Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
The Lumia 830 was launched by Microsoft at the IFA trade show in September. As seems to be the norm for most Nokia phones, it has taken a short while for announced phones to be generally available, but the Lumia 830 can now be found in many markets. When it was announced in September, it was marketed as an “affordable flagship” and we will take a look and see how it lives up to that kind of marketing. But marketing phrases aside, what we are left with is one of the best Nokia phones launched this year.
Unfortunately for fans of Nokia phones, there has not been a real flagship phone announced since the Lumia Icon/930 which came back in February. We did review that phone, and while it was quick and had a nice 20 MP camera, the battery life was subpar and it felt very thick and dense to carry around. It lacked Nokia’s Glance display, which is a big downside when coming from previous Nokia phones that support it.
The Lumia 830 is not going to fill a gap here as far as performance, which is a shame. The Lumia 830 shares the same SoC – the Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 – as the Lumia 630, 635, 730, and 735. There is no substitute for performance, and the quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.2 Ghz is not the quickest chip around. In the Lumia 630 review, I found the quad-core A7 design slightly slower than the dual-core Krait of last year’s Snapdragon S4 Pro in pretty much all benchmarks. It is a shame due to the marketing and price of the Lumia 830 that it did not jump up to at least the Snapdragon 600. With that SoC, perhaps the moniker of “affordable flagship” could have held up.
Let us take a look at what makes up the Lumia 830.
| Nokia Lumia 830 | |
| SoC | MSM8926 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400 |
| RAM/NAND | 1 GB LPDDR2, 16 GB NAND + microSD 128 GB |
| Display | 5.0” 1280x720 IPS ClearBlack LCD Corning Gorilla Glass 3 |
| Network | GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA/LTE up to 150 Mbps |
| Dimensions | 139.4 x 70.7 x 8.5 (mm) |
| Weight | 150 grams |
| Rear Camera | 10MP, 1.1 µm pixels, 1/3.4" 16x9 CMOS, f/2.2, 26 mm focal length, LED Flash |
| Front Camera | 0.9MP wide angle, f/2.4, 1280x720 video resolution |
| Battery | BV-L4A 2200 mAh, 3.8 V, 7.04 Wh |
| OS | Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim Firmware |
| Connectivity | 802.11 a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, DLNA, FM Radio |
| Location Technologies | Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou |
| SIM Size | Nano SIM |
As you can see, we have pretty standard fare for a Lumia phone launched this year. The previously mentioned Snapdragon 400 is paired with 1 GB of memory, and 16 GB of internal NAND. The Lumia 830 supports microSD card expansion up to an additional 128 GB. With the Windows Phone Storage Sense app, storage should not be an issue - Windows Phone has moved from having practically zero support for microSD to now having the best support of all of the mobile operating systems.
A big part of any smartphone experience is the design of the phone, and Nokia (now Microsoft of course) has crafted one of their best experiences yet.
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cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
"Lumia 830 that it did not jump up to at least the Snapdragon 600"Do you really understand what Snap 600 is?
It is good they don't use it here.
cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
"Snapdragon 600 for sure seems like it would have been a perfect fit "again, NO
Brett Howse - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
They (Nokia/Microsoft) don't seem prepared to move to 610 yet, although the 800 would of course be a better chip with integrated baseband. Just anything better than 400 at this price range is needed.cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
What "anything" exactly?Laxaa - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
They should have shipped it with a downclocked S800. When the 820 was released alongside the 920, the hardware was pretty much the same, aside from the lower res screen and the lack of OIS on the camera.cheshirster - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
And I had that 820.1650mah + top hardware is not really a good choise.
Yes, it could run games and tests but with violent battery discharge rates at 40%-50% per hour.
S800 + 2200mah would be the same sad story.
I think L830 is perfectly balanced for non-gamers, basically for every grown up user.
Laxaa - Sunday, November 30, 2014 - link
I guess I can agree with that. Still, I wish it was a step up from the 630 and 730.I tried one yesterday at my local store and it feels really good in the hand. They've done great job with the body and I'm excited to see where they go from here. Hopefully the 940 will build on that template.
cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
Galaxy A3 is the phone that beats price records for S400 hardware.L830, that is priced right on most markets.
jasont78 - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
curious in alot (most) of the graphs iphones are at the top of the stack but at the same time alot of the phones that are in some graphs say lumia 930 are omitted. seems to me like iphones are getting propped up once again to look like the best shiz on the market. if you are going to run graphs keep the stacks fair and truthful and use the same phones in all of them or your just cheating the public and helping the apple marketing department which by the they dont need the help.Brett Howse - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
The only graphs that don't have the 930 are the Basemark X 1.1 graphs since the benchmark would not run on the 930.