Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
Battery Life
Battery life, like the display, is one of the most important aspects to any smartphone. The Lumia 830 comes with a removable BV-L4A battery, which is a 2200 mAh, with 3.8-volt chemistry. This gives us a battery with 7.04 Wh of capacity. This is quite a bit smaller than the Lumia 930’s 9.20 Wh battery, but it also powers a lower resolution display which is much less power hungry than the Lumia 930’s OLED unit.
As with the performance comparisons, the graphs below are a subset of all of our devices which I chose to compare the Lumia 830 against other phones which are in the same market. Someone considering the Note 4 is likely not cross shopping with a Lumia 830 for instance. If there is a device that we’ve tested, you can use our online benchmark comparison tool Bench to compare any devices we have tested.
To compare battery life, we set all devices to the same brightness level (200 nits) in order to not penalize displays which have a higher maximum brightness. We then put them through several tests a couple of times each to ensure accurate results.
One note is a change to how I am testing Windows Phone battery life. Historically I have run a battery life test, and then done it again with Battery Saver enabled. Battery Saver on Windows Phone stops all background apps from syncing while it is running, and things like email will not work with push support. On our Android reviews, we already disable background syncing while doing battery life testing to ensure consistent results, so starting with the Lumia 830 I will be only showing battery life with Battery Saver enabled. Feel free to give me your feedback in the comments below, but this should give a more accurate result and a baseline we can work off of.
Our first test is web browsing over Wi-Fi. The Lumia 830 is very good here. When doing the Lumia 930 review, that device would actually get warm to the touch just from displaying a white background, but the Lumia 830 does not suffer any of those issues with its LCD display. The result of almost ten hours of screen on time is very good, and should allow almost anyone to easily get through a day of use before needing to charge. Please note that I have adjusted the Lumia 630 and 930 results in the above graph to show them with Battery Saver enabled so that this is an apples-to-apples comparison.
Although the Lumia 830 does support LTE, it will of course fall back to HSPA if the LTE signal is not strong enough. HSPA battery life is not fantastic. I was unable to test LTE battery life on this phone due to the model shipped to me.
In addition to the web browsing test, we have also started to utilize the Basemark OS II Battery Life test.
The Lumia 830 does well in the battery life for Basemark, but that does not tell the entire story. The overall score is calculated based on the average battery life loss per minute, as well as the standard deviation and CPU usage during the test. Windows Phone is at a disadvantage here somewhat due to the nature of the benchmark. As it cannot get CPU usage information from the OS, it does not factor it into the final score. While the benchmark was running, the CPU usage was only at 10%.
Charge Time
The speed at which a device can charge can be fairly important if you travel a lot and need to top up. Generally devices charge quickly at the beginning and then ease back over time until they hit 100%, so this is more than just about the overall charge time to 100%. I will now include a graph with the charge percentage over time.
The Lumia 830 comes with a 1.5 Amp micro USB charger, which can fill the battery in about 2:40. This is a higher amperage charger than is included with a device such as the Lumia 630, and it makes a difference. The Snapdragon 400 SoC does support quick charge, at up to 9 volts at 1.5 amps, and Windows Phone does support this.
The Lumia 830 charge rate is fairly consistent all the way up until 90% where it starts to taper off.
For those that hate plugging in their phones, the Lumia 830 also supports Qi wireless charging out of the box.
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cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Moto G can barely fight with 630. Definetly not with 735 and 830.CaedenV - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
like others here I have a 2 year old Lumia 920 and am looking for an upgrade, but there are limited options available. When I was essentially running a business out of my cell phone I was looking to upgrade to the 1520 (or better yet the long rumored 1525 what seems to have gone up in smoke), but now that I am a student and have a laptop a normal sized phone sounds much more appealing.I was looking really hard at the Icon/930, but the lack of Glance and SD card support are in fact deal-breakers. I use glance all of the time on my 920 (especially now that weather shows up on Glance... best simple feature ever!), and if I had SD support then I could fit my whole music collection, as well as more pics and vids of the kiddos to show off to friends and family. Plus the fact that it is only available on VZW, and I am not going there and will stick with ATT/T-Mo for service.
So then that leaves the 830. Playing with it in person, it is a great little device, and if you sell off the useless bundled fitbit for ~$80+ then the price is more than reasonable. It is a step down from the Lumia 920... but only a minor step down, and some things (like SD support, much lighter weight and slimmer design, significantly better camera, bigger display/less bezel, etc.).
But at the end of the day it is not a flagship. The processor is slower than the 920 for most of my uses (may be different if you play more games), the screen quality/resolution is lower, the build quality is not as good... it is exactly as advertised: an "affordable flagship" with all of the features, but at lower spec. The other issue is that it is not going to get the 'next gen' features like "Hey Cortana", or the 3D touch tech that MS is working on.
For myself at least, the only issue that my 920 has is that the GPS has lost it's mind and it refuses to narrow my position down closer than a 2 mile radius which makes navigation useless... but everything else on the device works fine and is in great shape. Unless there is some sort of crazy Black Friday deal, I think I am going to stick with the 920 until next summer when the next gen devices hit with Windows 10. It would be nice to have GPS again from time to time, but I would rather muddle through with GPS-less maps which still work and buy one high-end device later rather than a midrange device now and a high-end device in 6 months.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Since Windows Phone like most Android devices normally gets updates from the carriers...which is to say, they don't get updates- I'm wondering if we should all be running Windows Phone in developer mode is it gets timely updates. I have my 928 set like that and it's gotten probably 4 updates since 8.1, BUT it hasn't gotten any updates to the Nokia specific software yet.Still...I assume that means I'm getting security issues fixed.
(For that matter, I have no idea why my Nexus 7 tablet always takes months to get OS updates...)
synaesthetic - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
The reason your N7 takes so long to get updates is because that much time actually passes between Android version updates. Google has placed most of their functionality into Google Apps and the "Google Play Services" app, a move both intended to strengthen their ecosystem and fight device fragmentation.The OS itself only gets updated for major changes to low-level OS components, or when a new mainline version of Android is released.
Wolfpup - Wednesday, January 28, 2015 - link
No, what I mean is that after an Android update is supposedly released, and other Nexus devices are getting updates, my Nexus 7 takes MONTHS to get them. It was supposedly updated in November, for example, and STILL hasn't been updated.Busterjonez - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I believe that your 2G/3G web browsing battery life is missing the iPhone 6. Since many people don't live in an area where LTE is constantly available, it is suspect to omit this information.My guess is that the battery life for an iPhone 6 2G / 3G browsing session is bad to very bad, and you have left them off the charts to obfuscate this.
Brett Howse - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I didn't compare the iPhone 6 in any chart since it's not in the same price range. As for 2G/3G for the iPhone 6 in particular, I did not review that device but my suspicious is that it was due to the time crunch for that phone, since battery life testing takes the longest for any of our benchmarks.Busterjonez - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Fair point about the 6, I hadn't noticed it's absence on the other tests.Why include an iPhone 5s / 5c in the WiFi battery test, but not in the 2G / 3G battery test?
Brett Howse - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
The iPhones are not in bench for the 2G/3G battery life is the only reason they were not included. They were only tested as LTE:http://anandtech.com/bench/PhoneTablet14/989
The iPhone 5 was the last one tested for 2G/3G and it isn't sold anymore so I did not include it in my charts.
TheFlyingSquirrel - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Looks like a good phone that is priced way above its price range. You can buy a HTC Desire 820 of expansys or Newegg now for around $360-380 about the same price you can find a Lumia 830.I would bet that the Nokia would have a better camera but if you're just looking at numbers the HTC has the 13mp rear camera vs the 10mp Nokia. Has a 8mp front camera vs the .9mp Nokia.
Snapdragon 615 vs the Snapdragon 400. 2GB LPDDR3 vs the 1GB LPDDR2 Nokia. Depending on what floats your boat 5.5" display vs 5" Nokia. Both are 1280x720 16GB storage and microSD support. I think it would be hard on salesmen to pitch coupled with the poorly supported Windows Phone app store.