Nokia Lumia 630 Review
by Brett Howse on July 22, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Mobile
- windows phone
Hardware
The first thing that anyone will ever do with a smartphone is hold it, so we will start with the design of the phone. If you have ever seen or held any Lumia phone, then you will instantly recognize the 630 as a Lumia. The polycarbonate back is much thinner and more flexible than the 620, but has an excellent matte texture to it which makes it easy to grip and hold. The design has progressed from the earlier Lumia models with removable backs, and now features nicely rounded corners, and an angular side which makes the device quite comfortable to hold on to.
As is often the case with Lumia phones, there are several colors to choose from and in this case you can get white, black, yellow, green, or the color I received as a review unit which is a nice bright orange. As someone who has always owned black phones, I have to say that I’ve grown to really like the orange.
The power and volume buttons can be found on the right side of the device, with the micro USB port on the bottom, and the 3.5 mm jack on top. The back has the 5 MP camera sensor, a speaker hole, and a very faint Nokia logo. There is no fake chrome, or fake leather. This is a plastic phone that is made out of quality plastic, and with the small by today’s standard display of 4.5”, the phone fits nicely in the hand and is quite comfortable to hold.
The back of the device peels off, unlike older Lumia phones which definitely popped off. Behind the removable back cover we get easy access to the SIM slot (or dual SIMs if applicable) as well as the replacable battery and a microSD slot.
Lumia 620 (left) vs Lumia 630 (right)
The move to on-screen buttons for the back, home, and search keys was something that took me no time to adjust to. You can set the device to provide haptic feedback of button presses, and in that sense they work and feel exactly like the capacitive buttons of most phones. I also accidentally triggered the buttons less than the hardware buttons of other phones I’ve used, which I attribute to not having the buttons so low on the device, so if I rest my thumb at the bottom, I don’t hit search. A nice touch to the on-screen buttons is you can customize the navigation bar color to be always dark, match the background, or match the accent color.
The one thing I do miss though is the camera button, and perhaps that’s because Windows Phone 8.1 isn’t ready to give this button up yet. There’s no easy way to access the camera from the lock screen like on competing operating systems, and with other Windows Phones that’s not an issue because of the physical button to launch the camera. The workaround on this device is that one of the quick action buttons in the action center is set to the camera function out of the box. It is not the ideal fix, and I hope they add a slide right for camera experience to the start and lock screens in a future update to address this issue.
As far as the specifications, the Lumia 630 is also the first Windows Phone to sport the Snapdragon 400 class of SoC. This brings the MSM8226 model which is a quad-core Cortex A7 CPU at 1.2 GHz, Adreno 305 Graphics, integrated modem, and improved ISP over the Snapdragon S4 of the previous generation. Also in-line with the Lumia 520 and 620 is the 512 MB of RAM which is a shame in 2014. Windows Phone as an OS gets by just fine with 512 MB of RAM, but many games in the store are limited to devices with at least 1 GB of RAM, so it would have been nice to see the 630 include the 1 GB to open the device to all apps in the store. The full specifications are listed below.
| Lumia 630 Specifications | ||||
| Nokia Lumia 520 | Nokia Lumia 620 | Nokia Lumia 625 | Nokia Lumia 630 | |
| CPU |
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8227 Krait Dual-Core 1.0 GHz |
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8227 Krait Dual-Core 1.0 GHz |
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8930 Krait Dual-Core 1.2 GHz |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 MSM8226 Cortex A7 Quad-Core 1.2 GHz |
| RAM/NAND | 512 MB / 8 GB + MicroSD | 512 MB / 8 GB + MicroSD | 512 MB / 8 GB + MicroSD | 512 MB / 8 GB + MicroSD |
| Display Size and Resolution | 4.0" 800x480 | 3.8" 800x480 | 4.7" 800x480 | 4.5" 854x480 |
| Network | GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA+ up to 21 Mbps | GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA+ up to 21 Mbps | GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, DC HSPA+, LTE up to 100 Mbps | GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA+ up to 21 Mbps |
| Dimensions | 119.9 x 64 x 9.9 (mm) | 115.4 x 61.1 x 11 (mm) | 133.2 x 72.2 x 9.2 (mm) | 129.5 x 66.7 x 9.2 (mm) |
| Weight | 124 g | 127 g | 159 g | 134 g |
| Camera | 5MP rear camera, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/4" CMOS size, F/2.4, 28 mm focal length, No Flash, No FFC | 5MP rear camera, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/4" CMOS size, F/2.4, 28 mm focal length, LED Flash, VGA FFC | 5MP rear camera, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/4" CMOS size, F/2.4, 28 mm focal length, LED Flash, VGA FFC | 5MP rear camera, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/4" CMOS size, F/2.4, 28 mm focal length, No Flash, No FFC |
| Battery | 1430 mAh 3.7 V (5.291 Wh) | 1300 mAh 3.7 V (4.81 Wh) | 2000 mAh 3.7 V (7.4 Wh) | 1830 mAh 3.7 V (6.771 Whr) |
| Current Shipping OS | Windows Phone 8.0 with Black Firmware | Windows Phone 8.0 with Black Firmware | Windows Phone 8.0 with Black Firmware | Windows Phone 8.1 with Cyan Firmware |
| Connectivity | 802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, MPT, DLNA, FM Radio | 802.11 a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, MPT, DLNA, NFC | 802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, MPT, DLNA, FM Radio | 802.11 b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, MPT, DLNA, FM Radio |
| Location Technologies | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, Magnetometer | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou |
| SIM Size | MicroSIM | MicroSIM | MicroSIM | MicroSIM (Dual SIM Optional) |
There’s not too many surprises here. Wi-Fi is 802.11n and not ac, the 630 doesn’t have LTE (although the 635 does for a bit more money) and the camera is decidedly low end. 8 GB of NAND may seem low, but to get to this price it’s not unexpected. You can add up to 128 GB of storage via microSD though, and Windows Phone 8.1 now allows apps to be installed on the SD card, so storage isn’t really an issue.
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James5mith - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
Glance/Peek does not work on AMOLED screens properly. Either the design of the software is flawed, or the design of the driver (hardware or software) for the screen is flawed.Use the Glance funciton on the 1020 in a pitch black room. For the first fraction of a second, you see just the information displayed, as you would expect to on an AMOLED screen capable of only lighting up the pixels needed. But wait! after that first fraction of a second, the phone turns on the entire display to a dull, low-output greyish black. Why does it do this? No clue, I've asked Nokia several times, and never gotten a response. My guess is that they programmed the Glance function to work with LCD displays, so it's sending information to turn on the entire display, even when it's not needed.
Memristor - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
The screen used on the Lumia 630 lacks ‘display memory’. In order for Glance to work, it needs display memory to maintain the information presented by the program.name99 - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
"The 630 loses a lot of features over the Lumia 620 in an effort to hit an even lower price point than the 620 did"WTF is this crap? This crazy matrix of products, where nothing is clearly superior to anything else is what killed the Japanese CE companies, and MS-Nokia seems determined to follow their lead.
Have we learned NOTHING from the past 20 years?
You sell ONE product line, with good, better, best exemplars.
If there is a compelling reason to do so (consumer vs pro, for example) you make that split clear, and and again offer good, better, best exemplars.
You certainly don't offer this crazy quilt of better here, worse there crap --- not unless you want half your potential buyers to look at the product matrix, say "fsck this, I'll think about it tomorrow", and never reconsider you again.
Brett Howse - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
To be fair we're comparing it to last year's offerings. The 620 has more features, but is no longer available.Generally Nokia has done a good job of improving devices from 520->620->7... and up.
It appears they are changing the starting point for this round though with the 630 being lower end than the 620 last year, and having a lower price to match.
xomiuser - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
I been using the 630/635 with dual SIM since i bought it in may. I am impressed the way 8.1 fully support dual SIM and very easy let you change what SIM card is the data trafic sim card. Both SIM are active on all time, one card is data gateway. For me it helps traveling and i keep my home SIM on while able to use local 3G CIM card where i am. small complain from me that the phone have preloaded location software, for me it means i have Thailand news and TV apps that i dont use much-- good reviewBMNify - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
You can uninstall any app(even Nokia preinstalled apps) easily on windows phone unlike Android, so just uninstall the apps which you don't use. Just go to App list and long-press on the app you want to uninstall.sprockkets - Friday, July 25, 2014 - link
You can uninstall any app on android as well. That's been the case since 2011 with the debut of 4.0.BMNify - Friday, August 1, 2014 - link
Don't lie, i am using Galaxy Tab 3 with 4.2.2 and there are many preinstalled apps which can't be uninstalled.Memristor - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
"As a successor to the 520". I don't think that's correct. Today an image was shown from a Vietnam retailer that shows a Lumia 530, which seems to be the replacement for the 520. So it looks more like the 630 is an all new model that doesn't replace anything, certainly not the 620.Brett Howse - Tuesday, July 22, 2014 - link
Until we see more of the products we can't know for certain, but it appears they are resetting the bar for this round, with the 630 being roughly equivalent to the 520, and it is priced similarly to the 520 when it came out as well.But we need more data to make an analysis.