Nokia has a knack for releasing entry-level devices unmatched in build quality, price and software compatibility.

The Lumia 620 is a natural extension of its Windows Phone 7.5-based Lumia 610 predecessor, but accomplishes everything considerably faster. At $250 outright on TELUS and free on a two-year term, there aren’t many true competitors to the 620. But is it worth purchasing for the price alone, or are there better choices out there for the average smartphone buyer?

Specs

- Windows Phone 8 Portico release
- 3.8-inch 800x480px ClearBlack LCD
- 1Ghz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus SoC
- 512MB RAM, 8GB internal storage (+microSD card slot)
- 5MP back camera, VGA front camera
- 1300mAh removable battery
- WiFi (b/g/n), Bluetooth 3.0, NFC, A-GPS
- HSPA+ 21Mbps/5.76Mbps
- 115 x 61 x 11mm
- 127g

What’s Good

There may not be a lot to say about the Lumia 620 past the obvious: it’s a wonderful device at any price, but particularly at $250.

The screen is sharp, with excellent colour saturation and lovely contrast levels; viewing angles are fine, though anything past 30 degrees horizontal gets washed out. The ClearBlack display is responsive and gloriously one hand-friendly. There’s something peaceful about using a device this size after handling larger Android devices for the past year. Even the Lumia 920 feels cumbersome at times, and in using the 3.8-inch Lumia 620 it made me long for a simpler time.

More practically, though, the smaller screen means one-handed typing is a pleasure, as is the ability to reach any spot on the screen without adjusting the phone in your hand. Similarly, tipping the phone to one side to use as a camera is a subtle affair, and the 11mm thickness is negated by the phone’s trivial 127g weight.

Windows Phone 8 has really come a long way since its launch, with a bevy of well-made, nicely-designed, high performance apps available on the Windows Store. The Lumia 620 benefits from all of them, and runs the majority of apps with a consistency that most entry-level Android devices couldn’t dream of. Nokia didn’t skimp on power in this handset: a dual-core Snapdragon processor is plenty fast to run the latest apps and games, barring a few graphically-intense 3D ones like Asphalt 7.

The camera is quite good for a 5MP shooter, with a quick shutter and powerful flash. It in no way captures photos that compare to the excellent image-stabilized results of the Lumia 920, but Nokia does right by this little camera phone. Similarly, the Finnish OEM saw fit to include a front-facing shooter, albeit at a paltry VGA resolution, but the same can’t be said for the HTC 8S.

And while the Lumia 620 won’t win any awards for design, it does come with a removable back cover whose matte black finish can be replaced with a variety of hues. Battery life from the 1300mAh cell was excellent — we obtained longer than a day per charge — and call quality was similarly good. The device also has a microSD slot to expand storage another 64GB, if desired.

- Excellent outright price
- Fantastic one-handed usage
- Able to keep up with its more expensive peers in terms of performance
- Good call quality and battery life
- Nice screen
- Replaceable back cover
- microSD slot

What Needs Work

The Lumia 620, while great value, is only such when purchasing outright; far better phones can be had for $0, though you may have to sign a three-year contract (as opposed to a two-year) for the privilege. It may also be worth waiting to see if a Canadian carrier will release the newly-announced Lumia 720, which may carry a bit more bang for the buck.

If there is one serious design flaw in the Lumia 620, it’s that in removing and replacing the back cover, a non-trivial amount of pressure is exerted on the thin glass screen. This leaves the phone open to user-generated cracks, something that would have been avoided with a different mechanism.

The screen on the Lumia 620 also displays a fair amount of ghosting, a result of latency from a relatively cheap LCD part. Similarly, while the camera quality may be good enough for an entry-level device, it’s certainly not up to par with most mainstream handsets for a couple hundred dollars more. Lack of LTE connectivity will also be a concern for some users, especially as this is launching on TELUS and not Koodo.

Other than those minor quibbles, there really isn’t much to complain about here. We could continue to drive home the idea that Windows Phone lacks many of the top apps users can take advantage of on iOS or Android, namely Instagram, Flipboard, Path and more, but the OS itself integrates many of those popular functions. Facebook and Twitter integration is excellent, and developers are slowly coming around to the platform.

- Back cover removal is poorly designed
- Lacks LTE capabilities
- Can’t play some more graphically-intensive games
- Screen shows some ghosting
- Competitively priced only when purchased outright
- Windows Phone 8 still lacks many of the top apps available on iOS and Android

Final Words

The Nokia Lumia 620 is a competitively-priced entry-level smartphone and deserves a good look. It’s not necessarily the right choice for those signing a multi-year contract, since many better devices are discounted to $0 on three-year terms at the moment, but combined with an inexpensive pre- or post-paid plan, there aren’t many choices better than this.

Hitting all the right notes where it counts — performance, battery life, form factor — the Lumia 620 is let down only by the continued paucity of great Windows Phone 8 apps, though the number is certainly growing. Consider the Lumia 620 over the similarly-priced Windows Phone 8S, if only for the Lumia-exclusive app catalogue.

The Nokia Lumia 620 is available from TELUS for $250 outright.

But with the Lumia 710, a much more powerful device in almost every regard, available for the same cost, is there room in Canada for the Lumia 610? And, judged on its own merit, does it make a splash? Available for $200 outright on Koodo and $229.99 on TELUS, let’s see if this Lumia lights the way.

Specs:

- Windows Phone Tango OS
- 800Mhz single-core processor
- 256MB RAM / 8GB internal storage
- 5MP camera with flash
- VGA video capture
- WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS
- 1300mAh battery
- 119 x 62 x 12 mm
- 131.5g

Build Quality and Screen

The Lumia 610 is solid and hefty in a way an increasing number of entry-level smartphones have managed to be. The HTC One V and Desire C come to mind, as well as the Lumia 710, and the 610 stands on its sibling’s shoulders. There’s an accomplished design sensibility to the phone that only Nokia could have earned. Its smooth corners and swooping-S battery door are modern-looking, and though the company saves some money by using “plain jane” plastic over the scratch-resistant polycarbonate of the Lumia 800, I never questioned the robustness of the phone.

The three main buttons are on the right side of the phone: volume near the top; power in the middle; camera shutter on the bottom. Below the display’s glass are three capactivite touch buttons that respond eagerly to presses. On the back is a 5MP camera with LED flash, but there is no front-facing camera to take advantage of the new Skype app.

The screen is deeply recessed and clearly does not match the fidelity of the 800 or even the ClearBlack LCD nature of the 710, and is the phone’s biggest weakness. Colours are muted, viewing angles are awful, and the phone suffers from glare even in the most forgiving of environments. But it’s also WVGA and therefore has a better pixel density than the majority of phones at the same price point.

Nokia’s newest and most inexpensive phone gives a great first impression.

Software & Performance

Despite being equipped with an 800Mhz processor and 256MB of RAM, the Lumia 610 did not perform demonstrably poorer than any Windows Phone I’ve used before. That’s because Microsoft spent a great deal of time optimizing the “Tango” code to be more conservative in its memory usage and disallowing apps that have yet to adhere to those alterations.

Windows Phone has always behaved extremely well, and the Lumia 610 is no exception. Apps load quickly, games play smoothly and home screen animations lose none of their alacrity. Indeed, were I to have not known that the Lumia 610 came with lower specs than many of its peers, I likely wouldn’t have been able to tell a difference.

Indeed, the only major issue with app compatibility on the Lumia 610 is in the Xbox Live category, where just under 25% of games are not compatible. That number shrinks to around 1.5% when you consider the entire Windows Phone catalogue, but be aware that 3D games such as The Sims 3 and NFS: Hot Pursuit will not install on the 610. Keep in mind, too, that due to the slower processor web pages in Internet Explorer take a few seconds longer to load than on the Lumia 710.

The Lumia 610 comes pre-installed with Windows Phone Tango, the not-so-sequel to Mango that adds (obviously) compatibility with lower-memory devices, but also augments a few features of the device. MMS improvements are on board; so too is a little icon in the notification bar when GPS is being used. These little things don’t change the overall look or feel of the OS but flesh out its completeness. Windows Phone is still very much an operating system in its infancy and suffers from an incomplete notification system, poor customization options and a lack of compelling apps.

It does, however, have a few advantages over its iOS and Android competitors. The Live Tile system is fantastic, and as more developers take advantage of the expanded APIs in Windows Phone 7.5, the more useful the information one can glean from an app without opening it. WP’s mail app is astoundingly powerful, too, and is an example of how austerity can triumph over features. Microsoft bundles Office Suite with Windows Phone, though it’s still quite limited and cannot compete with suites on iOS and Android such as QuickOffice.

Nokia’s suite of apps, including Drive, Maps, Transit, Camera Extras, Play To, Trailers and Creative Studio are among the best on the platform, and the Lumia 610 can take advantage of them all. Drive and Transit are, for me, reason alone to invest in Nokia over any other Windows Phone vendor.

Camera

The Lumia 610, like all Windows Phones, can shoot from sleep by holding down the camera shutter button. In fact, the camera experience on the 610 is identical (in a good way) to its more-expensive peers, though the same cannot be said about the quality of the photos themselves.

The 5MP sensor is another area in which Nokia cut costs. Details are washed out, shots are often overexposed, and though the shutter is impressively quick, photos are often blurry. Thankfully the low-cost device comes equipped with a flash, something that can’t be said for Android devices in the same price range.

You have all the requisite tweaks and settings such as White Balance, Exposure Values and ISO to play with, and there are preset Effects such as Black & White and Sepia. For video, you’re limited to VGA quality (640×480), something we’ve come to expect from devices with sub-1Ghz processors.

Battery Life

The Lumia 610 is not a powerhouse, nor is it particular power-hungry, and I found myself to be quite satisfied with the end results. On average, the device lasted between 16 and 24 hours with regular use (meaning I would use it the whole day and leave it on before I went to sleep. There was usually 5-10% battery remaining when I woke up).

The device comes with a removable 1300mAh cell, so if you’re a heavy user you can always order another one to have on hand. You’re unlikely to need one, though, as Windows Phone in general and Nokia devices in particular typically have excellent uptime.

Audio, Network Speed and Storage

Nokia’s Lumia 610 has excellent call quality over TELUS’ network, though its network performance is hampered by a slow baseband chip. This is neither a “faux-G” nor a LTE device, and is limited to speeds of 7.2Mbps down. As a result, web page rendering was considerably slower than on the Lumia 710 or 800 — remember, there’s a 600Mhz difference in processor speed, too.

There’s 8GB of internal storage in this Lumia, but only 6.5GB is available to the user. Still, it’s the same amount as the Lumia 710 and we have to give Nokia props for that.

Conclusions

As an entry-level smartphone, the $200 Lumia 610 is pretty competitive, especially when paired with a low-cost plan from Koodo. On TELUS it’s a bit more difficult a decision, as Rogers sells the 710 for the same $229.99 price outright. While there are certainly some benefits over the similarly-priced HTC One V, it’s hard to recommend a Windows Phone over an HTC device running the latest version of Android. Google’s OS may not be as consistently smooth but it’s considerably more versatile and has a much wider array of apps and media content.

Where Windows Phone excels is in its simplicity and user experience. The 610 feels, due to Microsoft’s lean operating system, like a phone double its price. That is until you attempt to load a webpage or download a 3D game. At $200 the Lumia 610 is an excellent deal, but it’s not cheap enough to make us forget about the far-superior Lumia 710.

We know, we know. It’s hard getting excited for the Nokia 500′s of the world when there are so many smartphones to choose from. But everyone has a mom, brother or cousin who just doesn’t care about pixel density, megahertz and aperture size. Often, these folks want a phone to, you know, call people and, occasionally, check their email or open a web page. Rarely, if ever, does this group want to spend over $200 for a device, and, ideally wants to keep the monthly bill below $40.

These folks are a diminishing bunch, but an ample herd they still are. Which brings us to the Nokia 500. I had a chance to check out Nokia World in London this past October, and let me tell you, outside of North America the brand is still very much a big player. And it’s devices like this, in that important sub-$200 category, keeping them in business.

And while the Nokia 500 runs Symbian, it’s the C^3 Anna version “optimized” for touch screens — we stress the quotes — and purports to offer similar functionality to smartphones hundreds of dollars more expensive. Does it deliver? The short answer is Yes but there are a lot of sacrifices. Read on to find out if it’s still the device for you (or your cousin).

Specs:

-  Symbian Anna OS
-  3.2″ 360 x 640 pixel capacitive LCD display
-  1Ghz ARM11 processor
-  256MB RAM, 512MB ROM, 2GB microSD card included (max 32GB)
-  5MP camera, VGA video@15fps
-  WiFi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 w/A2DP, Compass
-  Stereo FM radio
-  111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1 mm, 93 grams
-  1100 mAh battery

The Phone

For lack of a better description, the Nokia 500 looks like a Nokia device. It’s a candybar, thick and narrow, three buttons below a deeply-recessed 3.2″ screen. There is a power button on the right side which sits below a single-button volume rocker. All the buttons are cheap, with barely any give, and feel like they could fall off at any moment. The top portion, amply-spaced, houses a headphone jack, microUSB, and proprietary circular charging port.

The back of the 500 actually fares quite a bit better, and appeals to the matte plastic lover in me: it is smooth and grippy and simple. The camera lens is deeply recessed and covered with glass that dirties very easily. The Nokia logo, arrayed vertically, stares at you warmly; “I am the last of my kind,” it seems to say. We can’t say we’re sorry for the loss.

For a 3.2″ display the capacitive screen performs well. You will rarely find such a high-density screen at this price point, and Nokia does well to furnish its three home screens with playful round icons and plenty of helpful widgets. Colours are muted; all yellows appear mustard; all reds a dappled fuschia. Nonetheless, the backlight is strong so whites are bright and accurate. Blacks are more grey than I’d like, but viewing angles hold up remarkably, and the screen performs decently in sunlight. What more could we ask for?

Symbian & Performance

Incredibly, the Nokia 500 wipes the floor with your N8 or E7. Indeed, I noticed this the moment I booted it; it took around 30 seconds, nearly half the time of the former flagships. Symbian Anna is a capable operating system if you give it the right guts, and the 500 is able to keep up with our gestures, for the most part.

Like previous C^3 versions of Symbian, there are three home screens bedecked with widgets and icons. These widgets can be moved to any grid of three icon spaces and, like Android, can update intermittently. By default your main home screen gives you access to the most important tenets of the OS: Camera, Contacts, Nokia Store, Nokia Maps, Messages, Email and Browser. Scrolling through them or, when you enter the app drawer by pressing the middle button below the display, vertically through a list of apps, is no longer an arduous, painstaking activity. Nokia have also improved the look of its icons immeasurably, creating squared-off ovals (or rounded-off squares) where before there was just noise.

Slow and inaccurate text input has been improved in this new version, offering a full QWERTY option in portrait mode where before there was only a keypad. Predictive text has been beefed up and, as long as you go slowly, is remarkably accurate. While the narrowness of the screen offsets the portrait keyboard’s usefulness it is a dramatic improvement over S60 and the original C^3 versions of Symbian.

You also have access to Nokia Store, the evolution of the now-defunct Ovi Store. Apps can be downloaded to either the 512MB of ROM or the 2GB microSD card, and though the fare is pretty meagre — you won’t be using your favourite iOS app on here anytime soon — there are some multi-platform favourites to choose from. Mainstays like Skype, Slacker Radio, WhatsApp and, yes, Angry Birds, are available from Nokia Store and while you’re there do yourself a favour and download Swype. It will be the best texting decision you’ve ever made.

Nokia bundles some decent native apps, too: Mail for Exchange now works, which is the first time we have been able to say that, well, ever. That means Gmail, Hotmail or corporate Exchange users can sync their mail, contacts and calendars without receiving an error every ten minutes. (Yes, we’re a little bitter.) The browser has received an overhaul, rendering pages much faster and more accurately than previous versions. For those of us used to an iPhone or Android browser, this is most definitely still a WAP experience — expect wait times in minutes, not seconds — but at least Javascript no longer locks up the phone and desktop pages can be scrolled through and zoomed in on.

The rest of the phone’s offerings is pretty standard Nokia fare: Maps has recently been updated and for many people is reason enough to buy a Nokia device. You get free turn-by-turn navigation, offline map caching, detailed driving and walking maps, and tie-ins with tons of services such as Lonely Planet, Michelin and Trip Advisor. While these may seem to be little more than advertising in the guise of features, being in a foreign country with a context-aware Lonely Planet guide at your fingertips could be invaluable.

There is a very capable music player, which is bundled with Nokia Music, an unlimited streaming service that hasn’t quite launched yet so we didn’t get to try it out. It looks to be like a Zune Pass where you can download tracks to your device and keep them for up to 12 months. Shazam, everyone’s favourite song name hunter, is pre-installed, along with a stereo FM radio.

Social networking is covered by integrated Facebook and Twitter support. The apps are clunky, slow and frustrating, but lacking official third-party apps makes Nokia’s built-in option the most convenient. If you’re really truly sticking with Symbian for the long haul, I’d recommend the excellent (and pricey) Gravity app  for Twitter. It may in fact be the best app on Symbian as a whole but at $9.99 is also one of the most expensive.

Incredibly, we’re not done with the Nokia 500′s built-in features. As with any good smartphone OS there are dictionary, calculator, voice recorder and note taking apps, as well as popular third-party voice-to-text solution Vlingo. Also hidden in there is the F-Secure Anti-Theft app which, once activated, allows you to find your lost phone through GPS or, if it’s truly gone forever, remotely wipe the memory. It also offers browser protection and attachment scanning.

Camera

There really isn’t much to say about the Nokia 500′s camera. While it claims to be 5 megapixels, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, pictures look to be of about the same quality as my Motorola RAZR. No, not this new Android version, but the one from years ago.

Colours are muted, detail is lacking and despite being thick enough to support an auto-focus mechanism there is none to speak of. Add to the experience a barely-usable camera UI and a “Please wait: deleting data from memory” message every time I open the app there may as well not be a camera on the back of the device. Oh, and the device takes VGA video at 15fps. Go figure.

Drawbacks

What, you mean besides the camera? Yes, Symbian Anna does have some outstanding issues. Firstly, connectivity: Symbian does not deal with multiple APNs and WiFi networks very well. Every app stores its own settings, and prioritizes them based on your last selection. Used a WiFi hotspot when last in the browser? It will attempt to reconnect to it, regardless of whether you’re a thousand miles away. Instead of dynamically selecting the best option — if no WiFi, move down the APN list until one connects — it explicitly asks you to choose, every time. It’s like a nagging six year-old.

And while the overall performance is dramatically improved over previous Symbian devices the Nokia 500 is by no means fast. It saunters along at its own pace, and slows to a crawl when you have more than a couple apps open. Forget about streaming music and browsing at the same time, or doing anything else while you’re downloading and installing an app from Nokia Store. It just won’t happen.

Speaking of Nokia Store, I continue to have problems getting apps to install. For every success there are three failures. Eventually the app will just snap to life and work, but it’s a frustrating endeavour to say the least.

Network, Sound and Battery

WIND has done a great job picking devices that support their HD Voice protocol, and the Nokia 500 is no exception. Like the C5-04 before it, when calling another WIND or Mobilicity user with a supported device (which, admittedly, is pretty unlikely) sound quality is crisp and lag-free.

Network speed is decent, though after using LTE devices like the Raider and Optimus LTE, WIND’s network seems slow. In reality it’s operating at a crisp 14.4Mbps, but due to Symbian’s inherent speed limitations it never feels as such.

And what of the battery? Well, it’s no surprise it lasts forever, at least in comparison to most modern smartphones. I was able to eek out three full days of use from it; Nokia claims seven hours of talk time and 18 days of standby.

Conclusions

I’ve said a lot about a phone that probably won’t appeal to you. But it may, and I hope it appeals to your mom, brother or cousin. The Nokia 500 is one of the best deals currently available on WIND, and the more people that don’t buy cheap Android devices and instead opt to buy decent workhorses like this one, the better the industry will be. Let’s give credit where it’s due: Nokia has done a fantastic job catering to the budget-friendly phone buyer who just wants something that works, lasts a long time and makes really great sounding, reliable phone calls.

The Nokia 500 is available from WIND Mobile for $179 or $29 on WINDtab.

Pros:

-     Sharp, responsive screen
-     Small and light, well-constructed
-     Symbian Anna is fast and much-improved from previous versions
-     Nokia Maps is the best free mapping software available, anywhere
-     Browsing and text entry improvements are notable
-     Inexpensive smartphone alternative
-     Excellent messaging and email solution
-     Fantastic call quality

Cons:

-     Terrible camera
-     Slowdown is common
-     Nokia Store has meagre selection
-     Finicky connectivity settings
-      Slow network speeds
-     Browser is still way behind iOS and Android, even BlackBerry 7

Stephen Elop, Nokia’s relatively fresh-faced CEO, is a huge proponent of Windows Phone. He’s even putting most of his eggs in one basket as the company scales down its massive Symbian phone output (though complete support won’t stop until 2016) and is hoping to get as many customers to switch over to WP7 as possible. They’re even offering tools and support to trepidatious users unsure of the transition.

In a recent chat with some Chinese tech journalists, Elop says that Nokia’s first Windows Phone devices will debut in Q4 of this year, but will have a country-by-country rollout plan. This means that Canada may not get the much-anticipated devices until sometime next year as the phone giant taps into bigger, more lucrative markets. Certainly they will look to appease their current fan base in Europe and Asia, as well as the huge North American market, though no insight into when us Canadians will be so lucky.

There is no doubt that Nokia is on the right track with Windows Phone — Mango is set to release any day now and buzz has been excellent for the impending upgrade. Whether this will translate into actual sales is another story, but consumers already know of Nokia as a maker of top-of-the-line hardware; adding a touch-friendly, stable operating system with a sizable app library and excellent social media support will be key.

Source: WPCentral

Would be good to see a breakdown per country. No word of how Canada contributes to the overall numbers but most likely it trails behind Apple’s App Store and the Google Android Market.

Source: Nokia
Via: CrunchGear

3 video have just been uploaded by Nokia Conversations that give an insight into what might be coming up in a few years. One of the videos shows a “stretchable electronic skin” that can literally take the shape of whatever it’s put on. Nokia states that this could be on a touchscreen for use on a tablet or a mobile phone. The other videos show a “super capacitor” (sounds like the flux capacitor in Back to the Future) that is a flexible printed circuit board that could enable better use for the flash in your camera. The last shows how “nanowire sensing” can detect changes in air quality. Check them out after the break

Source: IntoMobile

Check out the video after the break

Check out video overview after the break

The 6700 Slide is off the rumour list and officially available. The price tag for this is as low as $79.99 on a 3-year and ranges to an affordable no-contract $229.99. There are Canadians who will be happy with this as their first device, or those who don’t want the features of a smartphone. Specs of this S60 device have a 2.2-inch display (resolution of 240 x 320), unfortunately a 2.5mm headset jack, holds up to 16GB with a microSD card, stereo FM radio and an impressive 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera, auto-focus, LED flash and includes a front camera for video calling.

More here about the 6700 Slide over at Rogers
(Thanks HC – NO “i”)

Via: Nokia YouTube