Alike the Windows Phone 7.5 series, Nokia has the Windows Phone 8 Lumia devices ranging from 10k to 35k INR. Nokia announced the Lumia 620, 820 and 920 early this year whereas 720 and 520 joined the league much later. No doubt Nokia Lumia are the best Windows Phone to buy and with the variety in prices and models they are easily suit anyone’s pocket. If they still seems to be a little heavy for your pockets, Nokia offers a different budget smartphone-ish experience range of devices for the buyers. We reviewed the second high end model Lumia 820 earlier after its launch in India and now its time for the first mid-range handset in the WP8 series – Lumia 620.
Build:
Nokia have been well known for its build and they have kept their standards high alike their every other handset. The Lumia 620 has replaceable color shells giving their customers an option to refresh their smartphone looks. The main body of the smartphone is dense solid black making it easy to suit any color shell. The color shell itself shows how much effort and innovation Nokia puts in their handsets.
The review unit we had was having a green back panel with a secondary yellow shell inside. Though this looks very cool on the device but it totally destroys the first user hands-on with the device. Removing the back panel requires a special technique where the user has to push the camera on the back and pluck the shell from the top. We though it will be better to explain this with a video and therefore we shot one for the same which can be viewed below.
The design is the same as every other Windows Phone handset with volume rocker, power key and camera button on the right edge and three capacitive touch buttons on the front under the 3.8inch WVGA screen and secondary VGA camera on the top along with earpiece and proximity sensor. The back has 5MP camera with LED flash and the Nokia branding in the center.
Considering the price point, the build seems to be impressive and it gradually improves if you can add more money and consider buying the next model in the WP8 series.
Hardware:
Nokia Lumia 620 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chip set which has a dual core 1 GHz Krait processor and Adreno 305 GPU. It runs on 512 MB RAM and 8 GB internal memory which can be expanded up to 64 GB via an external microSD card slot. 620 supports micro sim and is juiced by 1300 mAh battery which might be fit for daily usage depending on your needs. Connectivity options include 802.11 dual-band Wifi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth v3.0, EDGE class B, HSDPA 21 Mbps and HSUPA 5.76 Mbps with microUSB v2.0. The audio output gets enhanced by Dolby headphone sound enhancement and the visuals get better with Nokia ClearBlack display.
Hardware specifications are good for the operating system and decent for the price point. Internal memory is the main problem here because in spite of 8 GB internal memory only 3.84 GB is available to the user and that is not enough for the media consumption what a user expects the smartphone to handle. Apart from this 512 MB RAM keeps pulling back the user on this smartphone to install the RAM hungry applications. To make it more clear, assume the big games which require both RAM and memory are not either compatible with this device or if it installs does not provide the experience which it should.
Performance:
There are some of the benchmark tools but we choose the most popular one Atuntu which we ran on the device during the testing period. The results are as follows:
Camera:
5MP rear camera with LED flash is pretty much common at this price point. 5MP camera has the autofocus feature and can shoot videos up to 720p@30fps whereas the front-facing camera is VGA that is 0.3 MP and is only there for the sake of video calling feature.
The performance is nothing special and give decent results on daylight. On the other hand, low-light is nothing good it has noise in its pictures but this is what you can get at the price. We clicked a few sample pictures and videos which are embedded below.
Software:
We have talked about WP8 as a mobile operating system earlier in the Lumia 820 review and the condition is pretty much the same. Windows Phone 8 needs that app ecosystem which make users fall for it. Despite the refreshing UI/UX and low resource demands comparing with Android and iOS the operating system still fails to impress some of the consumers. The only reason behind this is applications. Applications leads any operating system towards success or failure. Refeshing features might catch some users wandering around but not the masses. Microsoft efforts are not enough to make this operating system consumer friendly, they need to do something more.
Conclusion:
Nokia Lumia 620 is available for about 15k at leading retail stores and online traders like Flipkart etc. Considering Lumia 620 as an option for the smartphone at this range is not a bad idea but the buyer should be aware of the pros and cons. Hardware specifications is not much of an issue here rather than the operating system. If you are bored of Android and do not have the money to buy an iOS device this might be an option but you have to choose your budget wisely because there is a WP8 handset with little less specifications at 4k less and there is awesome build quality and superb camera WP8 for 4k more. Apart from this the insufficient internal memory and RAM could create a mess. In the end its the user who needs to evalute the usecase. But still at 14k it can be atleast kept in the list.
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