The Nokia Lumia 820 isn't meant as the Finnish firm's flagship handset - that accolade belongs to the Lumia 920 - but this colourful Windows Phone 8 smartphone is impressive nonetheless.
The
Nokia Lumia 820 carries plenty of unique features and costs less than
the Lumia 920, making it a tempting offer for anyone considering making
the move to Microsoft's OS.
It goes without saying Nokia is pinning a lot of hope on this phone. Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S3 are kicking up dust both in terms of sales and as standard bearers for their respective operating systems. In
the UK, you can pick the Lumia 820 up free from £25 per month on
Vodafone, albeit with only 300 minutes and 250MB of data, on a 24 month
contract. Alternatively the SIM-free version of the phone will set you
back an entirely reasonable £380.
Australians can enjoy the phone
for AUD$649 outright, or for $0 up front on a $50 plan over 24 months.
Optus customers - who get the benefit of 4G - can grab the handset for
$0 up front on a $35 plan.
There's a reasonable amount of power on
offer at that price thanks to the dual core 1.5Ghz Snapdragon processor
and Adreno 225 GPU. Windows OS is a typically smooth operating system
the Lumia 820 runs off 1GB of RAM which keeps things nice and slick. Outwardly
though, this is a different-looking phone from the Lumia 920. The
unibody is gone, replaced with a removable plastic back that lets you
change the colour of the handset. Our review model came with a bright
yellow rear cover, although red, black, magenta, blue, white and grey
are also available.
Hopefully over time third-party designs will
become available allowing you to customise your handset just like the
Nokia's of old. Unfortunately,
the back cover is also where we run into our first problem with the
Lumia 820. Basically you'll need fingernails like Wolverine to claw the
cover back from the body of the phone. It took the TechRadar team
several amusing minutes trying to remove the casing in order to insert
our SIM to begin using the phone.
Once you're happy with the
casing, and you've spent the required ten minutes struggling to get your
Micro SIM installed, you'll be able to sit back and notice that at
160g, the Lumia 820 isn't as heavy as its bigger brother. It's
also got slightly smaller dimensions - but at 124 x 69 x 10mm with a
4.3-inch AMOLED screen we wouldn't go so far as to call it tiny.
The
curved sides and rounded corners of the handset make it comfortable to
hold and certainly give it a friendly appearance. We could easily wrap
our hand around the Lumia 820 and access the physical buttons, which are
all located along the right hand side of the phone.
You get a volume rocker at the top, followed by the power on/off
button in the centre and then a physical camera shutter button -
something we're always happy to see on a smartphone. All the buttons can
be easily flicked with either the thumb of your right hand or the
fingers of your left, depending on which you use to hold the phone.
One point though, the plastic backing on the Lumia 820 is completely
smooth which looks nice but doesn't offer any great amount of grip.
The front of the phone is minimal in terms of design, with just the
Nokia lettering at the top and the three standard Windows phone soft
touch keys at the bottom. While the 4.3-inch AMOLED, 800 x 480 screen is
up to Nokia's usual high standard, there's definitely a noticeable
black bezel around the display.
Usually this doesn't cause too much concern, but given the near edge-to-edge displays of handsets like the Motorola Razr i and the iPhone 5, it's becoming more of an issue. The display isn't as large as other smartphones out there. It won't compete with the 4.7-inch HTC One X+, the 4.8-inch Galaxy S3 or the 4.5-inch Lumia 920, for screen real estate but compromises with portability.
Screen size itself is becoming far more of a subjective issue anyway
with a device on offer at pretty much every stage from pocket-friendly
smartphone to sofa-surfing tablet.
The top and bottom of the Lumia 820 are given over to the 3.5mm
headphone jack and the micro-USB charging and connection port
respectively. There's also a small speaker to the right of the micro-USB
port which we felt didn't look as nicely uniform as the dual speaker
vents on the Lumia 920.
Overall build quality is as good as you
would expect given Nokia's long history of mobile phone craftsmanship.
While we would expect the casing to scratch fairly easily if this phone
took a tumble, there's a reassuring heft to the handset that suggests
the internal workings would stay protected.
Importantly then, first impressions are quite good. It's a good
looking, feature-packed phone from a pair of companies that really have
something to prove this time around. So, how does it fare when we dip
below the surface?
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