By Sherri L. SmithAT&T continues its love affair with Nokia, adding the Lumia 925 to its burgeoning Windows Phone 8 roster. The 925 combines a slim, premium look with a powerful camera, a slew of compelling photo apps, and LTE speeds. Best of all, the handset is available for $99. If you’re willing to give Windows Phone a shot, this is a great midrange option.Somehow, the Lumia 925 has gotten even lovelier than the last time we saw it. While we liked the white version on T-Mobile, the phone looks absolutely fetching in black. The dark gray aluminum sides are cool to the touch, while the matte black polycarbonate back panel provides a firm grip. As attractive as this handset is, however, we do wish AT&T and Nokia offered more color options.
In one respect, the Lumia 925 is the inverse of the HTC One Mini, which has an aluminum back and polycarbonate sides. HTC’s glossy plastic adds a hint of cheapness that takes away from the Mini’s overall attractiveness. Both devices suffer from the lack of a removable panel.
The 925’s 4.5-inch display holds court on the front of the phone, surrounded by a shiny black bezel. A 1.2 megapixel camera is above the screen, while a trio of backlit capacitive buttons (Back, Home and Search) sits at the bottom.
You’ll find a microUSB port, micro SIM card slot and audio jack on the top of this Lumia. The volume rocker, power button and dedicated camera button line the device’s right side.
The 925 is the thinnest and lightest Lumia on AT&T’s roster at 4.9 ounces and 5.08 x 2.75 x 0.33 inches. Owing to its more powerful camera, the Nokia Lumia 1020 weighs 5.6 ounces and has a taller and thicker 5.1 x 2.HTC One1-inch body. The 4.4-ounce, 5.2 x 2.5 x 0.36-inch HTC One Mini is lighter but thicker than the 925.
Display
The Lumia 925’s 4.5-inch PureMotion+ AMOLED ClearBlack display serves up big helpings of eye candy. The 1080p trailer of “The Bounty Hunter” was an explosion of deep reds, rich, luscious and velvety blacks on the Lumia’s 1280 x 768 screen. The display has generous viewing angles and is plenty sharp, showing off the intricate curlicues and designs in the marauding hordes’ face paint.
In a side-by-side with the One Mini’s 4.3-inch, 1280 x 720 display, we noticed that white objects such as clouds or clothing had a yellowish tinge on the 925. The One Mini had a more realistic color palette. However, the 925 delivered better detail, allowing us to see individual strands of the woman’s raven hair as it blew in the wind.
Registering a dazzling 456 lux on our light meter, the Lumia 925’s display is much brighter than the 392 smartphone average. The T-Mobile version of the 925 posted 429 lux and the Lumia 1020 reached 441 lux. The HTC One Mini notched 422 lux.
Thanks to Nokia’s decision to use Corning Gorilla Glass 2, the Lumia 925’s screen can hold up against life’s inevitable bumps and scrapes. The Lumia 925 also includes a feature for adjusting the sensitivity of the touch screen, so you can use the phone while wearing gloves. We didn’t have a pair handy, so we used a sock and successfully selected icons and executed pinch-to-zoom gestures.
The Lumia 925’s rear speaker filled our room with loud, albeit flat, audio. When we did a quick sound-off against the HTC One Mini with Beyoncé’s “Love On Top,” the 925 delivered fairly clear vocals, but lacked the volume, bass and fullness of the HTC One Mini and its Beats Audio technology.
The 925’s speakers reached 78 decibels during the LAPTOP Audio Test, which measures a smartphone’s sound over the distance from the screen to the user’s nose (13 inches). This reading fell short of the 81 dB smartphone average as well as the HTC One’s 82 dB.
