No phone can claim to be the most innovative smartphone on the planet until a new iPhone is unveiled. You can always leave it to Apple to ruin a party and for Nokia’s sake, things did not turn out to be all that bad when Apple unveiled the iPhone 5.
While the iPhone 5 is better in every way than the iPhone 4S that it replaces, Nokia might just have things going its way when it launches the Lumia 920 later in November.
Nokia has put out the best it could with the Lumia 920. And whatever we saw of the Lumia 920, we can certify that the hardware was the reason Nokia for so long held the mantel of the world’s number one smartphone manufacturer. To put it simply, if there is a company apart from Apple that knows how to make innovative hardware then it is Nokia. No doubt that the iPhone 5 looks pretty stunning and most tech blogs in their hands-on have compared the build quality of the iPhone 5 to a piece of jewellery, but one can certainly argue that even Nokia has an equally iconic industrial design in place for the Lumia 920.
But then we take a look at the technical specs and realize the iPhone 5 is only playing catch up to what most Android users have had for quite a long time. The Lumia 920, on the other hand, does not only have a radically different UI but it also has some key new features that is not present in any current Android or Apple smartphone.
Let’s start with the PureView camera on the Lumia 920. The 8.7-megapixel camera features optical image stabilization via a floating lens technology. In essence, the entire optical assembly of the camera floats on a set of springs. This results in longer exposure times for massively improved low-light performance and stutter free video. The iPhone 5, on the other hand, features a 8-megapixel camera that contains refinements to the already brilliant iPhone 4S camera. Features like a Sapphire Crystal lens cap, precision lens alignment, improved ISP, a dynamic low-light mode, panorama mode and simultaneous video and photo shoot capabilities are good but not exactly ground breaking. The iPhone 5 may have a very good camera, but we are betting the Lumia 920 will still hold a significant advantage in terms of photography.
The next area where the Lumia 920 holds an advantage over the iPhone 5 the display. While we have not seen the iPhone 5, we have seen the PureMotion HD+ display of the Lumia 920. The viewing angles were simply stunning. Technologies like the ClearBlack polarization filter improve legibility in direct sunlight and blur free scrolling eliminate parallax issues. To make things better the PureMotion HD+ display is 4.5-inches with 332 pixels per inch at a resolution of 1280×768 pixels. In comparison, the 4-inch Retina display on the iPhone 5 is not only smaller, but it does not boast any of the bells and whistles Nokia has added to the PureMotion HD+ panel.
But the gravy train does not end for the Lumia 920 here. It has features like NFC and wireless charging baked in, something the iPhone 5 does not. Admittedly, these are not features that people will use on a day-to-day basis and the wireless charging bit is technically not even wireless considering the charging base station needs a wired source, but nonetheless the presence of these features cannot be discounted.
Nokia has also packed a very large 2,000 mAh battery with 10 hours of 3G talk time and 300 hours of standby time. In comparison Apple’s claims are less lofty at 8 hours of 3G talk time and 225 hours of standby time.
Like the way the iPhone 5 is a love-child of optimal hardware and software interplay, the same can be said about Windows Phones as they are built in accordance to strict hardware specifications. If anything, Windows Phone 8 could be smoother than iOS 6 because it was already so buttery on older generation single-core CPUs.
Apart from the hardware, Nokia really has an edge on the overall experience users will get from the Lumia 920. Unlike the iPhone 5, the Lumia 920 will come with free turn-by-turn navigation that would also work offline. It also has a huge music library that will be available for free to users. The iPhone 5, on the other hand, takes a step backward when it comes to maps on iOS 6. Forget turn-by-turn navigation, it won’t even show directions in many countries including India. And of course, iTunes music store isn’t available in India either.
And that is why we believe that Nokia really has a great chance to mark its resurgence with the Lumia 920. Of course, it also depends on what Microsoft does with Windows Phone 8 considering it has not shown much of the new operating system, yet. All it needs to do is to get its pricing right, reign in its hyper-active marketing team and of course, launch the device.
No comments:
Post a Comment