Microsoft Lumia 830 review: End of anera

The emotional connect we Indians have for the Nokia brand is immense. It is not an exaggeration that Nokia was probably the first mobile experience for most Indians. But Nokia, as we know it, is over. At least, for a few years. Now that Microsoft has acquired the Finnish company's phone division, it has started phasing out the Nokia name from Lumia smartphones. 

In fact, the Lumia 830 and the Lumia 730 are the last two smartphones that will bear the name Nokia. Afterwards, it's all going to be Microsoft Mobile. 

The Lumia 830 packs everything recent Nokia phones have been known for - a PureView camera, a colourful chassis and even Windows Phone. Being the last Nokia smartphone for the time being, one expects reliable, unique and fun experience from it. Is Lumia 830 a phone that does the iconic Nokia name proud? Let's find out. 

Design

The design on the Lumia 830 feels like an evolution of the design language Nokia started with the Lumia 925. It certainly has the same industrial design feel. At the same time, it also feels like a thinner version of the Lumia 930, which many have deemed to be too thick. In fact, by Microsoft's own admission it is the thinnest Lumia in the market at 8.5mm, but that is not much of feat. In an age where phones have started crossing the 5mm barrier, 8.5mm just feels thick, especially for a phone that costs more than Rs.25,000.

Undoubtedly, it looks quite pretty especially when combined with colourful polycarbonate back and the 2D curved glass. However, its ergonomics like most of the newer Lumia phones, are somewhat flawed. The metallic frame, while adding rigidity, also makes it blocky, which converts to a poor in-hand feel. 

The back of the phone borrows elements from the legendary Lumia 1020 as it flaunts a camera disk, but thankfully this time it is without the bulge. All these elements combine to form a highly recognisable Lumia phone, which in typical Nokia fashion is well build, however it fails to impress in terms of ergonomics. 

Display

The Lumia 830 has a 5-inch 720P LCD display, which results in a pixel density just shy of the retina moniker Apple has popularised. the lack of 'retina' level sharpness, may not be a big deal as the Windows Phone UI largely helps offset the problems of the lack of sharpness thanks to blocky and large interface elements. That said, if you care about pixel-perfect screen, you will notice the lack of sharpness while reading text on a web page on the Lumia 830.
 
The bigger issue is that the colours themselves are not natural enough and nor do they pop like on an AMOLED screen. There's an odd yellow tinge to the screen. While the phone offers colour calibration options, the effect is quite minimal. The viewing angles of the screen are decent and for watching video too the screen is adequate. Under direct sunlight the legibility of the screen is serviceable.

But that's the thing. Serviceable does not cut it when Android smartphone vendors are shipping 'beautiful' 1080P screens on phones that cost a good deal less. One can easily make do with the resolution, but the fact that the screen is overall not as brilliant as other phones is very disappointing.

Camera

The highlight of the Lumia 830 is its 10-megapixel PureView camera which packs in optical image stabilisation. In fact, it is the cheapest Lumia phone with the PureView branding and Microsoft claims it can eclipse the iPhone 5S and the Samsung Galaxy S5 in terms of imaging. This claim is a little far-fetched in our opinion. 

While the camera seems slightly better than the camera on the Samsung Galaxy S5, it is certainly not as reliable as the iPhone 5S.

The Lumia 830 can shoot great photos in low light and normal lighting alike, but its biggest shortcoming is speed. It is slow, very slow, which means a lot of missed shots, or a lot of blurred photos if the subject has moved even slightly.  

Microsoft promised to address this issue with the new Lumia Camera app, but at the time of writing the review the phone is yet to receive the new app.

If you can ignore speed, the Lumia 830 offers a solid camera which takes detailed photos with low noise levels. The low-light performance is particularly good. The colours on the Lumia 830 camera are also better than the Samsung Galaxy S5, but not as good as the iPhone 5S.

The camera also allows for ample granular control thanks to the radial interface for every manual camera setting. There are options for exposure, shutter speed, ISO and white balance. The phone even has a tutorial for new users.

The quality of footage captured with the Lumia 830 is also very good. By default the phone shoots at 1080P as well as supports Dolby Surround Sound. It can filter out higher frequencies like engine sounds automatically.  

The front facing camera is also quite good on the Lumia 830. It is a 0.9-megapixel camera which works via a separate Lumia camera app. It takes decent selfies which can be compared to the iPhone 5S.

Software

The Lumia 830 runs on Windows Phone 8.1 with the Lumia Denim update. This is perhaps the biggest weakness of the phone. Windows Phone 8.1 adds a notification panel, a new assistant called Cortana (Which is not yet available in India) and swipe typing using the "wordflow keyboard". But constant irritants like the poor support for Google apps remain. Also, the quality of apps in general is not as good as what is available on Android and iOS.

Overall, the operating system remains the biggest stumbling block for the Lumia 830. That said, if you are looking for a simple user interface and don't mind using Microsoft's apps like Outlook.com instead of Gmail or use One Drive instead of Dropbox or Google Drive then the situation is not that bad. 

One of the biggest USPs of the OS does not apply anymore as Office apps are now free on iOS and Android. In fact, if anything those apps are better on iOS and Android. 

Performance

Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor clocked at 1.2GHz with 1GB of RAM, the Lumia 830 doesn't claim to be the fastest phone around. But like any other Windows Phones device, it delivers solid performance. It rarely lags or stutters. The phone has 16GB of internal memory with support for an up to 128GB microSD card.

That said, the phone is slow in switching apps, and also in opening them. It also starts to slow down a bit if multiple tabs are open in the web browser. This would not be an issue on a phone selling for less than Rs.20,000, but the fact that Lumia 830 costs more than Rs.25,000 makes all this disappointing. 

The phone has the Adreno 305 GPU which means that it can handle basic games like Angry Birds without trouble. But the GPU is obviously not in the same class as something like Adreno 330, found in many Android phones in the same price bracket.

Battery life and call quality

The Lumia 830, despite its slightly chunky size, has a battery capacity of just 2,200mAh battery. While this number is low, the phone manages to last around 18-20 hours on single charge. Our usage included two email accounts, two social networks, 2 hours of calling, 15-20 pictures, a bit of YouTube streaming via a third party app, 15-20 mins of web browsing and a bit of music streaming. 

The call quality was impeccable and the phone always maintained good signal strength and we only faced a single dropped call in two weeks using the phone.

Should you buy it?

At Rs.28,799, the Lumia 830 is overpriced by any metric. It may be the last Nokia-branded Windows Phone device, but its design is starting to feel dated and its internal hardware inhibits its performance. This is true especially when it is compared to similarly-priced Android phones. 

The only bright spot is its camera, but that too is not as good as many cameras on Android phones, costing the same or little more. The LG G2 is a great example as its imaging prowess and performance is superlative, while the Lumia 830 is riddled with compromises, the biggest being Windows Phone itself. 

We recommend Lumia 830 only to Nokia faithful who likes Windows Phone. Windows Phone is undoubtedly a pretty and simple OS, but its integration with Google apps is disastrous (for no fault of Microsoft's) and the quality of apps itself is not as good as on Android and iOS.

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