Features of Microsoft Lumia 830 (Smartphone)

Microsoft Lumia 830

Available in orange, green, white, or black, the Lumia 830 is every inch the Nokia Windows Phone. Its colourful backside is a thin plastic detachable cover, which gives you access to the battery, SIM and microSD card slot. Unfortunately, because it is so thin, it feels cheap and plasticky when you are attempting to remove- and reattach it, and sometimes it doesn’t click in perfectly. It’s a dismal touch in an otherwise well-built device. The loudspeaker grill sits at the bottom of this panel.

Around the sides is a thick, metallic silver rim. On the right-hand side is volume rocker, on/off switch and a hardware camera button. At the top is a 3.5mm jack and the USB charging port. The silver look is okay, but we found it picked up a few marks after just a few days.

At 139.4x70.7x8.5mm, the Lumia 830 couldn’t be described as small. It is chunky and thick, but not entirely in a bad way. It’s relatively easy to use with one hand, and not uncomfortable to hold for lengthy periods. We weighed the Lumia 830 at 150g. There is no hardware home-, back- or search button, but permanent touchpoints beneath the display work well. The bezels around the display are pretty small, but the black glass front itself is surrounded by a thin silver strip, meaning that you get a lot of phone for a relatively small big-phone screen.

Display

The 5in IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen boasts 16m colours, and is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 for super toughness. With a resolution of 720x1280 pixels, the Lumia 830 has a 294ppi pixel density. While a QuadHD display would be nice, the Lumia 830’s screen makes photos look good. It works well with the bright colours of Windows Phone 8.1, too.

Microsoft’s smartphone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU. This now familiar quad-core chip is an ARM Cortex-A7, and runs at 1.2GHz. Onboard Adreno 305 graphics take care of the visuals. You get 1GB RAM. These specifications are fine, although they only match those of the much cheaper Lumia 630. In general, we found performance to be okay without sparkling. At least that was the case for low-load actions. This is a mid-range handset at a midrange price, after all.

In general things are responsive with no noticeable lag – as we have come to expect from Windows Phones. This wasn’t born out by the SunSpider JavaScript browser test, however, which completed in an exceptionally poor average time of 2540ms. To put that into context, we got 1486ms from the Lumia 630. Don’t expect zippy web browsing or general navigation under load.

Less disappointing are the connectivity options. The 830 is a GPRS, EDGE handset offering HSPA, and LTE. You get dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC. It charges and syncs via Micro- USB v2.0. It also has an FM radio, as well as an array of sensors including A-GPS, GLONASS, Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, and compass. And there is a microSD card.

The Lumia 830 comes with just one storage option: 16GB. On our test unit that left us with 10.8GB to play with out of 14GB available in total, which isn’t enough for any serious smartphone user. Fortunately, there’s a microSD slot, via which you can add up to 128GB.

Cameras

Windows Phones from the former Nokia label are expected to come with good cameras. In the case of the Lumia 830, it’s PureView branded, which means it should be good. You get Carl Zeiss optics, optical image stabilisation, autofocus and LED flash, so things look good feature wise. Yet the main camera is a 10Mp 1/3.4in sensor that captures up to 3520x2640 pixels, making it pretty low-rent for the PureView branding. Perhaps the image stabilisation and LED flash got it the branding. Around the front is a 0.9Mp selfie camera, that can grab 720p video.

In use we found the main camera did a good job on a well-lit scenes, with reasonable detail and colour balance. It struggles a little in low light, picking up a bit of noise. It’s by no means a great camera, but it’s acceptable. Certainly not bad for a mid-range smartphone.

The Lumia comes with a removable lithium-lion 2200mAh battery (BV-L4A), offering just over 7Wh. Over the course of a few days we found we could squeeze out up to 14 hours of heavy use from the device. It charges pretty quickly, too. And this handset offers Qi wireless charging straight out of the box.

The phone comes with Windows Phone 8.1 – the latest version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system. If you haven’t used Windows Phone before, don’t be afraid – it is a simple-to-use and feature rich OS that’s as secure and locked down as iOS. There are relatively few apps in the app store, but these days you can find most of the things you need for Windows Phone.

You get Cortana, too. Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to Siri and the firm says it’s the first ‘true personal assistant on a phone’.

Verdict

There’s nothing shockingly wrong with the Lumia 830, but better value can be found by dropping down to the Lumia 630, but if you want a 5in Windows phone this is a decent option.

Specifications:

1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU;
1GB RAM;
16GB storage;
microSD card slot;
5in IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen (294ppi);
GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, Micro-USB v2.0, FM radio, A-GPS, GLONASS, Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass;
139.4x70.7x8.5mm;
150g