I have personally used multiple devices of iOS and Android, but I never experienced any WP8 device firsthand. I knew Nokia Lumia 520 as a low-cost Windows Phone device for a while, but I never realized it actually received a lot of good reviews. So I decided to choose this phone as my first step to experience Windows Phone.
Nokia Lumia 520 has 4″ screen protected by scratch resistant layer (but bot Gorilla glass). As usual, I will still put a screen protector on it. It’s powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon™ S4 (dual core 1 GHz), which is not top-of-the-class, but produce reasonable speed. The camera is 5MP, again it produces decent pictures for its price, nothing spectacular.
I love the look and feel of this device. The front screen looks elegant and doesn’t feel like a low-end device at all. The back casing is removable, with rubbery feel. I like how it looks, but I don’t like how the back-case quickly gather dust whenever I put the phone on not-so-clean surface. The battery is removable. It uses micro-SIM and can read micro SD cards up to 64GB.
With display resolution 800×480 (IPS), Lumia 520 delivers crisp display. Too bad the automatic screen brightness is too dim for my taste.
There are 4 hardware keys for this unit: volume up, volume down, power and camera. There are 3 fixed touch-buttons on the screen: back, Windows, and search. It charges using micro USB and (according to Nokia) one full charge can deliver standby time up to 390 hours.
For wireless connectivity, we have Bluetooth 4.0 + LE and Wi-Fi: WLAN IEEE 802.11 b/g/n. There is no NFC and no wireless charging.
Overall, I think Nokia has done a good job delivering hardware with this quality at this price level. But a product is not just about hardware, so I will discuss about Windows Phone 8 next.
My first impression using WP8: it looks nice and fresh. The setup process is easy, but there’s a long waiting time between the steps. Once it’s done, we can use the phone immediately.
The main menu of WP8 displays icons of apps using live tiles, or you can also call it Microsoft’s “metro”-style. Adding or removing new shortcuts is easy. I do think they should put shortcut to “Settings” app in the default screen though.
Now let’s talk about the app store. The very first thing that surprises me is the amount of third-party (non-official) apps pretending to be official apps. When I searched for Google Maps, what I got was an app created by third party developer, but using the exact name “Google Maps”, with exactly the same icon as Google Maps in iOS and Android. I am quite sure a lot of novice users will think this app is actually made by Google.
I found multiple Facebook apps created by different developers, some of them use the exact name “Facebook” and exact identical icon with the real Facebook app in iOS and Android. I mean, I don’t have problem with third party apps, but at least they should use different name and different icon to avoid misleading users into thinking it’s the official app. I saw multiple YouTube apps, all using “YouTube” name and YouTube’s real logo as icons. I know maybe they can’t control all the submitted apps, but I think they can at least have a look on their own “top free” menu and immediately they can clean up some of this mess. I feel like browsing Google Play, all messy with third-party apps pretending to be official ones using the same name and icons.
Next is browser. I found Internet Explorer browser frustrating to use because there’s a stop/refresh button and back button, but there’s no “next” button. Adding favorites and dealing with tabs are not comfortable. A friend suggested to use a third party browser called UC Browser and it is indeed a lot better than IE. I’m surprised that Chrome, Firefox and Opera are not available in this platform.
After browsing the app store for few hours, I realized that despite having a lot of apps available there, I couldn’t find many well-known apps from the official developer. Heck even Facebook app is not made by Facebook and YouTube app is not made by Google, they’re made by Microsoft. There is no app for Google Maps that is made by either Google or Microsoft, so I’m stuck with a version from an unknown developer.
Now let’s talk about the Microsoft’s “app” for Facebook and YouTube. The Facebook app is very basic. Posting a comment is so slow, even in WiFi. I can’t even upload a picture in a comment. The YouTube app is actually an IE browser opening m.youtube.com automatically. What I got was a poor experience of using YouTube.
For multitasking, switching between apps is easy (long press of back button does the trick). But we can’t kill an app in the multitasking list, we can only push it behind by opening other apps.
Another serious lacking: there is no way to disable auto-rotation. Last night I wanted to use the phone on bed and trying to find a setting to turn off the screen rotation. After some online reading, I discovered that it is actually not possible to disable auto-rotation in WP8 unless our device has received a particular update. Some Lumia models already have it, some others don’t. I have checked my Lumia 520’s software update and found no update there. So I’m stuck with no way to do lock my screen orientation. To be fair, MAYBE this feature will be added in the future for 520. But seriously, Microsoft… WP8 is more than 1 year-old and still not all devices have this super basic feature???
For cloud-based computing, WP8 can automatically backup our app list + settings, text messages and photos using our Microsoft account. That’s a good thing. However, I found my contact list immediately got messy because it merged the entire contact list of my outlook account (inherited from the old Hotmail account) plus all my Skype contacts.
For the easiness of adding content (photos, songs etc) from my computer to this phone, I downloaded Windows Phone app from Mac App Store and it works fine without any problem. I can easily sync my music, photos and videos to the device. It automatically detect my iTunes library and allow me to selectively sync my music based on playlist, artist or genre. Windows Phone app is MUCH better than Samsung Kies that I once had nightmare with.
On the good side, I like the fact that this phone has Office app by default. It’s certainly a plus point for those who want to use this phone on business environment. I also like the live tile, which can show us more than just a static icon. I like that we can change the background color and the accent color, allowing different look and feel just by changing these settings.
While I do feel the OS itself is good, stable and decent, the app ecosystem of WP8 is just as chaotic as Google Play. In Google Play at least I can still find the “right” app among those scams (I can still find the black cat in the dark room). WP8 store is even worse, a lot of apps don’t even have the official version available in this platform (I tried to find a black cat in a dark room which doesn’t have a black cat inside). This is why I don’t like open ecosystem.
The final verdict? This phone is far from being worthy of being a primary phone. I might keep this phone just for the sake it’s a Nokia, with decent battery life and good hardware build. I can probably use it to replace my old Nokia E52 as my secondary phone. I will use it for few more days to decide whether this will become my secondary phone, or will it go back to the store.
Seri 5 is too low end, 8xx or 920 should be better.
Apart from review, your site’s theme may need updating. It is not responsive either in layout or photo ( I am opening this page and Nokia photo too large in iPhone while the paragraph width is only half)
Hahaha, I do have the plan to change my site’s theme, but never got the time to find a better one. Plus with all the customizations I have made, the process of changing theme would take longer than 2-3 hours. So, perhaps some time in the future.
About the 520 being low-end, I actually have no problem with the hardware quality, it’s not super but it’s decent. I also have no problem with the responsiveness, again it’s decent. My biggest disappointments are mostly around the app ecosystem, which I believe won’t be much different even when I get the high-end version.