The smartphone market is getting more and more saturated as many companies are trying to reign supreme by continually shelling out new smartphones to impress the public.
The main smartphone battle four years ago belonged to Apple and Samsung with the iPhone 3GS and Galaxy S2. However, everyone wants to get a share of the market today. Microsoft isn’t a stranger to getting into a fight. Since they acquired Nokia, they have developed several cool smartphones, and Lumia Icon is another one to compete with newest offerings.
Display and Design
Nokia has a good advantage with offering their Lumia product lines in different colors, but on this newest version they have opted to stay black and white. Compared to others Nokia doesn’t have the much to differentiate them in the design aspects from another phone. The design is outdated with sharp edges and a flat body. Unlike other phones that have three buttons on the phone to provide for more screen space. iPhone 6 has gotten with the times and provided design that curvier, but lacks the resolution that Nokia offers. The Icon has a 5 inch screen, but a 441 PPI pixel density, with the aid of 1080x 1920 resolution for their OLED display. The iPhone 6 boasts a 4.7 inch screen with 326ppi pixel density and a 750×1334 resolution on a Retina display.
Operating System and Hardware
Apple devices in general provide the best art integration between the software and the hardware. While the iPhone 6 fails to impress on paper, they have 1GB RAM memory that runs on a 1.4GHz dual-core processor. The device is able to run flawlessly and smoothly thanks to the built-in M-8 supportive chip and a 64bit A8 chip. Apple, usually, tops the rest of the competition when compared to the Android devices. In this case, however, the Icon runs at a lighter usage of RAM and uses Snapdragon quad-core process at 2.2GHz for a better performance. It offers different versions that have built-in memories of 64 GB that uses 3GB of RAM, and the 32GB that uses 2GB RAM. While there is no microSD card slot, it is still useful for downloading music, games, movies, etc. The iPhone 6 doesn’t have a microSD card slot either, so users would have to buy more storage. The latest iPhone runs of the iOS 8.0.2 and the Icon runs on Windows 8.1 upgrade.
Camera Time
Each phone has their weaknesses and strengths in delivering a quality camera. The icon uses a dual LED flash, with a 20-MP rear sensor, for optical image stabilization to take pics at 4992×374 pixels, on Carl Zeiss optics. iPhone 6 can’t match those specs with on an 8-MP sensor and not optical image stabilization, but they do provide better video capturing, and also the option for time-lapse and slow motion videos.
Battery Life
The iPhone has always struggled with a good battery life. The latest version still can’t measure up to Nokia’s reliable phones, in which the Icon houses a 2420 mAH battery that gives over 17 hours of battery life.
Price
Nokia phones have always been priced lower, even with the Windows OS still in its developing stages; they are continually adding new features. They are almost ready to compete with Apple’s iOS and Android. The iPhone 6 will run you $650 while the Lumia Icon cost $500.
They are both good phones; it is just a matter of preference.