Nokia Lumia 620 – First Impressions

The Nokia Lumia 620 is in the house! Yes, this is the good looking mid range Windows Phone 8 device that launched in India recently and has been on sale since just a few days back. We have it in our labs for extensive testing and as a precursor to our detailed review, we thought we should give you a quick hardware overview and our first impressions of the device. Are you ready? First up, the quick hardware overview, video below –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFXvVQLWTpg

For our impressions now. In short, we have to say we are quite impressed with what Nokia has done with this device. The 620 is the direct successor to the Lumia 610, which was largely underwhelming thanks to the underpowered hardware and likewise not-too-great software, but the Lumia 620 on the other hand ticks every hardware feature you mostly require and that is a huge upgrade over the measly Lumia 610. The 620 is, in every manner, unlike the Lumia 610.

The 3.8 inch WVGA screen looks great. At 3.8 inches, the PPI is not really an issue and the text seems really crisp. Unlike the 610, there are no washed out colours, and it is a clear black display now, meaning the blacks are really deep and the colours, really vibrant. It is even better than what they put on the 710, so Nokia is really going for better quality here, with this device. The viewing angles are not too bad too, but they are not too great either.

The design is curvy and the case is kinda special. The case covers whole of the device and can be completely replaced with seven coloured shells, oh and even a new rugged shell. So, that makes the novelty value of the device stay intact, at least in our opinion. The case is called a Dual Shot type case in which the outer layer is translucent plastic while the inner layer is a polycarbonate shell in the respective colour. In specific cases, there are dual coloured dual shot shells, for example the outer layer is a translucent blue while the inner layer is yellow, which makes the device look green. The dual shot presence is eminent from this picture – (notice the shadow the logo makes?)

The camera is a 5 megapixel unit, with a single LED flash and can record 720p videos. From a few samples, it mostly surprised us with the quality, but we will see how it goes in the coming days. The loudspeaker is a loud unit, with an output of about 100 dB but we are not keen on the distortion in it. Again, lets see how it goes, we are yet to test it out in full force. The internals are what makes this device much better than the abysmal ones of the Lumia 610.

There is a Qualcomm MSM8227 chip inside with a dual core 1GHz processor and 512 MB of RAM, this makes the device perform as well as the other Lumia devices but we can’t help but notice the slowness after extensively using the Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820, but nevertheless, this is extremely hard to notice. The performance although is tons better than what it used to be on the Lumia 610. There are many other hardware features packed into this device, mainly the inclusion of NFC. And there are the other usual suspects like BT with file transfer, a good VGA front facing camera(which was weirdly left out on most 7.5 phones) and overall a decent package along with all the other features included. The battery is a 1300 mAH Li-ion unit and honestly, since this is only our second day with the device, we can’t really judge.

In the end, looks like Nokia has a great value for money device in the Lumia 620. By not burning a hole in your pocket, you are now able to try or buy a Nokia device, and that’s what the Lumia 620 is all about. With the Lumia 520 and the Lumia 720 in tow, the mid range market is all set up for a fierce battle. Can Nokia manage to ward off the mid range Android competition with the Lumia 620? Wait for our full review to find out. Till then, if you have some questions about the device, do let us know in the comments section below and we will try to answer you in our detailed review.


Bharadwaj Chandramouli: Bharadwaj is a content creator who has been obsessed with technology since the early days of smartphones. He loves talking about tech, is a fan of good design and photography. You can follow him on Twitter @gadgetbuff_ to know what he's upto!
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