Nokia Lumia 920 versus competing flagship smartphones

Last night, Nokia unveiled to the public its flagship smartphone running Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows Phone 8. The details unveiled at the event weren’t anything that we haven’t already seen, but it was nice to get an official first look at the smartphone. The hardware specifications of the device are now known along with some unique features of the device. The downside to the launch was that no pricing or launch dates were mentioned. The demo Lumia 920 units at Nokia’s event didn’t run the final build of Windows Phone either. The device will however be available in Q4 2012 in the US.

Nonetheless, since the Lumia 920 is a flagship device from Nokia, we thought we’d compare it to other flagship devices from the likes of Sony, Samsung, HTC and LG. Comparing the OS at this stage doesn’t make sense since we haven’t seen the final build of Windows Phone 8 but the hardware on the Nokia Lumia 920 did seem to bring it up to speed with the competition. Finally users of Windows Phone devices will have the option of expandable memory, and multi-core processing.

To distinguish their devices from the crowd, manufacturers provide the user with a bunch of unique features on the device such as free cloud storage, an alternate app store or even some apps specific to the device. Below is a detailed comparison of the Nokia Lumia 920 against the competition in terms of both hardware and the unique features offered by the manufacturers.

Even though three of the devices (HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S III, LG Optimus 4X HD) boast of quad-core processing, there aren’t many apps on the Google Play store that are optimized for the multi-core environment. Granted that it makes the smartphone snappier, but then again, the performance of a current generation dual-core phone isn’t bad either – and, as a thumb rule, usually provides better battery life. The difference may not be startling but it is present nonetheless. We say that at this stage it doesn’t really matter if your device is a dual-core phone or quad-core phone.

From the above chart we can notice a few similarities between all the flagship devices. For starters all of them boast of 1GB of RAM making them quite snappy, with smaller load times. The front facing camera on all the devices was 1.3MP except the Galaxy S III, which has a 1.9MP camera. All the Android-powered smartphones run on ICS straight out of the box. The displays on all the phones too feature a 720p HD resolution.

The Xperia Ion, Sony’s current flagship before the Xperia T launches, has the second best display in terms of pixel density, a close second to the Lumia 920’s advertised specifications. The Xperia Ion also has the biggest camera sensor of the bunch, however, as we have seen its low-light performance is nothing to write home about – something the PureView camera on the Lumia 920 apparently excels at.

In terms of the battery life, we have tested all the devices except the Nokia Lumia 920. All of them last for nearly a day and a half except the LG Optimus 4X HD, which boasts of 2150 mAh battery, and lasted us for almost two days with average use.

With the Lumia 920 and 820, Nokia seems to have finally caught up with other manufacturers in terms of power under the hood. Will the company manage to revert its fortunes? A lot unfortunately also depends on the success of Windows Phone 8, and we’ll have to wait and see just how well it is adopted by consumers, who maybe wary of another OS refresh that won’t be supported by their devices.

The advantage of a device running Windows Phone 8 has to be the integration with Windows 8. You will be able to seamlessly use the phone in conjunction with your desktop. Developers on either platform will also be able to port their apps easily to the other. This however also means full-fledged games and applications, which have been optimized for multi-cores on the PC, will flourish best on much more powerful hardware.

Last week, Samsung unveiled the first Windows Phone 8 device at IFA 2012. Called the Ativ S, it features much the same specifications as the Nokia Lumia 920 – the same 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 1GB of RAM, a HD display (4.8-inch Super AMOLED with 1280×720 pixel resolution), an 8MP camera (without PureView of course), and a front-facing 1.9MP camera. It too, is powered by a large 2,300 mAh battery. Only time will tell of course, if Nokia’s exclusive features, such as PureView tech, wireless charging, special camera app, locations services such as Nokia Drive and City Lens, as well as Nokia Music, and the bright coloured bodies, differentiate the products sufficiently.