We unbox the Lumia 930!

While Nokia’s phone division has now been completely devoured by Microsoft and is now Microsoft Mobile, the company created one last smartphone before the two became one – the Lumia 930. Actually, not quite – the Lumia 930 first popped up as a Verizon Exclusive Icon, before being released as a smartphone for the global market. The Lumia 930 is the culmination of all the lessons that Nokia and Microsoft has learned over the years, and feels like a device that could (theoretically) take on an Android phone and actually win. Today we unbox the Lumia 930 and go over our first impressions of the device.

Lumia 930 specs

• 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm MSM8974 Snapdragon 800 processor
• Adreno 330 CPU
• 2GB of RAM
• 5-inch AMOLED capacitive display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, 1920 x 1080 resolution
• 32GB of storage, non-expandable
• 20-megapixel rear facing Carl Zeiss camera, 1/2.5” sensor size, 1.12 µm pixel size, PureView technology
• 1.2-megapixel front facing camera
• WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
• 3G, LTE
• 2450mAh battery
• Microsoft Windows Phone 8.1 (Cyan)
• 137 x 71 x 9.8 mm 
• Php 29,990
  

Packaging and contents

Even though the Lumia 930 is a flagship smartphone, it actually ships in a rather small and unassuming box. A photo of the color variants adorn the front of the box, while the some of the features are listed on the back. The box that actually contains the device is housed in a sort of cardboard sleeve, take that out and you’re greeted with the rather colorful flagship.

Aside from the device, you’re provided with a USB cable, charger, manuals and….that’s it. Nokia did not provide headphones for the Lumia 930.

Initial Impressions: Easily one of the most beautiful smartphones Nokia has ever made

Say what you want about Nokia, but they definitely know how to make a beautiful smartphone. The Lumia 930 exhibits all the hallmarks of a Nokia designed smartphone – beautiful, polycarbonate back and solid build quality.

An aluminum band surrounds the side of the Lumia 930, while the 5-inch display (protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3) tapers to meet the aluminum sides. There’s no question that the Lumia 930 is a flagship as far as build quality is concerned, and while it’s heftier than other devices we’ve used in the past, it’s weight isn’t a burden.

On the right of the device lies all the Lumia 930’s physical controls: the volume rocker, lock/power button and a shortcut to the 20-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics. On the top is the 3.5mm jack and the slot for your SIM (the Lumia 930 takes nano-SIMs) while on the bottom lies the USB port.

The display of the Lumia 930 deserves special praise, as the 5-inch, full HD AMOLED Clear Black panel, with excellent blacks, good color reproduction and color saturation. The display also has extremely good viewing angles, and is still pretty usable under direct sunlight.

Aside from having Windows Phone 8.1 pre-installed, the Lumia 930 will also have Nokia’s Cyan update when you buy it. In a nutshell, the Cyan update gives you a third column of Live Tiles on the Start screen, the Action Center, Word Flow keyboard (basically a fancy name for a Swiftkey-like keyboard) among other features.

While we can’t give you a solid benchmark of the Lumia 930 using AnTuTu (the AnTuTu app that’s available in the Windows Phone Marketplace had several issues preventing it from running correctly) it’s easy to see that the Lumia 930 is capable of giving you performance at least on par with similarly specc’d devices. As far as navigation is concerned, the Lumia 930 is buttery smooth, without any performance issues whatsoever.

That’s it for this unboxing guys. Expect a review of this in the near future.