A Smart Photo Finish for Nokia's Lumia 925

It’s finally here: Nokia’s next entry into the smartphone race. It has been a long time coming for the Finnish phone manufacturer, left behind at the starting gate long ago as Android and iPhone duked it out for consumer dollars during the initial smartphone boom. After teasing a big, game-changing release over the weekend, Nokia delivered in a big way. The Lumia 925 Windows Phone was launched at a dedicated Lumia event taking place in London.

The biggest attention grabbers about the Windows Phone 8 device are all visual. The Lumia 925 has the brightest Nokia display to date, with a 1280 x 760 screen resolution. Though it is only available in grey or black, extra sleeves can be purchased to add a bit of custom color to the smartphone. The Lumia 925 also sports a rear facing, 8.7 Megapixel camera, and this is where the phone expands into the realm of innovation.

Alongside the announcement of the phone came a complimentary software launch. The new Nokia Smart Camera app is meant to be used with the Lumia 925 to get exactly the right photo in every situation. Through the app, users simply point and touch like they always have. However, instead of taking a single picture, so easily ruined by movement, sudden lighting changes or an inopportune blink, the Smart Camera takes a burst of ten photos. This allows the photographer choose the ideal image, free of motion blur, closed eyes, or unexpected participants. 

In order to achieve this feat, the image resolution is reduced. The ten photos are taken in five megapixel quality to save on space and make the most of the Lumia 925’s processing capabilities. The phone also offers setting like “Best Shot,” for your more stationary photo-ops, “Action Shot,” for the amature stunt photographer, and “Motion Focus,” for the road trip documentarian.

There are plans to release Smart Camera to the entire line of Lumia Windows Phones through the impending Lumia Amber firmware update, but initially the multimedia suite will only be available on the shiny new phones that ship with it.