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Lumia 930: The most complete Windows Phone to date [Gulf News (United Arab Emirates)](Gulf News (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dubai: Nokia's Lumia 930 is the first smartphone to run on Windows 8.1 and the successor to Lumia 925. It is a well-constructed device that is sturdy with the grey aluminium frame and the polycarbonate back with eye-catching colours. At 9.8mm thick, the unibody Lumia 930 is thicker than the competitors as well as heavy. It weighs 167 grams. The five-inch Full HD AMOLED display has an impressive 441 pixels per inch density and it is toughened with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. There are four keys on the right side — volume rocker, on/off button and a dedicated camera button. The device runs on 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with Adreno 330 GPU and sports 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage capacity but no slot to expand the storage capacity. The ClearBlack display brings the deep colours to the screen so the black looks really dark even in outdoors. Depending on the user, the display colour settings can be adjusted. The new software lets users adjust the live tile sizes to bring more apps on to the home screen. Microsoft has added the notification bar to give an Android experience and the new keyboard supports swipe-based typing. It is easier to get searches and speed-up typing. Microsoft's answer to Siri and Google Voice Search — Cortana — works well and catches the accent fast. Even though Microsoft has made great changes to the operating system, it still lags behind other operating systems in apps. The core apps like Twitter, Spotify, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facbook, Skype, Xbox-influenced Games, Bing-powered News, Weather and Sports apps are included but popular games like Simpsons Tapped Out, Real Racing 3, Candy Crush Saga and Monument Valley are not there. Playing games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Halo: Spartan Assault is a breeze without no lag but the lower half of the backside gets warm and takes some time to cool down. Two images The autofocus 20MP PureView camera has a 1/2.5-inch sensor with an f/2.4 aperture, a dual LED flash and Carl Zeiss optics. There is no HDR mode but the optical image stabilisation is good when recording videos in Full HD. The camera app is straightforward and different options to change the settings. Users can take 10 frames in quick succession in the burst mode and adjust the image with blur effects. The camera takes two images — a 5MP and 16MP. The 5MP is for sending it to social networks. Taking close-ups and portrait shops with the device gives sharp and detailed images with accurate colours. In pitch dark conditions, the images are decent but colours look washed out. In decent light conditions the camera excels. Nokia has included four microphones and the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio recording so the voices are picked up from a distance in HD and it is very useful when recording. With the enhanced Nokia Camera with Living Images, it's easy to add movement and emotion to static pictures, while imaging apps such as Nokia Storyteller, Nokia Creative Studio and Nokia Refocus bring even more levels of creativity to any photo. The 1.2MP front camera takes decent snaps and shoots videos at 720p. The "selfie" concept is gaining traction and Microsoft needs to give a serious thought to it. The front records videos in 1080p or 720p at 30, 25, and 24 frames per second but the 60 and 120 frames per second are missing, which is disappointing. The non-removable 2,420mAh battery gives almost a day for moderate users but for heavy users it lasts for around seven hours, which is average. Charging the device is fast and it supports Qi wireless charging. Nokia does add battery saver options where users can disable running apps, stop syncing data online to add juice to the battery. Regarding connectivity, it has WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, 4G LTE and NFC. It is priced at Dh2,199. (c) 2014 Al Nisr Publishing LLC . All rights reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |