Nokia has been slowly and steadily expanding its lineup of Lumia devices. While Lumia 920 targets the top-end tier of the market, Lumia 620 goes for a lower mid-range. The huge gap between both these devices is filled up by Lumia 820. We had a chance to play with the Lumia 820 and this is what we think.
Design:
The Lumia 820 has a very clean design. Nokia forgoes Lumia 920’s unibody shell but gives the 820 an advantage of having a removable back cover along with the battery. The back cover can be replaced with different coloured shells (needs to be purchased separately) or the wireless charging shell that makes it compatible with Qi-enabled wireless chargers. However, one major gripe with the back cover is that it’s a task to remove it. The cover is closely flushed with the phone that you need to take extra care so as to not break it.
But apart from that, it’s a nicely built device. The front has a 4.3-inch ClearBlack WVGA display, touch-sensitive back, Windows and search buttons, front-facing camera; top part of the phone features 3.5mm headphone jack; bottom has the microUSB port and loudspeaker; and the right side places a dedicated camera button, power/lock button and volume keys.
Display:
As mentioned above Lumia 820 features a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display. The display supports a resolution of 800×480 WVGA pixels, which may be acceptable when compared to most smartphones available in the market but it surely seems less in the similar price range. But the lack of resolution is made up with the AMOLED display that offers a good colour reproduction, deep blacks and viewing angles.
Software:
Lumia 820 runs the latest version of Windows Phone 8 and since Microsoft does not allow any customisation of the user interface, unlike Android, Nokia spruces up their offering with a mix of apps and services. The phone comes loaded with software like Nokia Music, Mix, Maps, Drive, City Lens and various other downloadable lenses (more on lenses below). Nokia Music gives users the ability to download DRM-free music for a year whereas Mix allows users to stream unlimited music.
Maps and Drive have been clubbed under the HERE brand and offers free voice-guided navigation.
City Lens is an augmented reality app that displays all the nearby attractions, eateries in an eye pleasing and an intuitive way.
Performance:
Lumia 820 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon’s S4 1.5GHz dual-core processor and 1GB RAM, which is more than enough to handle the Windows Phone 8 OS. You wouldn’t find any signs of slowdown and it handled most of the things, including gaming and entertainment pretty well.
As for the video and audio, Lumia 820 is able to play most of the formats. However, we were disappointed to find the lack of subtitles support. The sound output on the loudspeaker and the included earphones is satisfactory.
Camera:
Lumia 820 sports an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics. Long pressing the dedicated camera button activates the camera or you can do it the conventional way by tapping on the screen. As for the camera quality, the Lumia 820 does not win any accolades. Photos shot have an evident amount of grainy details and appear to be washed, even in a bit of sunlight.
Lenses help enhance the camera’s capabilities further and couple of them which can be downloaded are Smart Shoot and Cinemagraph. Smart Shoot captures few burst images and allow users to choose the best face from the photos or remove an unwanted object.
Cinemagraph enables moving pictures a piece of cake. Users can create small moving pictures (gifs) that can be tweaked according to the preference.
Lumia 820 is capable of recording full HD 1080p video at 30fps.
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| Nokia Lumia 820 Sample Shots |
Battery Life:
Battery life depends on a number of factors, including user habits but in our continuous use of Wi-Fi, 3G and few hours of video watching, Lumia 820 easily lasted a day.
Conclusion:
Lumia 820 is priced around Rs. 25,0000 and it seems the price could act as a hindrance. For the same or slightly higher amount of cash, a user can walk away with a powerful Android device that can do and offer much more than Lumia 820. However, if we remove Android from the equation, Lumia 820 is a decently spec’d phone that offers features similar to its flagship – the Lumia 920.
Rating: 
Pros: Design
Cons: Camera, Back Cover
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