Review nokia Lumia 620

The revamped Windows Phone operating system has been doing its bit to dispel Nokia's waning image, as is the wide and varied colour scheme of the new Lumia 620, a lower end Windows Phone 8 handset that comes with a range of retina-searing coloured cases.

It's on sale now for around £220, which means it's competing with the likes of the HTC Windows Phone 8S and lower end Androids like the Orange San Diego, HTC Desire C and Sony Xperia Miro.

Design
The all-plastic case is a bit of a faff to get off -- you have to push down on the camera lens while pulling up on the bottom edge -- but if you can be bothered, you get the chance to switch between a variety of bright colours, with yellow, lime green, cyan, magenta, orange, white and yes, black, all on the menu. Each also has a different colour on the inside, so you get a two-tone effect around the screen when you clip it on.

It feels sturdy enough though (that workhorse ethic comes in handy sometimes) and the bright, glossy colour schemes will certainly help it stand out among the forest of black slabs on the table when you meet up with your mates.
In contrast to some of the minimalist handsets we've been looking at recently there seems to be a surfeit of buttons, with a volume rocker, camera shutter and power/sleep button all on one side. That's your lot though, with the only other extras a microUSB power/sync slot at the bottom and a 3.5mm headphone jack on top.

 Screen quality and performance
A single sheet of glass covers the front, with the three Windows buttons (start, back and search) beneath the 3.8-inch touchscreen. That's a fair bit smaller than the Lumia 820's 4.3-inch or the 920's 4.5-inch. It's just about big enough to do all the things smartphones should -- like providing a good-sized onscreen keyboard and enough space to pinch-to-zoom, but you wouldn't really want it any smaller. It offers a resolution of 800x480 pixels -- certainly not up there with the HD best but none too shabby for all that. It's bright and vibrant, and has no problem sharply rendering small text and photos online. The ClearBlack filter also apparently helps cut down on glare, giving it an even better appearance.

 The dual-core 1GHz processor is backed by 512MB RAM, which is decent enough, but a long way from the quad-core power of the Google Nexus 4 or HTC One X+. As a result, it's efficient, with occasional signs of lag, without that "just think it and make it so" aspect of the fastest handsets. Still, the dual-core power is pretty impressive for a lower-end handset, and it doesn't let the side down. Our AnTutu performance benchmark test turned in a result of 7,266, which puts it on a par with the HTC Windows 8S in terms of raw power.

 Cameras and image quality
The 5-megapixel camera has an LED flash, autofocus as well as touch focus and a range of scene settings. As with other Windows 8 handsets, all the available functionality isn't built in, but you can add different "lenses" from the Windows Store -- so far, there are about 50 available, and most of them are free. Smart Shoot lets you take five shots in quick succession so you can choose your favourite, Panorama does what it says on the tin and Bing Vision scans barcodes, QR codes, book, DVD and CD covers for searching.

 Picture quality isn't bad -- you can get nicely crisp images with sharp edges but colour balance tends to be a little off, with a bit too much saturation and it struggles a little with detail both indoors and out. It can record video at 720p HD resolution and the VGA camera on the front makes a decent fist of rendering your features for video calls.

 Extra features
Even in this price bracket, you can't say that Nokia skimps on features. Extras include a Groupon app, which searches your local area (or wherever you happen to be) for special deals and offers. There's also the Nokia City Lens augmented reality app, which uses the phone's camera to flag up local info and allow you to easily call businesses or tag them for later. Cleverly, you can tilt your phone to take you from street to map view, and get a better look at what's available locally.


You also get the full Office suite for creating and editing Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs and NFC's on board too, so you're ready for tags and mobile payments, though there's no wireless charging option like you get with the higher end Lumias.
Nokia Drive offers free sat nav based on Nokia Maps, which isn't quite the full Google shilling, but seems to make a better fist of it than Apple's effort did, and Nokia Music gives you free online access to an awful lot of music which you can also download.


It comes with a rather generous (for the price) 8GB of memory on board, and you can boost that by a further 64GB via microSD card if you feel the need.
The 1,300mAh battery isn't exceptional but it seemed to do a decent enough job nonetheless, keeping the Lumia 620 going for a good day and a half of steady use.