Nokia Lumia 820 (Price: Approx. Rs 26,000)
Design And Build Quality
Instead of following the current trend of slim and light handsets, the Lumia 820 aims for sturdiness. To accommodate a removable battery, Nokia has done away with the unibody design that was a signature of the Lumia 800, the 900 and the 920. The quality of materials used for the handset's innards and outer shell are top notch. The precision build and attention to detail is impressive, as always with high-end Lumias.
Nokia's affair with bright colours continues with the Lumia 820. The handset comes in glossy cyan, red, yellow, purple, and white. For those who prefer matte finish, the choice is between gray and black. Since the phone features exchangeable shells, you can buy extra panels if you get bored of the colour of the one that came with it. With the Wireless Charging Shell (not yet available, and to be bought separately), the Lumia 820 can take a power nap on Fatboy's charging pillow. Having used this feature on the Lumia 920, I can attest to the claim that it's a very convenient way of charging the phone.
Features & Performance
The spec sheet is fairly acceptable all along, except for the display. And we will touch upon that, before looking at the rest of the features on the Lumia 820. While Windows Phone 8 has removed any restrictions that the manufacturers would have faced in trying to deploy higher-res screens, Nokia decided to walk the old path. There is the 4.3-inch AMOLED display with 480x800 pixel resolution. Incidentally, the Lumia 900 also has the same resolution with the same size AMOLED display. And it is currently retailing for much lesser than the Lumia 820 would. Basing this decision on the fact that the phone does have a newer OS is just not right. Having said that, we must say that the overall display quality is acceptable. The deep black levels help the colours look rich. Text is fairly crisp, and while the display is reflective, it shouldn’t ideally hamper usability. Having said that, there are only three brightness settings – low, medium and high. Overall, while this display works, we expected something better. Particularly in the price bracket this phone is playing in.
Design And Build Quality
Instead of following the current trend of slim and light handsets, the Lumia 820 aims for sturdiness. To accommodate a removable battery, Nokia has done away with the unibody design that was a signature of the Lumia 800, the 900 and the 920. The quality of materials used for the handset's innards and outer shell are top notch. The precision build and attention to detail is impressive, as always with high-end Lumias.
Nokia's affair with bright colours continues with the Lumia 820. The handset comes in glossy cyan, red, yellow, purple, and white. For those who prefer matte finish, the choice is between gray and black. Since the phone features exchangeable shells, you can buy extra panels if you get bored of the colour of the one that came with it. With the Wireless Charging Shell (not yet available, and to be bought separately), the Lumia 820 can take a power nap on Fatboy's charging pillow. Having used this feature on the Lumia 920, I can attest to the claim that it's a very convenient way of charging the phone.
Features & Performance
The spec sheet is fairly acceptable all along, except for the display. And we will touch upon that, before looking at the rest of the features on the Lumia 820. While Windows Phone 8 has removed any restrictions that the manufacturers would have faced in trying to deploy higher-res screens, Nokia decided to walk the old path. There is the 4.3-inch AMOLED display with 480x800 pixel resolution. Incidentally, the Lumia 900 also has the same resolution with the same size AMOLED display. And it is currently retailing for much lesser than the Lumia 820 would. Basing this decision on the fact that the phone does have a newer OS is just not right. Having said that, we must say that the overall display quality is acceptable. The deep black levels help the colours look rich. Text is fairly crisp, and while the display is reflective, it shouldn’t ideally hamper usability. Having said that, there are only three brightness settings – low, medium and high. Overall, while this display works, we expected something better. Particularly in the price bracket this phone is playing in.
Windows Phone OS has always had the advantage of being nimble even on hardware that may be considered low spec for most Android phones. The Lumia 820 has a dual-core processor clocking at 1.5GHz along with 1GB of RAM. The critical bit is – Windows Phone 8 does not feel any heavier or resource hungrier than the Windows Phone 7.5 we saw on Lumia 900, which was powered by a single core processor and had just 512MB of RAM. System performance is quite good, and no issues at all with any slowdowns under the same app load that we use to test phones.
Memory expansion, or the lack of it, was big deal for the previous generation Windows phones. That has been solved this time around, and the Lumia 820 comes with 8GB internal storage and a micro SD card slot for up to 64GB more.
Call quality is more than acceptable, and this is pretty much at par in terms of signal reception to the Lumia 900. The earpiece is soft, and while it is quite loud, you will feel the need for a little more volume if you are speaking on this while walking down a busy market alley. The handsfree speaker is loud enough for hosting a conference in a small-ish room, and that’s about it.
The Nokia Lumia 820 comes with a 1650mAh removable battery. The backup times offered by this brick, when used as a primary phone, is a day and a half comfortably. The wireless charging option is available for Lumia 820, but for that, you will need to buy a back cover shell and one from the wireless charging plate or the fatboy pillow. At the time of writing this, the prices for these accessories are still not revealed on Nokia India’s online store, but do not expect this to come any cheap.
Display And Specs
The 820 features a 4.3" screen with pixel dimensions of 800x480. The pixel density of 217 ppi isn't great by today's premium smart phone standards, but not bad enough to complain. In comparison, the less expensive Android based 4.0" Sony Xperia P has 275 ppi; then the 4.0" HTC 8S which is the Windows Phone 8 competitor to the Lumia 820, has 233 ppi (same number of pixels, but on a slightly smaller display). Since the Lumia's Windows Phone 8 UI contains mostly tiles and straight lines, the effect of lesser number of pixels is less pronounced to the user. The display is bright and makes the colours pop-out. More importantly, black levels offered by the Lumia 820's AMOLED display is stunning. Since Nokia has used full-RGB matrix, there's no blueish ting, as found on most AMOLED screens including that of the GALAXY S III. Thanks to Nokia's ClearBlack technology, the screen delivers outstanding sunlight legibility. It's also one of the brightest screens out there on a mobile phone. To put things in perspective, we compared the Lumia 820's screen with its closest rival HTC 8S, and here's the result. Note that, brightness is set to maximum on both the handsets.
The 820 features a 4.3" screen with pixel dimensions of 800x480. The pixel density of 217 ppi isn't great by today's premium smart phone standards, but not bad enough to complain. In comparison, the less expensive Android based 4.0" Sony Xperia P has 275 ppi; then the 4.0" HTC 8S which is the Windows Phone 8 competitor to the Lumia 820, has 233 ppi (same number of pixels, but on a slightly smaller display). Since the Lumia's Windows Phone 8 UI contains mostly tiles and straight lines, the effect of lesser number of pixels is less pronounced to the user. The display is bright and makes the colours pop-out. More importantly, black levels offered by the Lumia 820's AMOLED display is stunning. Since Nokia has used full-RGB matrix, there's no blueish ting, as found on most AMOLED screens including that of the GALAXY S III. Thanks to Nokia's ClearBlack technology, the screen delivers outstanding sunlight legibility. It's also one of the brightest screens out there on a mobile phone. To put things in perspective, we compared the Lumia 820's screen with its closest rival HTC 8S, and here's the result. Note that, brightness is set to maximum on both the handsets.
Camera
In the camera department, the Lumia 820 features an 8 mp Carl Zeiss lens and a dual-LED flash. There's no denying that this snapper is no match for the 920's Pureview tech. However, it does a fine job in its price segment. The resulting pictures contain fair levels of details. Colours look natural too. However, image noise is evident, but then, this issue is common across most mobile phone cameras. Click here, to download the untouched sample.
In the camera department, the Lumia 820 features an 8 mp Carl Zeiss lens and a dual-LED flash. There's no denying that this snapper is no match for the 920's Pureview tech. However, it does a fine job in its price segment. The resulting pictures contain fair levels of details. Colours look natural too. However, image noise is evident, but then, this issue is common across most mobile phone cameras. Click here, to download the untouched sample.
The Lumia 820 can record 1080p videos at 30 fps, mono audio, saving the clip in MP4 format.
Similar to the Lumia 920, this phone comes preinstalled with Nokia exclusive lenses such as Cinemagraph, Smart shoot, and Panorama. To find out the usage of these camera plugins, go through our detailed article about Nokia's nifty camera tricks.
Battery
The 820's 1650 mAh Li-Ion battery provides sufficient juice for it to last from dawn to dusk during a normal work day. In our 720p video loop test, it lasted around 6 hours, 30 minutes which is quite good for a phone with dual-core CPU.
Verdict
The Lumia 820 is a solid piece of hardware, no doubt; and Microsoft has gotten its latest mobile OS right; which means, the fundamentals are covered. The bonuses come in form of the AMOLED display, multimedia performance, Nokia's exclusive navigation software, music service, and camera lenses (the software). If your budget for a smart phone is at the Rs 25,000 mark, and you are not stuck to earlier platforms, the Lumia 820 is the smartphone to go for [if you are an Android fan, you can only pick up a generation old flagship at this price].
The 820's 1650 mAh Li-Ion battery provides sufficient juice for it to last from dawn to dusk during a normal work day. In our 720p video loop test, it lasted around 6 hours, 30 minutes which is quite good for a phone with dual-core CPU.
Verdict
The Lumia 820 is a solid piece of hardware, no doubt; and Microsoft has gotten its latest mobile OS right; which means, the fundamentals are covered. The bonuses come in form of the AMOLED display, multimedia performance, Nokia's exclusive navigation software, music service, and camera lenses (the software). If your budget for a smart phone is at the Rs 25,000 mark, and you are not stuck to earlier platforms, the Lumia 820 is the smartphone to go for [if you are an Android fan, you can only pick up a generation old flagship at this price].
Features: 4/5
Design And Build Quality: 4/5
Performance: 4.5/5
Value For Money: 4/5
Specifications Highlights :-
- 4.3" AMOLED, ClearBlack screen (480x800, 217 ppi), 16.7 million colours, Polarization filter, High brightness mode, Sunlight readability enhancements, 15:9 aspect ratio, RGB stripe.
- 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 chipset, 1 GB RAM.
- 8 GB internal storage, 7 GB in SkyDrive (online storage), MicroSD slot.
- 8 mp auto-focus rear camera with Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, dual LED flash, F Number: 2.2, Focal Length: 28 mm.
- 1080p video recording @ 30 fps, Front 0.3 mp camera.
- NFC, Wi-Fi with hotspot and Channel Bonding (DLNA certified), Bluetooth 3.1, Assisted GLONASS GPS (with offline navigation support and voice navigation).
- Micro-USB 2.0, 3.5 mm audio jack (with Dolby headphone support), Noise-cancelling mic.
- Proximity sensor, Compass, Ambient light sensor, Orientation sensor.
- 1650 mAh battery, 14 hours talk time on 2G (8 hours on 3G), 330 hours standby time, 55 hours of music playback, 5 hours of video.
- Windows Phone 8 OS.
- 4.9" (l) x 2.7" (w) x 0.4" (10 mm) (d), 160 grammes.
- Package Contents: AC-50N micro-USB charger, BP-5T 1650 mAh battery, Charging and data cable CA-190CD, Headset WH-208, Product user guide.
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