Windows Phone isn’t setting the world alight just yet, but it continues to show signs of promise in the cheaper end of the smartphone market. Microsoft knows this. It’s why the first Windows Phone 8.1 device is a low-end Lumia 630. With Windows Phone still struggling to make a significant dent in a market full of Android handsets and iPhones, the Lumia 630 and Lumia 930 are the first handsets designed to showcase the new 8.1 update — an update that could improve things. This is even more important now that Microsoft plans to drop Nokia’s feature phones and focus solely on Windows Phone.
They might be Nokia-branded, but both represent Microsoft’s attempt to capture both the high end and low end of the smartphone market. Nokia’s low-cost Lumia 520 was a huge success for Windows Phone, helping push its market share above BlackBerry, and Microsoft is clearly trying to replicate that once more with the Lumia 630. The Lumia 930 is Microsoft’s fresh attempt to take on Samsung’s Galaxy S5 or Apple’s iPhone 5S: it has the best hardware specs Windows Phone has to offer. These phones are the strategy going forward — Microsoft’s Stephen Elop even outlined the company’s focus on securing both ends of the smartphone market with Windows Phone. But can Windows Phone take over the world?
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Windows Phone has grown up a lot recently. The 8.1 update finally brought a notification center, plus the Siri-rivaling Cortana digital assistant. The Lumia 630 takes full advantage of the improvements: it’s the first handset to feature on-screen Windows Phone buttons, and it also ditches the typical physical camera button at the side. Both changes are designed to reduce the overall cost of manufacturing, but they also create a clean-looking device.
The Lumia 630 is thin and light, with a colorful rear that blends into the front of the device. Thanks to some slanting edges, it’s actually rather comfortable to hold. It’s simple and attractive, with a look that could easily be confused with an iPhone 5C thanks to the rear polycarbonate casing and good build quality. In many ways, the Lumia 630 is an intriguing handset for the cost-conscious smartphone buyer, and it’s likely to be significant to Windows Phone’s future thanks to its $159 price. The Lumia 520’s pricing was the main driving force behind its popularity, and the Lumia 630 is a key part of Microsoft’s plans to grow Windows Phone.
With that price comes a few compromises though, chiefly in specifications. You might want to grab a microSD card for the Lumia 630 — it only comes with 8GB of storage, and that could soon fill up if you download a few offline maps, some games, and start to store photos and music on the handset.
It also only has 512MB of RAM. This isn’t usually an issue for Windows Phone itself, but a number of games require 1GB, and most new titles debut with this requirement before being reworked to support the lower spec. It’s irritating if a game isn’t available, but thankfully it’s not as common as it used to be. The Lumia 630 also ships with a slower processor than the one found in the Lumia 930, but for the most part it’s hardly noticeable. Windows Phone has always done a great job at catering for low-end specs and keeping the interface and apps smooth. Aside from the occasional "resuming" screen when multitasking, I had no real complaints with the performance of the Lumia 630.
WINDOWS PHONE 8.1 IS A GREAT IMPROVEMENT
The Lumia 630 and Windows Phone 8.1 really go a step further to improve the features and functionality of Microsoft’s inexpensive mobile offering. On-screen buttons are new on the Lumia 630 (and Microsoft’s just-announced Lumia 530), and while they don’t light up individually like their capacitive counterparts, they’re pretty identical in function. You can even have the buttons take the Windows Phone accent color, stay black, or match the background of any apps you’re using. If this slight compromise means Windows Phones get cheaper, or Android manufacturers can easily bring their designs across, then there’s not a whole lot to worry about here. Windows Phone just works the same.
The 8.1 update also brings the Cortana digital assistant that attempts to organize your life, and a notification center too. The Action Center notification hub is one of the much-needed improvements, and it now lets you customize notifications from apps in a much more granular way so you don’t miss those pesky toasts and have them disappear forever. The new swipeable Word Flow keyboard is surprisingly good, too. Other improvements in Windows Phone 8.1 include the ability to show more of the unique Live Tiles for apps on the home screen, and a customization option that displays an image over the Tiles
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The biggest complaint about Windows Phone is also an old one: the apps. Microsoft’s ecosystem is solid with OneDrive, Office Mobile, Xbox Music, and the built-in apps on Windows Phone, but the third-party offerings are still severely lacking. During the World Cup there was no official FIFA app, no ESPN app, and the official Twitter app wasn’t updated to support the country hashtags or a mini World Cup section. I felt left out of following soccer matches using the Lumia 630 or Lumia 930. Sure, there are alternatives like Bing Sports, but it’s a step behind the iOS and Android competition. And when I wanted to share a World Cup goal celebration video to Instagram, even the official app doesn’t support video yet. It’s a problem that’s replicated across the Windows Phone Store: even if you find an official app, it nearly always lags behind what’s available on iOS and Android. Microsoft has worked hard to lower the app gap, but it still has a long way to go.
MICROSOFT HAS WORKED HARD TO LOWER THE APP GAP, BUT IT STILL HAS A LONG WAY TO GO
While the app situation is a compromise for any Windows Phone, the Lumia 630 also comes with a few of its own. Its 4.5-inch display has a low 854 x 480 resolution, which is adapted to accommodate the new on-screen buttons. Viewing angles aren’t great, nor are the colors — blacks always look a little washed out. You can forgive these based on the price, but one part of the display I can’t get over is the lack of an ambient light sensor for automatic screen-brightness adjustment. It’s particularly painful in sunlight: you have to constantly adjust using low, medium, or high brightness settings. (Microsoft has pinned the setting in the Action Center, at least, so it’s quicker to switch between the three levels.) In 2014, this is unforgivable even for a low-end smartphone, especially when the Nokia X2 (an equally low-end model) ships with automatic brightness.
There’s no forward-facing camera, either, another feature the Nokia X2 also includes. If you were hoping to jump on the selfie bandwagon or video call with Skype, then tough luck with the Lumia 630. At least the rear-facing 5-megapixel camera is fairly reasonable: it’s impossible to compare to the Lumia 930’s 20-megapixel version, but in daylight the Lumia 630 performs well. It lacks any type of flash though, so you have to rely on its low-light capabilities for night-time photography — and it mostly performs well. It’s obviously no Lumia 930, but it gets the job done.
At the high end of the Windows Phone 8.1 offerings is the Lumia 930. It’s the complete opposite to the Lumia 630 in terms of screen, cameras, and specifications. While the aluminum body shows it’s the more premium of the pair, I found it’s a little too chunky and heavy. It’s a carbon copy of Nokia’s Lumia Icon, released earlier this year, apart from the addition of some vibrant orange and green colors at the rear. If you want the best Windows Phone, then there’s no real competition right now unless you want a 6-inch Lumia 1520, but the design of the Lumia 930 a little uninspired. The slightly rounded edges and sharp rectangular look and feel doesn’t really come off great when you’re holding the phone. It’s a shame because a 5-inch version of the Lumia 1520 design would be ideal for the Lumia 930.
Even though it’s not the prettiest Windows Phone, the Lumia 930 has some good hardware specs to help keep Microsoft’s operating system ticking along. A beautiful 5-inch display uses 1080p resolution to show off Windows Phone in the best possible way. While the OLED panel over-saturates everything, you can tweak and adjust colors and brightness freely. The 20-megapixel camera on the Lumia 930 is equally as impressive: a 1/2.5-inch sensor and an f/2.4 lens combine to produce beautiful photos, and while this is no 41-megapixel Lumia 1020 you can still zoom and crop photos well. A new Living Images feature brings a neat trick of showing a few seconds of captured video before the photo was actually taken when you flick through the gallery afterwards. The biggest drawback is still the amount of time it takes to autofocus and save photos: the Lumia 930 might take superior photos to the iPhone 5S in some conditions, but speed is still king for capturing the moment.
One thing that disappoints with the Lumia 930 is battery life. I found I struggled to get a full day of usage out of the device if I used it regularly throughout the day for email, Twitter, and phone calls. The Lumia 630 appeared to be a little better during my use, but that was really dependent on what screen brightness I had selected. If I was traveling and using the phone in sunlight a lot then this impacted the battery life as I kept the high setting on throughout the whole day. On average though, the Lumia 630 lasted the day.
When you move to the high end of Windows Phone, you obviously get the speed, beautiful displays, and camera improvements, but the experience is very similar. If you place the Lumia 630 side-by-side with the Lumia 930 it might be difficult, for the average smartphone buyer, to tell which is the premium device at first glance. Microsoft has done a great job at scaling its operating system down to low-cost devices, and it’s no great surprise that the low-end Windows Phones are helping push the platform.
GOOD STUFF
- Nice and simple design
- Good performance for a low-end
- Reasonable camera
BAD STUFF
- No automatic display brightness
- Only 512MB of RAM
- No forward-facing camera
Microsoft’s first phones are designed to showcase Windows Phone 8.1, but they fall slightly short on both ends of the scale. The Lumia 630 looks and feels great for a low-end phone, but the compromises with display brightness, storage, and cameras make it hard to recommend against strong Android competition from the Moto G and Moto E. Equally, even Nokia’s own Android X2 seems to fill some of the missing gaps, so it’s puzzling why Nokia and Microsoft opted for these spec choices on the Lumia 630.
At the high end, Lumia’s 930 is nothing more than the Lumia Icon rebranded with colorful options. It’s a phone that debuted almost six months ago on Verizon, and one that’s not coming to any US carriers for now. It has competitive hardware, but the chubby and boring design just doesn’t stand up to the competition. To really showcase the vast improvements in Windows Phone 8.1, you would have expected Microsoft and Nokia to launch a truly iconic handset that’s powerful, slim, and has a great camera. The Lumia 925 mostly achieved that goal more than a year ago, and its successor should be here right now ready for Windows Phone 8.1, but sadly it’s not.
So where does this leave Windows Phone for 2014? Both of these handsets will satisfy some, but there’s too much solid competition at both the high- and low-end for either to truly succeed. The Lumia 520 capitalized on a gap in the market before Motorola was able to produce good Android handsets at low prices. If Microsoft is serious about growing Windows Phone marketshare then it might have to sacrifice some margins and provide specs that deliver a good experience even at the low end of the market. Otherwise, there’s always Samsung or an array of Android handsets for savvy shoppers to consider.
