Nokia's R2000 Lumia 630 reviewed
The Windows Phone 8.1 update is finally out in the wild, and the company formerly known as Nokia has crafted two handsets for the occasion.
The Lumia 930 is the flagship model, essentially being the Lumia 1520 with a 5-inch screen - but unfortunately, it's not quite out yet.
However, the second model, the Lumia 630, is already available - and for R2000, it seems like an interesting proposition.
But is it worth buying over the venerable Lumia 520, especially now that the stalwart handset has a new recommended price of R1500?
Hardware
Nokia is well known for its unique-looking handsets, with the Lumia 630 being no different, thankfully.
The phone has a plastic shell, and with a bit of fingernail abuse, you can prize it off, revealing a 1800mAh battery, SIM slot and microSD bay.
Anyway, the overall design is pleasant, with our review model being a rather bright shade of green, drawing quite a few inquisitive peeks from colleagues.
As for inputs and all that, the Lumia 630 has a power button/volume rocker combination on the right, microUSB port at the bottom and earphone jack on top.
Unfortunately, it seems that Nokia had to cut a corner or two to get the Lumia 630 under R2000, as the device is missing a camera button.
This means you simply can't go from locked phone to camera by holding the camera button. At least there's a camera shortcut in the new Action Center dropdown menu, though. But more on the Action Center in a bit...
It seems that the audio quality may have been gimped a bit too - or maybe I got a slightly defective unit. Either way, I noticed a slight hissing when using earphones.
This hissing wasn't really noticeable when listening to music, thank goodness, but as soon as a track stopped you could hear it. I'm not an audiophile by any measure, but it was something that irked me now and again.
In any event, I found the phone's rear-mounted speaker to be loud and clear, although it understandably gets muffled when you leave the handset face-up. No BoomSound speakers here...
Still, the Lumia 630 has a pretty durable design, and I felt confident that I could drop it without any lasting damage.
Windows Phone 8.1 has quite a lot to offer over its predecessors.
Probably the most notable additions are Start Screen wallpapers and an extra vertical column of Live Tiles - the former goes a long way to improve customisability while the latter is neat too.
But there are two other major additions too in the form of Cortana (US/UK/China only for now, unless you switch regions) and the Action Center dropdown menu.
Cortana is definitely worth a region switch, combining Google Now (contextual information) with Siri (a personality and extensive voice queries) to create something rather special.
It's not as entertaining as Siri, which offers a variety of offbeat responses and jokes, but it's definitely more practical than Apple's effort.
Cortana is able to deliver traffic notifications (much like Google Now) as well as people-specific reminders. So the next time a chosen person contacts you, a reminder will pop up.
The Action Center isn't anywhere near as useful as Android's dropdown menu, which allows you to accomplish basic tasks from the menu itself. And in an odd quirk, the Action Center doesn't allow you to swipe notifications from right to left to dismiss them - only left to right. Weird.
It also seems like you can't actually swipe away individual notifications if you have a bunch of them from the same app. For instance, if I had three WhatsApp notifications, I can either swipe them all away or none of them. Strange.
Anyway, one of the cooler WP8.1 features is that you can now install apps to the microSD card, and it's handled rather well on the Lumia 630. If you remove the memory card, the app simply says 'not available' - pop the card back in and you're good to go.
This ability is a feature that Android implements in half-assed fashion, so we're glad to see it here and working just fine.
Anyway, Windows Phone 8.1 has caught up with the competition in many ways, so check out our in-depth review of the platform here.
Performance
The Lumia 630 isn't the most powerful Windows Phone around, featuring 512MBs of RAM and a mid-range Snapdragon 400 quad-core chip.
Despite the 512MB RAM restriction (a few games require 1GB or more), games and videos ran well. We tried out Subway Surfers, Temple Run and the advanced Asphalt 8, and they all ran at a great pace while looking sharp too.
Performance in general was mostly smooth, as core apps opened briskly and device locking/unlocking was pretty seamless.
It wasn't perfect though, as you'd occasionally see it creaking when taking photos or switching apps. It doesn't get so bad that the keyboard starts to lag or videos stutter - but you'll occasionally notice a delay when using using the back key or when switching apps.
As for battery life, the Lumia 630 doesn't reach the height set by phablets or many flagship smartphones. But it will get you through a day of moderate usage (music playback and WhatsApp) quite easily, we found.
Two days of moderate to heavy usage is stretching it though, but the Battery Saver utility comes in handy here, helping you to eke out a few more precious hours. The utility has also seen a few more tweaks since Windows Phone 8, such as the ability to disable certain apps from running in the background.
Camera
The Lumia 630's camera is certainly a budget offering (lacking a flash and coming in at five-megapixels), but it's still capable of taking good shots in the right hands.
Photos taken in good light or outdoors are very vivid, while night-time snaps can be useable too, despite the lack of a flash.
It doesn't have the best macro shots, as the phone struggles to focus when up close, but at least you can use the manual focus on the Nokia Camera app.
In other words, the Lumia 630's picture quality won't blow you away by any measure, but it'll get the job done just fine for Facebook and Instagram.
Get it or not?
Aside from the slight bump in power and Windows Phone 8.1 (which the Lumia 520 is getting anyway), the Lumia 630 doesn't really feel like an upgrade by any stretch.
In fact, the Lumia 520 has one over the 630 by actually having a camera button. Weird.
Anyway, the Lumia 630 is still a nifty little device for the price, but between its older brother and Chinese-made smartphones, the decision to buy it isn't going to be clear-cut.
Score: 7.8 out of 10
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