Nokia Lumia 521: Quality Smartphone on an Extreme Budget
by Vivek Gowri on August 8, 2013 1:08 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- Mobile
- windows phone 8
- Lumia 520
- Lumia 521
The camera, on paper, looks pretty competitive. The 5MP resolution won’t blow anyone away, but as we’ve noted recently and before, resolution isn’t the biggest deal in the world. The plastic optical system with a f/2.4 lens indicated some promise, though. This being Nokia, obviously the natural expectation is for the imaging system to hold its own.
And for the most part, it actually does. The image files by default are 16:9 aspect ratio, with a resolution of 2592x1456. This isn’t exactly 16:9 actually—that would be 2592x1458—but it’s near enough to make no difference. The rest of the camera interface is pretty much the same as what we’re used to in most other Windows Phones, with the exposed manual control options being limited to ISO, exposure, white balance, aspect ratio, and four scene modes. And I know I covered this before, but I really liked the camera button; it’s a shame that more phones don’t have solid two-stage camera buttons with good, positive feedback.
In well-lit scenarios, image quality is pretty solid, with good colors and reasonable sharpness. It won’t blow anyone away, but this is easily on par or ahead of where we were in terms of smartphone imaging before the Galaxy S2 and iPhone 4S came out in the latter half of 2011. What actually surprised me was that the images looked pretty solid when viewed at 1:1 on my 30” display (the 2560x1600 resolution is very close to that of the image output, which made it easier). Definitely much better than I was expecting, and actually better than many of the smartphone camera stills that I’ve accumulated over the years, particularly ones more than a year old.
The low light story is mixed. On the one hand, the lens is bright enough to give you pretty reasonable images in dimly lit situations, with good detail and not as much of the grainy mess I was expecting. It's worth noting that in dimly lit scenarios, the shutter speed is a bit slow so it's pretty easy to end up with blurry images if you aren't careful. These are usable, social media-worthy photos though, and that’s really all that can be asked from a phone like this. On the other hand, there’s a distinct lack of fancy features. Like a flash. Yeah. So while the 521 is a decent low light camera, if low light is really closer to no light, you’re out of luck.
As noted before, there’s no front facing camera either. It’s not a huge deal for me, because I rarely make use of the feature—Skype video calls from my phone just aren’t part of my normal usage model—but it’s something that could count as a pretty big omission for some people, particularly internationally. I think an LED flash and a front facing camera probably could have been included for not that much more, perhaps an increase of $10 on the price would have covered it, but I can understand why Nokia would be so hesitant to increase BoM costs on a device like this.
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notposting - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
Are you guys planning to do a review of the 1020 (well, basically the camera)?I switched to WP7 in 2011, fwiw, and haven't looked back. Just went to WP8 this summer with my Lumia 928. Very happy with it.
Crono - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
According the podcast (can't remember if it was the AT one or from Vertex on iMore) Brian Klug is working on it.PHlipMoD3 - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
Still waiting on that Lumia 920 review... Suppose it wont happen now with the 1020 release - albeit a very similar device internally...Myrandex - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
I've waited for this too. I've really enjoyed my 920 and my wife enjoys hers as well. And speaking of price, it is nice that it is free with contract at Amazon for those of us who don't mind an AT&T Contract.zepi - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
Instant messaging? What is actually missing there? I thought Whatsapp and Skype are both available? Problems with Google talk not working in the background properly etc?JPForums - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
A little elaboration on the Instant Messaging issue would be helpful. Perhaps it doesn't have the IM you want or maybe there is some killer feature in an IM you like that isn't available on any of the WP8 IMs.Also, I'm a little confused as to the problem with multitasking. IIRC you can pull up Skype and still have it receive messages when you are doing something else as long as you don't shut it down. Didn't seem like it took very long to resume or load tasks to me, though it was a higher end WP8 and an HTC One is still perceptibly, though not significantly faster at loading in most situations.
Your concerns on minimalism are quite valid, though I think many people have less issue than you might think. In my experience, people who have used WP for more than a few minutes tend to line up with Crono's classification. They find it easier to use than Apple. For many people the genuinely useful features and/or information that is hidden by the WP minimalist interface is still a distraction that gets in their way.
Note: though I disagree/don't understand some of your points, I still think this was an excellent write up and hope to see more. Non-flagship devices are seriously underrepresented. Thanks Vivek.
VivekGowri - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
I don't know, I rely on IMs as part of my workflow and I've literally never missed so many messages in my life as the time I spent on Windows Phone 8. Happened late last year with the 810, happened now with the 521. IM+ is garbage and if that's the best multiprotocol IM client on your platform, your platform will be woefully inadequate for IM. That's it. I'm not looking for a killer feature, I'm literally just looking for working IM.Multitasking in WP involves completely closing and rehydrating the apps, it's super slow and not multitasking at all. iOS 4/5/6 (7 is real multitasking) does something similar but doesn't need to completely rehydrate each time I think, it's much more seamless than on WP. This is all exaggerated by the still-slow WP app load times. It's been 3 years, I don't know why this is still an issue.
Windows Phone is frustrating for me, because I've been a fan of the platform for a very long time, I really want it to succeed as a third major smartphone OS and not just because it's the default option. It's been sad to watch it stagnate on so many levels since launch. Really, that's all I can say.
Myrandex - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
There are apps that you can switch quickly between without a complete refresh. I do it all the time and it is called Fast App Switching I believe.The only IMs I use on there are facebook messaging as I kind of got out of IMing when I started txting all of the time (nice universal standard), so I haven't actually used IM+ but knew of its existence. FB chat on the phone is quite nice, and hopefully Skype Instant Messaging integrates as nicely someday (what a pathetic joke that MS has purchased Skype so long ago but failed to really take advantage of integrating it into the OS yet like Facetime on iOS).
notposting - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
I've had good success with jiTalk (Gchat client).As for multitasking...are you doing it right? (serious question, not trolling) If you back out of the apps and/or if you launch them from the Start screen/app list, it reloads them. Otherwise if you are just hopping between apps with the long press on the back button, they come up with no delay and at the same state they were, in general (as Myrandex mentions). I can pop between a web site, a search, maybe a photo and a photo editing app, and email with no problems.
cheshirster - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
So it all comes dows to poor IM+ for WP application?It was last updated on April and it is really week in terms of quality (large time to connect on 2g, crashes while starting). I don't use it.
And what you say about multitasking is strange too, most core apps support fast resuming (the last to add it was Skype on 7.7.2013)