Update: The YouTube video was removed by the user, moments after we published this post; we have therefore removed the embedded player for now. Anybody care to leak another version? A photo and video of the yet-to-be-released Nokia Lumia 929 has been leaked by WPCentral forum member Falorin. The Windows Phone device appears scuffed and […]
Starting today, Nokia is beginning to roll out its own update to Lumia devices working with Windows Phone 8, one that brings about a wide range of improvements to key elements inside the phones lucky enough to get it. With Amber, Nokia devices will be gaining boosts in software that build upon Microsoft’s own most […]
Nokia’s new Pro Camera application may debut on the Lumia 1020 announced yesterday, but the software will also be rolled out to the company’s existing PureView Windows Phones, albeit after a firmware update to pave the way later this year. Pro Camera marks a considerable step up over the default Windows Phone camera app, overlying concentric controls for exposure, ISO, and more over the preview screen, and giving real-time feedback on what tweaking each of the settings will actually do.
Now, Nokia has confirmed that the Lumia 920, Lumia 925, and Lumia 928 – all of which are PureView branded – will also get the Pro Camera app eventually. It’ll require the “Amber” update first, however, which Nokia has previously said will be released sometime this month.
It’s not the first we’ve seen of Nokia ensuring that existing owners aren’t left behind when new features arrive. Amber will also bring support for the Smart Camera application we reviewed on the Lumia 925, offering features like combination shots coupling together elements from multiple frames, and object removal.
Meanwhile, Amber will also have an impact on the quality of photos, Nokia has promised. On the Lumia 920, for instance, the update will add a broader ISO range, among other things.
Of course, even with the Pro Camera app, there’ll be some things the Lumia 920, 925, and 928 can’t do that the Lumia 1020 can. The biggest is lossless digital zooming, which will remain the preserve of the 1020′s 41-megapixel sensor.
There’s more on the Nokia Lumia 1020, and the Pro Camera app, in our full hands-on. As for how the oversampling system in the Lumia 1020 works, check out our SlashGear 101 on the topic.
Nokia Lumia 1020 PureView hands-on:
Nokia Lumia 1020 Pro Camera app will get 925, 928 and 920 release is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Now that Verizon has its own Nokia hero smartphone working with Windows Phone 8, it’s high time the platform takes off, isn’t it? At the moment, the Nokia Lumia 928 is one of the nicer Windows Phone 8 devices on the market, and if it weren’t for the release of the Nokia Lumia 925 (having been revealed this month right on top of the 928), it’d be an easy thing to say that this is Nokia’s finest effort to date with this OS. As it stands, this device is ready instead to be the heartiest Windows Phone 8 smartphone in the USA.
The Nokia Lumia 928 works with a body and a set of innards that make it a very close relative of the Nokia Lumia 920, a device that’s being sold by AT&T right this minute. The 928 works with a 4.5-inch AMOLED display with 1280 x 768 resolution, carrying with it Corning Gorilla Glass 2 for scratch and break protection, ClearBlack technology so your blacks are as black as can be, and PureMotion HD+.
Those buzz words do actually mean something when it comes down to it – you’ll have brights that are bright enough to see in direct sunlight, darks that blend in with the bezel, and with a pixel density of 334 PPI, you’ll have quite a bit of sharpness as well. Of course compared to the HTC One and the Samsung GALAXY S 4, you’ll have a bit less sharp of a picture, but other than that you’re up there with the top guns – thus far this year, that is.
ABOVE: Just about as direct as the sunlight gets, straight on and up. BELOW: In a bit more shade.
This machine works with NFC, Qi-standard Wireless Charging, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. This is the same processor found in the Nokia Lumia 920 and will be more than enough to power the highest-requirement Windows Phone 8 apps on the market today.
Also inside you’ll have 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, and SkyDrive cloud storage of 7GB – given to you right out of the box. The back-facing camera is similar to that of the 920, bringing an 8.7 megapixel PureView sensor with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens. This all means you’re going to be able to take photos in rather low lighting situations and will have some nice looking pics no matter what you’re photographing.
You’ll be getting Nokia’s friendly collection of apps like HERE City Lens, HERE Maps, and Nokia Music along with Microsoft-added apps like Office and OneNote. One thing Windows Phone 8 can still hold over Apple’s head is Office as a native app, and here Nokia makes it clear that they’re willing to stick with that party. This device also has several photo “lenses” that add on to the abilities of the camera.
Each of these lenses is an app that can be downloaded for Windows Phone 8 devices, some of them specifically tuned for Nokia Lumia models. The Lumia 928 comes with Cinemagraph, Smart Shoot, Panorama, and Bing vision. With Bing vision, the user will be able to take photos of objects and receive information about them – this app also works with text translation on-the-spot.
The biggest difference between this device and its competitors is its exclusive access to Nokia apps and hardware – particularly its camera technology. Nokia makes several high-powered location-based apps for allowing you to get around your city – or a city you’ve never been to before. The camera technology you’ll be able to experience in the section immediately following this one.
Below you’ll find a collection of photo examples captured with the Nokia Lumia 928. Some of these photos were captured in optimal cloudless-day sunlight situations while others were photographed in the dark. This machine does, without a doubt, still reign in the darkest conditions without a flash. Have a peek at our Nokia Lumia 920 vs iPhone 5 camera battle to see how they fare in similar conditions.
The battery life on this device is well balanced enough to provide at least 8 hours of uptime for an average user. If you’re a power-user, you’ll want to consider the positive and negative elements in a battle between this and a smartphone with a replaceable battery: Verizon also carries the Nokia Lumia 822. The 822 doesn’t quite have the camera power of the 928, but the ability to carry more than one battery replacement in your pocket can be a big matter for some users.
The Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 will cost you $99 USD with a 2-year contract after a $50 mail-in rebate – that’s less than half the cost of some of the higher-end competitors on the carrier today (like the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and the Galaxy Note II), and essentially equal to that of the Samsung Galaxy S III. It’s also equal to the price of the Windows Phone 8X from HTC, a device that was released several months ago that we reviewed as well. If you’re going for tactile feeling alone, you might want the HTC device – otherwise I’d stick by the Nokia hardware for basically everything else.
The Nokia Lumia 928 is easily Verizon’s finest Windows Phone 8 device, and with its advanced camera abilities, it may well be the nicest Windows Phone 8 device in the USA as well. Until another Windows Phone 8 device comes along with a metal body, on the other hand, the Nokia Lumia 925 will continue to roll with that title worldwide.
Nokia Lumia 928 Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nokia’s Lumia 928 may not have had the high-profile launch of its Lumia 925 sibling, but the Verizon LTE smartphone does have the benefit of being on sale today. Available from this morning, priced at $99.99 with a new, two-year agreement, the Verizon Lumia 928 joins the rarefied list of current smartphones offering a Xenon flash.
That means better low-light photos, with Xenons usually far stronger than the LED flashes we’re used to seeing on smartphones. You don’t miss out on a video light, either, with the Lumia 928′s focus-assist LED capable of being repurposed for illuminating during video recording.
Functionally, the new smartphone is much the same as what the Lumia 920 was offering months ago. However, it’s packaged up in a neater design, with the squared-off polycarbonate casing fitting more neatly into the hand, and yet still accommodating the PureView suspended optical system, which helps the high-end Lumia take such solid low-light photos.
There’s also a new display, versus that of the 920, with Nokia slotting in an OLED ClearBlack panel, coincidentally the same screen as on the Lumia 925. That’s topped with a layer of Gorilla Glass 2 which forms the entire edge-to-edge fascia of the smartphone.
Interestingly, if you head over to RadioShack, the Lumia 928 is going for half of Verizon’s upfront price, though you’ll still need to commit to a two-year agreement.
There’s more on the Lumia 928 in our hands-on and unboxing. We’ve also got photo samples from the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera.
Nokia Lumia 928 hands-on:
Nokia Lumia 928 lands at Verizon: Can Windows Phone and Xenon tempt you? is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 928, its Windows Phone 8 smartphone for Verizon, and the device it has been steadily teasing over the past week. Packing a 4.5-inch OLED display and an 8.7-megapixel PureView camera, along with Verizon LTE 4G support, the Lumia 928 also has three high-audio-amplitude-capture microphones for better audio recording. It’ll also arrive with an impressively competitive price.
There’s wireless charging, as you’d expect from a device based on the Lumia 920, and NFC. That means the phone can be easily paired with wireless speakers and such, using Bluetooth 3.0 to squirt music across. Other connectivity includes WiFi a/b/g/n (2.4/5GHz) and microUSB.
Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 demo:
Nokia throws in HERE Maps, HERE Drive+, and HERE City Lens for easier navigation, along with the camera enhancements such as panoramic photos and animated GIFs. Optical image stabilization is included, just as Nokia demonstrated recently by strapping the phone to a remote-control helicopter, as well as a Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics. As for video recording, that’s supported at up to 1080p resolution.
The display, meanwhile, uses Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, and runs at 1280 x 768 resolution. It has a high-brightness outdoors mode, running at 500nits, and the super-sensitive touchscreen which can be used by gloves. The battery is a 2,000 mAh pack, and there’s 1GB of RAM paired with the 1.5GHz dualcore MSM8960 processor, and 32GB of user-storage.
Connectivity is impressive, with the Lumia 928 coming “Global Ready”: that means quadband GSM and UMTS HSPA for when you’re abroad, and EVDO/Rev.A and LTE for when you’re in the US on Verizon’s 4G network. It’s unclear whether Verizon will supply the phone SIM unlocked, however, for international use.
The Nokia Lumia 928 will hit Verizon on May 16, the company says, priced at $99.99 after a $50 mail-in-rebate, and assuming a new two-year agreement.
Interestingly, the Lumia 928 had been expected to debut at Nokia’s London event next Tuesday. Exactly what will be the star of that show remains to be seen, though SlashGear will be there to bring you all the details as they’re announced.
Verizon Nokia Lumia 928 gets official: 4G 4.5-inch OLED Windows Phone is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Another day, another string to the Nokia Lumia 928‘s bow, and the slow Finnish drip of information ahead of the new Windows Phone’s release now turns to the optical image stabilization (OIS) on the 8.7-megapixel camera. Anti-shake during still photo framing and video recording is one of the features most praise on the Lumia 920, and so it’s no surprise that Nokia is taking it seriously on the Lumia 928, strapping the new smartphone to a remote control helicopter to show how it can smooth out footage.
Nokia took the Lumia 928 to Squamish valley in British Columbia, and set to work zooming the phone around the scenery. “We attached the Lumia to a remote control helicopter and filmed as many remote, scenic and inaccessible locations as we could in one amazing day of good weather” Nokia explains of the project.
Whereas many smartphones use digital image stabilization techniques to try to smooth out judder and shake in video recording, there’s no replacement for physically controlling movement of the lens. In the Lumia 920, Nokia used a special “suspended lens” system which basically mounted the camera components on a shiftable platform inside the phone, and then adjusts its position according to movement data from a gyroscope.
That OIS system can handle up to 500 movements per second, and it’s that which helps smooth out the jerkiness of hand-held filming. Or, in this case and the Lumia 928, the sort of filming you might get when you’re fixed to a flying vehicle.
“We drove up old logging roads and flew off the sides of cliffs, we filmed sunken barges that can only be seen when the tide is completely out, and we flew the helicopter into waterfalls and river gorges to capture footage that you wouldn’t be able to see in any other way” Nokia
Previous Lumia 928 demonstrations have also focused on the phone’s recording abilities. First, Nokia showed how the 8.7-megapixel PureView camera fared against the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S III, with stronger low-light performance among other advantages; then, the high dynamic range for audio recording was illustrated.
This latest test doesn’t make any direct comparisons – Nokia didn’t strap any rival phones to the helicopter – but, while it’s not quite what you might get from a BBC nature documentary, the footage is impressive nonetheless. We’re expecting the Lumia 928 to be made official, for Verizon and other international carriers, at an event Nokia is hosting next week.
Nokia Lumia 928 demos OIS with helicopter joyride is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Nokia keeps dripping out details about the Lumia 928, the new Windows Phone expected to officially launch next week, and latest is a confirmation on the rumored Xenon flash and a demo of the smartphone’s audio prowess. The new image, shared by Nokia itself, shows the rear of the Lumia 928 for the first official time, complete with PureView branding and what looks like a combined Xenon and LED flash assembly.
If that’s the case, it could be Nokia is using the LED for a focus light, or potentially including it so that the Lumia 928 can use it as a video lamp when recording footage. The Xenon flash is a hotly-anticipated inclusion, a rare addition to a smartphone though one expected to pair well with the 8.7-megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics that Nokia has already confirmed.
Meanwhile, Nokia is also pitting the Lumia 928 against the Galaxy S III in terms of audio performance, testing out the two smartphones for their ability to record natural-sounding soundtracks. The test subject in this case is a subway band, with the new Windows Phone showing a far broader frequency range than its Android rival.
That’s something Nokia has emphasized before, on the 808 PureView, though the Lumia 928 is a whole lot more pocket-friendly than its Symbian predecessor. As per the low-light recording test earlier this week, though, we can’t help but wish that Nokia had pitted its new phone against the HTC One, which itself uses clever microphone technology to improve its audio pick-up.
If all goes to plan, we should expect to see the Lumia 928 officially detailed at a London event Nokia is holding next week, though it appears the Finns are keen to spill some of the headline features in the run-up to that.
Nokia Lumia 928 demos audio skills (and there’s that Xenon flash) is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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