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Nokia Lumia 928 review

By Hezythem on December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

409 Comments

4.4super score

If a mobile operating system can go through a mid-life crisis, Windows Phone 8 might be there: Devices have been on the market since late last year, there's no major revision in sight (yet), and OEMs — mainly Nokia — are now at the point where they're ready to release another volley of hardware. So without a publicity boost from a new version of Windows Phone, that puts a lot of pressure on these new phones to be particularly good.

And if Nokia has its way, that's where the Nokia Lumia 928 could factor in. Verizon and Sprint have generally been soft on Windows Phone since version 7's launch — the flagship hardware has mostly gone to GSM carriers, particularly AT&T — so the 928 fills a gap in Verizon's lineup while warming over last year's Lumia 920 with new audio hardware, a xenon flash, and a revised design.

Is the 928 the bump that a mid-life Windows Phone 8 needs to bridge the gap? A genuine hit on Verizon would be a huge boost for the platform — but is this the flagship Windows Phone that Verizon customers deserve? Let's take a look.

Though closely related to AT&T's Lumia 920, Nokia has done an admirable job of differentiating the 928's hardware, for better or worse. It's safe, even staid. To some degree, it feels out of lockstep with Nokia's famed (and relatively consistent) industrial design. Then again, Espoo has been experimenting lately: Take the Lumia 620, for instance, which features a double-shot plastic case — two colors layered on top of one another — or the aluminum Lumia 925. In other words, it looks like lead designer Marko Ahtissari is keen to move beyond the classic rounded plastic shell first seen on the N9, and the 928 certainly shows it.

If anything, the 928 could be described as a grown-up Lumia 810 with just a little more time, effort, and TLC put into it. It's mostly squared-off with just a hint of curvature at the four corners; the back bulges slightly, making the phone more comfortable to hold and providing the optical illusion that it's slightly thinner than it actually is (10.1 millimeters, beefy by today's standards). The front of the phone is entirely flat and black; the back and sides come in your choice of glossy white or matte black.

I would've liked to have seen Nokia do a full range of snazzy colors for this phone, just as it did for the 920 and most of the other Windows Phones in its lineup, but I suspect this may have been a Verizon request: The 928 is a Verizon exclusive, and it's probably no coincidence that the 822 (which is also Verizon-only) comes in the same two color choices. It reminds me a little bit of Verizon's decision to slap its logo right on the Galaxy Note II's home button — there's nothing good about the design changes that Verizon very likely was involved in dictating here. It's a shame, because a bright red glossy shell would've helped counteract what is otherwise one of the more boring designs that Nokia has made in recent memory. Let's be clear: this phone looks and feels worse than the 920. Why?

Hardware

The first thing you're confronted with upon obtaining one of these fancy BlackBerrys is the sheer bulk of the package they come in. Nearly the size of a shoe box, the matte black container has a high-quality soft-touch finish and a flap door held in place by magnets. It's evidently meant to be kept around after unboxing. Inside, there's even more blackness — the one color that pretty much never goes out of style — covering a velvety tray that houses the P‘9981 and its included dock. Lift that up and you'll find the second tray, hosting your BlackBerry PIN card and user guides, below which resides the third level of luxurious velvet, ensconcing power adapters, cables, and a headset with in-line mic.

Beyond the self-evident excess of its dimensions and materials, the box also clues you in to the fact that this is a Porsche-branded phone first, with the BlackBerry logo present as a sort of subtitle. The P‘9000 series is Porsche Design's subset of electronics products, currently populated by four LaCie external storage drives and the P'9981 smartphone. Why that pesky apostrophe has to figure in every product name, however, remains a mystery.

THE 928'S
HARDWARE HAS TO STAND ON ITS OWN

SOME WILL LOVE THE ANGULAR LOOK, MANY OTHERS WON'T

he right edge of the 928 has the classic Nokia Windows Phone button configuration: a volume rocker at top followed by a power button and a two-stage camera button (more on the camera in a bit). I've always loved the placement of the power button on these phones, but I'm not in love with the volume rocker — putting on the right makes it harder to hit mid-call, and it's just barely longer than the power button which can make them difficult to differentiate by feel alone.. On the top, there's a center-mounted Micro USB port flanked by a noise cancellation mic and a SIM tray (which, refreshingly, requires nothing more than a fingernail to pop open). At the very corner lies the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The back, though, is what sets this phone apart from the Lumia 920: You instantly notice the larger (much larger) xenon camera flash sitting just left of the lens. Another difference is the big loudspeaker grille toward the bottom, which is strategically placed on a slightly-curved area so that it isn't muffled when the phone is sitting face-up on a table.

The phone's display is 4.5 inches with a resolution of 1280 x 768, just like its Lumia 920 cousin, but the 928 switches from an LCD to an AMOLED — presumably to shave some thickness. It's gapless and looks good, particularly indoors; the colors are unusually accurate for an AMOLED, to the point where I needed to double-check the spec sheet and make sure it wasn't using the same IPS panel as the 920. Nokia also describes it as having "sunlight readability enhancements," and without knowing exactly what those "enhancements" are, I did find that I could see the display just fine outdoors. It seems that manufacturers are generally getting the hang of producing AMOLEDs that don't completely sacrifice outdoor viewability. Even though it has a different panel, the 928 can still be configured for high touch

Keyboard

BATTERY LIFE IS
TOTALLY REASONA-
BLE ON THIS PHONE

As I mentioned early on, the 928's hardware has to stand on its own — there's nothing new in the Windows Phone platform right now that Nokia can use to sell it. Bundled apps include ESPN, My Verizon Mobile, NFL Mobile, VZ Navigator, and Weather; as usual, they can all be uninstalled. Verizon's relatively light commitment to Windows Phone (compared to Android) continues to be an asset here: Crapware is kept to a bare minimum. I had no issues with performance — Windows Phone seems to make smart use of the processing power it has available, just as it has since version 7. The 1.5GHz dual-core processor suits Windows Phone 8 just fine, unlike Android, which seems to be in perpetual need of more cores and gigahertz to overcome stutter and lag. For the phone shopper, that can be an asset: the purchasing decision becomes less about the spec sheet and more about how the phone looks, feels, and operates. (Though as I've said before, the 928 doesn't look or feel particularly great.)

The camera performs admirably in low light, as you might expect — the 928 uses the same PureView-branded 8.7-megapixel camera borrowed from the

The Breakdown

4.4
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • Desing
    6
  • Display Quality
    5
  • Software
    3
  • Camera(s)
    8
  • Battery Life
    10
  • Ecosystem
    4

There are 409 Comments.

  • Run say
    December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

    The 27" monster that is the Apple Cinema Display is another of Apple's extremely well designed and functional products, clocking in at a super-high resolution of 2560 x 1440. The resolution of the display is higher than that of my television, and it definitely shows whilst the display is in use.

    reply →
    • Run say
      December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

      The 27" monster that is the Apple Cinema Display is another of Apple's extremely well designed and functional products, clocking in at a super-high resolution of 2560 x 1440. The resolution of the display is higher than that of my television, and it definitely shows whilst the display is in use.

      reply →
      • Run say
        December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

        The 27" monster that is the Apple Cinema Display is another of Apple's extremely well designed and functional products, clocking in at a super-high resolution of 2560 x 1440. The resolution of the display is higher than that of my television, and it definitely shows whilst the display is in use.

        reply →
  • Run say
    December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

    The 27" monster that is the Apple Cinema Display is another of Apple's extremely well designed and functional products, clocking in at a super-high resolution of 2560 x 1440. The resolution of the display is higher than that of my television, and it definitely shows whilst the display is in use.

    reply →
  • Run say
    December 25, 2014 03:45 pm

    The 27" monster that is the Apple Cinema Display is another of Apple's extremely well designed and functional products, clocking in at a super-high resolution of 2560 x 1440. The resolution of the display is higher than that of my television, and it definitely shows whilst the display is in use.

    reply →
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