So my low-end Nokia 520 has microSD, which lets me easily swap in TV series that I watch when traveling or to kill time waiting somewhere. A new 930 at much higher price won't let me do that.
Hmmm... my love affair with Nokia (the 520 is great) will be coming to an end.
Windows Phone doesn't even have the flimsy excuses of the Android camp for no SD. It can even be read-only dumb storage, with no security issues. But no.
SD, mSD or whatever external storage are at least an order of magnitude slower than eMMC or ONFI or more advanced NAND interfaces. When an application like the Photo Gallery browser has to read lots of pictures from SD it is really a torture (several seconds, or tens of seconds). In the first eras of tablets and smartphones, people get accustomed that all has to launch in less than second (give or take), faster than their desktop application launch at home/work. So in this context, several seconds is inappropiately interpreted as sluggish CPU performance when the real bottleneck is in the storage IOs. These delays severely impact usability if you are used to full internal flash storage, where everything opens in under a second.
I am not against mSD cards, I have an 8GB S4 mini and 32 GB mSD. I can easily tell the performance difference, but I have no choice if I want to take lots of pictures or film lost of 1080p videos.
Summing up, performance is the real reason why Google do not allow external storage on their devices (Nexus smartphones and tablets). From Apple point of view is arguable that they had contracts with music label records inheriting the iPod policy: "easy to load music into the device, a pain in the ass to extract it in order to make piracy more difficult"
If you think sd cards make viewing photos on a phone a chore them it could be your phone or its support of SD cards that is at fault on the Lumia 620 there is no noticeable difference between photos on the phone memory and in SD card.
Also there seems to be very little difference, if any, between the 620with all pics on SD and a925 with no SD support so speed is not a reason.
Plus: What's worse, photos that take a little bit longer to load or photos that either don't load at all because you don't have them with you or take much much longer and half of your free data?
Well Nokia sure is trying, but Microsoft is not exactly helping them out (they even released their own app for iPhone first... gosh). Anyway, as of today it's much better to go for one of the really good Android phones. /Marco from http://www.consumertop.com/best-phone-guide/
That wasn't the reason given, iirc. The problem he mentioned was one of user removes sdcard, doesn't see his photos/apps on phone and gets confused. The other issue was technical, but, again iirc, was fixable if they wanted.
While that is the one technical issue with SD card implementation I would say there is a very small amount of people that would be able / willing to switch out the SD card and not be aware that they would be missing the contents of that SD card when they go into their photos app.
When you remove a DVD from your computer do you wonder why you can't watch your favourite film anymore? Would anyone?
I am sure it has happened to someone at some point but realistically how many people would that affect compared to the amount of people that would put an extra 32 or 64 Gb in their phone and just be happy to have doubled or tripled their storage to keep a years worth of photos and videos of their kids on their phone.
Either way you look at it having the option to massively extend the amount of internal storage to have more media / apps in your phone is more favourable to most compared to having to resort to the cloud (which is just a no-go for a good portion of smartphone users across the world) or constantly removing stuff to make the newest stuff fit.
I would miss Glance but without SD card I will not be buying this which is a shame I was looking forward to it, don't even get me started on how the rumours for the 830 got me all excited and left me disappointed when the phone was finally announced. Either the 830 or 930 could have been WP halo phones for a lot of potential detractors to the WP platform, instead they are just a few tweaks short of stacking up very favourably with their android competition.
The technical issue was actually brought up by the poster below me (pjcamp). It was regarding creating a unified storage space across multiple devices. To be clear, I am NOT saying these were good reasons, I only brought them up in response to the parent who I thought MIGHT have been claiming that the reasons android dropped sd card support was related to security. I really wish that sdcards (or some other removable storage standard) made a comeback on android.
"""Summing up, performance is the real reason why Google do not allow external storage on their devices "" Yeah right and it has nothing to do with Google Drive
Not a dev. THE dev. Marcus Duarte himself claimed that users find two storage locations confusing.
How we've muddled along with multiple storage locations on laptops all these years must confuse HIM to no end.
Besides this is Linux. It is possible to make a single file system spanning multiple devices. There's no reason Android couldn't clear up the "confusion" that way.
That's not limited to Linux. I mean heck there's multiple approaches, some are completely software agnostic.
Anyway, MS tried something like that with Windows Phone 7. It creates another problem when the user wants to REMOVE the memory card any time they want (users are stupid, this was a common complaint with WP7 I kid you not, result was WP8 separating the two again). WP 8.1 has a better middle-ground solution. Keep the spaces seperate but make better (and easier) use of the memory card.
The issue is that this is meant to be the flagship phone at a reasonable size, the 1520 and 1320 are too big for the majority of users, the 830 is running a far inferior SoC, less RAM, poorer quality screen and camera, everything lower is in the same boat as the 830 or even worse so really the lack of SD card support here is it's main disappointment.
I was looking forward to this phone so much only to find out it had no SD card support, any user of a Lumia (or other WP phone) with SD card support knows that it is so easy to use and allows for much more space than is available in a phone.
Would you rather have a phone with 32Gb or 96Gb? I know which I would prefer and I definitely would have bought a 930 outright to replace my 925 as this is an upgrade in every way but for some unknown reason they decided to make it the only phone in this years line-up without SD card support meaning it is a no go for me.
The question is what feature would you drop in order to gain that MicroSD slot? Because the 930/Icon is packed very tightly, it has everything that is in the 1520, yet in a full inch smaller package. Furthermore, it is barely larger overall than most 4.5" phones, so they really packed it tight.
I am not willing to go with a larger phone. The features they did include are all very useful to me, I'd be pissed to lose, say, Qi charging, for a SD slot. I get that you want it all, but there are tradeoffs. Either you get the 930 with SD but without something else that takes up space, or you get it without SD support, or you get a larger phone that has all of it included (1520). The reason the 1520 exists is because there are some who are not willing to compromise. Quite frankly the 1520 is the phone you should be looking at, it was made with you in mind.
Also, the 520 has a SD slot not because its a high end feature but because it permits them to sell a phone with very little integrated storage, putting that part of the cost in the hands of the buyer.
Most SD cards are slow, the controllers are slow, both add complexity and space to the PCB, most people rarely, if ever, use them, and most importantly, they drain the battery.
If I were designing a small phone, I wouldn't put in external storage, either. Phablets and Tablets, sure...but with everything (especially WP8) becoming cloud-centric now, I don't see the need for physical media in a phone.
The cloud this, the cloud that, cloud, cloud, cloud cloud cloud.
Do none of you people ever go outside the city you live in? End up in the mountains? The woods? A back country road that just happens to not have a signal?
I spend sometimes weeks on job sites out in the middle of nowhere with no signal. No wifi, either, since, ya know, it's a job site.
The cloud is 100% useless in those situations. Yea it's a neat toy, and can be handy when you never ever lose service. And you're willing to pay more and more for less and less data service.
Otherwise, you need storage on the device. 16GB, 32GB doesn't cut it. An endless supply is 64-128GB mSD cards, however, does. After apps are installed, I can only put a couple GB of music on my phone before it's filled. And then I get nagged to death by low storage warnings.
And in your situation that makes sense. However that is an edge case and the market really isn't, nor should it be, tailored to edge cases. Also, as someone who has compared coverage between carriers, I strongly suggest Verizon which tends to work just about everywhere, even in the backwoods, at least in the northern half of the country.
So, I should pay extra amounts of money, every month, to stream the same data over and over to my phone, instead of carrying said data on my phone to begin with, and not keep incurring ever increasingly exorbitant monthly fees? What sense does that make?
Pay to have the amount of data I'd need monthly (10GBish), over, and over, and over, and over.. etc. Or, $25 mSD?
It's not market tailoring, it's data fees extortion.
LOL, ok, I'm coming across mighty angry. I'm not, really. I'd LOVE to be able to use the cloud as it is intended. But I can't, in its current state.
I'm just sick of people thinking there is no reason to have mSD cards. There are real, legitimate uses for them still. And as long as tiered, over priced network access exists, that isn't going to change.
The fact that they're getting fewer and further between almost wreaks of some sort of conspiracy, if you're into that sort of thing.
There is certainly a place for micro SD cards. I've said it before and I will say it again - Windows Phone supports micro SD better than any OS. But you have to remember this is the only Windows Phone in the entire Nokia lineup that doesn't have micro SD. Unfortunately if that is a requirement then this phone is not for you. If you absolutely need a 5" Windows Phone with top end specs and micro SD, check out the HTC One for Windows :)
The cloud works for certain parts of the world and for people with a phone contract that has enough bandwidth. It is not right to assume that because you are in an area with good reception and a contract that allows lots of downloading that everyone or even a majority of people are because that just isn't the case.
1. The cloud is not always there. If you use T-Mobile, for instance, it can disappear just from going inside a building. What do you do then?
2. If you don't want to use them, don't use them. But don't demand that they be absent for people who do use them. I don't use Bluetooth. But I just turn the damn thing off rather than demanding that mobile devices stop supporting it.
3. SD cards can be, but don't have to be, slow. That's why they're useful for mass data storage. I use mine to segregate data from system and apps. When I experimented with Cyanogenmod a while back, I backed up my data by simply removing the card during the install process. Similarly, I installed Sygic navigation (because the cloud isn't always available) and the local maps would totally consume storage space on any of the 16 GB "flagship" phones that companies are putting out these days because, you know, the cloud.
I think this phone is great. Lack of an SD card is definitely not an issue, at least for me. One drive gives me plenty of storage for almost anything I need and 32GB is plenty of storage for anything else. (Reading these comments makes me realize that so many still don't appreciate the value of cloud storage) Additionally, I am not sure why anyone would ever want to watch movies or TV, like Arbie commented above, on a phone while traveling when tablets or Ultrabooks do a far better job. Just saying...
If you genuinely read ask of these comments you would already know all of the reasons that cloud storage is not a replacement for the majority of users, it is far slower, more costly and only available in limited areas for certain users. SD storage is cheap, faster, always there and just all round more convenient.
Storage isn't just for huge music or HD film collections. Some of us have large app collections, lots of photos and videos (the cameras on these phones do get used a lot by some of is) and like to have things like maps saved on our devices amongst other things that use up tonnes of space and make a phone much more usable.
Using the cloud is fine for those that never lose signal, have an unlimited bandwidth allowances and can put up with everything leading much slower then that is fine but for those of us that have no option for reliable and unlimited use of the cloud or prefer much faster local storage we would like for SD card storage to be an option.
The caddy for the card takes up a very small amount of space and cost just pennies, it is an oversight to not include something so useful to the huge majority of users just because some people can use the cloud.
You realize the high end Lumia 1520 has SD card slot support...as well as Glance support that was a major loss in the authors eyes right? Too bad it was never reviewed at AT. That LCD screen on it is really nice.
I was testing on TELUS, but as it was an international phone it did not support all of the LTE bands for North America. The specific LTE bands this phone is capable of are listed in the specs on page 1. T-Mobile appears to use band 4, which is not available in the 930.
The Lumia 930 (aka Lumia Icon in the US) is a Verizon exclusive. There will be no US GSM versions (ATT&TMobile), aside from international editions of the 930.
About the wifi graph on page 7: If I'm reading this correctly you tested the 930 with a router that only supports up to 802.11n despite the fact that the phone supports ac, and then published a graph that includes phones that were tested with routers that DO support 802.11ac.
Yes, I only have access to a 802.11n router. I updated the graph to point out the connection speed was based on 802.11n. I hope to get a 80.211ac router soon but I have been waiting for the new wave of ac routers that are just starting to appear.
I went to the Microsoft store last week, and every single Lumia Icon on display had a ridiculous amount of mura. Solid colors had a rough linen texture even at high brightness levels.
Maybe Samsung's selling Nokia rejected Galaxy S4 panels?
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Actually it has to do with panel availability. I believe only LG makes panels with display memory, it is a proprietary technology. Unfortunately LG does not have a 5" 1080p panel available at this time.
In the interview with wpcentral.com that I linked to in the article, they specifically called out cost as the issue - which likely has to do with supply as well. If they have to get a custom panel made, it's going to cost more. Still, it's a big sore spot with this device and on something that is supposed to be a flagship, it needs to have it.
It might be still early but you guys need to add some CPU benchmarks at some point. The focus on browsing and GPU doesn't seem enough. I also think it would be good to test... lets call it "touch latency" (or hand to eye or input lag or w/e seems right). Took a long time to add storage tests and battery life in gaming (missing here) , hope it won't take that long for more (needed) benchmarks to be added. The focus mostly on pics and very little on video doesn't seem ideal either, wish there was a bit more about video. Almost forgot , at least in some cases looking at temps would be useful too, the race for more and more perf is pushing things too far sometimes..
"With the 930, Nokia has launched a phone which was on the most current SoC at the time of launch"
not fit with this:
"MSM8974VV"
Wouldn't the Snapdragon 801 at least be required to call it a current SoC, even a few months ago when this apparently launched? The One M8 had the 801 on Android three months before the 930's release and beat this review to bring it to the Windows Phone platform. This thing runs the same processor as the nearly year old Note 3, far from what I'd call current in the fast moving phone market.
There are already a few Snapdragon 805 devices available in Korea and the Note 4 is soon bringing it to the masses, which'll make the 800 two generations old.
Windows Phone really needs a proper flagship, but so far they've only had what feel like warmed over revisions of Androids from 6-12 months ago.
Thanks for the feedback. I've updated the wording of that to include the identical Lumia Icon, which I referenced in the first page. When the Icon shipped in February, Snapdragon 800 was the top. Yes it was not the top for long, but it was at least at the top.
Wow, excellent review! It's nice to finally see a full featured review of a flagship Windows Phone device on Anandtech. Hopefully if Microsoft comes through with rumors of planning more Lumia 1020-esque cameras, we can get one of those on Anandtech as well!
It was even a semi-review of the 1020! If we see a true successor to the 1020 that decreases the camera load times, I'll buy it. The 1020 is pure camera joy otherwise.
Hmmm. Good review. I'm quite a fan of windows phone & lumias. Shame about the battery life on this fella though - I would've expected a lot more. I own a 1320 and the battery life is ridiculous, and everything I've read suggests the 1520 isn't far behind despite its high-end spec. :/
Page 7 needs to be redone... arbitrarily comparing an ac capable phone at n speed and display it alongside a bunch of phones clearly connecting at ac speed is just plain misleading and lazy writing. If you do not have the gear to properly test it - then don't test it - don't put in some misleading chart simply because you need a chart there.
Same goes for the cellular speed test - arguably the most important part for this phone, since I'm not sure 930 4LTE bands would even work on any of the US carriers - and apparently, neither does the tester.
Just speculating here, but I have a feeling they're using a panel like the Galaxy S 4's or even the same panel. It has the same meh to ok colour accuracy and high power draw characteristic giving mediocre web battery life. The S4 had a similar 5 odd hour battery life. Cost and the fact that this device was released in February (before the S5 and it's efficient AMOLED panel came out) as the Icon definitely is it.
"The original image in its full resolution is also available on the device, but can only be accessed via a USB cable by connecting the phone to a PC."
Are you positive about this? At least with the Lumia 1020, that has changed as of Windows Phone 8.1. Instead of automatically uploading the 5MP oversampled (and reframed) image to OneDrive when using Camera Sync, now the high resolution original gets uploaded. I really would prefer it worked how it did before - the high resolution original is pretty useless to me except for reframing.
I'll take a proper white level over good greys on an AMOLED anyday. My biggest gripe with AMOLED is the historically horrible white levels. Nothing wrong with blown colors either, I'm not going to print a proof.. or anything... off this display.
I am honestly not certain why they are getting these results. I use my Icon all day every day and it has the longest battery life I've had on any phone since I had a flip phone. Better than my previous HTC 8X, better than the HTC Trophy before that. I get at least a solid day out of it, and I've gone two days before while out of town (although I was much more careful in my usage).
I think there is something wrong for this test to be getting the results they are, whether with their hardware or with the test itself.
Made an account just to comment on this review - I'm really happy that you guys are reviewing more WP handsets, even with the frustrating hardware stumbles that seem to accompany each generation.
While the base WP isn't skinned by manufacturers, the Nokia firmware and software tweaks - glance, double tap to wake, sunlight readability, etc - are awesome and have been, up until the M8/Moto X, have been unique to WP.
The 801 is an up-binned 800. The 805 is an up-binned 801 with a (significantly) better GPU and Qualcomm themselves has said that clients are expected to pick one or the other rather than use both as an upgrade path. This doesn't excuse the 930 shipping with an 800, but it's a bit of an overstatement to say it's shipping 2 or 3 generations of chip behind.
What I would have liked to see was the 930 come in at a Nexus price. Position it like the Moto X (features, not specs) and introduce more people to the platform. Unfortunately, they pulled a typical Nokia, used cheaper components, focused on features, and then charged a premium price. Hopefully a US-centric version of the 830 will come out with an 800 at around $350. That would be a phone worth reviewing.
What's going on with the web battery life? The N5 has the same size screen and a smaller battery but far better battery life. Also, when did you start including basemark battery tests (I don't recall seeing that test on other reviews)? What do they measure, exactly? The basemark site isn't very forthcoming. Slightly surprised about winos generally poor performance compared to like silicon on Android. I thought it was supposed to be a more efficient platform?
The Galaxy S4 has a slightly larger battery, and gets slightly longer battery life. Without pulling the phone apart, that is the best conclusion I can make based on my time with the device. Battery life on dark scenes is much better than our worst case scenario with the web test of white web pages.
Thanks for the comments. Might I suggest a more transparent (is, open source) test platform? They exist, even for mobile, and you can see exactly what they do. For instance, linaro has released the benchmarks they use for internal testing of commits.
@Brett Howse: 4k video recording is coming to all Snapdragon 800 equipped phones that is Lumia icon, 1520 and 930 with Lumia Denim update, Here is the wpcentral article on this: http://www.wpcentral.com/lumia-denim-firmware-anno...
I'm not sure how so ethi g that, by the charts of performance, can have "superlative" performance. For a flagship phone that's just come out, the performance is no better than mediocre.
The 930 was actually released in February as the Nokia Lumia Icon. At that time the 800 was top end. This review is simply six months late. There is a new top end WP8 phone now, the HTC One M8, which has the Snapdragon 801.
"At 1.1 microns, the pixels in the 930 are much smaller than the HTC One’s 2.0 micron pixels, and even much smaller than something like the iPhone 5s with its 1.5 micron pixels."
The "even much smaller" statement is illogical here.
Nokia Lumia 1520,Big size and big screen with good quality,It worth my money.It is the best windows phone ,i prefer its colors looks.I even bought a nice case from casecoco it would be awesome when you play games with big screen.
I agree on the hardware front, but I no longer agree on the software front. WP8.1 Update 1 is IMO now ahead of the game in terms of software or at the very worst even. Before it was only behind in features, but 8.1 and 8.11 (for workgroups :p) move the bar to AT WORST even with Android and iOS (but ahead of both in plenty of areas).
There are some parts where it is behind: the music app is worse than Apple's and the notification centre could be more customisable for example, but overall it's in excellent shape.
Then there's also the games situation. You can no longer really complain about the app selection, but in terms of games, Windows Phone is undoubtedly well behing its rivals.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 ;)
Lol I gotta say I did think this myself but am sure it is just unlucky timing.
I am very glad that WP is starting to get some virtual column inches around here, there really isn't a best place to read reviews about phones or anything else tech related really.
Real-world battery life is much better than the tests suggest. I'm not sure if there's an issue with how Brett is doing the testing or what, but it's definitely not right.
Battery recharge time was skewed due to Brett not being able to use the proper charger.
Harping on a non-removable battery nowadays is just silly.
IE on WP doesn't have the best benchmark scores, but those benchmarks are largely useless anyway. They've all been optimized and cheated on by everyone. In real usage, I don't notice any difference in web page load times on my Lumia 920 (which has a much slower SoC than the reviewed 930) as compared to any flagship Android or iPhone.
WP has plenty of apps, including some really nice ones that can't be found on other platforms. Harping on the app store thing at this point is ignorant.
Buy whatever smartphone platform you like, but kindly don't cherry-pick a few tidbits from a single problematic review to support what is likely your preexisting bias against the WP platform.
"One thing that Anand has harped on with regards to Windows Phone is that it is often on a much older SoC than competitive Android phones. This delta in performance is difficult to turn a blind eye to, even for supporters of the platform." What for. In general you don't need that power. (For exceptions there are some games like Total Defense 3D, which can slow down massively)
Delta in performance often doesn't translate in better experience...
I just bought this device (live in europe) and I love it! Just sold my old company phone IPhone 5 which I've never really used that much, IOS just doesn't cut it for me I guess although I do love the Hardware. Currently I own a nexus 5 as well as this green lumia 930 as well as the old 920. Lumia 930 is definitely an upgrade over the 920, although battery life isn't as good as it should be. Everyone should give WP a try... so try a lumia 630/635 they're like 100-150$, yet really delivers a very good experience.
It can't be emphasized enough how great the RAW feature is. I've personally not been impressed by most smartphone pictures. They're great... for smartphone pictures. But after running the 929/930 RAW pictures through Adobe Camera Raw, these are amazing pictures. Pictures I can show as equal or superior to "real" cameras.
I don't prefer windows phone, I personally feel android platform is goo enough for device. and I am pretty much happy with the way my Honor 6 is performing. It's just an amazing phone. http://goo.gl/4wojuW
I Lumia 930 with Windows Phone may be best seen, with a beautiful screen, great camera and video performance easily compete with the best Android phones out there. However, I wanted more from the application of the material, and the compatibility of its files is limited.
I couldn't help but notice that you included a result of 55 Mbps in your UDP wifi performance table for the Lumia 930. The reviewer that recorded that value (Brett Howse) was called out several times in the comments section of his review for his incompetence for testing wireless performance using a router that only supported 802.11n when benchmarking a device that supports 802.11ac, and even worse placing that result into a graph with phones that WERE benchmarked against an 802.11ac capable router. He then "corrected" the issue by adding a note to the graph (http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8441/67571... that doesn't really fix anything. I don't understand how you can be in a position to write technical articles and reviews without understanding why this is fundamentally wrong.
Anyway, apparently his erroneous metrics made it into the database of test results that you pull from despite the fact that it's completely unrepresentative of reality. Please either re-test the performance or just remove the result from your recorded metrics. I know nobody really cares about Windows Phone, but I honestly just expect better from anandtech.
I purchased a brand new Nokia Lumia 930 from Singtel Singapore on a contract. The phone would heat up during normal use (making phone calls, checking email, browsing internet, etc..) after two weeks the screen starting showing signs of heat damage.
I would have expected a nokia phone to have lasted longer than two weeks!?
On the recommendation from the Singtel retail store I handed my phone into Nokia Singapore (Harbourfront) to be repaired under warranty. Although I would have really expected a replacement handset given that the phone was only 3 weeks old at this point. Apple seem to provide this service all through their warranty period.
After three weeks and I was still waiting for my phone to be repaired. I tried calling the service center over 20 times, yes over 20 times and with no reply. I also tried calling Nokia support and it is so automated that there is no option to talk to a person regarding my service request or just in general (it has now been changed). I also tried re-visiting the service center where I dropped off the phone and it had closed down! With a note to call Nokia AKA the same I tried before which is (was) useless to a human being.
When I did finally got hold of a Nokia rep over virtual chat, they were helpful in answering my questions and providing an update but with no real result. I was told that the service center are waiting on an important part to arrive but without a date when it might arrive.
Well it's now been over six weeks that Nokia Singapore has had my phone. Apparently the parts are still on their way and the delay is due to bulk shipping them... really? from where the moon???!
The Nokia rep was pretty much useless (again). In that he couldn't provide a timeframe or even escalate my call other than add a priority to the repair once the part(s) arrive, whenever that might be.
According to Nokia's own Limited Warranty, "During the warranty period, Manufacturer will, in a reasonable time, remedy the Defect free of charge by either repairing or replacing the defective Product or the defective part of it at its option provided that you have informed Manufacturer of the Defect before the warranty period expires." Anyone with an iodate of common sense would determine that 6 weeks for a phone repair is beyond a "reasonable time".
Surely it must be cheaper to just provide a replacement phone than ship parts over to Singapore??
I purchased this phone from Singtel and its just money wasted as far I'm concerned as what is the point on owning a phone without being able to use it?
Nokia Service in Singapore is absolutely atrocious and non-functioning, compounded with an unannounced service center closure I don't see a future for Nokia here.
Also given my recent experience this will be the last Nokia phone I'll be getting, back to HTC or even Samsung for me.
The whole experience has been utterly frustrating.
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Arbie - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
SD police here...So my low-end Nokia 520 has microSD, which lets me easily swap in TV series that I watch when traveling or to kill time waiting somewhere. A new 930 at much higher price won't let me do that.
Hmmm... my love affair with Nokia (the 520 is great) will be coming to an end.
Windows Phone doesn't even have the flimsy excuses of the Android camp for no SD. It can even be read-only dumb storage, with no security issues. But no.
Not interested / will never buy it.
tuxRoller - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The Android issues aren't with security but, from what a Dev claimed (falsely, IMO) poor user experience.NikAwesome - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
SD, mSD or whatever external storage are at least an order of magnitude slower than eMMC or ONFI or more advanced NAND interfaces. When an application like the Photo Gallery browser has to read lots of pictures from SD it is really a torture (several seconds, or tens of seconds). In the first eras of tablets and smartphones, people get accustomed that all has to launch in less than second (give or take), faster than their desktop application launch at home/work. So in this context, several seconds is inappropiately interpreted as sluggish CPU performance when the real bottleneck is in the storage IOs. These delays severely impact usability if you are used to full internal flash storage, where everything opens in under a second.I am not against mSD cards, I have an 8GB S4 mini and 32 GB mSD. I can easily tell the performance difference, but I have no choice if I want to take lots of pictures or film lost of 1080p videos.
Summing up, performance is the real reason why Google do not allow external storage on their devices (Nexus smartphones and tablets). From Apple point of view is arguable that they had contracts with music label records inheriting the iPod policy: "easy to load music into the device, a pain in the ass to extract it in order to make piracy more difficult"
jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
If you think sd cards make viewing photos on a phone a chore them it could be your phone or its support of SD cards that is at fault on the Lumia 620 there is no noticeable difference between photos on the phone memory and in SD card.Also there seems to be very little difference, if any, between the 620with all pics on SD and a925 with no SD support so speed is not a reason.
tobi1449 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Plus: What's worse, photos that take a little bit longer to load or photos that either don't load at all because you don't have them with you or take much much longer and half of your free data?marcokatz - Friday, September 26, 2014 - link
Well Nokia sure is trying, but Microsoft is not exactly helping them out (they even released their own app for iPhone first... gosh). Anyway, as of today it's much better to go for one of the really good Android phones. /Marco from http://www.consumertop.com/best-phone-guide/tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That wasn't the reason given, iirc. The problem he mentioned was one of user removes sdcard, doesn't see his photos/apps on phone and gets confused. The other issue was technical, but, again iirc, was fixable if they wanted.jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
While that is the one technical issue with SD card implementation I would say there is a very small amount of people that would be able / willing to switch out the SD card and not be aware that they would be missing the contents of that SD card when they go into their photos app.When you remove a DVD from your computer do you wonder why you can't watch your favourite film anymore? Would anyone?
I am sure it has happened to someone at some point but realistically how many people would that affect compared to the amount of people that would put an extra 32 or 64 Gb in their phone and just be happy to have doubled or tripled their storage to keep a years worth of photos and videos of their kids on their phone.
Either way you look at it having the option to massively extend the amount of internal storage to have more media / apps in your phone is more favourable to most compared to having to resort to the cloud (which is just a no-go for a good portion of smartphone users across the world) or constantly removing stuff to make the newest stuff fit.
I would miss Glance but without SD card I will not be buying this which is a shame I was looking forward to it, don't even get me started on how the rumours for the 830 got me all excited and left me disappointed when the phone was finally announced. Either the 830 or 930 could have been WP halo phones for a lot of potential detractors to the WP platform, instead they are just a few tweaks short of stacking up very favourably with their android competition.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The technical issue was actually brought up by the poster below me (pjcamp). It was regarding creating a unified storage space across multiple devices.To be clear, I am NOT saying these were good reasons, I only brought them up in response to the parent who I thought MIGHT have been claiming that the reasons android dropped sd card support was related to security.
I really wish that sdcards (or some other removable storage standard) made a comeback on android.
Rama TT - Saturday, September 13, 2014 - link
"""Summing up, performance is the real reason why Google do not allow external storage on their devices "" Yeah right and it has nothing to do with Google Drivepjcamp - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Not a dev. THE dev. Marcus Duarte himself claimed that users find two storage locations confusing.How we've muddled along with multiple storage locations on laptops all these years must confuse HIM to no end.
Besides this is Linux. It is possible to make a single file system spanning multiple devices. There's no reason Android couldn't clear up the "confusion" that way.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
This ^I guess they've never heard of lvm/MD/btrfs.
Alexvrb - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That's not limited to Linux. I mean heck there's multiple approaches, some are completely software agnostic.Anyway, MS tried something like that with Windows Phone 7. It creates another problem when the user wants to REMOVE the memory card any time they want (users are stupid, this was a common complaint with WP7 I kid you not, result was WP8 separating the two again). WP 8.1 has a better middle-ground solution. Keep the spaces seperate but make better (and easier) use of the memory card.
BMNify - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Then get Lumia 1520 or 1320 or 630 or soon to be released Lumia 830 and 730, loads of options for MicroSD fanatics.jimbo2779 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The issue is that this is meant to be the flagship phone at a reasonable size, the 1520 and 1320 are too big for the majority of users, the 830 is running a far inferior SoC, less RAM, poorer quality screen and camera, everything lower is in the same boat as the 830 or even worse so really the lack of SD card support here is it's main disappointment.I was looking forward to this phone so much only to find out it had no SD card support, any user of a Lumia (or other WP phone) with SD card support knows that it is so easy to use and allows for much more space than is available in a phone.
Would you rather have a phone with 32Gb or 96Gb? I know which I would prefer and I definitely would have bought a 930 outright to replace my 925 as this is an upgrade in every way but for some unknown reason they decided to make it the only phone in this years line-up without SD card support meaning it is a no go for me.
Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The question is what feature would you drop in order to gain that MicroSD slot? Because the 930/Icon is packed very tightly, it has everything that is in the 1520, yet in a full inch smaller package. Furthermore, it is barely larger overall than most 4.5" phones, so they really packed it tight.I am not willing to go with a larger phone. The features they did include are all very useful to me, I'd be pissed to lose, say, Qi charging, for a SD slot. I get that you want it all, but there are tradeoffs. Either you get the 930 with SD but without something else that takes up space, or you get it without SD support, or you get a larger phone that has all of it included (1520). The reason the 1520 exists is because there are some who are not willing to compromise. Quite frankly the 1520 is the phone you should be looking at, it was made with you in mind.
Also, the 520 has a SD slot not because its a high end feature but because it permits them to sell a phone with very little integrated storage, putting that part of the cost in the hands of the buyer.
Samus - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Most SD cards are slow, the controllers are slow, both add complexity and space to the PCB, most people rarely, if ever, use them, and most importantly, they drain the battery.If I were designing a small phone, I wouldn't put in external storage, either. Phablets and Tablets, sure...but with everything (especially WP8) becoming cloud-centric now, I don't see the need for physical media in a phone.
ummduh - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The cloud this, the cloud that, cloud, cloud, cloud cloud cloud.Do none of you people ever go outside the city you live in? End up in the mountains? The woods? A back country road that just happens to not have a signal?
I spend sometimes weeks on job sites out in the middle of nowhere with no signal. No wifi, either, since, ya know, it's a job site.
The cloud is 100% useless in those situations. Yea it's a neat toy, and can be handy when you never ever lose service. And you're willing to pay more and more for less and less data service.
Otherwise, you need storage on the device. 16GB, 32GB doesn't cut it. An endless supply is 64-128GB mSD cards, however, does. After apps are installed, I can only put a couple GB of music on my phone before it's filled. And then I get nagged to death by low storage warnings.
The cloud can go screw itself.
Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
And in your situation that makes sense. However that is an edge case and the market really isn't, nor should it be, tailored to edge cases. Also, as someone who has compared coverage between carriers, I strongly suggest Verizon which tends to work just about everywhere, even in the backwoods, at least in the northern half of the country.ummduh - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
So, I should pay extra amounts of money, every month, to stream the same data over and over to my phone, instead of carrying said data on my phone to begin with, and not keep incurring ever increasingly exorbitant monthly fees? What sense does that make?Pay to have the amount of data I'd need monthly (10GBish), over, and over, and over, and over.. etc. Or, $25 mSD?
It's not market tailoring, it's data fees extortion.
ummduh - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
LOL, ok, I'm coming across mighty angry. I'm not, really. I'd LOVE to be able to use the cloud as it is intended. But I can't, in its current state.I'm just sick of people thinking there is no reason to have mSD cards. There are real, legitimate uses for them still. And as long as tiered, over priced network access exists, that isn't going to change.
The fact that they're getting fewer and further between almost wreaks of some sort of conspiracy, if you're into that sort of thing.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
There is certainly a place for micro SD cards. I've said it before and I will say it again - Windows Phone supports micro SD better than any OS. But you have to remember this is the only Windows Phone in the entire Nokia lineup that doesn't have micro SD. Unfortunately if that is a requirement then this phone is not for you. If you absolutely need a 5" Windows Phone with top end specs and micro SD, check out the HTC One for Windows :)prb123 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Time to get one of these: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=13...Notmyusualid - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
Quote: "The cloud can go screw itself."I love this.
peterfares - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
LOL SD cards waste battery and you suggest to use streaming instead? HAHAHAHAjimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The cloud works for certain parts of the world and for people with a phone contract that has enough bandwidth. It is not right to assume that because you are in an area with good reception and a contract that allows lots of downloading that everyone or even a majority of people are because that just isn't the case.pjcamp - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
So someone always has to point this out, but:1. The cloud is not always there. If you use T-Mobile, for instance, it can disappear just from going inside a building. What do you do then?
2. If you don't want to use them, don't use them. But don't demand that they be absent for people who do use them. I don't use Bluetooth. But I just turn the damn thing off rather than demanding that mobile devices stop supporting it.
3. SD cards can be, but don't have to be, slow. That's why they're useful for mass data storage. I use mine to segregate data from system and apps. When I experimented with Cyanogenmod a while back, I backed up my data by simply removing the card during the install process. Similarly, I installed Sygic navigation (because the cloud isn't always available) and the local maps would totally consume storage space on any of the 16 GB "flagship" phones that companies are putting out these days because, you know, the cloud.
pjcamp - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Why do I have to drop something? Why can't I just pay an extra dollar? Would that really price them out of the market?quasitraveler - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I think this phone is great. Lack of an SD card is definitely not an issue, at least for me. One drive gives me plenty of storage for almost anything I need and 32GB is plenty of storage for anything else. (Reading these comments makes me realize that so many still don't appreciate the value of cloud storage) Additionally, I am not sure why anyone would ever want to watch movies or TV, like Arbie commented above, on a phone while traveling when tablets or Ultrabooks do a far better job. Just saying...jimbo2779 - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
If you genuinely read ask of these comments you would already know all of the reasons that cloud storage is not a replacement for the majority of users, it is far slower, more costly and only available in limited areas for certain users. SD storage is cheap, faster, always there and just all round more convenient.Storage isn't just for huge music or HD film collections. Some of us have large app collections, lots of photos and videos (the cameras on these phones do get used a lot by some of is) and like to have things like maps saved on our devices amongst other things that use up tonnes of space and make a phone much more usable.
Using the cloud is fine for those that never lose signal, have an unlimited bandwidth allowances and can put up with everything leading much slower then that is fine but for those of us that have no option for reliable and unlimited use of the cloud or prefer much faster local storage we would like for SD card storage to be an option.
The caddy for the card takes up a very small amount of space and cost just pennies, it is an oversight to not include something so useful to the huge majority of users just because some people can use the cloud.
Myrandex - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
You realize the high end Lumia 1520 has SD card slot support...as well as Glance support that was a major loss in the authors eyes right? Too bad it was never reviewed at AT. That LCD screen on it is really nice.Luke4 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Just buy the upcoming 730 instead.Chriz - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Will the 930 support T-Mobile LTE? It wasn't really clear which provider Brett was using to test with.Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I was testing on TELUS, but as it was an international phone it did not support all of the LTE bands for North America. The specific LTE bands this phone is capable of are listed in the specs on page 1. T-Mobile appears to use band 4, which is not available in the 930.krutou - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The Lumia 930 (aka Lumia Icon in the US) is a Verizon exclusive. There will be no US GSM versions (ATT&TMobile), aside from international editions of the 930.Myrandex - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
The 1520 supports TMo LTE though ;)Boogaloo - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
About the wifi graph on page 7: If I'm reading this correctly you tested the 930 with a router that only supports up to 802.11n despite the fact that the phone supports ac, and then published a graph that includes phones that were tested with routers that DO support 802.11ac.Let me know if I understood correctly please.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Yes, I only have access to a 802.11n router. I updated the graph to point out the connection speed was based on 802.11n. I hope to get a 80.211ac router soon but I have been waiting for the new wave of ac routers that are just starting to appear.jenesuispasbavard - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Still isn't clear that the other phones were tested with 802.11ac...georgehan - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I went to the Microsoft store last week, and every single Lumia Icon on display had a ridiculous amount of mura. Solid colors had a rough linen texture even at high brightness levels.Maybe Samsung's selling Nokia rejected Galaxy S4 panels?
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.
Reflex - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Actually it has to do with panel availability. I believe only LG makes panels with display memory, it is a proprietary technology. Unfortunately LG does not have a 5" 1080p panel available at this time.Brett Howse - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
In the interview with wpcentral.com that I linked to in the article, they specifically called out cost as the issue - which likely has to do with supply as well. If they have to get a custom panel made, it's going to cost more. Still, it's a big sore spot with this device and on something that is supposed to be a flagship, it needs to have it.jjj - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
It might be still early but you guys need to add some CPU benchmarks at some point. The focus on browsing and GPU doesn't seem enough.I also think it would be good to test... lets call it "touch latency" (or hand to eye or input lag or w/e seems right).
Took a long time to add storage tests and battery life in gaming (missing here) , hope it won't take that long for more (needed) benchmarks to be added.
The focus mostly on pics and very little on video doesn't seem ideal either, wish there was a bit more about video.
Almost forgot , at least in some cases looking at temps would be useful too, the race for more and more perf is pushing things too far sometimes..
wolrah - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Am I missing something, or does this:"With the 930, Nokia has launched a phone which was on the most current SoC at the time of launch"
not fit with this:
"MSM8974VV"
Wouldn't the Snapdragon 801 at least be required to call it a current SoC, even a few months ago when this apparently launched? The One M8 had the 801 on Android three months before the 930's release and beat this review to bring it to the Windows Phone platform. This thing runs the same processor as the nearly year old Note 3, far from what I'd call current in the fast moving phone market.
There are already a few Snapdragon 805 devices available in Korea and the Note 4 is soon bringing it to the masses, which'll make the 800 two generations old.
Windows Phone really needs a proper flagship, but so far they've only had what feel like warmed over revisions of Androids from 6-12 months ago.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Hi Wolrah.Thanks for the feedback. I've updated the wording of that to include the identical Lumia Icon, which I referenced in the first page. When the Icon shipped in February, Snapdragon 800 was the top. Yes it was not the top for long, but it was at least at the top.
Yofa - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
the only thing worse than a windows phone is a riders fan.boo!!!
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
boo back :)Drumsticks - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Wow, excellent review! It's nice to finally see a full featured review of a flagship Windows Phone device on Anandtech. Hopefully if Microsoft comes through with rumors of planning more Lumia 1020-esque cameras, we can get one of those on Anandtech as well!MonkeyPaw - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
It was even a semi-review of the 1020! If we see a true successor to the 1020 that decreases the camera load times, I'll buy it. The 1020 is pure camera joy otherwise.gg555 - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Yeah, it's amazing how far ahead of it's time the 1020 (and 808) remain. It's such an under appreciated phone.Yeoman_guard - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Hmmm. Good review. I'm quite a fan of windows phone & lumias. Shame about the battery life on this fella though - I would've expected a lot more. I own a 1320 and the battery life is ridiculous, and everything I've read suggests the 1520 isn't far behind despite its high-end spec. :/Yassarian - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Page 7 needs to be redone... arbitrarily comparing an ac capable phone at n speed and display it alongside a bunch of phones clearly connecting at ac speed is just plain misleading and lazy writing. If you do not have the gear to properly test it - then don't test it - don't put in some misleading chart simply because you need a chart there.Same goes for the cellular speed test - arguably the most important part for this phone, since I'm not sure 930 4LTE bands would even work on any of the US carriers - and apparently, neither does the tester.
snoozemode - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Microsoft: Fix the screen calibration issues with next firmware update!eddman - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
What's wrong with this phone's web browsing battery life?!I've seen sort of similar results in other reviews. Could it be that nokia/MS used a subpar, inefficient display?
frostyfiredude - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Just speculating here, but I have a feeling they're using a panel like the Galaxy S 4's or even the same panel. It has the same meh to ok colour accuracy and high power draw characteristic giving mediocre web battery life. The S4 had a similar 5 odd hour battery life. Cost and the fact that this device was released in February (before the S5 and it's efficient AMOLED panel came out) as the Icon definitely is it.jhoff80 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
"The original image in its full resolution is also available on the device, but can only be accessed via a USB cable by connecting the phone to a PC."Are you positive about this? At least with the Lumia 1020, that has changed as of Windows Phone 8.1. Instead of automatically uploading the 5MP oversampled (and reframed) image to OneDrive when using Camera Sync, now the high resolution original gets uploaded. I really would prefer it worked how it did before - the high resolution original is pretty useless to me except for reframing.
Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
You are correct - the high res shots are now uploaded to OneDrive.I agree with you the 5 MP picture was often good enough. I wish there was an option.
jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
There is an option for uploading "Good Quality" or "Best Quality" in the upload settings:Photos App=>Settings=>OneDrive
I realise there is some ambiguity as to what is Good Quality and what is Best Quality but there is at least some distinction there.
coburn_c - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I'll take a proper white level over good greys on an AMOLED anyday. My biggest gripe with AMOLED is the historically horrible white levels. Nothing wrong with blown colors either, I'm not going to print a proof.. or anything... off this display.tom5 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I have stopped reading at battery life tests. This is a joke, not a flagship device.Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I am honestly not certain why they are getting these results. I use my Icon all day every day and it has the longest battery life I've had on any phone since I had a flip phone. Better than my previous HTC 8X, better than the HTC Trophy before that. I get at least a solid day out of it, and I've gone two days before while out of town (although I was much more careful in my usage).I think there is something wrong for this test to be getting the results they are, whether with their hardware or with the test itself.
AlexOwliver - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Made an account just to comment on this review - I'm really happy that you guys are reviewing more WP handsets, even with the frustrating hardware stumbles that seem to accompany each generation.While the base WP isn't skinned by manufacturers, the Nokia firmware and software tweaks - glance, double tap to wake, sunlight readability, etc - are awesome and have been, up until the M8/Moto X, have been unique to WP.
The 801 is an up-binned 800. The 805 is an up-binned 801 with a (significantly) better GPU and Qualcomm themselves has said that clients are expected to pick one or the other rather than use both as an upgrade path. This doesn't excuse the 930 shipping with an 800, but it's a bit of an overstatement to say it's shipping 2 or 3 generations of chip behind.
What I would have liked to see was the 930 come in at a Nexus price. Position it like the Moto X (features, not specs) and introduce more people to the platform. Unfortunately, they pulled a typical Nokia, used cheaper components, focused on features, and then charged a premium price. Hopefully a US-centric version of the 830 will come out with an 800 at around $350. That would be a phone worth reviewing.
tuxRoller - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The 805 also has vastly more bandwidth.tuxRoller - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
What's going on with the web battery life? The N5 has the same size screen and a smaller battery but far better battery life. Also, when did you start including basemark battery tests (I don't recall seeing that test on other reviews)? What do they measure, exactly? The basemark site isn't very forthcoming.Slightly surprised about winos generally poor performance compared to like silicon on Android. I thought it was supposed to be a more efficient platform?
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
"Also, when did you start including basemark battery tests"We've had the data for some time now.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/992
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thanks! I hadn't seen that part of the site before.Brett Howse - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I contacted the authors of Basemark just the other day to get a better feel for how their score is calculated, but have not heard back yet.As far as the web battery life, the AMOLED panel in the Lumia 930 appears to be the same generation as the Galaxy S4, which also had terrible battery life http://www.anandtech.com/show/6914/samsung-galaxy-...
The Galaxy S4 has a slightly larger battery, and gets slightly longer battery life. Without pulling the phone apart, that is the best conclusion I can make based on my time with the device. Battery life on dark scenes is much better than our worst case scenario with the web test of white web pages.
tuxRoller - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Thanks for the comments.Might I suggest a more transparent (is, open source) test platform? They exist, even for mobile, and you can see exactly what they do.
For instance, linaro has released the benchmarks they use for internal testing of commits.
randomshinichi - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
How did you measure the shot latency with such precision? In my experience, the iPhone 5S has the best shot latency, even more than the HTC One M8.notposting - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I set a Favorite in IE labeled "-jump to top", the target is: javascript:scroll(0,0) -- it works great.Also I get the same mobile NY Times site in IE10 on WP8...I believe a better example is supposed to be Twitter.
BMNify - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
@Brett Howse: 4k video recording is coming to all Snapdragon 800 equipped phones that is Lumia icon, 1520 and 930 with Lumia Denim update, Here is the wpcentral article on this: http://www.wpcentral.com/lumia-denim-firmware-anno...BMNify - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Ohh, i was reading the camera section where it was not mentioned but you have mentioned about 4k, HDR, Denim update in the last section :)melgross - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
I'm not sure how so ethi g that, by the charts of performance, can have "superlative" performance. For a flagship phone that's just come out, the performance is no better than mediocre.Reflex - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
The 930 was actually released in February as the Nokia Lumia Icon. At that time the 800 was top end. This review is simply six months late. There is a new top end WP8 phone now, the HTC One M8, which has the Snapdragon 801.batongxue - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
"At 1.1 microns, the pixels in the 930 are much smaller than the HTC One’s 2.0 micron pixels, and even much smaller than something like the iPhone 5s with its 1.5 micron pixels."The "even much smaller" statement is illogical here.
edwardjames2014 - Monday, September 8, 2014 - link
Nokia Lumia 1520,Big size and big screen with good quality,It worth my money.It is the best windows phone ,i prefer its colors looks.I even bought a nice case from casecoco it would be awesome when you play games with big screen.leomax999 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
IMO, wp is slow to adopt new hardware and very slow catching up with rest of the market in terms of software.althaz - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I agree on the hardware front, but I no longer agree on the software front. WP8.1 Update 1 is IMO now ahead of the game in terms of software or at the very worst even. Before it was only behind in features, but 8.1 and 8.11 (for workgroups :p) move the bar to AT WORST even with Android and iOS (but ahead of both in plenty of areas).There are some parts where it is behind: the music app is worse than Apple's and the notification centre could be more customisable for example, but overall it's in excellent shape.
Then there's also the games situation. You can no longer really complain about the app selection, but in terms of games, Windows Phone is undoubtedly well behing its rivals.
peterfares - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
ugh pentile grosstheNiZer - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Finally the Lumia 930 got reviewed at Anandtech - thank you, and the wait was worth it. Great review and handset!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.Gunbuster - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Good to finally have a review, even if it's conveniently just in time to be buried by apple articles.Brett Howse - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
That's my bad I received the phone at the start of August but was unable to review it for a while due to personal matters.jimbo2779 - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Lol I gotta say I did think this myself but am sure it is just unlucky timing.I am very glad that WP is starting to get some virtual column inches around here, there really isn't a best place to read reviews about phones or anything else tech related really.
maximumGPU - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Yes thanks Brett for finally reviewing a windows phone. Hope they get more coverage.halcyon - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Shortest real-world battery life.Longest battery recharge times.
Non-removable battery.
Slowest / Stupidest web-browser for visiting web-pages and no real alternative on the whole platform (all are IE skins basically).
And very little WP apps to combat the sucky browsing experience.
Now, remind me again, why would I buy this as a smartphone?
kyuu - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
Real-world battery life is much better than the tests suggest. I'm not sure if there's an issue with how Brett is doing the testing or what, but it's definitely not right.Battery recharge time was skewed due to Brett not being able to use the proper charger.
Harping on a non-removable battery nowadays is just silly.
IE on WP doesn't have the best benchmark scores, but those benchmarks are largely useless anyway. They've all been optimized and cheated on by everyone. In real usage, I don't notice any difference in web page load times on my Lumia 920 (which has a much slower SoC than the reviewed 930) as compared to any flagship Android or iPhone.
WP has plenty of apps, including some really nice ones that can't be found on other platforms. Harping on the app store thing at this point is ignorant.
Buy whatever smartphone platform you like, but kindly don't cherry-pick a few tidbits from a single problematic review to support what is likely your preexisting bias against the WP platform.
notposting - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
I upgraded from the 928 to the Icon, and putting them side by side running WP8/GDR3 with the same apps, performance is basically identical.The Icon pulls away in loading times, and has a slight advantage in browsing, but otherwise even the older dual cores run fine.
Put the Icon up against the LG G3 I shipped out yesterday and web browsing was a wash.
Of course, the camera on the 928 blew them both away in very low light situations, so there's that. :P
Klimax - Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - link
"One thing that Anand has harped on with regards to Windows Phone is that it is often on a much older SoC than competitive Android phones. This delta in performance is difficult to turn a blind eye to, even for supporters of the platform."What for. In general you don't need that power. (For exceptions there are some games like Total Defense 3D, which can slow down massively)
Delta in performance often doesn't translate in better experience...
suandantal - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
I just bought this device (live in europe) and I love it! Just sold my old company phone IPhone 5 which I've never really used that much, IOS just doesn't cut it for me I guess although I do love the Hardware. Currently I own a nexus 5 as well as this green lumia 930 as well as the old 920. Lumia 930 is definitely an upgrade over the 920, although battery life isn't as good as it should be. Everyone should give WP a try... so try a lumia 630/635 they're like 100-150$, yet really delivers a very good experience.dirtyvu - Sunday, September 21, 2014 - link
It can't be emphasized enough how great the RAW feature is. I've personally not been impressed by most smartphone pictures. They're great... for smartphone pictures. But after running the 929/930 RAW pictures through Adobe Camera Raw, these are amazing pictures. Pictures I can show as equal or superior to "real" cameras.ritwik - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
I don't prefer windows phone, I personally feel android platform is goo enough for device. and I am pretty much happy with the way my Honor 6 is performing. It's just an amazing phone. http://goo.gl/4wojuWnuna12 - Tuesday, October 14, 2014 - link
I Lumia 930 with Windows Phone may be best seen, with a beautiful screen, great camera and video performance easily compete with the best Android phones out there. However, I wanted more from the application of the material, and the compatibility of its files is limited.Boogaloo - Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - link
I couldn't help but notice that you included a result of 55 Mbps in your UDP wifi performance table for the Lumia 930. The reviewer that recorded that value (Brett Howse) was called out several times in the comments section of his review for his incompetence for testing wireless performance using a router that only supported 802.11n when benchmarking a device that supports 802.11ac, and even worse placing that result into a graph with phones that WERE benchmarked against an 802.11ac capable router. He then "corrected" the issue by adding a note to the graph (http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph8441/67571... that doesn't really fix anything. I don't understand how you can be in a position to write technical articles and reviews without understanding why this is fundamentally wrong.Anyway, apparently his erroneous metrics made it into the database of test results that you pull from despite the fact that it's completely unrepresentative of reality. Please either re-test the performance or just remove the result from your recorded metrics. I know nobody really cares about Windows Phone, but I honestly just expect better from anandtech.
chrisouth - Tuesday, December 2, 2014 - link
I purchased a brand new Nokia Lumia 930 from Singtel Singapore on a contract. The phone would heat up during normal use (making phone calls, checking email, browsing internet, etc..) after two weeks the screen starting showing signs of heat damage.I would have expected a nokia phone to have lasted longer than two weeks!?
On the recommendation from the Singtel retail store I handed my phone into Nokia Singapore (Harbourfront) to be repaired under warranty. Although I would have really expected a replacement handset given that the phone was only 3 weeks old at this point. Apple seem to provide this service all through their warranty period.
After three weeks and I was still waiting for my phone to be repaired. I tried calling the service center over 20 times, yes over 20 times and with no reply. I also tried calling Nokia support and it is so automated that there is no option to talk to a person regarding my service request or just in general (it has now been changed). I also tried re-visiting the service center where I dropped off the phone and it had closed down! With a note to call Nokia AKA the same I tried before which is (was) useless to a human being.
When I did finally got hold of a Nokia rep over virtual chat, they were helpful in answering my questions and providing an update but with no real result. I was told that the service center are waiting on an important part to arrive but without a date when it might arrive.
Well it's now been over six weeks that Nokia Singapore has had my phone. Apparently the parts are still on their way and the delay is due to bulk shipping them... really? from where the moon???!
The Nokia rep was pretty much useless (again). In that he couldn't provide a timeframe or even escalate my call other than add a priority to the repair once the part(s) arrive, whenever that might be.
According to Nokia's own Limited Warranty, "During the warranty period, Manufacturer will, in a reasonable time, remedy the Defect free of charge by either repairing or replacing the defective Product or the defective part of it at its option provided that you have informed Manufacturer of the Defect before the warranty period expires." Anyone with an iodate of common sense would determine that 6 weeks for a phone repair is beyond a "reasonable time".
Surely it must be cheaper to just provide a replacement phone than ship parts over to Singapore??
I purchased this phone from Singtel and its just money wasted as far I'm concerned as what is the point on owning a phone without being able to use it?
Nokia Service in Singapore is absolutely atrocious and non-functioning, compounded with an unannounced service center closure I don't see a future for Nokia here.
Also given my recent experience this will be the last Nokia phone I'll be getting, back to HTC or even Samsung for me.
The whole experience has been utterly frustrating.
Shame on you Nokia.