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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cheshirster - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
What makes you think IM+ is the best? The fact that it is preforming poorly? What's wrong with you, man?toraji - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
did you ever hold the back arrow button for more then one second? (bottom left on your screen) Every app you have open will suddenly appear, just a question of playing with the phone instead of finding reasons to hate itOoklaTheMok - Thursday, August 15, 2013 - link
With regard to multitasking, or the perceived lack of, I think you are confused. You are confusing WP7 with WP8. In WP8, true multitasking was implemented. In order to leverage this though, the app needs to make use of it, otherwise it defaults to the "standard" tomb stoning behavior, which is what you have been describing in your article. In WP8, apps can continue to run in the background, i.e. not suspended, and continue to function. I have seen a demo of a GPS app that logged points along a route even when the app was running in the background.seanatwork - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
I'd like to know about this too. It's kind of an important feature. I use an optimus V cuz it's reliable as hell and I'm concerned with switching to something new that doesn't do what I want. I also heard you can't orientation lock the screen in windows phone, that sounds like some bs.Myrandex - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Its true I've never found a way to lock the screen orientation. I've never found myself wanting to, but if it is a feature that is for you then that could be a big negative in your opinion.ssj3gohan - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
So how does WP actually fare on 512MB RAM? I wouldn't even go near an Android handset with that little RAM, but is this significantly different on windows phone?VivekGowri - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
Application load times are even slower than they are in high-end Windows Phones, but other than that it's totally fine. Also you have to watch out, some games are coming with a 1GB requirement (like GFX Bench/GL/DXBenchmark). But really, in the day to day, you don't notice the difference much.jeffkibuule - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
Windows Phone is like iOS in that apps are not allowed to run in the background unless they conform to a specific set of APIs.steven75 - Thursday, August 8, 2013 - link
iOS 6.x and older. Not so in iOS 7 due next month.toraji - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
WP8 is very smooth and fluid because of the way it is build. It does not need high specs to run apps that are build for android that DO require a powerhouse to be able to run. Admitted, the flagship phones have a little more ummpf to them but the 520 and 521 are really good at performing too and because of the low specs battery life is great on wp8 devices