Nokia recently launched the Lumia 625 in India, bringing its biggest
smartphone to the country. This handset also holds a lot of sentimental
value, as it is the last smartphone launched by the Finnish manufacturer
before its sale to Microsoft.
The phone matches the specs of key rivals in this segment and does
not seem to fall short in most departments, at least on paper, and comes
with a host of freebies. Let's see if the sub-Rs 20,000 segment has
found a new king, or the Lumia 625 can at best achieve a moderate
success in the market. Here's our review to check out the strengths and
weaknesses of Lumia 625 and if the phone is worth buying...
Design and hardware: Design-wise, the Lumia 625 is quite similar to
Lumia 620, though a little bigger and thinner. You get the same curved
edges and removable shells that you got with the Lumia 620, but the
thinner design adds to the overall appeal. At 4.7-inch, the screen of
Lumia 625 is obviously bigger, the largest for any Nokia smartphone in fact. The design is easy on the eyes and the build quality seems solid. However, it is a tad heavy at 159gram.
The screen of Lumia 625 dominates the front panel and happens to be
the chief selling point of the device. In fact, Nokia at the India
launch event emphasized how this handset is meant for those who love to
watch movies and videos on the big-screen phones. Much to Nokia's
disappointment, there are already several phones with bigger screens and
same resolution in the Indian market (Canvas 4 and Galaxy Grand for
instance).
While the display is supposed to be the key feature of the Lumia 625,
we were not exactly impressed by it. With 800x480p resolution and IPS
panel, it is not any different from the crop of Android smartphones we
have in the market today. Nokia has even left out its ClearBlack display
technology from the Lumia 625, which would otherwise have rendered it
with the advantage of deeper blacks. The contrast levels are low due to
the absence of this display technology, but this is a sacrifice that the
manufacturer probably had to make in order to keep manufacturing costs
to a minimum.
Incidentally, Lumia 7
20, priced lower than this handset, has this
technology and boasts of one of the best screens we have tried out in
this price range.
Other display aspects like viewing angles and sunlight legibility are
decent, giving us no problems during daily usage. The screen comes with
the super sensitive touch technology that allows users to access the
display even while they are wearing gloves; this feature is available
even in the low-priced Lumia 520 smartphone.
Cameras have always been central to Nokia's smartphone experience.
However, the company has left us disappointed with the imaging
capabilities of the Lumia 625. This phone has a 5MP camera with LED
flash on the back. The photos taken by the smartphone are quite noisy
and colours are not exactly vibrant, though they are largely accurate.
Some photos show a little softness at the edges and do not capture
enough detail.
We have seen better cameras in phones priced under Rs
20,000 and the Lumia 625 leaves us feel a little lacking in this
department at least.
Under the hood, Nokia Lumia 625 packs a 1.2GHz dual-core processor
and 512MB RAM. The phone delivers an average score of around 9000 in the
Antutu benchmark test, which is not really impressive but shows that
the phone can deliver workable performance. While many potential buyers
may cry themselves hoarse that 512MB RAM is much too less, especially
compared to the 1GB RAM that most Android phones in this segment offer,
it must be remembered that Windows Phone platform is better than Android
in resource management and very few WP8 apps at present demand 1GB RAM
for smooth functioning.
The 2,000mAh battery of the Lumia 625 is okay, giving us
approximately 14 hours of life during daily usage. This includes 4-5
hours of music playback, an hour of video playback and web browsing each
and around half an hour of gaming. 2G mobile data was turned on for at
least eight hours each day. While this seems good, moderate usage should
be able to give over a day of battery life.
For connectivity, Lumia 625 has features like 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth 4.0 and microUSB 2.0. GPS lock was fast and
the Nokia Here
maps suite is present, though it does not have as much local information
as Google Maps. Lumia 625 loses out on NFC, likely a means of keeping
costs down. This feature, though not very widely used as far as we have
heard, is present in lower-priced Lumia 720 and Lumia 620.
Verdict:
Lumia 625 is not an exceptional device by any measure (Lumia 720
certainly has an edge in most departments), even though it is not
lacking in any department. However, Lumia 625's list of freebies makes
it a smarter choice if you want a good smartphone experience without
spending over Rs 20,000. The phone has a lot of things going for it, and
is expected to improve on its shortcomings with future updates. Though
camera performance is less than stellar, it is still worth buying
considering that you get everything, namely hardware, software and the
experience, besides freebies.
What we like:
Build quality
Freebies
Battery
What we don't like:
Unremarkable display
Average camera performance
