Let’s start with why on earth I got a new phone. I used to own a nice little Xperia play which kept me company on many boring days and nights. One day as usual while frolicking (don’t take it literally! I don’t frolic much) by the pool, my lil play went for a swim for the tenth time and unfortunately he didn’t survive this time. He drowned and short circuited his capability to charge. After an uneventful funeral, burying him into the abyssal depths of my drawer, I went out hunting for a cheap phone that can do simple things like calling and texting. Thats when I saw an elegant Lumia 620. Now on with the review.
I wasn’t planning on spending more than MYR 800 (approx. INR 13781.20) on a new phone. I never spent more than that on a phone (unless I go into retard mode) . And the Lumia 620 was MYR 799.
Specification: The hardware is phenomenal for a phone. Why would I need a dual core cpu with an Adreno 305 GPU to run my phone? but it has exactly that. A Snapdragon S4 keeps this bad boy running. And plenty of RAM at 512 MB. I believe if somebody can’t write phone software that can’t run on the limited resources of a "phone", they are doing something terribly wrong. Yep even though I had an Android phone, I will never agree with what they did to the OS. Besides I don’t want my phone to be as powerful as netbook and suck at staying on for more than 8 hours. It comes with 8 GB built in storage and that’s not bad! But only 4.5 GB is available to the user. I assume the Windows 8 with the Office package and Nokia’s GPS stuff take up most of that space. It also has an expansion slot to support upto 64 GB. Not bad at all for a cheap phone! Comes with a nice 5 MP camera with flash and fancy software to make pictures look, well weird and also a front side VGA camera for vanity purposes and video calls. It also comes with an NFC chip, but I don’t think I would need it for another couple of years though. It can be used to send pictures and stuff to other phones with the same technology. Connectivity options are pretty standard, HSPA+ and wireless a/b/g/n, the usual stuff. Note that it doesn’t come with 4G.
Design: Well I always like industrial designs, minimalistic, abstract with sharp corners and in dull colors. I am not complaining about your choice of color for marketing this phone Nokia, but I like mine plain black thank you. But my eyes! that silly lemon yellow is hurting my eyes! Anyway back on track, the phone looks almost perfect for my liking. No fancy logos or extravagant protrusions on the back for the camera, nothing but 3 simple buttons (camera, power and volume - from bottom up) on the right side, a micro usb port at the bottom and a 3.5mm jack on the top. Those are the only bumps and dents on this phone. I like it! Coming to the screen, it’s 3.5 inches I think. Covered by dust proof gorilla glass (honestly, what was the guy thinking when he named it after an ape?) nothing spectacular about the screen other than that it does what it should do well: Respond to my touches and display stuff nicely. Best part, no protruding buttons below the screen. Just simple touch sensitive buttons for back, home and search in white. See how minimalistic it is? Love it.
Performance: I guess most people might think android and iOS would be the fastest OSes on mobile platforms. Sorry to say that Windows 8 leaves the rest eating dust. It’s been 2 weeks since I got this bad boy and has never lagged on me and boot up takes less than 10 seconds. Now that’s what I call speed. For a fact linux and android don’t go well with power saving, and windows is always known for excellent power saving features (comes with the crown - biggest OS maker). I wasn’t expecting much from a cheap smarty touchy feely phone, but surprisingly this is the 3rd day I am using it without plugging it into the charger and still has 17% battery. I am not a heavy user though. I do the basic things like calling, texting, reading news online for about 10 minutes a day and reading a book for 30 minutes on the kindle app. Connecting to wireless or 3G is faster than my previous phone. Call qualities are pretty good as always with Nokia phones. Not much complain about the performance.
The camera is pretty decent for this price range. It’s not one of the best cameras on a phone, but thinking with the cost in mind, I am perfectly happy with it’s performance. Haven’t tried taking pictures in dark environments yet.
Usability: Again Windows 8 is just too simple to use. no multiple screens like Android or iOS, just a long vertical scroll on the home screen to see all the "pinned" apps. Slide to the left and you get the list of all apps installed, settings and stuff. Plain and minimalistic. Why didn’t Android come up with this? I suppose they were busy copying iOS . When I bought the phone, it came with a few apps. Office suite, Nokia maps, Nokia drive beta+ and the Nokia music player are the significant ones. I am not sure if I’ll need to use Office ever on my phone, but nice to have though. I don’t have to download some weird lil app to read pdfs or word documents. Oh When I say Office suite, I mean the proper MS Office package with fully functional Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Nokia maps is not one of the best looking maps but has a little more accuracy when it comes to map coordinates. The Nokia drive beta+ seems to be quite interesting. It’s a proper GPS application developed by Nokia and surprising enough works well even with walking. Haven’t tried it while driving though. But it does screw up with the speed indication. It was showing 20 km/h when I was walking. Guess Nokia has to sort out these bugs with the release version.
The music player seems to be pretty basic. The one basic thing I desperately need on it right now is a playlist editor. Yep, this phone doesn’t have a freaking playlist editor. I can create a playlist, but I can’t add more songs or sort the list manually. I am not even sure how to delete a playlist yet. I did notice a paid music player app in the windows market place, but I aint paying for it ever!
For app hoarders, you are completely out of luck with any windows 8 phone. There are all the basic apps and a few games, but that’s it. Me, not being an app addict, I am perfectly happy with everything the phone has, but I am sure there are many who would complain about this. I guess it takes time for developers to dive into the new platform. Maybe I’ll create a free playlist manger sometime in the next 3 months.
So now comes the question, would I recommend this phone? well I would if you need a decent smartphone with all the basic functionality built in. If you are an apps junky, photographer with a camera phone, listening to loads of music but want a windows 8 phone, probably it’s best if you wait for a little longer. Nothing much to complain about this phone though. It does everything exceptionally well if you look at it relatively to other platforms and phones.