Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Review

Microsoft Lumia smartphones hit the midrange hard, in fact they often do the low end nicely too. With the Lumia 640 XL you get a big screen phone and a set of quite good cameras for 99 cents on contract or $249 full retail. The phone is available worldwide, and here in the US AT&T just added it to their lineup. For those who don't follow closely, Lumia Windows phones are now branded as Microsoft rather than Nokia products. Nothing has changed in terms of design aesthetics, camera tech or software (you still get Lumia Camera, Mix Radio and other compelling apps), rather Microsoft has jettisoned the Nokia name post-acquisition.

Design and Build Quality

This isn't a sexy phone like the 6" Nokia Lumia 1520--to be fair the 1520 was a much more expensive phone. Overseas you can get the 640 XL in the usual playful Lumia colors including Cyan, but AT&T offers just black and white. I'm sure you can find colorful back covers on eBay, if you'd like to jazz things up. The back cover is removable as is the battery. Under that cover you'll find a micro SIM card slot and microSD card slot. The surprisingly loud and full speaker fires from the rear.

The look is typical Lumia low to midrange, with a rubbery plastic back, clean lines and a solid feel in the hand. The phone's headphone jack is up top, the micro USB connector is at the bottom and a volume rocker and power button are on the right side. There's a raised ring or hump around the rear camera, but surprisingly it doesn't make the phone wobble when placed on a table. The raised plastic ensures that the lens cover doesn't touch the table.

Display

The Lumia 640 XL has a 5.7" display with outdoor visibility enhancements and Gorilla Glass 3. This is a $249 phone, so don't expect whopping high resolution, in fact we're looking at 1280 x 720 here, for a not wildly impressive 259 PPI. Still, the display's colors and contrast are good and unless you have eagle-eyed vision, you probably won't see individual pixels or jaggies (Microsoft's attention to typography helps too). Simply put, the display actually looks pretty good, and it's not grainy or budget looking. When the phone is asleep it can display the time and selected notifications (faint white text and icons on a black background). I love this Lumia feature, and there's a night mode so it won't be overly bright in the night.

Horsepower and Performance

The budget element kicks in again for the processor, and the 640 XL runs on the aging 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU with Adreno 305 graphics (we do wonder why Microsoft didn't go with it's current replacement, the Snapdragon 410). That processor has graced many midrange Android and Windows Phones. Since Windows Phone 8.1, much like iOS, is a highly optimized OS that runs well without flagship CPUs, the phone feels responsive. Demanding 3D games like Modern Combat 5 (demoed in our video review) don't have fantastic frame rates, though they're still quite playable. The phone runs Windows Phone 8.1 update 2 with Lumia Denim, and it will get the upgrade to Windows 10 for phones. It has 1 gig of RAM and just 8 gigs of internal storage. Thankfully there's a microSD card slot under the back cover so you can extend storage.

Microsoft Lumia 640 XL Video Review

Cameras

The Lumia 640 XL is the supersized version of the Lumia 640, and it also boasts camera improvements. The front camera moves up to 5MP resolution, and it can shoot 1080p video, which results in sharper Skype video chats. It's a wide-angle lens that's perfect for group selfies, but it will distort facial features given that wide angle (noses grow, hairlines recede).

The rear 13MP camera has a Zeiss lens, BSI sensor, HDR and it too can shoot 1080p video @30 fps. It won't beat the pants off the Lumia Icon, LG G4 or Samsung Galaxy S6 cameras, but for the price, it's a solid camera with plenty of software features like Lumia Lenses and the capable Lumia 5 camera app. There are other goodies like the background defocus app, though I find that one a bit heavy handed-- backgrounds are excessively blurred, which looks artificial. Still, it's better than nothing since camera phones lack shallow depth of field for pleasing bokeh. The camera handles low light well, and in harsh outdoor lighting it suffers from some blown out highlights, but nothing out of the ordinary for camera phones lacking flagship imaging hardware. 1080p video is detailed and sometimes a bit over-sharpened, and audio recording quality is impressive.

Battery Life

Big phones have space for large batteries, thus the Lumia 640 XL has an ample 3,000 mAh battery that's removable should you wish to swap in a spare. Given the relatively low resolution and midrange CPU, battery life is simply stellar for a big phone. We couldn't kill it in a full day of use, and it generally lasted two days on a charge. Of course, if you play Real Racing 3 or Modern Combat 5 for hours, you'll drain the battery sooner--we're talking average use that includes email, web, taking photos, social networking, a few calls and streaming a 30 minute video. The AT&T model with the stock back does not support wireless charging.

Conclusion

The Microsoft Lumia 640 XL is a very likeable and solid phone at a reasonable price. If you're in the market for a big screen phone on a budget and are a fan of Windows Phone or are hankering to try that OS, it's a great introduction to the platform. Though the resolution won't win a specs war, the display is pleasingly sharp, bright and colorful, and the size is fantastic for watching movies and viewing photos. Both cameras are quite good for the price and we really enjoy Lumia imaging software. Call quality is good and data speeds are par for the course on AT&T's 4G LTE network.

Nokia Lumia 630 Review

What is the Nokia Lumia 630?

The Nokia Lumia 630 is a new budget-price Windows Phone mobile. It follows the supremely popular Lumia 520, which has proven to be one of the most popular affordable mobiles of recent times – forgetting even that it runs Windows, rather than budget-staple Android.

We took a look at the phone to see whether it deserves the same success as the 520.

Design

As with other low-cost Nokia phones, the Lumia 630 keeps the colourful style of the high-end Lumia Windows phones, but uses a traditional removable plastic back cover rather than a unibody-style construction.

It doesn’t feel quite as robust as the Lumia 930, but it’s pocketable, cute and a cut above some of the lower-end Android phones we’ve reviewed recently. The 630 comes in a few different colours – orange, green and yellow alongside the more conservative white and black.

Nokia’s dedication to making even its low-cost phones look and feel pretty good is one of the reasons why I rate the company’s budget phones so highly. You know you’re going to get a certain grade of construction and general experience with a Lumia.

The finish on the Lumia 630 mobiles is matt, where the 4G edition (known as the 635) finish is glossy. However, you could conceivably tool-up your Lumia 630 with a 635 case after buying if you’re desperate for that shiny look.

Screen

Nokia’s usual decent build quality is evident, but so are the basic compromises involved in making a low-cost phone. The screen is just ‘ok’, a few rungs below what we see in Nokia’s top phones.

It’s a 4.5-inch 854 x 480 resolution display. And while Nokia gives it the ClearBlack branding, it’s not going to blow you away with its image quality. Resolution is noticeably a bit low, and while the IPS screen offers decent viewing angles, its contrast naturally not on-par with the OLEDs used in some of Nokia’s top phones. However, from a brief play it does seem that Nokia has improved colour reproduction in its entry-level screens.

What makes the Lumia 630 stick out most clearly as a budget model, though, is the execution of the virtual ‘soft keys’. Windows Phone 8.1 is the first edition of the software that does not require hardware nav buttons, and the design of these software alternatives needs work. The resolution has a hand in this too, but the button layout doesn’t look nearly as classy as it does in an up-to-date vanilla Android phone. They look a bit tacked-on.

Software and Performance

The budget cuts are not really evident in general performance, though. As usual, the Windows Phone software flys by, and the core specs of the Lumia 630 are sound at any rate.

The phone uses a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 chipset. This is less powerful than the dual-core Snapdragon 400 model used in phones like the Galaxy S4 Mini, but it’s easily enough power to get the relatively efficient Windows Phone system running well. I’ll give the phone a proper gaming workout too see how it copes under strain when we get our review model in.

This will be one of the first phones to use new Windows Phone 8.1 software. It brings in a few of the extras you get in other platforms, such as a universal in-phone search, a voice assistant and a proper notifications system.

Camera and other hardware

One slight hardware disappointment is the Lumia 630's camera. It appears to use the same 5-megapixel sensor as older Lumia phones like the Lumia 520 and 620.

It’s a passable camera setup that we have found very easy to use in the past, but its small ¼-inch sensor is never going to produce particularly remarkable images. As in the Lumia 520, there’s no front-facing camera either, which may be a deal-breaker for some of you.

There are also a few other missing bits. There’s no NFC, and if you want 4G you’ll need to upgrade to the Lumia 635. As yet, we don’t know what sort of price bump such an upgrade will cause. The phone has an entry-level 8GB of storage, but there’s a microSD memory card slot under the back cover to bump this up if needed.

First Impressions

The Lumia 630 seems like another neat little Windows Phone mobile that should sell by the truckload if sold at the right price. But just like cheap Android rivals, its screen is rather shown up by the much higher-resolution Moto G, but otherwise Nokia seems to have made most of the right hardware decisions here.

Source:trustedreviews.com

Nokia Lumia 930 review

First Impressions

The Lumia 930 is seriously bright and comes with Windows Phone 8.1

The Nokia Lumia 930 is the successor to the Lumia 925. It's a high-end 5-inch screen Windows Phone, with a focus on camera technology. However, it's not quite as camera-obsessed as the Lumia 1020, making it a slightly more accessible phone.

We took a closer look the phone at its launch to find out if it deserves to head-up Nokia's 2014 phone line-up

Design

Like the Nokia Lumia 925, the Lumia 930 has a metal shell, into which a plastic back plate is plugged. It's a slight evolution of last year's design, with less bulbous sides.

It was a necessary change too, as with a 5-inch screen a phone needs to trim down its body to avoid being difficult to use with one hand. The screen bezel has been reduced since the Lumia 925, and this makes it roughly the same width as the 5-inch competition, such as the HTC One M8 (and significantly less tall, in that particular case).

It weighs 167g, which is among the heavier 5-inch phones – it's a good 22g heavier than the Galaxy S5. But it's nothing like as heavy as the old Lumia 920, which had a much smaller screen but weighed 185g.

You’ll be able to get the Lumia 930 in green, orange and white – apparently this year’s catwalk colours according to Nokia’s research. I tried the green version, whose bright hue is likely to be an acquired taste in my opinion, but it’s true to the Lumia series’s colourful style.

As is the norm for high-end Nokias, build quality of the Lumia 930 is excellent. You get that expensive, hard feel of metal matched with a plastic back that has enough rigidity to stop it feeling plasticky. It’s a class act – as long as you can stomach the colours.

The phone uses a microSIM, and it sits in a tray on the phone’s top edge. Unlike an iPhone 5S, you can open it with a fingernail – other SIM trays tend to require a paperclip.

Screen

Until recently, Window Phone mobile screens tended to lag behind the competition in spec terms, but the Lumia 930 is right up there with top phones like the Galaxy S5. It has a 5-inch screen of Full HD resolution.

It’s an AMOLED panel that earns the Nokia ClearBlack branding. This term is assigned to Nokia’s top mobile screens, and is intended as a seal of image quality. And blacks don’t get much deeper than AMOLED blacks. Consequently, it’s the perfect canvas to show off the colourful Windows Phone interface.

It is also bright, sharp and colourful. We’ll take a look at how it compares to phones like Galaxy S5 and Xperia Z2 when we get our unit in to review.

Software

The Lumia 930 will be among the first phones to launch with Windows Phone 8.1 fresh out of the box. And unlike iPhones, you do have to wait a bit for Windows Phone updates to arrive as they require network approval (assuming you don’t have an unbranded phone).

New things in Windows Phone 8.1 include a proper notification centre, universal search within the phone (rather than just the internet) and Internet Exporer 11. Microsoft has also implemented a switch that will let you choose between home screens of 3-icon width or 2-icon width.

Last year a phone this size wouldn’t have packed in quite as many Live Tiles. And that’s good news for any experienced Windows Phone users out there. The basic feel of Windows remains, though.

Camera

One of the strongest hardware features of the Nokia Lumia 930 is its camera. It uses a 20-megapixel sensor of 1/2.5-inch size. That’s the same size sensor as the Galaxy S5, but has OIS packed in too.

The high-resolution sensor will give excellent detail levels in good lighting while the optical image stabilisation should provide decent low-light performance. This is something I’ll be testing properly when we get the phone in to review, though, as the sensor pixels of this phone are absolutely tiny. Small camera sensor pixel size is one of the reasons mobile phone cameras can't really compete with 'proper' cameras in tricky lighting.

Nokia has also tweaked the Lumia 930 camera app a bit. The basics are the same, with a dead simple basic interface and a special Nokia interface for more advanced users that gives you great manual control over settings. But you also get five additional filters for better Instagram-isation of your snaps.

The bodywork, the screen and the software are all clear improvements on the Lumia 925, and so are the insides. The Lumia 930 uses a Snapdragon 800 quad-core 2.2GHz processor with 2GB of RAM.

Although it’s one step behind the newest Android phones, which use Snapdragon 801 chips, power tends to go further with Windows Phone. And, like just about every Windows mobile, general performance is great.

First Impressions

The Nokia Lumia 930 isn’t going to get camera geeks quite as excited as something like the Lumia 1020. But this seems like another Nokia success. A good-looking, part-metal design (although we’re not sure about the green), an impressive-sounding camera and the reliable Windows Phone software make this a phone to consider if you simply don’t want an Android.

Source:trustedreviews.com

Nokia Lumia 2520 review

The Nokia Lumia 2520 has been some time coming. The glaring absence of a tablet in the company's range, and its refusal to discuss it until it could figure out a suitably "Nokia spin" on the segment, left us with big expectations. Turns out, the Nokia magic is making LTE standard-fit and borrowing the Lumia phone style for a Windows RT slate, but is that enough to differentiate the Lumia 2520 from the iPad and Microsoft's Surface 2? Read on for the SlashGear review.

Hardware and Design

Shorter and narrower than the Surface 2, at 267 x 168 x 8.9 mm, the Lumia 2520 is also lighter, at 615g than its soon-to-be step-sibling. That's because Nokia opts for polycarbonate plastic rather than the metal chassis of Microsoft's tablet, a rounded-edged slab that looks much like an oversized Lumia 1520.

The glossy red of our review model feels solid in the hand, though there's some noticeable flex to the back panel. On the front you get a 10.1-inch, 16:9 aspect Full HD display, which Nokia is particularly proud of: it uses a particularly bright 665 Nits LCD topped with Gorilla Glass 2, for improved outdoor visibility and broader viewing angles; there's also a special coating to supposedly cut down on reflections.

According to Nokia, while most existing tablets get used in the morning and in the evening, with downtime in-between, the Lumia 2520 is designed to help fill in that middle lull. The extra-bright display is part of that proposition, and it's certainly a great addition: the brightness means you can take it outdoors and work without having to necessarily worry about the angle of the sun, while watching video in the garden is eminently possible too. That does seem to be more down to brightness than reduced reflectance, however; we couldn't notice much difference on that front compared to other tablets.

The other special skill the Lumia 2520 offers is in its connectivity. Whereas most tablet ranges begin with a WiFi-only version, helping keep prices down, and some companies - like Microsoft - don't even offer cellularly-enabled models, Nokia has skipped WiFi-only altogether. As you might expect from a phone company, LTE is standard-fit for the Lumia 2520, with support for the 2,4,5, and 17 LTE bands, and up to 150 Mbps downloads.

In the US, Verizon and AT&T will offer the Lumia 2520 complete with data packages, though of course owners will be able to use them WiFi-only (and the unsubsidized model will be $499); there's WiFi a/b/g/n (not 802.11ac) along with Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC. Other connectivity includes a microUSB 3.0 port and a micro HDMI port on one side, and a 3.5mm headphone jack on the other (confusingly similar to the charging connector which is also on the same edge). Along the top there's a power button and volume rocker, while on the bottom there's a proprietary docking connector.

That works with Nokia's optional Power Keyboard, which magnetically clings to the Lumia 2520 much in the way that Microsoft's Type Cover 2 keyboard attaches to the Surface 2. Nokia fits an extra flap to its version, though, which wraps around the opposite edge and helps keep the cover closed; it also accommodates a small trackpad. Nokia's keys have more travel than those on the Type Cover 2, and there's also an integrated battery billed as adding up to 5hrs more, and two full-sized USB 2.0 ports. Unfortunately, Nokia didn't have Power Keyboard samples available in time for review.

Inside, Qualcomm's 2.2GHz quadcore Snapdragon 800 is paired with 2GB of memory and 32GB of storage. There's also a microSD card slot, which shares tray space with the nano SIM card for the modem; it'll handle up to a 32GB card.

Software and Performance

Windows RT continues to be contentious, Microsoft's version of Windows 8 for ARM-based processors still occupying a shaky middle-ground where apps are in relatively short supply and background compatibility is absent. As we noted in our Surface 2 review, the situation is a little better with Windows RT 8.1, thanks to the inclusion of Outlook for enterprise users, while features like system-wide Bing search and more flexible split-screen layouts for multitasking help streamline things in everyday use.

Performance-wise, the Lumia 2520 had no problems in everyday use, though the Snapdragon processor lags a little behind Surface 2 at least in browser benchmarks. In SunSpider, the test of Javascript performance, the Nokia slate finished in 492.5ms; the Tegra 4 powered Surface 2, in contrast, did it in 390.5ms.

A more important difference, however, is in software. Just as it did with Windows Phone, Nokia has taken a proactive approach to the shortage of RT apps and cooked up some of its own. Nokia Camera has been carried over from Lumia phones, offering more settings and options than you'd usually get on a tablet camera, while there's also HERE Maps and Nokia Music familiar from phones.

Nokia Storyteller launches simultaneously on the Lumia 2520 and the Lumia 1520, before spreading to other recent Nokia phones. Designed to corral your camera roll into a more meaningful log of your adventures, it automatically clusters themed photos into albums and allows you to view them on a map courtesy of geotagging.

HERE's points-of-interests are also floated around each shot, in case you want to retroactively explore the surrounding area. We're not entirely sure why that would be something most people would actually want to do, however; in our experience, POI generally make more sense when you're actually at a place, not looking back on it.

Storyteller doesn't just work with photos taken with the Lumia 2520 itself, but with images in your SkyDrive storage, as well as those on your Lumia 1520. Phone and tablet can pair via NFC, with the 2520 and Storyteller used as a big screen to navigate through the photo content on your handset. It's handy if you want to show off photos to a group - the 6-inch Lumia 1520 is big, yes, but the 10.1-inch Lumia 2520 is bigger - but we wish there was support for group Storyteller use, simultaneously connecting a number of phones and having all of the photos pooled together on the map. That would be great for when you want to, say, relive a family holiday, or browse through all the photos taken at a particular party.

The other main homegrown app is Nokia Video Director, the company's answer to iMovie on the iPad. It's certainly a handsome app, pairing the bold colors of Nokia's Lumia phones with the 2D Live Tile interface from the Windows RT homescreen, and it makes cutting together simple videos straightforward too. You can use footage filmed on your tablet, or pair up a Lumia handset via NFC and transfer video from that over Bluetooth or WiFi.

Nokia includes a number of styles - cut, vintage, collage, dissolve, wipe, and avant garde - which effect how clips and photos are titled and captioned, how transitions work, and what background music is applied. From then it's a case of selecting which clips you want included, trimming them if necessary, dragging them around to organize them on a visual timeline, and then adding any text.

You can also swap out the default music for whatever audio you have saved on the Lumia 2520, though it needs to be a local track; you can't, say, add a playlist from Nokia Music. There's also no support for recording a voice-over, which limits how much professional use you might get from Video Director. Still, as a free app goes, it's a good example of how tablets can make content creation look easy, rather than being solely useful for consumption.

The final exclusive app is Dragons Adventure, produced in collaboration with DreamWorks. It's potentially the most ambitious, in fact, though the focus on young children gamers means many may overlook what's in fact the first title to be built on top of the Nokia Commuter platform.

Dragons Adventure sets out to recreate the surrounding world as a How to Train your Dragon movie, using GPS to pull in maps of the local area which are then redesigned, on the tablet's display, for gameplay. Roads become dirt tracks; traffic conditions are mimicked with blockades and other perils; and even weather in the real world is echoed on-screen. Inside that environment, children are set challenges like picking and training a dragon, harvesting crops, and other goals.

What makes Dragons Adventure interesting is how it plays out over multiple journeys. Designed to keep kids occupied during the school run, or to the grocery store, the previous play in the game is remembered for the next trip: so, crops you planted yesterday might be ready for harvest today. It also hooks up to a Lumia phone, so that the parent driving can see how the game is progressing, which challenge their kids have selected - transferred over via an NFC tap - and even take part.

It's obviously not for everyone, but it's a solid start for augmented reality gaming on Windows RT, and makes a reasonable case for picking up not only a Nokia tablet but handsets from its Lumia line. It's something we've been hoping to see Microsoft emphasize more since the Windows Phone launch - its Windows line as an ecosystem - but that the company has struggled to pull together despite paying plenty of lip-service to Xbox and Office on Windows and Windows Phone.

Camera

Taking photos with a tablet is usually a shortcut to being roundly criticized, but Nokia is tempting fate with the inclusion of 6.7-megapixel camera on the back and f/1.9 Carl Zeiss optics. It's actually the same camera as was included in the Lumia 720, with support for Full HD video recording. There's also a 2-megapixel camera on the front, for video calls.

Unsurprisingly, photo quality is much in line with the Lumia 720 itself. That means you don't get the image superlatives of PureView, nor optical image stabilization, but natural looking shots and a slight tendency to over-expose brighter areas.

Battery

Nokia fits an 8,000 mAh battery to the Lumia 2520, insisting that it's sufficient for a full day of heavy use. It also takes advantage of more recent quick-charge functionality, building on Qualcomm's technology with some proprietary tweaks of its own.

The upshot is a tablet that can juice back up to 80-percent after just an hour on charge, and it's something you quickly get used to having. Being able to plug in and get back up to a usable level before you head out the door is a legitimate advantage over rival slates.

As for how that battery holds up, we got through a couple of days of regular use before the Lumia 2520 died. Nokia quotes up to 10hrs of video playback, though our testing involved a mixture of video, video editing, streaming media, ebook reading, some quick gaming, HERE Maps navigation, and emailing, over a combination of WiFi and LTE.

It's worth considering that our use of the Lumia 2520 might have been more extreme had we had the Power Keyboard around. Windows, even in RT form, still makes a lot of sense as a work machine, but extended typing on the on-screen keyboard is nowhere near as comfortable as with a physical 'board. Still, even if we'd used the tablet more in those circumstances, we'd also have had the cover's own onboard power supply to make up the difference.

Wrap-Up

Nokia needed a tablet. It took its time with the Lumia 2520, and in many places that consideration shows. The decisions to go with a more usable display and a fast-charging system do make sense for what's billed as a tablet for work and play, and while the absence of a WiFi-only model does mean there's no low-cost model, you have to give Nokia some credit for sticking to its connectivity guns.

Would we opt for the Lumia 2520 instead of the Surface 2? Microsoft's tactile metal chassis is nice, but Nokia's standard LTE and the extra work it has put into apps like Video Director, HERE Maps, and Nokia Storyteller all make the Lumia more usable out of the box. We've deliberately avoided considering the keyboard covers both can be outfitted with, since we need to spend proper time with the Nokia's Power Keyboard first.

The problem Nokia faces is one any Windows RT slate does, however. Apple's 2013 iPad range is its best yet, and the standard of Android tablets - not to mention the number of Android tablet apps - has improved too. Meanwhile, full Windows 8.1 tablets from Dell, ASUS, and others offer the flexibility of a complete version of the OS at a strongly competitive price. The Nokia Lumia 2520 is a complete package when viewed in isolation, but the tablet market is a competitive one and it lacks that must-have feature to distinguish it.

Source:slashgear.com

Nokia Lumia Icon review

We loved the Nokia Lumia 1520, and I personally said it was the best Windows phone that I would never use. Why? At 6", it was too big for me. Others who felt the same have patiently waited for Nokia to release a smartphone with the same cutting edge specs and 20MP PureView camera, but in a smaller package. Now we have it in the form of the Nokia Lumia Icon, a worldwide exclusive to Verizon Wireless.

What's Inside?

The 5.9 ounce Nokia Lumia Icon has a 5" full HD Clear Black OLED display with outdoor brightness mode and heightened touch sensitivity for gloves but no Nokia Glance feature. Like the 1520 it runs on a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad core CPU with Adreno 330 graphics and 2 gigs of RAM, giving it the same horsepower as top Android phones. It has 32 gigs of internal storage but no microSD card slot. The phone has dual band WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and a front HD webcam. Qi wireless charging is built in- no need to buy a special charging back. The 20MP PureView camera that can shoot DNG RAW files? It's every bit as good as the excellent Lumia 1520 camera. And that makes it one of the top camera phones on the market, barring the 41MP Nokia Lumia 1020. The Lumia Icon runs Windows Phone 8 (specifically the "Lumia Black" release).

Design

The only place the Lumia Icon lets us down is looks. Lumia has been synonymous with unique and attractive styling, but the Icon looks a little boxy and dull. Somehow Nokia's Lumia models suffer on Verizon and we can only guess that carrier prefers staid looks and eschews zingy colors. The usually curvy Lumia design is squared off here, and in fact the sides are broad and flat enough that you can stand it on three of its four sides (the side with all the buttons won't work). The sides are unibody aluminum and the back is Nokia's usual matte polycarbonate, and the back has a gentle bulge. It looks like a quality piece. Verizon Wireless offers the phone in your choice of black or white for $199 on contract and $550 with no contract commitment.

Calling and Data

This is a CDMA phone with 4G LTE on Verizon's network. It also has unlocked GSM world roaming with 2G and 3G but no LTE for GSM networks. Call quality on Verizon was decent but not stellar, Nokia excels at voice phones for GSM, but their CDMA (Verizon and Sprint use CDMA) call quality lacks the fullness and clarity of their top GSM phones. That's not to say your conversations will be an unintelligible mess--that's not the case. You just won't enjoy landline equivalent clarity and bass to treble range. Data speeds are par for the course on Verizon's solid 4G LTE network and the Lumia Icon matched current Android phones and the iPhone 5S for download and upload speeds according to the SpeedTest.net app.

Nokia Lumia Icon Video Review

Display

We're fans of Nokia's OLED displays because they're sharp, bright and color saturated without looking cartoonish or garish in terms of color. This is a full HD 1920 x 1080 display, currently a rarity on Windows Phone but standard fare on higher end Android phones. In a word: "great"! Videos look superb with strong black levels and high contrast, photos shot with the camera look scrumptious and text is clear with no jaggies. The display has an outdoor viewable mode to combat brightness, and it is indeed legible outdoors. Like other Lumia phones you can enable enhanced sensitivity if you wish to use the phone with gloves.

Camera

Beyond the top notch CPU and speedy internals, the 20 megapixel camera with f/2.4 Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED flash steal the show. Granted, it's not as impressive as the Nokia Lumia 1020 and its 41MP shooter (nothing is), but it's better than most high end camera phones on the market. It has a larger sensor than most: 1/2.5 inch (0.40" diagonally) that's just a hair smaller than point-and-shoot dedicated digital cameras that commonly use a 1/2.3 sensor (0.43" diagonally). Like the Lumia 1020 and 1520, the Icon by default shoots a 5MP image and a full res 19MP image that you can use for print and lossless zooming via crop. The Lumia 1020's shot times didn't impress us, and even the Lumia 1520 could be faster, and the Lumia Icon only slightly improves shot times over these two. For example, autofocus speeds are tolerable though still not quick. As with other Lumia smartphones, you can use software lenses to achieve different effects, and you'll find these on the Windows app store for free. Nokia also includes their Cinemagraph, StoryTeller and Nokia Camera apps.

Video is crisp and clear, and we found the camera a more than adequate replacement for a point and shoot when taking photos and shooting video. You can shoot in your choice of 720 or 1080p at up to 30 fps. Nokia's high dynamic range microphones make much better than average stereo recording while shooting video and optical image stabilization keeps shaky video at bay without degrading video and image quality as digital stabilization sometimes does.

Battery Life

The Nokia has a 2420 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's sealed inside. That's a similar capacity to Android smartphones running on the same CPU with a 5" full HD display, so we expected similar runtimes. Indeed, like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One, the Lumia Icon easily made it through a full day of moderate use with 25% left at 11pm. We used the web browser, email, social networking, played an hour of music with the display off, watched an hour of streaming video via Netflix, navigated a 5 mile trip with the GPS and shot 20 photos. We expect gaming to drain the battery more quickly, but in the Lumia Icon's case, shooting lots of photos and video will also drain the battery quickly.

Apps

You know the story: Windows Phone's app store selection is weak compared to Android and iOS, and that's something to keep in mind if you're a software junky looking to defect from those platforms. But the built-in programs like Microsoft's mobile MS Office suite, XBOX music, a strong PIM suite and social networking, MS Exchange support and a very good mobile IE web browser take core of core needs. Most of the top apps are available on Windows Phone, but some popular apps are still missing and the game selection is decent, but different from Android and iOS in terms of titles available. That said, I've managed to find apps to cover my needs with a few exceptions like my favorite grocery shopping list (Grocery IQ) and remote camera control and transfer apps from the likes of Canon and Sony.

The phone can sync with Google services for contacts, calendar and gmail, though push gmail went away when Google dropped Exchange ActiveSync support from free gmail accounts. POP and IMAP email are supported natively and as you'd guess MS Exchange works fine. The phone can use Microsoft's OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) cloud services for easy access to all manner of files including MS Office documents, photos and videos.

Conclusion

Looks aside, this is Nokia's best Lumia yet, unless you're a serious camera buff who lusts for the Nokia Lumia 1020. The Lumia Icon brings a full HD display, cutting edge CPU and graphics and an excellent camera to Windows Phone, and despite my aesthetic complaints, it looks and feels like a well made phone. If you're a Verizon customer and are interested in trying Windows Phone or upgrading, the Nokia Lumia Icon is easy to recommend.

Source:mobiletechreview.com

Nokia X Dual SIM review

Nokia broke a lot of hearts when it announced in 2011 that it would use Windows Phone and not Android on future smartphones. The Finnish giant had found itself struggling to compete in a post-iPhone world, when consumer interest was shifting to devices with large touchscreens and no keyboards. Since then, the company has pushed out some fantastic hardware, but it has often seemed to be constrained by Windows Phone's limitations and lukewarm interest from app developers.

Despite Nokia's close relationship with Microsoft, a small but vocal group of users has held out hope that it will see the errors of its ways and switch to Android. Even after Nokia announced it would sell its entire handset business to Microsoft, rumours and speculation of an Android device in the works continued to swirl.

The Nokia X: a brief history

It seems odd that the company, despite such strong ties to Microsoft, would have even been considering an Android product. Still, here we are, and we have exactly that in our hands right now. It's not the high-end phone with a slick design and record-breaking camera that everyone might have been hoping for, but it's running Android for real, and it's possibly one of the most important products Nokia has ever released.

Nokia had dominated the mobile phone market from nearly its inception till the late 2000s, but unfortunately decided to bet against slick touchscreen phones, and spent far too long chasing a failing strategy of using underpowered hardware and ancient software. After years of struggling (during which time Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sony and nearly every other competitor adopted Android), it finally decided to start from scratch and threw all its weight behind Windows Phone.

Microsoft's new and unproven smartphone OS has improved a lot since its shaky debut, but is still nowhere near competitive with Android and iOS. Furthermore, Windows Phone is totally unsuitable for low-end devices, which means Nokia has been forced to continue pushing derivatives of its older Symbian OS. Meanwhile, Android has pushed downwards quite steadily, and can be found in phones as cheap as Rs. 5,000.

Simply put, Nokia finally realised it could not afford to allow Android to displace it in the value segment, and that no one was interested in supporting yet another new OS. So it finally turned to Android - or as we now know, its underlying Linux foundation.

While Android itself is open source, Google is responsible for a layer of software and services including the Google Play app store, Google Maps, various search capabilities including Google Now, and frameworks for apps to run on. All Android licensees must include these apps, and follow Google's guidelines for how devices should look and behave.

Nokia and Microsoft are clearly not interested in promoting Google's search, maps and other hooks when they have their own. That means ditching Google's services, which is something traditional hardware companies such as Samsung and LG cannot do. Thus, you'll see Bing search, Office, OneDrive and Nokia Here maps, with no sign of Google anywhere.

So just like Amazon did with the Kindle Fire OS, Nokia has forked the Android codebase and put its own spin on things. The resulting Nokia X platform has a lot in common with Android, but the Nokia X is not technically an Android phone - it cannot use Google's trademarks.

Still, the company is reaching out to app developers with the promise that things should work exactly the same as they do on Android. 75 percent of existing Android apps are said to work, but that doesn't mean every function will work flawlessly. Specifically, apps which tie into Google's push notifications, in-app payments and maps APIs will have trouble.

The current version of the Nokia X platform is based on Android 4.1.2, which is pretty old now. We'll just have to see if that becomes a problem.

The Nokia X is one of three confirmed devices on the Nokia X platform. There is definitely a place for these phones in the market right now, but we don't know whether Microsoft will continue development, focus on improving Asha, or broaden Windows Phone's reach once its acquisition of Nokia is complete.

Nokia X: the hardware

No matter how alien its innards are, there's nothing surprising about the Nokia X device itself. It looks very similar to the recent Asha 5xx series. It's a boxy rectangle roughly the size of an iPhone 4, with a slightly bulging back and completely flat sides. Our review unit was bright red (almost too bright!), but the X is also available in white, black, blue, green and yellow.

The coloured shell fits around the back and sides of the Nokia X, forming a coloured border around the black screen and bezel. Tt takes a bit of pushing and bending to make the shell pop off, since the phone itself fits very snugly. We fully expect Nokia to play up customisability by selling various coloured shells as aftermarket accessories.

The shell has a matte plastic texture which is easy to grip, but the corners are a bit sharp and dug into our palms. The back lies flat and picks up scuffs and dirt surprisingly quickly. We wouldn't recommend letting this phone get bumped around in a bag without a protective cover, such as the transparent shells Nokia has given the Asha 502.

The front panel has only a single capacitive button beneath the 4-inch screen, which doubles as Back and Home. It's the same arrow icon used on Nokia's newer Asha phones, but isn't raised or otherwise demarcated. It also isn't backlit, which makes usage in the dark a bit difficult.

The left side is totally blank, and you'll find the volume rocker and standby button on the upper right. There's a headset jack on the top and Micro-USB port on the bottom. On the rear, you'll see the camera lens (without a flash), an embossed Nokia logo, and a small slit for the loudspeaker.

Underneath the shell, you'll see a slim 1,500mAh battery and two Micro-SIM card slots with a microSD card slot between them. The layout is neat and unfussy, though the battery does look a bit puny. Nokia might have been able to increase its size or make the phone slimmer by not using a removable shell, but the company seems to have gone for a distinctive look instead.

For a phone in this price range, the build quality is amazing. Nokia has not cut corners anywhere with the materials or construction. The Nokia X feels like a much more expensive phone than it is.

Specifications

Nokia definitely isn't going high-end with the X, and we know that it won't pose any threat to the Lumia 525, Nokia's cheapest current Windows Phone offering. So where does it stand? For starters, the processor is a rather poky 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4; that too the Cortex A5-based MSM8225 which was low-rung even two years ago. The GPU is an equally disappointing Adreno 203, and there's only 512MB of RAM.

Immediately, we can see that Nokia's primary consideration here is price. This is not a phone with any gaming or multimedia aspirations.

Continuing down the spec sheet, we can see that there's only 4GB of built-in storage, which is split between app and file storage. You'll definitely need a microSD card for music, videos and photos, but even this is limited to 32GB.

The IPS screen is a bright spot on the spec sheet, with its 800x480 resolution, which would have been considered top-of-the-line not too long ago. 3G data is supported, and there's also Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0 for wireless connectivity. GPS is a nice bonus, and there's also FM radio reception.

Three megapixels is probably the absolute minimum resolution for a smartphone camera today, and that's what we have on the rear. You'll be disappointed if you were planning to video chat, since there's no camera in front.

Clearly, hardware specifications are not going to help this phone sell. It's really all about the new Nokia X operating system.

User Interface

The hardware might be derivative, but the software is all new. We've been dying to get our hands on Nokia's flavour of Android, and we can finally get into more detail than we managed in our quick preview during the Nokia X launch event.

As we've already noted, Nokia has certainly put its own stamp on the Android software stack. However, it isn't trying to completely obfuscate what lies beneath. While the lock screen and home screen are totally customised, you'll see evidence of Android nearly everywhere else.

The lock screen shows the time and date as well as recent notifications. The status bar, which shows battery, Wi-Fi, signal strength and other indicators, is also visible. If you have music playing, you'll see the track name and controls instead of the day and date. Swiping on a notification will take you directly to its app, as it should.

The interface seems optimised for weak hardware, and thankfully animations are short and sweet. Swiping to either side of the lock screen brings you to the home screen, which has a passing similarity to the Windows Phone home screen. Nokia has given the X platform its own visual identity while keeping things consistent across products. Rather than individual tiles, we see clusters of large square icons with no spacing between them. The icons are similar to those used in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.

You can tap and hold to rearrange these icons and break the clusters apart, but we like what Nokia has done by colour-coding important apps. Each one can be enlarged to four times its default size, which seems a bit pointless, since these are not Windows-style live tiles that animate, except the Gallery app which does cycle through thumbnails of saved images.

The home screen is one long list, rather than scrollable pages. For some reason, Nokia decided to allow Android-style widgets, but since the home screen and app launcher aren't separate things, these must be mixed in with the app icons. So, for instance, you can have a large clock, or a bar of toggle controls for brightness and Wi-Fi, at any random point between app icons. There's also no dock, so important icons such as Phone and Messaging aren't always visible.

Swiping either left or right from the home screen will bring up Fastlane, Nokia's hybrid notifications panel and recent events tracker which has been imported from the Asha OS. Here you can see a breadcrumb trail of sorts, with all the apps you've used, notifications, Web history, music controls, and one single shortcut for an app of your choice. Fastlane has the same hierarchical priority as the home screen, so if you jumped into an app from this view, you'll come back here instead of the home screen when long-pressing the Home button.

This is a good time to mention that the Nokia X does not support app multitasking. Apart from music playing in the background while you use other apps, everything shuts down when you long-press the Home button. Even though it shows your recently used apps, Fastlane is not an app switcher.

It's also how the Nokia X gets away with a single navigation button. Tapping once takes you back to whichever screen was open before, so you retrace your steps exactly as they happened, even if that means jumping from app to app. There are no on-screen buttons for going back, not even in the Web browser (which conversely means that going forward is not possible at all). You will see buttons for going up in menu hierarchies, which is a hallmark of Android design. It can become a bit confusing, but just remember that a long-tap on the Home button will always take you home - or to Fastlane, if that's where you were last.

Nokia's keyboard is fairly ordinary, but cramped by today's standards. Each key has at least one alternate symbol, so you can hold it down and slide left or right to select them, if switching to a symbol panel is difficult. There's also an Edit panel, with buttons for selecting, copying and pasting, and moving the cursor.

Fans of Swype style typing will be happy to find an implementation of it is included, and there are plenty of gesture shortcuts, including one to change a selection's capitalisation, changing input languages, and switching between keyboard panels. You can even switch to a handwriting recognition panel, which works one character at a time. There's no dictation feature, but we didn't miss it.

Apps

Nokia has most of the basics covered, such as a calculator, calendar, alarm clock, email client, browser and music player. They're handy, but not all are as capable as we expected. The clock app, for instance, can only do alarms. There's no stopwatch, timer or world clock.

The browser, which is just called Nokia Browser 1.0, is as basic as it could possibly be. Bing is of course the default engine, though switching to Google or Yahoo is as easy as tapping an icon above the keyboard. The email app is more capable, with support for multiple accounts, one-step setup for popular webmail services, and a decent amount of control over settings, though it could do with some UI design improvements.

Nokia's Here Maps app includes satellite and terrain visuals, plus traffic and public transport route information in many cities. The satellite imagery we saw for Mumbai was many years out of date, but at least roads and landmarks were accurately labelled. We were happy with the capabilities on offer, which is a good thing considering Google Maps is not even an option (except via the browser).

Nokia's other notable app is Mix Radio, a fantastically underrated ad-free streaming service that you can customise based on your tastes. It works by asking you to pick a pre-made mix or create on by entering three artistes. If you create your own, you'll hear tracks by those three as well as other similar artistes which the app thinks you'll like. You can skip up to six tracks in each mix per hour, and upvote or downvote tracks to help it learn what you like. In our brief testing, we couldn't find an artiste too obscure for Mix Radio, across genres including classical, folk, and even Brit punk. The search function auto-suggests Indian artistes first, and a wide range of languages and regions are represented.

Nokia also preloads Facebook, Twitter, BBM, WeChat, Opera Mini, Astro File Manager, and a number of games. Astro File Manager is pretty useful, but it displays ads unless you pay to unlock a "Pro" version. It can show SD card usage information and includes a task manager and app manager. It also lets you browse shared devices on a home or office network, and can connect to your Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box and Facebook accounts so you can swap files and photos between them.

Nokia Store

Of course the most interesting thing for us was Nokia's Store. The Nokia X is capable of running Android apps, as we've been told many times, but there's no Google Play storefront. Nokia's Store is crucial in helping users find and install apps, which is what gives the platform its appeal.

We found a decent number of options, including local favourites Zomato, Cleartrip, Hike, Flipkart, Cricbuzz, and others. It isn't immediately clear if these are Android apps or if they've been optimised for Nokia X, but as long as they work, that fact shouldn't be of any concern to end users. When we tried the Zomato app, for instance, it failed to detect which city we were in; not surprising, considering Google's location services aren't available. However, it did accurately show us restaurants near our actual position.

Nokia is doing a decent job of curation, and most of the apps featured on the front page are genuinely useful. We searched for a few other popular favourites: Whatsapp, Instagram and Snapchat weren't available, but VLC player, Angry Birds and Cut the Rope were. Nokia's way of dealing with this is to make other app stores easily available. 1Mobile Market, Apotide, Mobango and SlideMe Market are prominently featured. Nokia had specifically mentioned the Amazon App Store during its launch event, but there's no sign of it here.

You'll have to enable third-party app stores via a security setting, after which you can even sideload APKs on your own. This isn't exactly safe, so you should be careful about where you download Android installation files from.

Getting the most out of Android

So how much of Android has Nokia really left intact? For starters, you'll find that most dialog boxes and settings screens look very familiar. Android's battery manager, storage manager, USB mode selector, confirmation dialogs, app permissions prompts, and even home screen widgets are all present and accounted for.

We had to poke around a bit and see whether Nokia had locked things down or whether we could really mess around. Amazingly, Apex Launcher installed perfectly and we were looking at a familiar Android interface within seconds, complete with multiple home screens and a separate app menu. We played around with it for a while, and other than Nokia's default app icons standing out, it seemed to work flawlessly.

We then tried a number of others including iOS7Launcher, Atom Launcher and Nova Launcher. Again, we had no trouble whatsoever. Of course, we lost access to Nokia's launcher and Fastlane, but switching back to the default was as easy as long-tapping the Home button and choosing it from the standard Android 'Complete Action Using...' dialog or tapping its icon.

We also installed a bunch of Android apps from the 1Mobile store, including the recently released Microsoft Office, and a variety of games. Performance was limited by the Nokia X's weak internals, but it wasn't terribly bad.

The Nokia X thus works well for casual users who would never even think of deep UI customisation, while giving Android fans and tinkerers a lot of power. Nokia's bet seems to have paid off: the platform is already far more capable any new OS could have been if started from scratch. Obviously, you have to have realistic expectations about which apps you want to run, but we're now tantalised by the prospect of the more capable Nokia X+ and XL, which will launch soon.

Performance

Obviously, we're dealing with a low-end phone here. Despite its ambitions, the combination of a weak S4 Play SoC and 512MB of RAM are just too little to give this phone any real oomph. Animations stutter, and even scrolling isn't quite as smooth as we'd have liked. There are long pauses while apps load, and after installing several apps over the course of a few days, we found "Please wait" messages even when switching back to the home screen.

The complete lack of multitasking also means you're going to have to wait a while for apps to load from scratch each time you tap their icons. The lack of an app switcher and long, unpaginated home screen also mean you have to dig and scroll each time you want to find an app.

Heavy websites make the browser quite sluggish, and we wouldn't recommend having more than three or four apps open at a time. On the other hand, basic games ran quite well. The ones Nokia has preloaded are quite easy on the system, and apart from long load times, didn't feel like they were overloading the device.

We ran a subset of our usual benchmarks, mostly due to the low-end specifications of the Nokia X. SunSpider and Mozilla Kraken, our browser-based tests, took 2733.8ms and 29863.9ms respectively to run, which is up to four times as long as a top-end Android phone and twice as long as models that sell in the mid-range today. Quadrant and AnTuTu gave us scores of 2,686 and 7,577 respectively, which were consistent with our low expectations, and are just about okay for a phone priced at this level. Neither 3DMark nor GFXbench, our primary graphics tests, was able to run on the Nokia X.

The Nokia X is extremely loud, and even on its lowest volume setting, system sounds such as typing ticks and the camera shutter sound are a bit too loud. Amazingly, a few of our 720p videos played. Our heavier 720p H.264 file dropped frames like crazy and was mostly unwatchable, but apart from minor stuttering in action sequences, a lower quality H.264 was reproduced quite well. The Nokia X had no problem with low-resolution video playback.

Three megapixels might seem lowly, but then again Nokia is known for great camera quality. Photo quality is actually very good, and even though they aren't too large, noise and compression are well under control. The phone struggled a bit with exposure and white balance detection, but focusing was usually quick and accurate. Details are fairly sharp even in low-light indoor shots. We definitely would have liked a flash, but that's reserved for more expensive models.

Video is recorded at a puny 352x288 resolution, which to us, makes it rather pointless. Quality wasn't that great, so we'd only use the Nokia X for video if there was nothing else available.

Call quality was fair enough, with nothing really remarkable to mention. Battery life was just about acceptable, at just a shade over six hours in our video loop test. We wouldn't expect more than a day of reasonable usage out of this phone, thanks to the relatively small battery.

Verdict

Nokia is obviously capable of building a fantastic ecosystem around Android, but their hands are tied. The company will soon be owned by Microsoft, but has for many years been making decisions based on the partnership between the two. For this reason, we're not sure the Nokia X platform has much longevity in it. We can only wistfully imagine the high-end flagship devices that might have been, had Nokia not signed its future away to Microsoft.

Nokia has publicly declared that Nokia X is meant to attract customers who will then be tempted to upgrade to Windows Phone, but we wonder how they've accounted for the fact that many buyers will be happy to modify their Nokia X devices and then progress to bigger and better Android phones, rather than Windows Phone which would feel restrictive in comparison.

We also don't know how (or whether) Microsoft plans to continue the Asha line and the basic Nokia phones priced well below Windows Phone's entry level, and it's very likely that the company we now know as Nokia will become a WP-smartphone-only division of Microsoft.

From a long term perspective, we have our doubts about the Nokia X. Still, Android is a whole lot better than some proprietary OS that no one would ever bother developing apps for. The X and its siblings offer non-demanding owners a decent amount of value for their money.

The Nokia X is a very clever phone, and it blows away the Android competition in its price band. If you aren't worried about life expectancy and platform updates a few years down the line, this is definitely a worthwhile phone to buy. The only real thing that makes us hesitate is the fact that the X+ and XL are going to work a fair bit better when they launch in a few weeks' time, and we'd rather wait that long to find out the price difference between these models than go out and buy the X right now.

Source:gadgets.ndtv.com