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Lumia 630 , a great little workhorse
630 Package
Few screenshots comparing settings 630 To 1020
Click thumbnail to view full-sizeA few bits missing
So once again I have been lucky enough to be allowed a trial of a new Lumia handset via the nice folks at Connects, and it ain't bad :)
The 630 is a budget handset and as such has a few things missing that I like and use on my Lumia 1020 & 1520, so I'll start with the 'Bad Stuff'. Well not so much bad as stuff I miss which you get on a £450 phone and you don't get on a sub £100 handset ! In no particular order, the Lumia 630 is lacking a physical camera key and flash for the 5 megapixel auto focus camera. The 4.5” IPS LCD screen has no tap to unlock or ambient light sensor to adjust the brightness and doesn't have NFC or Wireless charging, but then again all this stuff costs money. Also YOU REALLY NEED A MICRO SD CARD !!! once set up the 630 had virtually none of its 8 gig of internal memory left, however I bunged a 32 gig card in it and most apps & media went on the card and the phone was flying again :) Now the reason for the title of the review is that I have had a very busy week at work, due to the time of year and so haven't had much time for taking pics or playing games and for this week the 630 has actually been great.
Full Nokia Lumia 630 specifications HERE at GSM Arena
Lumia Storyteller of the 630 arrival
Good stuff
So the good stuff, the quad core processor in the 630 lets it buzz along swiftly and smoothly, it only has 512mb of ram , but only occasionally lets you know if you try to open very demanding games or data heavy websites, and once the phone has rendered everything the actual thing you are doing works great, I haven't actually found anything the little phone wouldn't do that I've tried to do with it.
Setting up any Lumia once you have an account and have backed up a handset is a doddle, simply sign in and restore from a previous backup, I used a backup from my 1520 and the 630 was set up with my accounts , ringtones and apps within about 25 minutes and five minutes after that it was doing a software update to WP 8.1 and I was putting a couple of folders on my home screen
Setting up and updating
Click thumbnail to view full-sizeBack removed for access to removable battery and card slots
Photos of the Lumia 630
Now as far as the 630 being a good little workhorse it has been great for me, the battery life (as with all 512 mb ram Lumia handsets apparently) has been stellar , my mail and messages have synced as expected, call quality has been great and on the few occasions I have had to relax, media both looks and sounds great. I haven't had much chance to play games on the 630, but everything I tried worked fine. As I mentioned in the 'Bad Stuff' section the 630 has no tap to unlock or light sensor and these took a little getting used to, but the screen quality itself is really quite good and setting the brightness toggle on the top of the drop down notification screen made it fairly easy to go from low to medium to high quite quickly and to be fair, even in bright sunlight, when set to its highest brightness the screen on the 630 was easy to see and use.
The physical size of the 630 is very comfortable for one handed use and it fits perfectly in a top shirt pocket, I really can't imagine anyone being disappointed to get the phone as a works phone or a younger person getting it as a first smartphone, as with all the budget WP handsets I've tried it seems to punch above its weight performance wise and the shortfalls that I noticed would certainly pass the what you never had you never miss test :) And although the camera is budget too, it will operate most of the 'Lenses' available on WP as well as the more advanced camera apps and takes quite a good pic in good light, which I tried to show HERE
Well that is all I've got time for, I have a lot to get sorted including re-setting and packing up the 630 to return it. I can think of worse ways to spend £100 and if you are looking for a well specified budget phone go hold a Lumia 630 in a phone shop and take a look at it and have a play, it is well worth a play, keeps going all day long and is a great little work horse.
Anyway, thanks for taking time to take a look.
Cheers
Stephen Quin
28/09/2014