The new Nokia Lumia 820 has been launched as an affordable offering from Nokia. This has been especially targeted to customers who want to switch to Windows 8 but still limiting on price. Let’s have a look what Lumia 820 has in store for us.
Design
Lumia 820 has been a little less luxurious in quality than 920 but still it hasn’t lost its lusture of being a robust phone. The screen is flat with swappable covers available in different colors.
These covers has been named as “shells” by Nokia. They are built of tough plastic materials, can be swapped easily and fit perfectly against rear sides of phone. For now the covers seem to be expensive but the prices are expected to drop over time.
Behind the cover you could find a Macro SIM slot, Micro SIM slot and a swappable battery , but no doubt they'll drop in price over time. This is the first time a Windows Phone 8 mobile has had expandable storage and it really is a welcome addition, particularly as the high-end 920 doesn’t have one. The phone built is think which gives it a feeling of being robust and strong.
Nokia presents vibrant ad lively colors for back cover including purple, blue, grey, black, white, yellow and red. This gives an option to make your phone look new every time or swap the cover if it has got scratches.
The 4.3 inch screen makes it narrow and easy to hold, the grip is comfortable and is easily to operate with one hand. The button placement is quite handy with phone lock placed just below the volume rocker on the right hand side of the phone. A camera button is placed below which when pressed opens up camera app. The headphone jack is perfectly sit at the top while Micro USB Charger at the bottom of the phone.
Software
The Lumia series again runs on Windows platform , with latest version of Windows Phone. The scroll-able homescreen with colorful tiles, 3D effects and transitions makes it a fun phone to use.
The tiles on the screen are live and hence we can see notifications like unread messages or mails on the homescreen itself. We can also resize the tiles depending on desktop icon of a particular app. On scrolling to left a list of alphabetical app opens up from which we can pin them individually to homescreen.
My favourite feature of Windows phone is People Hub which pulls all the contacts from all my linked accounts Facebook, Twitter, email , phone book etc. to one place. This gives the ease to not just look at contact’s phone number but also his feeds and updates. You can also see their various posts on different social networks under the 'What's New' tab
Nokia apps
Nokia Lumia comes bundled with some new apps which are hard to find in existing Windows phone. Pre-installed apps include Nokia Drive, which offers turn-by-turn, voice-guided navigation -- something not included in the standard Windows Phone maps app (which is actually powered by Nokia's maps).
Nokia has made music easier with its Music app which lets easy streaming of playlists generated and cover a very broad spectrum of music genres from heavy metal and indie to dub and classical. They are as- free playlists which allows 14.5 hours of music to listen offline.
The City Lens app uses GPS and the phone's compass to superimpose stuff like train stations, restaurants and hotels onto a live feed from the camera to show you what's nearby.
Windows market place provides a lesser number of apps when compared to Android or iOS but all the basic apps and games will easily be found and you wont miss the vastness of Google play or IOS market .
Processor, Performance & Battery life
It's got a dual-core Snapdragon processor that runs at 1.5GHz and is paired with 1GB of RAM. There's 8GB of storage space built in, but the phone also has a microSD card slot that can accept cards of up to 64GB in size. On performing Browser tests the processor was pretty quick and completed SunSpider in just 916.2ms.
The best part of this phone when compared to 920 is removable battery. It's a 1,650mAh power pack, which is smaller than the one in its high-end sibling. The battery is good enough to keep the phone in use when used rigorously during the entire day.
I had no problem with signal strength or call quality during my time with the phone with an excellent call quality due to perfect earpiece and mic quality.
Screen
The OLED technology has made screen very bright. The colors are very crisp and clear with blacks being blacker. The touch is pretty amazing and can be operated even with gloves on while setting sensitivity to maximum.
The ClearBlack Display technology looks quite promising with it being proven on its stated facts of polarizing filters over the screen designed to cut down on reflections.
Camera
Although 820 does not contain the PureView camera technology found on the higher-end 920, but its camera is still very impressive. The 8-megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss optics and dual-LED flash to help out in low-light conditions makes it’s a pretty decent camera to use. A 1.3 megapixel front facing camera is also present for video calling usage
To click a picture a number of options are available to set the scene according to the external light conditions including close-up and sports scenes. These can also be adjusted with respect to ISO level, exposure and white balance. By default the camera is set up to use the LED flash, It does help it achieve sharper focus, but you can turn it off in the menu if you find it too intrusive in certain situations.
Shot Taken from Lumia 820
There's also a video recording mode that works in 720p and 1080p modes. The 1080p mode produces better results than it does on a lot of other phones.
Conclusion
The Lumia 820 has plenty of good stuff going for it, including its swappable covers, strong camera performance and enjoyable Windows Phone 8 software. The screen is smaller but excellent especially for people who want to use a little smaller phone. With the amazing camera quality it is a must try.
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