Nokia Lumia 620 – Initial Impressions

Nokia seem to want to cover all sectors of the mobile market. From the lowly Asha range right through to the top end Lumia 920. The Nokia Lumia 620 sits somewhere smack in the middle. At first I thought the Lumia 620 was going to be a drastically cheaper and low spec device, but when I actually got to read through what it had and what Nokia hadn’t left out I was quite looking forward to seeing how it faired. I bought one last week to conduct my Windows Phone experiment with and as part of that I will review it as well, starting with the good and bad points.

Good Points

• Movement through the UI is lag free
• All of the Nokia camera enhancements are present
• All of the Nokia suite of apps are present
• NFC
• MicroSD slot with great implementation within the OS
• Removable battery

Bad Points

• Small screen means some web browsing may be a struggle
• 512MB RAM means some games may struggle
• Odd method to remove the shell, pressing the camera/flash worries me about the longevity of that area

Design

The Nokia Lumia 620 is a chunky little thing, it fits nicely in the hand and for me it makes a nice companion to some of my other larger phones. It is a little thicker than my HTC 8X and to hold I think I prefer the Lumia, yes it’s small but the button arrangement on the Lumia phones is spot on. Having the power button on the side always makes sense to me.

Here are a few pictures of the Lumia 620:

Hardware

Windows Phones don’t necessarily need the latest Octo Core Processor, 2GB of RAM or a fancy NVIDIA GPU to function normally. Microsoft have once again crafted an OS that works lag free on a range of different devices and because of this the manufacturers don’t need to get involved in the constant never ending spec chasing that other OS’s get bogged down in (yes I’m looking at you Mr Android).

The Nokia Lumia 620 is the lowest spec in the current Nokia Lumia range and yet in use it feels as snappy as my HTC 8X.

Here is the spec of the Lumia 620:

• Dimensions – Height 115.4 mm Width 61.1 mm Thickness 11.0 mm
• Weight – 127g
• Display size – 3.8” WVGA 800×480 pixels
• Display height 83.0 mm Display width 50.0 mm
• Display technology – LCD, ClearBlack
• Micro SIM
• 3.5 mm audio connector
• Wireless connectivity – Bluetooth 3.0, Near Field Communication, WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n
• RAM – 512MB
• Memory card size – up to 64GB
• Internal memory – 8GB
• HSPA+ (3G)
• Battery model – BL-4J 1300  mAh
• Processor – Snapdragon™ S4 Dual-core 1.0GHz

Having a MicroSD slot means that when you set the phone up you can make it store all media on the card from the outset, leaving the internal memory just for apps. Which is a wise thing to do as the Lumia 620 only has 8Gb internal memory. Of which about 4.7GB is available out of the box. Which is disappointing and yet perfectly adequate when combined with a MicroSD card.

The screen has been lauded as its main feature, in use I found it to be nice and bright and viewing angles are decent. The screen doesn’t look or feel as lower quality as the HTC 8S I tried a while back and it manages to resist fingerprints fairly well.

The camera is a 5MP on the rear which I initially found to be perfectly usable and the shutter button actually made taking shots easier, unlike the button on the HTC 8X. The extra software Nokia have provided really make the camera quite usable and having auto uploading photos to SkyDrive is damn useful as well.

Software

The Nokia Lumia 620 runs Windows Phone 8 with the Portico update pre-installed, which means that things like persistent WiFi connection and the text reply options on the call screen are all present.

As Google and Microsoft have come to an arrangement about Google sync it meant that I could quickly and easily setup all of my contacts, calendars and emails. As I use SkyDrive and the Windows Phone backup I quickly got hold of my previous SMS messages and my files.

I found the Lumia 620 to be nice and lag free, the only time you really notice the fact the phone has a slower CPU and less RAM is when loading up big games or multitasking between umpteen different apps.

I mentioned it before when I reviewed the HTC 8S and I’ll mention it again, the implementation of the MicroSD card in Windows Phone 8 is great. When you insert the card it asks what you’d like to store on it and from then on all media will be stored on it. This means that you can use what’s left of the internal storage for your apps.

I feel I should mention that here on the Lumia 620 the available apps provided by Nokia really make the 620 a great little phone, the different camera lenses or the City Lense or the Maps or the Sat Nav. They all add value over the other Windows Phones in this price bracket (HTC 8S and Huawei W1).

Initial Conclusion

Initially I found the Nokia Lumia 620 to be a great little phone with no noticeable compromises in hardware or software. Over the next few weeks I’ll be testing out the Lumia 620 as part of my ongoing experiment with Windows Phone, so if you want anything trying out, testing or if you just have a question about it then leave a comment below.

Oh and as a last thing thanks to Clove for shipping it as quickly as they did. You can get a Lumia 620 from them here.