Thursday, March 5, 2015
Nokia Lumia 630 An expensive proposition
The Nokia Lumia 630 will make you crave for a second look. And why not?! The phone is extremely well built and feels really good to hold. It comes with Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone 8.1 out of the box and comes with a dimension of 129.5 x 66.7 x 9.2 mm. You will also notice that Nokia has done away with straight edges and chosen to round them off in the Lumia 630.
Flip the phone to its rear and you will find the Nokia logo, a 5 MP camera and small round outlet for the speakers. To the right you will a volume rocker and a power/sleep button. The 3.5mm headphone jack is placed toward the top while the bottom is home to the Micro-USB charging and data transfer port. And with Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has removed the need to include capacitive keys. The keys now come as on-screen navigation buttons.
Whats in the box
The Lumia 630, 1850 mAh battery, charger and user manual. There are no headphones bundled with the 630. Also keep in mind that the charging cable doesnt double up as a data cable as it comes fixed to the charging head.
As mentioned earlier, the overall build of the Lumia 630 stands out and there is question about it. The 5MP shooter will give you more than decent pictures in well-lit conditions. In fact its camera can go head on with most other mid-range phones that feature an 8MP camera. And as usual, the camera on the Lumia 630 is a delight to work with. It includes manual (auto being its default) adjustments such as shutter speed (1s to 1/16000s), ISO (100 to 1600), White-balance, Exposure compensation (-3 to +3) and point of focus. Videos are recorded at 720p @ 30fps and the user is again given the freedom to adjust the White-balance and point of focus. Sample images below:
For a phone with just 512 MB of RAM, the overall responsiveness is buttery smooth but there is a catch, which we will come to shortly. Most of you might feel that the installation space might be a little too small for long term usage since you are left with just 3.9 GB of space. Well, think again. With WP 8.1, most apps can now be installed onto the SD card by default. Moreover, if you find the need to add more memory, the phone can accommodate a whopping 128 GB via its Micro-SD card expansion slot.
But the question remains - are buyers going to spend almost the same amount just to slip in some extra storage space?!
Another nifty little addition is Nokia’s navigation app – Here Drive+. In short – it is very effective in navigation and finding locations. Along with this, there are a bunch of productivity tools such as OneNote and Office.
The 1850 mAh battery is not that bad either and will give you about a full day of usage. .
The Bad
The screen is a finger-print magnet and you will find yourself rubbing off the prints more often than not. It gets to a point where it will actually begin to test your patience. The 4.5 inch screen gives a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels (Landscape) providing a pixel density of 218 ppi. However, the effective resolution maxes out at 800 x 480 since the balance 54 pixels is taken up by the on-screen navigation buttons. What’s depressing is the overall quality of the display is not at par with other products at the same price range. The edges are unevenly lit and tend to appear haphazardly dark and bright than the rest of the screen.
The touch response is bad. There were times when pages refused to scroll and only did if a certain amount of pressure was applied. However, doing so, sometimes forced unwanted apps to execute which became frustrating to operate. The phone just doesn’t have that overall smoothness when sliding across the screen as your fingers tend to stick to the glass. Wonder why they didn’t implement a fingerprint sensor on the screen itself? If you are used to an overly responsive phone, where your fingers just slide across, then you might just find the Lumia 630 extremely frustrating and irritating to use.
This phone is not meant for games even though it is powered by a Snapdragon 400 processor and Adreno 305 GPU. Not that the two have the juice to play games at the highest quality but they have managed to play a decent number of games with the settings set to low (in other phones, that is).
After successfully installing all required apps, the Lumia 630 was left with hardly any RAM to execute installed games. In other words, the games exited before even showing up on the screen. And if they ever did start, they would buffer, making them unplayable. There were also times when the games would randomly quit during play.
After successfully installing all required apps, the Lumia 630 was left with hardly any RAM to execute installed games. In other words, the games exited before even showing up on the screen. And if they ever did start, they would buffer, making them unplayable. There were also times when the games would randomly quit during play.
Games that failed to run –
Danger Dash, Asphalt 8, Real Football 2014
Phone specifications:
If you are migrating from an Android device, you will be disappointed. You will find nothing published by Google in the marketplace. So migration is all up to you, if you can handle the disappointment. There is also no access to Dropbox or Mega. You are just left with Windows OneDrive (7 GB) and Box – which can be downloaded via the Marketplace.
The phone is also devoid of a secondary camera, flash, headphones and a proximity sensor. Features that are present on most smartphones at this price range. You will also not find any equalizer presets as they have been removed making this a very basic phone.
Microsoft Marketplace has a long way to go before it can take on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. There are only a handful of apps worthy of being installed. Another aspect to keep in mind is the app UI isn’t at par. There is a big difference between WP apps and Android based apps.
Verdict: It does well at being a darn good music player but fails to step up as a budget smartphone. At Rs. 9494, the Lumia 630 is a very expensive proposition. With the number of features this phone provides a price between Rs. 7000 - Rs. 7500 would have made the 630 a worthy buy.
Second, the 128 GB expansion slot doesn’t add value to a basic phone such as the Lumia 630. Reason: 128 GB cards are exorbitantly expensive and no entry level buyer would spend Rs. 8,000 just to gain a little extra space. When in reality, you can actually buy a portable 2 TB hard drive for the same amount.
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