Nokia has done what we asked: released a Windows Phone handset in metal. Except it's not all metal. And it's very similar to the Nokia Lumia 920. And it's in the high-end price bracket... but does a stunning camera warrant the extra cost?

Last year's Lumia 920 was a decent handset. It married striking looks to a quality screen and an even better camera. However, while it was undeniably good there was still some room for improvement, as being a flagship phone many hoped for better specs, less weight and a more premium build.

Now the Finnish phone-smiths are back with the Nokia Lumia 925. It's only seen a small number boost in its name, and if you assumed that meant that not much had changed, well, you'd be right.

While Nokia has equipped the Lumia 925 with a similarly brilliant camera and gone some way to addressing the build of its flagship, it hasn't really improved the specs, leaving the Nokia Lumia 925 in the curious position of feeling more like a tweaked handset than an all new one.

This used to be a problem when the handset was so expensive, but it's much more reasonable at £380 (around AU$674) now, making it a much more attractive buy compared to the now discontinued Nokia Lumia 920, although the older model can now be had for under £290 through some sellers.

With a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and just 1GB of RAM the Nokia Lumia 925 matches the Lumia 920 for horsepower and trails some way behind the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S4 or Sony Xperia Z - both of which have double the RAM and quad-core processors.

Arguably Nokia didn't need to go all out, since it doesn't have a huge amount of competition in the Windows Phone space - only the HTC Windows Phone 8X really poses much of a threat. But it seems like a missed opportunity to compete on a level playing field against the wider phone world.

At first sight you might almost not recognise the Lumia 925 as a Nokia handset. It has the same sharply rectangular shape that the Nokia Lumia 920 has, but where that was all brightly coloured plastic, the Nokia Lumia 925 has a shiny aluminium band running around the sides. It gives it a premium edge that is sorely lacking from other Nokia handsets, and it looks good for it.

Unfortunately Nokia hasn't gone the whole hog and made a completely metal handset like the HTC One, and instead made the back from polycarbonate. It still looks decent and the fairly conservative colour options (black, white or silver) mean that it looks a lot classier and more grown up than the Nokia Lumia 920, but it doesn't come close to the premium look or feel of the HTC One.

Despite incorporating metal into its design, the Nokia Lumia 925 is actually lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920, coming in at 139g (4.9oz) compared to the 185g (6.5oz) Lumia 920. The weight was one of our key qualms with the Nokia Lumia 920, so it's good to see that it's been addressed.

At a sleek 8.5mm (0.33 inches), the Nokia Lumia 925 is quite a bit thinner than its 10.7mm (0.42-inch) predecessor too, while the length and width remain almost identical at 129 x 70.6mm (5.08 x 2.78 inches).

It feels nice in the hand and it's generally quite comfortable to hold, though there are a couple of caveats to that. Firstly the position of the camera lens on the back makes it very easy to accidentally put your fingers over it, which is uncomfortable and could leave marks on the lens.

And secondly, the corners aren't very curved, which means they can dig into your hand if you hold the phone in a certain way. On the plus side, the polycarbonate back feels soft and warm against your palm, which is a comforting sensation.

The front of the Nokia Lumia 925 is dominated by the 4.5 inch 768 x 1280 AMOLED screen. It's not quite edge to edge but it's not far off at the sides - although there's reams of plastic above and below, which seems a trifle unnecessary. It's a good size too in our opinion, big enough to use easily without becoming unwieldy.

At 332 pixels per inch it also has a pretty good pixel density, though not one that will bother the HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4. And in fact it's exactly the same size and resolution as the previous model, which is a little disappointing. However it does use the same impressive PureMotion HD+ ClearBlack technology as the Nokia Lumia 920.

Above the screen there's Nokia's logo, the earpiece and the 1.3 MP front-facing camera, while below the screen there are three soft touch buttons with icons for Start, Back and Search.

Flip the Nokia Lumia 925 over and you'll find another Nokia logo stamped across the middle of the polycarbonate back, while above that there's an 8.7MP Carl Zeiss camera lens and flash, and near the bottom of the handset there's a speaker.

The plastic around the lens is raised, leaving the lens itself slightly indented. That gives it a little protection when putting the phone down, but it also makes the phone less comfortable to hold as your fingers will often stray over the raised area.

The left edge of the phone consists of a strip of metal with no real features on it, while the right edge has the power button in the middle, a volume rocker just above it and the camera button near the bottom. The buttons are all quite raised and responsive, making them easy to press and easy to find by touch alone. They're also spaced out enough that there's no confusion over which is which.

The top of the Nokia Lumia 925 houses the micro SIM card slot at the left, the micro USB port and 3.5mm headphone port near the centre and the microphone to the right.

The bottom edge is left unadorned, with just the metal band running along it.

You can't remove the back cover so there's no getting to the Nokia Lumia 920-matching 2000mAh battery and there's also no microSD card slot, so unlike some lower-end Nokia handsets (such as the Nokia Lumia 520), the storage isn't expandable. This leaves the Nokia Lumia 925 with just 16GB of memory, which is half what the Nokia Lumia 920 offers - although 32GB options are apparently going to be available.

The Nokia Lumia 925 is slimmer and lighter than the Nokia Lumia 920. It also has a more premium build and a slightly improved camera (more on that later) but with the same core specs, less storage space and a much higher price tag it's got an uphill struggle on its hands.

Source : techradar[dot]com

Spotify Connect is a nifty little feature, letting you stream your music to select speakers locally over Wi-Fi and eliminating the need for any Bluetooth pairing faff.

It's also something that iOS users have been able to rub in Android faces for the past couple of months. Now the feature has been made available for fans of Google's OS via an update for the Android app, as spotted by Android Police.

There are currently only a limited number of compatible partner speakers, which include Philips, Argon, Revo, Pioneer and Bang and Olufsen, and of course you'll have to be using Spotify Premium before you can start streaming.

Multi-room, multi-platform

While you're streaming music over Spotify Connect you'll be able to take calls and just generally use your phone however you want without interrupting the music.

You won't be able to play any local files though, just tracks you find on Spotify. But it's an especially handy feature if you want to get some of your own tunes rocking when visiting a friend's house.

It also means you can be as far away from the speakers are you like, just as long as you're still in Wi-Fi range.

• Google Play Music All Access or Spotify? FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Source : techradar[dot]com

There's been a lot of talk and rumours lately about the Sony Xperia Z1s, a handset believed to be a mini version of the Sony Xperia Z1.

But as likely as that had previously seemed, a new image posted on Chinese site Digi-wo and found by Xperia Blog shows a phone that's supposedly the Xperia Z1s side by side with an Xperia Z1 and it looks anything but mini. In fact if anything it looks slightly bigger than the Xperia Z1.

The angle of the image isn't great, so it's hard to say for sure, but the Z1s looks both taller and wider than the Z1, as well as having its headphone port near the middle of the top edge, rather than to the side as the Z1 does.

Super size me

The size difference could mean that rather than being a shrunk down Z1, the Z1s is actually a slightly bigger version of the handset, perhaps with a 5.2-5.5 inch display and maybe even an increased resolution to match.

If you were looking forward to a more pocket friendly Z1 though don't give up hope yet, as a shrunk down version known as the Z1F has already been confirmed for Japan. This new news may just mean that we're getting both a mini and a max version of the Z1.

• The Samsung Galaxy S4 has already gone mini. Check out what we thought of it.

Source : techradar[dot]com

News on the successor to the five star, flagship HTC One is rife with new leaks suggesting the follow up M8 handset will be the Taiwanese firm's most powerful to date.

The HTC M8 moniker is widely believed to be a codename for next-gen smartphone (the One was known as M7 during development) and while we'd be surprised if it launch as the HTC One Two, it's currently the most common name in circulation.

Confusion over the name aside, after yesterday's brief outing the folks over at AnTuTu benchmark reckon they've uncovered a gem in their Android app - with a phone carrying the HTC M8 name posting some rather impressive information.

Feel the power

It's not clear how accurate the information is, but with a punchy 2.26GHz Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM it would put the HTC M8 up there with (and ahead of) the LG G2, Google Nexus 5 and Sony Xperia Z1.

That's a significant boost from the HTC One, which packs a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 chip - so not only will there be more power, but hopefully better battery life from Qualcomm's efficient 800 SoC.

In terms of operating system the HTC One Two is tipped to launch with the latest version of Google's mobile platform - Android 4.4 KitKat. While the One Two may well have KitKat at its heart, HTC will almost certainly stick its Sense overlay on top.

There's no mention of which version of Sense will adorn the HTC M8, but we could well see the new 6.0 overlay, following on from 5.5 which resides on the One Max.

Storage hunters

So what else might we expect from the HTC One Two? Sadly it looks like there won't be any advances in the camera department, with the same 4MP (likely to be Ultrapixel tech) and 2.1MP lenses quoted for the rear and front of the device.

Something else which strikes fear into us is the quoted level of internal storage - just 16GB. Considering the One doesn't come with an expandable memory option and the OS takes up 8GB there could be serious storage issues here.

As we've already mentioned, these specs are certainly not set in stone and we'd be surprised if HTC didn't go down the 32GB and 64GB route for the One Two.

Unsurprisingly this handset wipes the floor with its predecessor in all the benchmark tests on Antutu so, while you should take this with a generous dosage of salt, it's looking good over at HTC.

Word on a HTC One Two release date is still relatively sparse, but it's thought the handset will make an appearance early on in 2014 - we can't wait.

• Want a top phone right now? Here's our list of the 20 best mobile phones in the world today

Source : techradar[dot]com

There isn't enough room in town for three separate versions of the Windows operating system, admitted Microsoft's Executive Vice President of Devices Julie Larson-Green.

"We have the Windows Phone OS. We have Windows RT and we have full Windows. We're not going to have three," she confirmed last week at a UBS Global Technology Conference.

Reading between the versions, Microsoft sounds as if it's looking for a unified, mobile-friendly edition of its operating system, while keeping the more intensive desktop version.

Two months ago, the company hinted at just that, suggesting Windows RT could make its way into phones.

'We should not have called it Windows'

Microsoft learned several valuable lessons from the ill-fated launch of Windows RT, and it paid heavily with a costly write-down of Surface RT tablets.

"I think we didn't explain that super-well. I think we didn't differentiate the devices well enough," Larson-Green surmised

"They looked similar. Using them is similar. It just didn't do everything that you expected Windows to do. So there's been a lot of talk about it should have been a rebranding."

She went as far as to say that Microsoft should have called it something other than "Windows."

"We should not have called it Windows. How should we have made it more differentiated? I think over time you'll see us continue to differentiate it more."

Whether or not the product of Windows Phone and Windows RT takes that rebranding route seems to be up in the air at the Redmond, Wash.-based company right now.

The new path

Toward the end of her comments, Larson-Green noted that Microsoft's path includes a more defined mobile operating system. One that's different from the tablets like the Surface Pro 2 running full Windows 8.1.

"We do think there's a world where there is a more mobile operating system that doesn't have the risks to battery life, or the risks to security," she said.

She complimented Apple's efforts in this area, saying "you look at iPad in particular, and it's a turnkey, closed system. It doesn't degrade over time.

"It doesn't get viruses. It's not as flexible, you can't do as much with it, but it's a more seamless experience, even though more simplified.

"It also comes at the cost of flexibility," she concluded. "So we believe in that vision and that direction and we're continuing down that path."

• Read our ongoing Xbox One review, proving Microsoft got it right with its unified One console.

Source : techradar[dot]com