Nokia Lumia 920 Review: A Fisher-Price Phone For A Giant

@ author:
I'm 100% sure that you are a crazy man. I got my Lumia 920 last Saturday and I love it. I don't see any issue with OS. And I don't see any problem with Lumia 920's battery life.

I love Lumia 920's great features:
Offline GPS
City lens
Panoramic photographs
Best quality videos
NFC
Wireless charging

Windows phone 8 has all the great apps that I wanted.

@ author: go and have fun with your cheap quality samsung phone, or apple's stupid same design iPhone 5 with crap maps app.

Lumia 920 is # 1 selling phone on amazon.com

By the way, if you think that lumia 920 is so big then why don't you try Nokia's Lumia 820 with smaller screen???

This phone probably isn't for little girls like the reviewer.
Everyone who has actually bought this phone has said they do not have concerns with the weight or size.

A company and phone that actually innovates and you put it down cause of it's weight?
Do you really want a world full of Apple and Samsung?
There would be no reason for innovation and progress then.

Ridiculous review on every level.
Grow up and write a review based on what the phone is capable of doing. Not it's size and weight.

"The Lumia 920 is unnecessarily big: it's heavy, there's unused space (given the screen size, the phone could be an entire centimeter shorter), it's thick, it's huge."

Haven't had any issues with the size - nor has anyone I've shown the phone to. The other day I actually had to pat my front pocket to confirm I had the phone on me. I doubt the phone is "unnecessarily" large - I'm sure every mm of space in the case is used. Why would Nokia spend money on wasted materials?

"Battery life wasn't great, doubtless the fault of the huge screen and battery-hungry 4G LTE antenna. It was enough to make it through the day, barely, if you used it lightly. Not good."

Yesterday I used my phone ALL day, from 7 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., when I got home it was still at 23% battery life. The battery is fine under normal, daily use. If you use your phone for tethering or nav or some battery intensive activity then you should have a way to charge it, but under normal use the battery life is fine, 8-10 hours.

"But for some reason there's hardly any friction on that swipe, so it's hard to get it to stop on the app you want. The app list itself populates according to some algorithm I never figured out--sometimes one app would have three spots, sometimes the app I was using five minutes ago wouldn't be there. There's no way to close apps that I can see."

This is just complete hogwash. Press and hold the back button shows your running apps, you can swipe thru them and they are just as "sticky" as any other swipe on the phone. to close an app you select it (so that it's the active app) and then press the back button until you return to the home screen, voila the app is now closed. I agree it would be nice if you could simply "flick" the app to close it but haven't really had an issue pressing back until the app is closed. I imagine part of the reason it's done this way is because sometimes you suspend an app several layers deep and the back button option allows you to resume from where you left off and then go back one screen at a time rather than having to re-start the app and drill down to where you want to be again. So it's a trade off in that regard.

"The apps that it does have are sometimes woefully outdated or buggy; why would Twitter or Rdio spend time and money fixing an app that only a few hundred or a few thousand people use? And Instagram, swiftly becoming one of the most important social networks out there, has no Windows Phone app."

Interesting that you didn't do basic research to learn Instagram will be on WP8 in the near future - and that 46 or the 50 most used apps on iOS and Android are already on WP8 today. Twitter is building a Win8 app from the ground up and announced as much already. Maybe you should stop the speculation and just deliver the facts.

Some of the functions that REQUIRE an app on other platforms are baked into the OS on WP so no app is needed. For instance the People Hub does FB better than FB does. I almost never have need to go to the FB app at all on my WP.

Bottom line - WP8 smokes Android hands down and is far more fun and interesting than iOS. Lumia 920 is an EXCELLENT platform and I highly recommend it.

"multitasking is still broken"

I'll give you the clock thing - but to demonstrate how minor that is I didn't even realize it goes missing when you're in an app until just now. But there's nothing "broken" about multi-tasking - you can run multiple apps in the background. Just because you assert something doesn't make it factual you know? You're coming very close to just plain lying about this function on WP8.

"there are better phones out there."

LMAO - no there isn't. There are phones that you may PREFER for yourself but they aren't better. You're readers should also know there are approx. 130,000 apps on WP. Were you b!tchin' like this when Apple was at 130,000 applications, Android (which doesn't even vet its apps), I doubt it because 130,000 apps is a lot of apps and it's growing very quickly.

Good job on your article. To be honest, I don't really think it's worth a response. All I want to know, is: Where do I sign up?! Apple must be paying you and a whole lot of other people a lot in exchange for their integrity. How much did they pay you for this one? I can write articles too!

I don't get this review. The 920 is wonderfull. Come on man:
- Wireless charging that no top phone has
- The best camera compared to Iphone 5 and the S3
- Many colors compared to the 2 on Samsung and Apple
- Great working navigation
- The battery life is great but why keep power hungry things on at all time? Use the settings to close gps etc when not in use
- you can operate it even with gloves or a pen
- The screen is stunning and a lot better then the competition
- It has NFC that is a growing platform for wireless payment and is developing into a thousand and 1 uses, including the modules that Nokia has that allow applications to start or close when you dock it in your car or in your bedroom or in your office. Like starting music, opening, closing gps, calender etc.
-it as 32 GB internal memory
-greatly priced with subscription
-do i need to continue

You have to ask yourself why this phone has so many pre orders. Like in France where pre orders have been outselling the new Iphone 5. The fact is slowly but surely Nokia is getting back in the game. Whats not to like. Many people here in Europe love this phone. We are tired of top phones from just Apple or Samsung. More choice of top phones is a wonderfull thing. And this phone is clearly the best spec smartphone to ever hit the market.

I have no affiliation with Nokia, but calling the Nokia 920 a Fisher Price, that is, a toy is completely derogatory. I thought PopSci was better than this.

But, the reviewers are paid junk, they have to get a reaction to get people to their review.

It's all part of the process.

The Apple chain, it stems so far....

Let's say no more ehh?

My goodness, I have been a reader of Popular Science for over 50 years and have never ever read such absurdity. Are you sure you actually work for what is generally a great magazine or are you just a part time reviewer who happened to talk your way into an article. Dribble. Unbalanced. And worst of all simply not factual.

This is 100% fail. I got the Lumia 920 and its the smoothest phone I've ever used, and I work IT at a massive health system and use iPhones and have owned 2 android phones in the past, so I'm not a metrosexual rookie that walks around in tight pants using weight as an excuse to bash the most solid phone I've ever used. Your overall talking a 16ish % weight difference from an iPhone. When you consider the off contract pricing and using a non contract GSM provider like straight talk, you have the best deal you can get while not being a sheep to overpriced monthly service bills. This is an amazing piece of hardware, and you even had more good to say about it than bad,but you still blew the review and used an insulting headline. The 920 feels like a Roles Royce, or a Bentley and performs just the same. I just typed this comment on mine in about 5 min, took my phone(which has a well conditioned battery!) off the charger at 9am today and its now 1240am, and I have 30% battery left...thats with regular use, and syncing my work exchange account and 2 personal email accounts. This article = FAIL.

Who edited this thing? popsci, get this thing down before you get into trouble.

Dan Nosowitz needs to quit writing articles under popsci.
He is clearly incapable of applying the slightest notion of objectivity. It's an embarrassment to a company that associates itself with science, when objectivity is one of the foremost values of scientific truth.

A reviewer is entitled to their opinions but I'm afraid you invited a lot of trouble on yourself by writing such a subjective review which is superficial and lacking in any real technical knowledge, even at a user level. You have let your own personal bias and opinion prevent you from writing a properly structured, informative and objective article which is what will encourage people to visit the site and stay there.

Your title alone is a disgrace alluding to the Lumia 920 as a 'Fisher Price Toy'. I'm afraid the only childish thing that is apparent is the quality of your review. Being a complete geek myself I have the iPhone 5, Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and now the Lumia 920. It is nowhere near as bad as you make out. The only mistake Nokia have made is gambling on such a large flagship phone which may restrict its success in some consumer segments.It has also been very poorly marketed by Nokia. However, it is better than the iPhone 5 despite Apple having a better ecosystem and more apps. It certainly stands head to head with the Galaxy S3 and Note 2 as a high-end smartphone.

You spent a longer time than usual with this phone? I could have written a review of this depth after spending 2 hours with the phone followed by a 60 minute write up! You need to do better Dan or no-one will come back to read phone reviews on this site!

I'm not coming back to this website. Goodbye popsci.

Wow, big shocker here. PopSci gave a bad review to a none Apple device. Seriously people, what did you expect? they drool for weeks before each new Apple device, and hate anything none-Apple with a thinly veiled passion, especially Windows devices.

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. Albert Einstein

Ruby explained I'm shocked that a person able to make $9138 in one month on the computer. did you read this web page.. {{{ twlr.me/pop }}}

Goodness gracious. I can't be the only one who liked this article.

I agree that the power of a phone is important, but weight, aesthetics, etc obviously matter too, as does what the phone does with its power; give you an operating system that performs smoothly, or gets in your way. As for the subjectivity of this article... It's a flippin' review. If any article is allowed to have opinions, it's this one. If you want objective tech specs and nothing else, the manufacturer can probably oblige you. I read tech reviews looking for opinions. I got one. Who in their right mind expects anything different?

We may never know whether Dan is physically a dwarf and this is why he feels Nokia Lumia 920 is too big for him. However, based on this article all readers know for sure that Dan has dwarf size brain.

PopSci, is your owner Bonnier worried of the collapse of his Apple investment or why do you release such crap?

Whoever wrote this must be a pussy. Waaah it's too heavy and thick. Please. It's 10mm thin, which is not thick at all. It weighs 6 ounces. 6 OUNCES. 6 ounces is too heavy for you? Are you 10? Not to mention, you should get all the specs right, if you're going to review/bash a phone. It's 1280 x 768, not 760. Christ.

@Kokopure

It's kinda like when a movie reviewer writes a scathing critique of a universally-loved movie. It gives the impression that the author is baiting for page views by adopting a controversial opinion. The reader is left to decide whether the reviewer is disingenuous, or an idiot, but in all cases it cheapens the review.

I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do, cloud68.com

$85 an hour! Seriously I don't know why more people haven't tried this, I work two shifts, 2 hours in the day and 2 in the evening…And whats awesome is Im working from home so I get more time with my kids. Heres where I went...Mel7.CoM

This is a good review. I especially agree with you on the "bad" aspects of the phone. And I do have several more complains to add to this list.

1. The "page" is not fit to the screen. To make myself clearer, if you are careful enough, you will usually catch the "page-break" line at the right side of a page. Sometimes, even part of the next page will be shown with the previous page. This is NOT a good design for display at all.

2. The setting is not comprehensive in a way that sometimes it will be hard for the user to fine the right option. For example, I would like to disable the "sound" or "vibration" that is associated with the "back button". But I can't find the settings.

Finally, here is my frustration even with iphone. There is no way for you to organize the apps into categories!

Oh, and if you're (god forbid) going to keep reviewing Windows Phones, you should really learn how to use the OS - like the fact that you can show the click in any program, at any time, by just swiping your finger down from the top of the screen. If you're in a "virtual full-screen" app like the kindle reader, you sometimes have to tap the screen first to show the "chrome" layer first, but that's the only exception.

BTW, Ivy, that whole "you can see part of the next screen over" is on purpose - its what's known as a UI affordance, and is meant both to inform the user of the presence of more content, and to give the user a clue about the interaction(swiping sideways) used to access it. Every single person I know who's seen it has both immediately figured it out and liked the style, so I guess you're just the odd man or woman out there.

christinareiter is a lowlife criminal

The Lumia 920 is probably Nokia’s best smartphone offering ever and quite possibly the best Windows 8-based phone out right now too.

This is my 1st visit to this site. I was checking to see if I can watch netflix on the 920. I don't know what this guy likes in a phone, but I don't think he liked this one from the onset. Mine's yellow. Fuck you.