







The biggest and most important change to Windows Phone 8 over previous versions is one users don't see directly: internal software plumbing shared with Windows 8. Microsoft likes to say that it has managed to change the engine on a car speeding down the freeway without slowing down, and the metaphor is an apt one. It's remarkable that an OS can have its internals so radically changed and yet still feel the same on the outside.

The Lumia 920, along with the rest of the latest batch of Windows Phone 8 devices, benefits from that updated core primarily because it can now run on a modern processor, Qualcomm's dual-core Snapdragon S4 clocked at 1.5GHz. It's actually a little difficult to gauge just how much of an effect that speedy processor has, for a couple of reasons.

The first is that Windows Phone has always been built with responsiveness in mind, so improvements in animations and scrolling are subtle. The second is that Windows Phone 8 as an OS seems to be faster and more stable overall. Microsoft has definitely made some performance tweaks, improving scrolling and responsiveness throughout the OS.

I benchmarked the browser's javascript ranking with Sunspider and got ridiculously good results — around 920ms, which puts it in the same class as the iPhone 5 in terms of browser performance. I should point out that HTC's Windows Phone 8X also achieved similar marks — no surprise since it uses the same processor. Overall, I never felt like the Lumia 920 was slowed down because of its processor. It felt just a stitch faster than the 8X, probably thanks to the aforementioned PureMotion HD+ technology.

Windows Phone 8 as a whole is a curious mix of incredible speed and maddening delays. Apps still take longer to boot from a cold start than they should, but once they're open every swipe and tap engenders an instantaneous response. Granted, the last few apps you’ve opened do load immediately thanks to fast resume feature that was added in Windows Phone 8, but I’m still spending way too much time looking at splash screens. To go back to Microsoft's metaphor, it may have changed the engine but that has kept the company from devoting resources to overhauling the transmission. The good news is that there's a real feeling that the base here is much better than it was before and that there shouldn't be anything to hold the company back from improving the OS' imperfections going forward.

I have no complaints whatsoever about battery life. Even running LTE full-bore, I was able to get a full day's use out of the Lumia 920. It's not in the same class as the Droid RAZR Maxx HD, but it's a small step above most LTE phones I've used. It has a 2,000mAh battery, 200mAh more than the 8X, and that relatively small bump makes a big difference in terms of my peace of mind.

The speaker on the Lumia 920 is loud but obviously doesn't exhibit much bass, and strangely it can get much louder when playing music than it can on speakerphone. Call quality was uniformly good, but I've had intermittent issues with reception, especially on LTE. Nokia tells me that this unit is technically still running preproduction software, other 920 users I spoke to didn’t have the issue, and finally AT&T in Seattle generally seems lackluster, so I'm not willing to say definitively that there's a real problem here. Still, I found myself toggling Airplane mode to kick-start the radio a few times and it's something to keep an eye out for when retail units start shipping.