Nokia Lumia 820 Review

In this era of iPhone and Android smartphones, Blackberry and Windows Phone-based smartphones have been largely overshadowed. The reason for this has mainly been the lack of a proper ecosystem, but the launch of the new BB 10 OS and Windows Phone 8 has signalled a comeback for the two OSes. Microsoft seems to be completely relying on a select handful of smartphone manufacturers; HTC, Samsung and Nokia are presently the only ones whipping out the latest from Microsoft. We did review the Nokia Lumia 920 recently and now we have the Lumia 820 with us. Let’s check out what Nokia has to offer its smartphone fans through this new entrant.

4.3-inch AMOLED display with 480 x 800 pixel resolution

Design and build

Nokia is well-known for producing phones with a solid build, be it for basic candy-bar feature phones or large-screen smartphones. The Luimia 820 is no different. The entire shell is well-crafted and at first, there is a feeling that the body cannot be opened up. There are no notches or indications to open the panel. But the rear panel does open up; it houses the battery and SIM and the memory card slot. Opening it is tricky and after a bit of practice, you can open it with ease. The glossy shell and rounded smooth edges make opening the back a struggle. Nokia has gone with an entirely glossy exterior that can be ruined if not handled with care. Looking on the bright side, if you end up with damaging the rear panel, you can always opt for a replacement to make the phone look new. 

Volume, power, camera buttons on the right, micro USB on the bottom

Moving on, the handset weighs 160 grams, is around 9.9 mm thick and 68.5 mm wide, which means you can have a decent enough grip while handling or operating it.

The Lumia 820 has the power, volume and camera buttons on the right side. The top sports the 3.5-mm jack while the bottom has the micro USB port and a mono speaker. The rear only sports the 8MP camera with the dual-LED flash. The front is mainly occupied by the large 4.3-inch display panel which is highly glossy and easily gets smudged with finger-prints. So if you are one of those who are constantly on the move outdoors, make sure you don’t use it with sweaty hands. If possible, opt for a matte-finished screen shield, which could help in better visibility by reducing the fingerprints. Below the display is the standard row of WP capacitive buttons.

The rear panel, as mentioned earlier, can be replaced with different colours, which are optional and need to be purchased. Also available is a wireless charging shell option that contains the wireless charging module. Simply swap out the standard rear panel with this one and you can juice up the battery without connecting any wires at all. Yes, you would also have to buy the wireless charging mat or pod, which does not come cheap.

Thickness of 9.9 mm, weighs 160 g

Features

The Nokia 820 packs a powerful dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor clocked at 1.5GHz. The graphics processor paired with the main processor is the Adreno 225 and a decent amount of 1GB RAM is provided for the system. The operating system is Windows Phone 8. The screen is a nice 4.3-inch AMOLED-based Nokia ClearBlack display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The pixel density is 217 ppi, which makes the picture quality pleasant and crisp. The internal storage is just 8GB of which around 5GB is available for the user’s data. We recommend opting for a 32GB or a 64GB microSD card while purchasing the handset in order to have sufficient storage. The camera featured here is a Carl Zeiss optics-based 8MP with dual LED flash, which is capable of taking full high definition 1080p videos at 30 fps. The front camera is a standard VGA camera for video chats. Connectivity options are dual-band Wi-Fi with 802.11 a/b/g/n interface, 3G with HSDPA at 42 Mbps, NFC, Bluetooth v3.1 with A2DP and LTE, which sadly is not available here as yet. What we found missing on the handset is the video output in the form of AV or HDMI. Most Android-based entry-level tablets and mainstream smartphones sport HDMI out, but this one lacks it. The handset is powered by a 1650 mAh battery and bundled along are the charger, a pair of earphones and a micro USB cable. 

8MP camera on the rear with dual-LED flash