Nokia Lumia Icon Review

 

Thinking inside the box. 

Last year, Nokia launched its first high-end smartphone to be available through the largest carrier in the United States. When it was released, the Verizon-exclusive Lumia 928 was one of the best Windows Phone devices available, so it was only appropriate for the two to collaborate a second time. The new Lumia Icon shares a lot of its physical features with its predecessor—namely, its boxier shape—but packs the hardware of the biggest and most powerful Nokia device, the 6-inch Lumia 1520.

Was Nokia able to, once again, create an impressive Windows Phone device, primed and ready for the American market? With its powerful internals and stunning camera, the Lumia Icon has the chops to potentially distract Android and iOS users perusing their local Verizon store, but, unfortunately, the phone still has a few shortcomings that prevent it from achieving greatness.

Like the Lumia 928 before it, the new Lumia Icon strays from the eye-catching, curved, unibody design that has donned almost every high-end Nokia smartphone. Instead, Nokia and / or Verizon opted for a boxy and sharp body that lacks the ergonomic feel of other Lumias and is unlikely to attract much attention from casual shoppers. It has a much more premium feel than last year's model, though, due largely in part to the metallic band around the edges, connecting the Gorilla Glass on the front of the device and the slightly curved matte plastic casing on the rear. The gorgeous 5-inch OLED display is surrounded by a relatively thin bezel—making the handset only slightly larger than the 4.5-inch Lumia 928—and the phone's general shape makes Windows Phone easy to maneuver with one hand.
But the Lumia Icon is also noticeably bulky, with a body thicker than the 5.5-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and just about as heavy. Coupled with the Icon's sharp metallic edges and slick rear casing (though not as slippery as the glossy white Lumia 928), the phone just isn't comfortable to hold. The heft adds a sense of durability, but it also makes the device feel like a brick to today's standards.

Fortunately, the Lumia Icon's internal hardware is much more impressive. Equipped with a 2.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 CPU, Adreno 330 graphics, and 2GB of RAM, the Icon is not only the most powerful Windows Phone device, it actually has the same specs as the speedy, high-end LG G2 Android smartphone. Battery life was fantastic as well. Most, if not all, users will never have to top up during the day, and a quick trip to a Qi wireless charger would easily make sure you never run out of juice. As a whole, the Lumia Icon handled Windows Phone 8 with ease, never stalling or stuttering during my time with the handset. Gaming performance was also never a problem while I was speeding around the crazy courses in Asphalt 8: Airborne.
Windows Phone itself still has some room to improve, though. For example, the lack of a unified notification system makes checking on new messages, tweets, and emails a chore. Live Tiles are handy, but are inherently limited because of how much space is available to display messages, and checking each individual app to view updates adds far too many steps to what should be an otherwise easy-to-accomplish task.
According to a leaked SDK of Windows Phone 8.1, there are a ton of improvements coming to the operating system, and once they do arrive, it's likely that we will look at the operating system in a totally different light. But until then, the OS still isn't quite as versatile or efficient as Android or iOS.

Nokia Shows Off the Lumia Icon's Audio Recording Capabilities

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Thankfully, app developers have increased support for the platform, with more official apps available to replace some of the third party-developed options that have filled the gaps in the meantime. There still are, however, some popular services that are yet to be available through official channels. Users who visit social networks like Instagram and Vine will be happy to know that they are supported, but those who rely on Dropbox or first party Google apps will be disappointed with the alternatives. Nokia provides a pretty healthy supply of its own software to help occupy the app store, many of which are tied to the phone's camera.
The Nokia Camera app is one of the best you can find for smartphone photographers who like to fine tune their pictures prior to capturing. The radial menus are incredibly easy to use, and are presented in a way that is neither confusing nor poorly presented. Nokia Refocus, which lets you adjust the focal point of a photo after capturing the image, is equally impressive. Sony offers a similar feature with its Xperia Z1S, but Nokia's software results in a more realistic final product.

Nokia is smart to populate its phones with photo-related apps, as the company is most well known for its impressive cameras, and the same goes for the Lumia Icon. Equipped with an f/2.4 wide angle lens, a 1/2.5-inch sensor, and Zeiss optics, Nokia's latest takes fantastic photos in just about every situation.
By capturing a large amount of image data, you can even "zoom" into photos after they are captured by cropping and reframing a smaller portion of the pictures. To get the best results, you'll want to keep your hand and the subject as steady as possible, but results can be rather impressive. This phone isn't the 41-megapixel Lumia 1020, so don't expect to have the most detailed cropped images, but the 20-megapixel shooter in the Lumia Icon is more than capable of producing quality photos with tons of detail, especially since it uses the data to create oversampled 5-megapixel images. The Lumia Icon also features four high-performance microphones, which, as advertised, does a great job at recording audio from your subject while drowning out ambient noise and unwanted racket coming from other sources.