Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
Wi-Fi
The Lumia 830 most likely unitizes the Qualcomm VIVE Wi-Fi available on the Snapdragon 400 SoC. In this particular case, it is nothing special. The 830 has a single stream only, although at least it is dual band. This gives us a maximum connection speed of 150 Mbps, which the Lumia 830 was able to achieve. However connection speeds rarely equate to real world transfer speeds.
I was only able to achieve 38 Mbps transfer speed with the Lumia 830, which is not a stellar result. On a device of this price range, it would be nice to see 802.11ac wireless and possibly a dual-stream solution.
There is one other note about Wi-Fi. On one occasion, the device stopped seeing any access points at all. I had to restart the phone, at which point the Wi-Fi worked normally again. I’ve contacted Microsoft and this is a known issue on some Lumia 830 devices. They have no fix for this yet, so if you do purchase one and have this happen, you may want to exchange it. It happened just the one time to me though.
Cellular
Qualcomm’s MSM8926 SoC supports up to Category 4 LTE which offers a maximum of 150 Mbps download and 50 Mbps Upload.
I was only able to achieve 6 Mbps download and 4 Mbps upload but these numbers have a lot to do with the traffic on the tower, as well as location and obstacles.
Reception is good but this is difficult to test unless you live on the fringe of a cellular signal and I do not.
GNSS
Qualcomm’s IZat Gen8A is the GPS in the Snapdragon 400 SoC, and as with most modern Qualcomm location solutions it is fast and accurate. With location services enabled on the phone, GPS lock happened within a couple of seconds. Going from location services disabled to a GPS lock took around thirty seconds, which is pretty good.
The Lumia 830 supports A-GLONASS, A-GPS, BeiDou, and assist from cellular and Wi-Fi networks to get a quicker location fix.
Speaker and Call Quality
The Lumia 830 has a single speaker on the back of the device, which is never the ideal location for maximum clarity and volume. The tiny speaker does get plenty loud though. I measured 88.7 dBA from the speaker from 3” away.
The Lumia 830 has four microphones for noise cancelling. Below is the audio of a call from the 830 to my personal cell, which I recorded on my PC. There is a bit of whine in the recording from my PC so please ignore that I will try and get that sorted out for the next review.
The 830 does a good job cancelling out the outside noise during a call, with it only struggling when the ambient noise was high enough that it would be difficult to speak face to face. The audio quality of the call was also quite good.
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sandman74 - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
I've been tempted to try a lumia for a while now but Nokia (now MS) just keep on releasing disappointing phones.I'm not interested in the low end and the majority of their high end phones are very old now with recognised flaws mentioned in every review.
I find it amazing how many long term lumia owners are willing to side grade (down) to a phone like this from almost equivalent hardware and then be locked in for another year or two.
Talk about being taken for a ride.
The off contact price us just too much as well.
The only lumia that makes sense is the 735 which can be found for as little as £150 in the UK and is very similar spec wise to this. It may also be a middlle end phone but atleast it's priced right.
The biggest turns off for me about this phone are the slow processor, and the metal band styling with square edges... It may not dig into the hands as much as the 930 but it's not that comfortable to hold either (tried it this weekend).
Good review though. I'm looking forward to the 735 one.
tralalalalalala40 - Monday, December 1, 2014 - link
These devices will have very limited importance until we start seeing blockbuster releases of gadgets and useful services that aren't just iOS/Android compatible.Harry_Wild - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
I hope Anandtech does a review of the 735 too! I like it much more then the 830 here. It strange that the reviewer used last year's models on the iPhone 5S and 5C along with Moto X 2014 this year's model and HTC M8 for comparison sake. Only one graph on iPhone 6 if I recall!cheshirster - Sunday, December 7, 2014 - link
http://www.windowscentral.com/lumia-camera-update-...New camera app on video
Seems faster.
nickolas - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
I have a Nokia 520 having had iphones and a Nexus device in the past. My only gripe with the 520 is the loading times and crashes of apps like Skype and Viber I use often. I would be REALLY interested to know the performance on loading apps (open for the first time or resuming) of the 830. This metric alone if it could match an Iphone 5 would make me buy it.I am sure many Windows phone users are interested in this, because it is the only problem with the user experience in this great platform.
lalcha - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Well said everyone but I love windows phone as they don't hang say not like androids . Androids as u know wen it gets old after a long run they become slow unlike windows they don't atall . So the only thing they lack ryt now is that say 830 even I'm not happy with its price and all for a flirty ship the core is way too low snapdragon 400 n that for 27k.. he'll no!! N the front camera , pppfftt wanna hang myself.. well as for 1 GB m ok.. but front camera and the core that they should come up with something .. n ofcourse the ppi way too low it sudve atleast reach 314 or something.. windows r good phones with smooth UI except they lack some apps which the android has .lalcha - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Still better phone than iPhone 4. Ppfftt !!Darsh - Sunday, February 28, 2016 - link
How does the front camera perform?