Nokia Lumia 610 Review : Can it take over the cheap Android Phones ?
Nokia has definitely made its place with all the Lumia devices in the Mobile Phone segment, specially if you are looking for a phone which helps you get a solid integration with popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook.
While a lot of promotion was done for High end devices like Lumia 800, & 710, Nokia recently announced in India, Lumia 610( priced at 13K), a low end segment phone which we consider was targeted towards all the Low Quality Devices, specially Android Segment. So we got in touch with the Nokia PR to get our hands on this beauty to find it out.
Build Quality, Look & Feel :
I am a die hard Windows Phone fan, so instead of me giving the first expression, I tried giving the device to a couple of my family members and tell us what they felt about the phone and using it for approximately 15 to 20 minutes.
Out of four, three said the build is pretty good and it really did not feel like a cheap phone at cost of 13K, specially it was not feeling plastic thanks to its round edges which gives it a modern, solid feel. In fact all four said that its a beautiful phone and if put on display, one will definitely will take one glance at it to find more about it.
The screen of Lumia 610 is LCD but its re-enforced with Corning’s Gorilla Glass which makes sure the phone is safe from light scratches you get from Keys, Pens and anything else in your pocket. The metallic colors makes sure the phone has the shine you wanted.
When compared to Lumia 710, I found lumia 610 to be a lot better both at look and feel and also the overall experience, specially, the hardware buttons of 710 wasn’t very comfy and are replaced with capacitive buttons like all other Windows Phone.
Whats inside the Box ?
Below is the unboxing of Lumia 610 to know what it comes along with :
Performance & Battery Life :
Since the phone has low ram i.e. 256 MB Ram, many should be concerned how the phone performance is affected. Surprisingly it doesn’t, and I would say the lag is around 1 sec which can be seen only when you switch between apps or if you download a big size app and try to launch game on the front end. The last example is an extreme case which many will not fall into, not often.
Boot Test : Lumia 610 vs Lumia 710 vs Lumia 800
In fact we also did a Gaming Test of Lumia 610 with a couple of most wanted racing games to see if the screen gets stuck or the game starts responding low. Below is the video :
To our surprise, the game did not lag at all and the graphics were amazing.
The App performance was decent enough except the gaps that the phone OS has, long scrolling is one such example. Microsoft has made sure that if a developer wants to get the app to Lumia 610, it had to be optimized for the low memory scenario. This make sure that whatever the apps you are able download, are definitely optimized. If the games can stand, so the apps will.
The browsing experience : This turned out to be dicy. At times when the 3G connection was slow and I opened up websites which was not optimized for mobile, a lag can be seen. Since the processor is low ( 800 Mhz ), rendering of websites not optimized for mobile can be freaky. However, when browsing through websites optimized for mobile, it was good enough.
Battery Life : Lumia 610 comes with 1300 mAH which is not a lot but keeping in mind the OS is well optimized for the phones and so are the games and apps, it lasted for just over a day. This length was tested both when I made more calls and less of internet usage and vice-versa. When both was in excess, the battery went low in around 18 hours.
Camera & Video Test :
If you really want a nice camera with a phone, this is not just for you and all can be blamed to the slow processor of the phone itself. The camera worked just fine in full day light but on low light it will never satisfy you because of the blurriness and pixelated images. The camera button response was also slow and a minimum gap of 3 to 4 seconds under lock screen.
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Like I said before, the phone does not support HD but only VGA and suffers from NO Daylight Trauma, the quality was ok and good enough, if you just want to capture the moments and not bothered a lot about the quality.
The phone also suffers from lack of auto upload of pictures and video to Skydrive because its more resource hungry, so you will have to share them individually i.e. email them individually to yourself or use apps like Photo2Cloud.
Final Verdict :
So its definitely a low end phone but its not like any other cheap phones that are available in the market. The phone is solid, app performance are fine ( because the apps are optimized to work on low memory ), the OS is robust and comes with all goodies of social integration, modern looks and its good to hold.
The only deal breakers are that it does not support HD format and good apps are limited but not scarce. Apps like Nokia Drive, Nokia Maps, Nokia Transit and other Lumia special Apps, you just get the good deals.
I will strongly suggest you to try the phone out at local store, look out for Lumia 610 deals of Money Back to make your judgement. From our side this phone is worth the price and much better than any other cheap phones running older and not so updated version of Android.
If you are interested in detailed specification, Check on the official page Full Specification
