Gadgetory

four legions of upgrade starved Microsoft fans the Lumia 830 is as close as it gets to exciting in the opening months of 2015 but does this so-called mid-range flagship deserve its ambitious title let's find out I'm Michael Fisher with PocketNow and this is our Lumia 830 video review the Lumia 830 might be a full hundred digits below Windows Phones true flagship the 930 but the step down in prestige also brings a step down in size eight eight and a half millimeters and a hundred and fifty grams the Lumia 830 is a very palm friendly very pocketable little Windows Phone besides our cool aluminum and the back is a polycarbonate panel available in several colors and adorned with the old Nokia logo one of the last uses of the legacy branding you'll see on a Windows Phone popping it off reveals a removable battery and a microSD expansion slot increasingly rare customizations these days and welcome news for those who need more power or more storage up front the display is nice and big at 5 inches protected by Gorilla Glass 3 it almost seems to pull at the corners on the hole it's a very nice piece of hardware especially for the mid-range dig a little deeper and the disappointments start to show first the display is IPS instead of AMOLED now some might call this an upside and not a disadvantage but the lack of true blacks and high saturation is a real bummer on Windows Phone where colorful live tiles floating on an expanse of pure darkness is much better served by AMOLED also the polarization filter that Nokia uses means the screen starts getting pretty milky viewed off-center and modes like glance screen aren't nearly as dramatic in darker conditions finally the screen is 720p instead of full HD it doesn't bother us much but eagle-eyed buyers might pick up some pixelization here and there the rest of the hardware is a mixed bag the speaker phones rear mounted position is disappointing if predictable and the top mounted USB port is just plain awkward if you're using the phone when plugged in fortunately there's built in wireless charging here so you don't need to bother with wires if you have a cheek paddle charging pad like the dt 903 here reviewed in another video and the changeable covers offer a modicum of customizability even if they do give under the finger a bit more than what we're used to peeling from a lumia the 830 runs Windows Phone 8.1 gd-r one with the Lumia denim update which is fantastic except it's not C while this is technically denim it's not totally denim early stop denim enough to support one of the biggest upgrades to the camera experience Lumia camera 5 whether this is a symptom of carrier delays or Microsoft being sluggish with the release it's very frustrating and more frustrating is Windows Phones perennial pain point the ecosystem January 2015 saw two major blows in the United States as two of America's largest banks pulled their apps for Windows Phone citing lack of users this comes on the heels of Microsoft releasing office and outlook apps for Android and iOS titles that in some ways eclipsed their Windows Phone counterparts so the app gap is still a concern if you're any kind of power user in every other respect Microsoft smartphone platform has only gotten better since we reviewed the 8.1 release last year with the most visible edition since being the Microsoft health app during the review period it worked with my Microsoft band to keep me up to speed on notifications while logging everything from my steps to my sleep yeah it's still an ugly accessory but that's not the 830's fault major third-party titles like Spotify have also seen extensive upgrades while high visibility apps from other circles like NPR one have popped up too and the star of the Windows Phone show is still the animated information-packed Start screen being able to pin pretty much anything to home base and check its information at a glance is still one of this platforms key advantages along with a visual design that's still fresher and cleaner than most other platforms that said it's pretty easy to trip up the 830 with more pressing demands on the hardware this is just a snapdragon 400 under the hood backed up by a single gig of ram and Windows Phone 8.1 isn't always as silky smooth under those limitations as earlier versions of the OS animations occasionally trip up and restoring apps from standby gets old really fast a good example is switching from streaming Spotify to shooting a video by the time you're done with the camera Spotify has already been dumped from memory and you need to relaunch it to resume listening the hardware limitations make having a conversation in an app like Facebook messenger more frustrating to thanks to the constant need to reload upon restore maxing out the snapdragon with a game like asphalt 8 you can see the hardware struggling to keep up at points lighter impact games everything holds together nicely the a 30 didn't have any trouble with jetpack joyride or rise of glory and of course the trivia crack and words with friends ranch is fine though they weren't without their own bucks a voice calling is also win some lose some audio quality was fine on my end about inbound callers said they didn't have any trouble hearing background sounds from where I was either and the speakerphone is plenty loud but again its rear firing position makes it ill-suited for doing much but listening to music fortunately reception seemed on point in cellular Wi-Fi and bluetooth especially the latter even when paired to a Nokia charging plate and LG headset in a Microsoft band at the same time I had almost no connection troubles in the mid-range and high-end a Lumia phone lives or dies by its camera and on the spec sheet Nokia imbued the a30 with a shooter to be proud of it's a 10 megapixel PureView sensor made it to a six element lens and yes it's optically stabilized when the Lumia 830 finally gets its true denim update so we can run Lumia camera 5 it's going to be much more impressive possibly one of the best mid-range shooters out there if for now its output is just fine you don't get the outrageous digital zoom the crazy over sampling or the shallow depth of field effects of higher-end Lumias but color reproduction is much better here than it was on the Lumia 1020 as we show in our comparison going up tomorrow also low-light performance is nice thanks to OAS and if you do need to fire up the LED flash you'll be glad it's there as long as your subject isn't moving too much you'll also be happy to know the 830 is fully compatible with the Lumia selfie app that allows self-portraits to be taken with the May shooter he since the front-facing camera is nothing special especially in low-light situations around the world video output tops out at 1080p in 30fps but it gets a boost on the audio side from the three microphone rich recording setup and as long as you don't have the camera going the whole time you should be able to get a day of moderate to heavy use out of a full charge on the 2200 milliamp hour battery even while using Bluetooth accessories rather heavily and thanks to the removable power pack you can always spend a little money on a spare battery to get you through long trips without a charger so what we have in the Lumia 830 is a starkly almost painfully average smartphone there's just nothing truly exemplary about this product in that sense it's much more mid-range than flagship and anyone seeking the latter will be much better served by the Lumia 930 now in the United States the 930 is exclusive to Verizon in the form of the Lumia icon and that leaves the 830 is the only sub 6 inch Windows Phone even near the high end on AT&T so if what you're looking for is the most modern Windows Phone well the 830 sort of becomes your default choice but it's not cheap enough to be a budget phone and it's not good enough to be a premium one when it comes to Windows Phone it seems you can have a mid-range phone or a flagship but you can't have both for more on the Lumia 830 see our comparisons with the 10 20 and 930 above and be sure to subscribe follow and visit PocketNow everywhere else on the Internet at the links in the description below until next time this has been michael fisher with pocket now captain to phones on twitter reminding you that denim doesn't always mean denim unless you're talking Levi's thanks for watching we'll see you soon