and aesthetically it’s appealing at a glance. Thanks to the curved aluminum sides, Lumia 925 feels great in hand too. Nokia has gained some reduction in weight as well as the thickness of Lumia 925 by omitting wireless charging and making the optics bulge out slightly.
Before moving on to the raw performance, let us talk about the camera performance of Nokia Lumia 925. It features 8.7MP PureView sensor that does speak for itself. You wouldn’t think much of 8MP, but the resolution isn’t everything and the sensor can do wonders too. The aperture of the lens is rated at f/2.0 enabling you to create those wonderful background blurring effects that can be seeing in DSLR photographs. The hardware based Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) tolerates more when your hand shakes enabling you to worry less about your hand shaking and more about capturing the moment. Nokia claims that Lumia 925 can withstand long exposures up to ¼ second without losing sharpness using OIS and it translates in to great performance in low light photography where we can keep the sensor a tad bit longer to get a lot more light to the photo. As it wasn’t enough, the dual LED flash is more powerful than what we could find in normal smartphone. The front facing camera is also good with 1.3MP resolution and f/2.4 lens capable of taking good shots and videos for streaming.
Apart from the camera, Lumia 920+ smartphones looks identical inside. Lumia 925 is powered by 1.5GHz Dual Core Kraits processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM. Those of you who are wondering what’s so great about these specs; well there’s nothing stellar about them, but the underlying hardware is as good as the overlaying operating system and Windows Phone 8 doesn’t seem to cater for anything more than this for the foreseeable future. Hence, it is understandable for Nokia to use this configuration in Lumia 925. The internal storage is at 16GB, and the Vodafone edition provides 32GB. However, Lumia 925 doesn’t have the option to expand the storage using a microSD card so users will have to live with whatever space they get. It features a 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332ppi. As you can see, this is a retina display according to Apple’s classification and does produce wonderful colors with deep blacks and saturated blues. Corning Gorilla Glass 2 is used to make it scratch resistant and PureMotion HD+ makes looking at the screen a pleasure.
Nokia Lumia 925 comes with 4G LTE connectivity which has become a norm these days for any new smartphone. To support the super-fast internet connection, Nokia has included Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n that has DLNA and enables you to create a Wi-Fi hotspot easily to share your super-fast internet connection with your friends. It comes packed with 2000mAh battery, and Nokia reckons that Lumia 925 can do 18 hours on 2G and 12 hours on 3G, which is quite impressive.
A Brief Comparison of Nokia Lumia 1020 and Lumia 925
• Nokia Lumia 1020 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset along with Adreno 225 GPU and 2GB of RAM while Nokia Lumia 925 is powered by 1.5GHz Krait Dual Core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset along with Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM.
• Both Nokia Lumia 1020 and Nokia Lumia 925 run on Microsoft Windows Phone 8.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi and reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 while Nokia Lumia 925 has 4.5 inches AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display featuring a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels at a pixel density of 332 ppi and reinforced with Corning Gorilla Glass 2.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 has 41MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and hardware based optical image stabilization that can capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 fps and capable of extreme low light performance while Nokia Lumia 925 has 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and hardware based optical image stabilization that can capture 1080p HD video with great low light performance.
• Nokia Lumia 1020 is slightly larger, thicker, and heftier (130.4 x 71.4 mm / 10.4 mm / 158g) than Nokia Lumia 925 (129 x 70.6 mm / 8.5 mm / 139g).
• Both Nokia Lumia 1020 and Nokia Lumia 925 feature 2000mAh battery.
Conclusion
Nokia Lumia 1020 vs Lumia 925
The conclusion should be fairly simple in this case. It will of course depend on several reasons. The first is the level of your need for low light photography. Don’t get us wrong, both these smartphones are THE best cameras in any smartphone out there now (with the exception of a rare few like HTC One at the same level) and picking one is difficult. But the technologies Nokia has used in these two are different, and that makes Lumia 1020 a superior camera compared to 925 with an improved intuitive user interface giving you a great user experience. On the other hand, Nokia Lumia 1020 is bulky, whereas Lumia 925 is slim in modern standards and weighs considerably less. It also has a comfortable design with the anodized aluminum strips on either side. There is also a price difference between these two smartphones. Hence we believe you can be the judge on what is the best buy in terms of the main three variables; the price, the need for the camera, and the need for convenience of a slim, light smartphone.