Nokia Lumia Updates - New High End, New Markets
by Brett Howse on April 3, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Mobile
- Lumia
- windows phone 8
During the day 1 keynote at the Microsoft BUILD developer’s conference, Stephen Elop took the stage to announce some new Nokia Lumia phones with Windows Phone 8.1.
First up was the new Lumia 930. The Lumia 930 is a 5” 1080p phone, with a 20 Megapixel PureView camera with OIS, Snapdragon 800 2.2 GHz SoC, 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, and Qi wireless charging. This new phone is actually the recently released Lumia Icon rebranded, and pre-loaded with Windows Phone 8.1. Availability of the device is going to start with Europe in June, and move out from there. The announced price point is $599 USD off contract. This phone doesn’t look like it will be launched in the USA anytime soon, since Verizon has an exclusive arrangement with Nokia for the rebranded Icon.
| New Lumia Comparison | |||
| Nokia Lumia 930 | Nokia Lumia 630 | Nokia Lumia 635 | |
| SoC | 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 (Quad Core Krait) | 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 (Quad Core Cortex-A7) | 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 (Quad Core Cortex-A7) |
| RAM | 2GB | 512MB | 512MB |
| NAND | 32GB NAND | 8GB NAND with microSD slot | 8GB NAND with microSD slot |
| Screen | 5" 1920x1080 | 4.5" 854x480 | 4.5" 854x480 |
| Network | 2G/3G/4G LTE | 2G/3G (Dual-Sim Optional) | 2G/3G/4G LTE |
| Price | N/A in North America | $159/$169 | $189 |
Windows Phone has been much more successful with the lower end of the market, and to serve this market, Elop announced the Lumia 630, and 635.
Spec wise, the 630 is decidedly low end, 4.5” 854 x 480 smartphone. It comes with a Snapdragon 400 1.2 GHz quad core SoC, 512 MB of RAM, and 8 GB of onboard storage, and no LTE support. Even though the storage is low, it does support MicroSD cards, and Windows Phone 8.1 looks like it will have even better support for expandable storage than Windows Phone 8 did, so the small storage should not cause too many issues. The low 512 MB of RAM will restrict the apps that can run on the device, just as it does for current devices with the same memory.
A new feature to Windows Phone for the 630 is Dual SIM support. Although not used much in North America, it is popular in many countries and will open this low cost device up to those markets. Dual SIM looks fairly well done, with different color tiles for different SIMs if you want, or you can link the tiles for both SIMs together much like the linked inbox. Dialing can be set per contact as to which SIM you want to use as well.
The 635 is identical to the 630 in every way, other than LTE support (bands 3, 7, and 20).
Also discussed is a new “Sensor Core” which, like many phones being announced recently, is a way to track movement for health and fitness apps.
The 630 and 635 will be the first Windows Phone 8.1 devices sold, and will go on sale in May in Asia, moving across India and Europe with North American availability beginning in July.
Prices are starting at $159 for a single SIM 630, moving up a staggering $10 to $169 for the dual SIM version. The 635 with LTE has a MSRP of $189. Local subsidies may apply, so we’ll have to see how the actual street price lands.
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drwhoglius - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
If I'm not mistaken, the 630/635 are the first Windows Phones not running on Qualcomm Krait corescmikeh2 - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
In a while yes but the earliest devices were all running Scorpion cores. These should be the first WP8 phones with non-Krait based CPU though.Rocket321 - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
The 930 looks nice, but I wish it was price competitive with the Nexus 5 at $399.The 630 looses to the Moto G in both display and pricing, while the 635 does bring LTE to the table which makes it interesting.
Braumin - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
Yes but the Moto G doesn't have SD support, which is pretty important when the onboard storage is so low like on these phones. At least the Moto G can have optional 16 GB of storage but that's really not much.doubledeej - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
The typical street price of an unlocked Moto G is $199, higher than the MSRP of the 630 or 635. Locked Moto Gs are cheaper, but the 630/635 will be too.The 630/635 is Nokia's replacement for the 520/521/525. Today in the US the 520 and 521 (locked to AT&T or T-Mobile) are about $50-$65 street price. I'd guess the 635 won't be a lot more than that.
mczak - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
The problem with the 630 being successor of 520 is that it looks quite overpriced to me, since the 520 was 99$ MSRP and the 630 is 159$. And what exactly justifies the higher price? You get all the same low storage, seemingly even same sensors (missing compass among others, though it's possible the specs are incomplete), camera (but no front camera) etc. You do get a larger screen (with nearly the same resolution) at the cost of size and weight. The SoC isn't really any faster neither, they even have the same gpu (adreno 305), the old one had two Krait cpu cores, the new one has 4 Cortex-A7 (per core they should actually be roughly equally fast, Krait is faster per clock but the new chip has 20% higher clock) - sure that's two cores more but two cores at higher frequency (which btw you can also get in the form of a Snapdragon 400) would have been much more useful.Now don't get me wrong the value still doesn't look too bad with the 630 compared to competition (in terms of hw), but it can't match the 520 in that area.
The only thing this really seems to offer over the 520 (well apart from the larger screen which you might or might not like due to increased size/weight) is a larger battery, with increased standby time. That's definitely a welcome update, but imho doesn't justify a 60% price increase.
Braumin - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
The $99 520 is one locked to a carrier, so it does have some subsidies, or else it's a sale price.Either way, MSRP and what the street price will be are not necessarily the same thing.
lmcd - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
One can buy an unlocked international 520 for $130 online pretty consistently.mczak - Friday, April 4, 2014 - link
Oh I think you are right, I thought the 520 really had a much cheaper MSRP. So if it sells for the same price in the end (the 520 you could get with very good deals with prepaid cards for instance everywhere, and the unlocked version was pretty cheap too) the 630 should be ok too. Though I'd still wish they'd have added a little something (say, 1GB of memory, or a compass, or a front facing camera, or whatever), mostly the same for the same price one year later still isn't too great.MrSpadge - Thursday, April 3, 2014 - link
Snapdragon 800 - isn't this massively more powerful than the previous offerings? It would be really interesting to see the 1020 updated to a newer SoC as well.