For those who prefer affordable smartphones and not Android OS models, Nokia Lumia 520 is that smartphones for them. The Nokia Lumia 520 is Nokia’s fifth Windows Phone 8 handset.
The Nokia Lumia 520 has a fairly generous 4-inch, 480 x 800 display and is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and 512MB of RAM
Like all the Lumia range, 520’s beautiful windows Phone 8 tiles greet you on the 4 inch WVGA screen. The smooth cover has buttons on the side for powering up, volume and camera. At the top the phone has a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro USB port can be seen at the bottom of the device.
On the back is 5MP camera near the top, the materials great and nice to touch. The phone has no flashlight or front facing camera and no FM radio.
The phone’s camera can capture video in up to 720p though the lens is not of the Carl Zeiss as compared to higher end Lumia devices.
The phone has a Super Sensitive Touch technology just like Lumia 920 and 820 handsets and users in cold weather you can use your gloves on the touch screen.
The camera is good for daylight use both indoors and outdoors but as it get darker it becomes harder to take clearer photos as the phone has no flash.
OS
Running on Windows Phone 8, the pre-arranged touch sensitive live tiles show the homescreen, swiping takes one to the app menu. During the period I used the phone, it never hang on me. I only hated having to have a Microsoft account to dig deeper into the apps and though its a small thing, many users find it manipulative.
Away with the OS, Nokia’s HERE Maps family is great and more accurate than some of the present mapping services in the industry. Having a team on ground doing the mapping pays. HERE Drive and HERE city lens are great for having the whole city in at your fingertips and your car trip turns out to be fun letting them do the ‘thinking’.
Performance
Windows Phone 8 is a well optimized mobile operating systems and also light but the phones 512MB of RAM limits its performance especially for games. However, you can most games with it, depending on the remaining storage you have.
Battery Life
On call time the 1430 mAh battery could run for ten hours maximum use, that’s a whole day of work. On 3G, the battery lasts slightly over 6.5. For best results, users need to carry an extra battery just in case it goes off at 4 or 5PM just before you leave office and want to meet friends for an evening chat.
Connectivity & Call Quality
The phones vibration is not so great, to avoid missing your calls you need to put both ringer tunes and vibration on, actually the 520 sucks on sound and call quality. I missed a number of calls and had to call back with excuses. Its speakers didn’t work so well for me. I hate straining to hear someone from the other end, so at times I preferred text, whenever sound was low-this happens when you are in a busy and loud area, like on the road on a busy street.
It’s signal strength was fine. It connects to WiFi so well and also allows Bluetooth file sharing.
The Lumia 520 is affordable at around. It is a clutter free smartphone with an ecosystem with less apps, only essential ones.
Pros
• Decent camera for a phone
• Fairly fast when sane
• Its durable
• Affordable
• Large, wide screen
Cons
• No front-facing camera
• Average battery life
• 512MB RAM
• No NFC
• Beats the Huawei Ascend W1, the Huawei Ascend G330 and the Orange San Diego.
That means a decent saving for those who don’t mind committing to a network. It’s a little cheaper than the Huawei Ascend W1 too.
at a fairly sleek 9.9mm and 124g. At 119.9 x 64mm it is longer
The front of the Nokia Lumia 520 is mostly screen as you’d expect and at 4-inches it’s a decent size for a low-price handset. The pixel density of 233 pixels per inch also isn’t bad at all for the money you’re paying – sure it’s dwarfed by the likes of the 469 ppi HTC One, but it’s also many times cheaper.
Unlike some handsets, the screen here isn’t edge-to-edge: there’s a black border running the entire way around it. At the sides this border is fairly narrow, but it becomes quite wide at the top to make room for the earpiece and a Nokia logo. It’s even wider at the bottom, because that’s where you’ll find the start, back and search softkeys.
The back of the handset is almost featureless, with just a small Nokia logo in the centre, the 5-megapixel camera lens near the top and a tiny loudspeaker near the bottom. The left edge is devoid of any features, ports or buttons at all.
The top is home only to a 3.5mm headphone port on the left hand side. The bottom edge has a micro USB port in the centre, which is used for charging or connecting the Nokia Lumia 520 to a computer.
The back cover is easy to remove – you simply use your nails to peel it away at each corner. The cover itself feels reasonably sturdy, so we don’t see it snapping even if you take it on and off a lot.
Once that has been removed, you’ll have access to the 1430 mAh battery (which interestingly is bigger than the 1300 mAh battery found in the Nokia Lumia 620).
Underneath the battery there are two slots – one for a micro SIM card and one for a microSD card. The Nokia Lumia 520 supports up to 64GB cards, which comes in very handy for bulking up the storage from the fairly limiting 8GB of onboard memory.
Key Features
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4, Dual-core 1 GHz
RAM: 512 MB
Mass memory: 8 GB Expandable MicroSD up to 64 GB and free cloud storage of 7 GB
Camera: 5 MP but not Carl Zeiss Tessar lens and has no flash
Screen size: 4”
Dimensions: 119.9 mm by 64 mm by 2: 9.9 mm
Weight: 124 g
Display resolution: WVGA (800 x 480)
SIM card type: Micro SIM
NFC: No NFC
