Gadgetory

in the past month we've reviewed the Nokia Lumia 822 and the Nokia Lumia 810 here at PocketNow so it only follows that we should now review the device both of those were based on I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our quick review of the Nokia Lumia 820 480 in our written quick review we call the Lumia 820 a block of solid technology and that's appropriate it's a 160 gram nine point nine millimeter thick device that feels simultaneously heavier and thinner then it's dimensions suggest the combination of straight lines with sensible curves and small radius corners gives the 820 a more grown-up authentically premium feel then it's siblings on Verizon and t-mobile that's helped along by the matte black cover on the back but careful it's slippery and there's no Gorilla Glass protecting the display if you drop this device speaking of that display it's the same 4.3 inch AMOLED panel at 800 by 480 resolution that we saw on the 810 and the eight 22 as before saturation and viewing angles are quite good but the low pixel density gives it a dated appearance if you get too close still that high saturation paired with those deep blacks really makes Windows Phone 8 pop the tiles appear to float right on the surface of the glass under the hood which is tough to pry off until you learn its secrets you get a removable 1650 milliamp hour battery as well as expandable microSD storage to shore up the eight gigs of internal memory that's in addition to a dual-core Qualcomm s4 CPU running at 1.5 gigahertz and backed up by a gig of ram an 8 megapixel primary and VGA front-facing camera and LTE support for a TTS 4G network in all the Lumia 820 might not pack the biggest punch in terms of raw hardware but it's more than enough to run Windows Phone 8 and look very very classy doing it and the hardware runs Windows Phone 8 just as well as you'd expect which is to say excellently Windows Phone 8 has proved just as stable responsive and fluid as Windows Phone 7 on every device we've tested so far and the Lumia 820 is no exception no matter how many live tiles you're running no matter how many tabs you've got open an Internet Explorer 10 no matter how many planes you crash and rise of glory performance is consistently top-notch the 820 kept up well with its contemporaries and with other mid-range smartphones in our testing calling was solid both over earpiece and speakerphone data speeds over 18 T's LTE network were excellent especially on the upside where we averaged about 14 megabits per second and battery life was quite good the 820 lasted 2 hours and 11 minutes on the WP bench stress test and that's slightly lower than the Lumia 920's score of 2 hours and 30 minutes but the 820 was also a real champ on standby lasting 24 hours with light use even while constantly connected to LTE we're getting used to solid camera performance on Lumia devices and the 820 delivers just like its siblings even though it doesn't have PureView branding or the optical image stabilization of the Lumia 920 the 820 s shooter delivers good stills as long as we use Nokia's scenes option in the camera viewfinder once you get used to tweaking the camera using those options it can deliver some really really nice shots for a smartphone and once again low-light is where it really shines just don't rely on the VGA front-facing camera to deliver anything but disappointment it's pretty bad the Lumia 820 may not have the high-end features buzz or looks of its higher-end cousin the 920 but for $50 cheaper it doesn't need to for $49.99 on contract you get a Windows Phone 8 device with beautiful industrial design solid features the full suite of Nokia exclusive apps and a great camera it's still a mid-range phone it's got last year's display with no gorilla glass and bad front-facing camera and it makes compromises on storage and battery capacity but if those aren't deal-breakers this is a solid Windows Phone for the price we give the AT&T Nokia Lumia 820 a 7 out of 10 for screenshots benchmarks sample photos and much more visit us at pocketnow.com for the written quick review of the lumia 820 and stay tuned for much more on this device and others at pocket now in the days weeks and months ahead in the meantime follow us on Twitter so you don't miss anything pocket now tweets is the official account if you want to follow me I'm at captain two phones that's captain the number two phones leave us a thumbs up here on youtube if you liked what you saw leave us a comment on the post at pocketnow.com if you have something to say and thanks for watching we'll see you next time