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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Daniel Egger - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Well, I called it months ago that this phone is in many ways inferior to its predecessor. Would have been nice to include the benchmarks for the 820 but I already have a good idea on how that would compare.@Microsoft, sign me up for the next phone with a <5" OLED display that is run by something else than those measly entry level Cortex A7s, no problem if it's "just" a dual-core...
BedfordTim - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Add me to the list too. Changing to a smaller phone was a revelation and I don't want to go back to carting a tablet around all the time.LittleB69 - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Been waiting for a new flagship model with Glance support from Microsoft. It has not arrived yet so I am sticking with my 920. Actually I have been thinking about going back to Android. Moved from Apple to HTC (Android) and from Android to Windows Phone. Was pretty happy as an Android user. After being without my WP for less than a week and using a S4.. I am staying on WP for sure :-)Gunbuster - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I'm in pretty much the same boat. Waiting for an upper end SOC, Qi charging, Glance, and Hey Cortana, and a good camera. How hard is it to just check all the boxes.P.S. they need to figure out cross carrier WiFi calling and then just sell it unlocked through the Microsoft store supporting ATT and T-Mobile.
tolgerias - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
As the owner of a Lumia 920 I am very interested in this phone. I know it's not a flagship, but I love the design and I prefer the 5" screen even though it is only 720p. If I could find this phone for $300 off contract I would buy it instantly, so I'll keep an eye out for it. There are a few things that would be an upgrade for me:1. 5" vs 4.5" screen
2. Sensor Core
3. Thinner and lighter design
4. Newer SoC
Last year I bought an iPhone 5s on my contract renewal, but even though I like iOS 8, I find myself going back to my 920 most of the time. I just love the amount of information WP 8.1 provides me at a glance. Live tiles, glance screen, and wireless charging are absolutely brilliant and always miss them when I am on a phone that doesn't have them.
So I'll stick with my 920 for now and will either jump on an 830 if the price is right, or I'll wait for the next true flagship to appear in 2015.
MarcSP - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I know Anandtech is known for its extensive benchmarking, but I think the performance section should include also a subjective assessment of the performance during "normal" use. Just looking at the numbers someone could understand that the device lags badly or even that the user experience must be quite frustrating. None of the reviews on other sites said so, on the contrary, they praised the general fluidity of the system except in a few high end games or very specific CPU/GPU intensive apps.cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
+830Brett Howse - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Hi. I wanted to address this comment because it's important.I did mention this in the performance section: "Microsoft has done a great job with the UI and animations of Windows Phone to make them fast and without the jitter of some platforms, even on low end hardware. But that does not help in-app performance, nor the app loading times."
Windows Phone has been fluid since practically day 1. They really nailed that part. But it is all of the other areas where the performance is a let down. You just see a lot more "Resuming..." screens on a device like the 830 than a much more powerful system like the 930. Opening apps can take far longer.
Performance is important even if the UI is smooth. There seems to be a common misconception that due to the OS being well designed for a smooth UI, the performance is not as important but really that's never the case.
I can give the Lumia 630 a pass by having Snapdragon 400 - that phone is now selling outright for under $100 in some places. I get it. But a device like the Lumia 830 has that same SoC yet costs 3-4 times more money than the Lumia 630. It needs to have something better. I mentioned Snapdragon 600 because the quad-core Krait is quite a bit more powerful even if it likely isn't the perfect choice due to no integrated baseband, but the OnePlus One comes with Snapdragon 801 for $299. For the price range the 830 came in at, it needs to be quicker.
So yes, it's fluid when using the OS, but once you get past the OS and launch an app, it's not as good as it needs to be for this price range.
cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Please don't bring Cyanogen phones in compartion.830 is obviously not for extreme spec and adrenaline seekers.
Do you have any tests on hands to post FAR longer times?
There were no such evidences between last gen 520 and 920.
S600 is not just "is'n perfect", it is largely outdated power-hungry SoC with no Sensor Core support (which you completely missed in the review).
Basically even you can not provide the name of hypothetical "better soc for 830" so I don't understand where all those complains are coming from.
Brett Howse - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Snapdragon 800. There you go.