Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
The Lumia 830 was launched by Microsoft at the IFA trade show in September. As seems to be the norm for most Nokia phones, it has taken a short while for announced phones to be generally available, but the Lumia 830 can now be found in many markets. When it was announced in September, it was marketed as an “affordable flagship” and we will take a look and see how it lives up to that kind of marketing. But marketing phrases aside, what we are left with is one of the best Nokia phones launched this year.
Unfortunately for fans of Nokia phones, there has not been a real flagship phone announced since the Lumia Icon/930 which came back in February. We did review that phone, and while it was quick and had a nice 20 MP camera, the battery life was subpar and it felt very thick and dense to carry around. It lacked Nokia’s Glance display, which is a big downside when coming from previous Nokia phones that support it.
The Lumia 830 is not going to fill a gap here as far as performance, which is a shame. The Lumia 830 shares the same SoC – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 – as the Lumia 630, 635, 730, and 735. There is no substitute for performance, and the quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.2 Ghz is not the quickest chip around. In the Lumia 630 review, I found the quad-core A7 design slightly slower than the dual-core Krait of last year’s Snapdragon S4 Pro in pretty much all benchmarks. It is a shame due to the marketing and price of the Lumia 830 that it did not jump up to at least the Snapdragon 600. With that SoC, perhaps the moniker of “affordable flagship” could have held up.
Let us take a look at what makes up the Lumia 830.
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| SoC | MSM8926 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 |
| RAM/NAND | 1 GB LPDDR2, 16 GB NAND + microSD 128 GB |
| Display | 5.0” 1280x720 IPS ClearBlack LCD Corning Gorilla Glass 3 |
| Network | GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA/LTE up to 150 Mbps |
| Dimensions | 139.4 x 70.7 x 8.5 (mm) |
| Weight | 150 grams |
| Rear Camera | 10MP, 1.1 µm pixels, 1/3.4" 16x9 CMOS, f/2.2, 26 mm focal length, LED Flash |
| Front Camera | 0.9MP wide angle, f/2.4, 1280x720 video resolution |
| Battery | BV-L4A 2200 mAh, 3.8 V, 7.04 Wh |
| OS | Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim Firmware |
| Connectivity | 802.11 a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, DLNA, FM Radio |
| Location Technologies | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou |
| SIM Size | Nano SIM |
As you can see, we have pretty standard fare for a Lumia phone launched this year. The previously mentioned Snapdragon 400 is paired with 1 GB of memory, and 16 GB of internal NAND. The Lumia 830 supports microSD card expansion up to an additional 128 GB. With the Windows Phone Storage Sense app, storage should not be an issue - Windows Phone has moved from having practically zero support for microSD to now having the best support of all of the mobile operating systems.
A big part of any smartphone experience is the design of the phone, and Nokia (now Microsoft of course) has crafted one of their best experiences yet.
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cheshirster - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
Yes. S800 is the only candidate and it is to pricey for the segment whrere 830 is going to play.And S800 with 2200mah battery... Don't think it would be a good deal?
cheshirster - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
Why no cyanogen? O P O comment section pretty covers it.http://www.anandtech.com/comments/8242/the-oneplus...
StrangerGuy - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
$400? Even at *mere* $200 that must be some really strong crack Nokia is smoking in a market filled with non-contract $180 Moto Gs and $150 Redmi Notes.cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Keep calm and bing galaxy A3 prices.tuxRoller - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Is that Nexus 9 article still happening, or was the preview really the review?Laxaa - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
It's great to see that WinPhone finally is getting the attention it deserves on this site! Keep up the good work.As for the device, it's one of those "this one had potential". I am disappointed by the lack of a true holiday flagship to replace my 920(which still works fine, btw) and it's kind of worrysome that there won't be one coming out anythime soon. The 830 has a lot of features that I want(slim design, better audio capture, SD-card support) but the SOC just doesn't cut it for me. If it was a notch faster, I would have jumped and used it as a stop-gap phone for the next couple of years.
(The 930 is not interessting to me because ot the mediocre battery life and the low internal storage)
Klimax - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Good review and quite matches my experience.I'd have small suggestion: Game "Total Defense" could be used as general gauge how well 3D games will work on WP8.x and W8.x devices. Although it doesn't have FPS meter, it is very visible if game doesn't run fast enough including touch input. (+ main menu itself can provide hint how it will work)
Myrandex - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link
The 10MP Pureview camera isn't the smallest pureview camera. The Lumia 920's 8.7MP camera was the first Nokia Pureview windows phone camera and honestly I have been impressed by that camera many times. So people commenting about how this 10MP doesn't deserve the name I feel doesn't know what they are talking about, as that 8.7MP one has taken numerous nice shots in multiple shooting conditions for me.kspirit - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
I believe they were talking about the sensor size, which is far more important. Not the raw MP count.Laxaa - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
They were. The 920 sensor is also larger than the 830 sensor(1/3.2" vs 1/3.4")