The Lumia 620 is one of Nokia's cheapest
Windows Phone 8 smartphones at $300 for a SIM-free package. Like the more
expensive Lumia 820 (see our review, Issue 388), the 620 has a removable shell
so you can swap it for another one. The glossy shells are available in a
variety of vivid colors at around $21 each, but they make the 620 chunkier than
phones with designs you can't customize.
The Lumia 620 is still comfortable to hold
though, and it's not nearly as heavy or as wide as the most expensive Lumia,
the 920. This is due in part to the sensibly sized 3.8in screen. Some people
like phones with large screens, but we much prefer the 620's smaller display -
it's far more comfortable to hold and use with one hand. The phone is also
sturdy, although one design flaw is the placement of the volume buttons, which
are a little too high to be easily pressed.
Nokia
Lumia 620 - A Cheap And Colorful Smartphone
As expected for a budget Windows Phone 8
handset, the 620's screen has a resolution of 800x480 pixels. Other phones have
crisper, higher-resolution screens but these are more expensive. The 620's
display is good enough with bright colors and reasonably sharp text. Removing
the shell and the battery gives easy access to the micro SIM and micro SD
memory card slots. Inserting and removing cards is a little fussy, but this
isn't a big problem as you won't need to do it too often. The micro SD slot is
handy if you want to store lots of apps and media files because the built-in
8GB of storage can fill up very quickly
Although the selection of Windows Phone
apps is much smaller than those on iOS and Android, it is improving. Spotify is
a one big-name app available, but others, such as Dropbox are absent. Nokia has
provided its own apps, including Nokia Maps, which we found to be slightly
better than Microsoft's Bing Maps app at both locating addresses and
calculating routes.
As
expected for a budget Windows Phone 8 handset, the 620's screen has a
resolution of 800x480 pixels
However, Nokia's apps become surprisingly
sluggish when other apps run in the background. We suspect this problem is
specific to Nokia's apps, as other apps ran without a problem on the 620's dual
core 1GHz processor. The Lumia 620's web browser (Internet Explorer) is also a
bit glitchy. It struggled to keep more than a handful of tabs open
simultaneously without having to reload webpages. We suspect this poor
performance was due to the relatively meager 512MB of memory, which will also
prevent the 620 from running demanding apps in the future.
On the Vodafone SG network in central
London, callers reported that our voices sounded clear and crisp with
background noise effectively filtered out. However, voices through the built-in
earpiece sounded distorted, especially when the volume was turned up. Battery
life was good though, lasting just under 24 hours when used for a mixture of
phone calls, web browsing and navigating by GPS. The GPS was occasionally slow
at loading on to our position compared to other phones. This occurred whether
we were using Bing Maps or Nokia Maps.
Overall,
the Nokia Lumia 620 is a good, affordable Windows Phone 8 handset
Photos taken in bright sunlight using the
five megapixel camera had accurate-looking colors, but over-aggressive attempts
at reducing noise meant finer details often looked fuzzy. As expected, photos
taken in low light were far too blurry and smeared to be usable. Overall, the
Nokia Lumia 620 is a good, affordable Windows Phone 8 handset. Its brightly
colored, removable shells and larger amount of built-in storage give it the
edge over the otherwise very similar HTC Windows Phone8S
Nokia's apps would be a boon if it wasn't
for their poor performance. As it is, the Huawei Ascend W1 is even Better
value- it's similar to the 620 but has longer battery life and is cheaper.
Our verdict
A good budget smartphone, especially if you
like colorful shells, but cheaper, better alternatives are available
Key points
Colorful, removable shells • Sluggish Nokia
apps • Flawed camera • Decent battery life • Memory card slot
Best price
online
Websie: www.snipca.com
Price: $300
Alternative
Huawei Ascend W1
Price: $195
A great-value Windows Phone 8 handset that
matches the Lumia 620 and is $105 cheaper
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Specifications
·
Main camera sensor: 5 MP
·
Display size: 3.8''
·
Processor name: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4
·
Maximum 3G talk time: 9.9h
·
Maximum 3G standby time: 330h
·
Music playback time: 61h
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