Nokia announced the Lumia 930 at the BUILD conference early this year and this is the first flagship phone from the company running the latest Windows Phone 8.1. The device looks very similar to Lumia Icon which was launched for Verizon in US. The Lumia 930 comes with a 5 inch Full HD AMOLED display and runs on Snapdragon 800 Quad Core processor with 2GB of RAM. The device also comes with 32GB internal storage, but there is no micro SD card support.
The phone has a 20 MP PureView camera with dual LED flash and a front facing camera for selfies and video calls. Lumia 930 is the successor to Lumia 925 (review) which was released last year. Here is the detailed review of the Lumia 930 with Windows Phone 8.1 with respect to design, display, software, performance, camera and the battery life.
Related Reading: Nokia Lumia 930 unboxing.
Here is the video review of the device, for text version read on.
Design and Build:
Nokia Lumia 930 goes away from the traditional polycarbonate build and employs a metal design. The device feels solid and is build to last with amazing quality. The rear panel has polycarbonate matte back that comes in bright orange and green. The front panel has 5.0 inch display which has a tapered edge although the tapering is pretty subtle. Below the display you have the three capacitive touch buttons which are back lit.
At 9.8mm thick, the Lumia 930 is significantly thicker than most of the flagship phone and it is heavy as well. The design although looks good makes the phone a bit too thick and the edges are sharp making it a bit inconvenient for long time use.
The button and port layout is fairly conventional and the power and volume keys are on the right side. The headphone jack is on the top edge; the microUSB charging port at the bottom and there is also a dedicated camera button. The nanoSIM card slot is well disguised next to the headphone jack and this time you don’t need the ejector pin as it can be pulled out with fingernail.
Display:
Nokia Lumia 930 has a 5 inch Full HD display with a pixel density of 441 which is the highest on any Lumia phone. The display is also toughened up with Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The display panel is AMOLED and also comes with Nokia’s Clear Black technology along with Glove mode (super sensitive touch) and Sunlight readability. The display on the Lumia 930 is very bright and has great contrast with vibrant colours which really impresses.
There is also option in the settings where you can can adjust the screen’s colour profile to standard, vivid or cool. The viewing angles are exceptionally good and the touch response as usual is great. Overall, we would say it is really one of the better displays we have seen on a flagship phone.
Software and Performance:
Lumia 930 runs the latest Windows Phone 8.1 which brings in host of new features to the platform including the much needed notification center, support for VPN, storage sense, Wi-Fi sense and a lot more features. There is also pretty good amount of customization available on the start screen. You can resize the tiles, add a wallpaper over the start screen and also group the icons into folders. With these features the gap between Android and Windows phone in terms of features has narrowed for sure.
Other major change is to the keyboard and now it supports word flow and it is one of the most accurate among all the smartphones. Microsoft has also included Cortana, the voice assistant which works really well. Having said that app ecosystem still needs to catch up with Android as lots of apps are still missing on the platform.
One thing that you won’t have to worry about a Windows Phone is the performance. Whether it’s swiping around the UI or launching applications or even multitasking, the 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor with 2GB of RAM and Adreno 330 GPU powering the 930 does all these without any lag. The phone comes with 32GB of storage and there is no expandable memory available. But for an average user 32GB should be more than enough. Gaming performance of the device is also really good with no lag or issues.
The call quality of the phone was pretty and we didn’t have any issues like dropped calls. The rear speaker performance was very good and it manages to produce loud, clear audio for music and video playback. The unit we had did not come with headphones, but Indian retail unit does ship with headphones.
Camera:
Nokia has been a pioneer in smartphone camera ever since they debuted the PureView camera technology couple of years back. First came the PureView 808 and then the Lumia 1020 with 41MP sensor. On paper, Lumia 930 matches the Lumia 1520’s camera (Review). It has the same 20MP camera with PureView technology. It also features an f/2.4 aperture lens, 1/2.5-inch image sensor and a dual LED flash.
The phone also feature Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) with 1080P recording while the front camera can record videos in 720P. Nokia has also improved the Lumia camera app with improvements in terms of speed. The camera takes two images, one in 16MP high resolution and second is 5MP low resolution for sharing.
The Lumia 930 camera excels for daylight photography especially in close-ups and portrait shots, delivering sharp, detailed images with excellent colors. The lack of HDR is one real disappointing aspect of the otherwise great camera. The low light ability is another strong point of the camera, but unlike the Lumia 1020, the results are mixed bag and not all the shots produced great results.
The 1080P recording with OIS is also pretty good and the 4 directional mic delivers excellent sound quality in the videos.
Overall, the Lumia 930 has a really great camera although it might not be as good as the Lumia 1020.
Here are some of the samples taken with the device.
Daylight and Macro samples:
Low Light Samples:
Battery Life:
The Lumia 930 comes with 2420mAh battery and it supports wireless charging. The battery performance is pretty decent with Lumia 930. If you use the camera a lot on the device, then the battery might drop pretty quickly. With Windows Phone 8.1, you can now check which all apps are using the battery the most and you can control them. For an average user, with calls, SMS, social networking apps, camera and other general apps, you can get a day of usage with the battery.
Verdict:
Should I buy the Nokia Lumia 930? Priced at Rs 37000, Lumia 930 is the best Windows Phone device till date and if you love WP platform we definitely recommend this device. But having said that the app ecosystem is still catching up on Windows Phone and there are some minor issues with the device including the design (weight and thickness). The best things about the device is superior lag free performance and a great display along with a good camera.
Quote: “Having said that app ecosystem still needs to catch up with Android as lots of apps are still missing on the platform.”
Which apps are missing? I know that most of the google apps are missing (Hangouts is the most disappointing for me), but are there other apps that are missing? Can you name a few?
When I say app ecosystem has to catch up, there are still lot of popular apps and games missing like Candy crush, Snapchat, Dropbox, Tinder and others..cant name all of them here. Moreover, if a new service decides to make an app, it first comes to iOS and Android, Windows Phone generally does not get them first. Now coming on to banking, Airlines and other services, many of them are missing in WP. But having said that it has grown big time in last one year.
Don’t bother getting the Nokia Lumia 930. My screen burnt out in less than two weeks and Nokia are still “trying to repair it” after 5 weeks of them having received it at their service centre. What a waste of money.