Nokia Lumia Icon review: Perfect frame

Controls

Above the display you will find the earpiece, an ambient light and proximity sensor, and the 1.2MP front-facing camera. They are flanked by a Nokia and a Verizon logo.

The view above the display

Below the display there are three capacitive keys - Back, Start, and Search. The mouthpiece microphone pinhole is located underneath the Start button.

A look below the display

There is nothing on the left side of the Nokia Lumia Icon. The volume rocker, the power/lock key, and the dedicated camera button are all located on the right side of the device.

Nothing on the left • the trio of buttons on the right side

The nano-SIM card slot and the 3.5mm audio jack sit on top of the device. The microUSB port is on the bottom.

The top and bottom of the Nokia Lumia Icon

The back of the Nokia Lumia Icon is home to the 20MP PureView camera, its dual-LED flash, the device's loudspeaker, and a duo of microphones. A Nokia logo and two pieces of Verizon livery are also part of the landscape.

Battery life

With a 2,420mAh battery on board, the Nokia Lumia Icon did rather disappointingly in our dedicated battery test. The handset did rather poorly in the web-browsing test, while its video playback and stand-by efficiency weren't ideal either - leading to an endurance rating of just 40h.

This means that even if you only do an hour of web browsing, an hour of talking and an hour of video watching per day, you will have to charge it every other day. And if your usage pattern is skewed towards browsing more than anything else, you will barely last a full day.

Our routine also includes a standby battery draw test, which is not featured in our battery test scorecard but is calculated in the total endurance rating. Our battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you want to learn more about it.

Handling

The Nokia Lumia Icon feels pleasant to handle thanks to aluminum frame around the device. However, the edgy design of the handset has resulted in less than stellar ergonomics and worse than the rest of the Nokia Lumia smartphone range. We didn't find this to be a dealbreaker though.

Handling the Nokia Lumia Icon

Overall, the Nokia Lumia Icon deserves high marks for its design and build. Following next is a look at the latest Windows Phone 8 iteration, as well as Nokia's additions to it.