Nokia Lumia 810

Overview

Best Mid-Budget Windows Smartphone

Overview of Nokia Lumia 810

Nokia wants to revive its lost domination over the smartphone world with its unique series of smartphones, which come penned under the name- ‘Lumia’. The release of Windows 8 has quite evidently compelled Nokia to come up with innovative smartphone designs, which can lure the smartphone buying audience. Nokia clearly wants to make hay while the sun shines. Coming from the far-flung Lumia series, Nokia Lumia 810 is a Windows 8 based smartphone with 1.5 GHz processor, 8 MP camera, and 4”3 inch display. It’s Nokia’s idealization of a mid-budget, feature-packed smartphone. So, does Nokia Lumia 810 have what it takes to be that ‘ideal’ smartphone, or are we in for another flop-show? Let’s find out.

Nokia Lumia 810 Design and Build Quality

If looks mattered, Nokia Lumia 810 could have easily shattered a million hearts. Lumia 810’s design is quite evidently one of the most uninspired designs from Nokia. It’s thick, bulky and brick-like form is hard to love. Measuring 5.03 x 2.69 inches, the phone is too big to fit into hands, and weighing just around 145g, it upholds its close semblance with the ‘brick’. We are very disappointed with Nokia when it comes to Nokia 810’s design and build quality. It surely isn’t one of the best looking smartphones out there. In fact, it’s nowhere closer.

Display

Though Nokia Lumia 810’s build is a bit disappointing, Nokia reimburses the gimmick with its bright, colourful 4.3 inch AMOLED display, which supports a WVGA resolution of 800x480 pixels. The ClearBlack display with the enhanced “colour boosting” technology, which first debuted with Nokia Lumia 910, is nothing less than a treat to eyes. The colours saturation and the deep blacks on the screen are near perfection. The “super sensitive touch” on Nokia 810 is magical, and it blends awesomely with the Windows 8’s intuitive interface. Nokia has also enhanced the display’s brightness in order to cope up with ‘sunlight readability issues’. The display certainly does much better than some other similar ranged smartphones in broad daylight. Additionally, the display panel comes protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, which prevents the screen from undue scratches.

User Interface – the all new Windows Phone 8

Windows 8’s Live Tile interface is refreshingly different from the highly analogous iOS and Android interface. The Tiles are dynamic- which means there’s always something happening on the screen. The tiles are also highly customizable- like they can be resized to small, medium or large based on your preferences. They can also be tweaked to show your messages, Twitter feeds and Email messages, as and when they arrive. It’s perhaps the dynamicity of the OS, which makes it so easy and fun to use. However, the down side of Windows 8 is its high boot-up time and lesser number of apps on Windows Marketplace.

Nokia Lumia 810 Performance

When it comes to horsepower, Nokia Lumia 810 packs more power than what it needs. Under Lumia 810’s hood is a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core Krait processor, which keeps the smartphone surprisingly snappy and intuitive. Meanwhile, the 1 GB RAM makes sure you switch from one app to another, in the blink of an eye. Navigation on Windows 8 is extremely fast, and it’s not hard to notice that there are almost zero lags in between transitions.

Music Player and FM Radio

The Music tracks sounds clear and loud on Nokia Lumia 810. As a matter of fact, Windows 8’s default Music player- ‘Music + Video' is perhaps the most beautifully crafted music apps. It’s extremely easy to navigate and the app fetches full-screen wallpapers of the popular bands, along with their thumbnails. The stock music player supports almost all kind of audio formats like WAV, MP4, AAC, AMR, MP3, M4A, WMA, and more. Nokia also offers cloud music playback (online and offline), which means you can stream your songs directly from any cloud service (For example, SkyDrive) you might have subscribed to. All in all, when it comes to music and sound quality, we think Nokia Lumia 810 is just on par with its competitors- HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S III.

Nokia Lumia 810 Camera and Image Quality

Nokia Lumia 810 flaunts an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash, which takes amazingly crisp and sharp shots. While Nokia Lumia 920 may enjoy the much hyped ‘PureView’ feature, Lumia 810 captures images at the same resolution (3264 x 2448 pixels), and with the same clarity as Lumia 920. Some of the features which we loved about Nokia Lumia 810’s camera are the White Balance Modes, the Camera Roll feature, and the ‘Tap to Focus’ functionality. Overall, camera’s features and image quality are perfect, which puts Nokia Lumia 810 high on the list of smartphones with really great camera.

Video Camera and Video Quality

Nokia Lumia 810 records decent 1080p (Full-HD) videos at an impressive 30 fps. The phone does not stutter while recording high-definition videos and the camera captures motions amazingly well, even under low lighting conditions. The recorded video can be played via the default video player, or can also be shared via social networks, SkyDrive, or NFC. There’s also a secondary VGA camera to record portrait videos, or attend video calls.

Nokia Lumia 810 Apps and Maps

The lack of apps on Windows Phone 8, when compared to iPhone or Android, could perhaps be another major disadvantage for Lumia 810. However, with Windows 8 catching up, expect the number of apps on Windows MarketPlace to rise soon. But as of now, we seriously wish you keep your expectations down. Though Windows MarketPlace is not as big as PlayStore or AppStore, 60% of the most popular apps on iOS and Android have already found their place in the Windows MarketPlace. When it comes to Maps, Bing Maps disappoint. The interface is poorly designed, and there is nothing useful you can actually do with it. However, Nokia Maps, Drive, and Transit are some good apps, which offer voice-based navigation, and transit directions. Though Nokia Maps is good, it ironically is not as good as- Google Maps. People who switch from Android to Windows would have a tough time bearing with Bing Maps and Nokia Maps.

Connectivity and Storage

When it comes to connectivity, Nokia Lumia has everything a smartphone needs to have- Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, 3G, and NFC. When it comes to storage, Nokia Lumia 810 comes with 8 GB of internal storage, which can be expanded by inserting MMC up to 64 GB.

Nokia Lumia 810 Battery life

The battery-life is perhaps another feather in the cap for Nokia Lumia 810. The 1800 mAh battery bolsters the phone to last- 10.2 hours talk time on 3G, 15 days on standby, and 54 hours on music playback. Even under heavy Internet usage and extensive call logging history, Lumia 810 lasts at least a day long. That, by smartphone standards, is monumental.

Verdict

Lumia 810 is Nokia’s answer to a mid-budget, feature-packed smartphone. Nokia Lumia 810 though looks a bit dull in its brick-shaped, bucket-like design, but there’s more to 810 than its lack-lustre design. There’s so much to love about Nokia Lumia 810- its breath-taking camera, its unbelievably long battery life, the turn-by-turn navigation system, and the cool new- Windows 8 interface. Buy Nokia Lumia 610 for its features, and not its looks. However, if you want a slimmer, lighter phone, we suggest you to have a look at HTC One S, instead.