Nokia might be the Mircosoft’s darling in Windows Phone game but HTC has been their longest partner. Since the days of Windows Mobile, HTC has been actively standing by Microsoft’s side and was once the biggest OEM to use the Microsoft OS. Even when Windows Phone 7 debuted, HTC had the biggest portfolio of devices showing their trust in Microsoft’s new mobile OS. With Windows Phone 8, they seemed to have reduced their effort but they did produce two phones which they call “signature” phones. Plus, they are directly given the advantage to include the “Windows Phone” branding to name their phones.

We recently reviewed Windows Phone 8S but Windows Phone 8X is the real flagship with top-end hardware. The task for 8X is to compete with Lumia’s and at the same time it’s own Android siblings and prove itself in the run. A sophisticated design, top-end hardware and hefty price tag really make it a “Signature” company wants it to be?

Design:

Like its younger sibling, HTC has used its designing talent for 8X; rather it is even better. Complete unibody construction, sculpted glass on front, matte finish back, tapered edges; that’s how you design your signature phones. We had a black unit which looked stunning. And those craving for colors, there more shades of 8X available like red, blue and yellow. It looks fantanstic in all those shades.
HTC 8X has 4.3″ S-LCD2  display which has 720p HD resolution. At this screen size 720p resolution results in pixel density of 342ppi which makes images very crisp. Contrary to this, Nokia’s Lumia 820 has just WVGA resolution resulting in lower ppi count and thus less sharp images. For the matter of fact, HTC 8X has slightly more ppi count than Lumia 920 as well. HTC 8X uses sculpted, Gorilla Glass 2 on the front which covers front from top to bottom, almost. At the top left corner, there’s a 2.1 MP front camera which also uses wide angle lens. First time on phones on we guess. Right in the middle of the screen there’s a big earpiece grill. It also covers the multicolor notification LED under it. Next to the earpiece grill there are proximity and ambient light sensors but they almost go invisible. Below the display you’ll find the usual set of Windows Phone buttons, all of them are touch sensitive. They are also adequately lit.

Rest of the body of the HTC 8X uses matte finish which while feels and looks good also gives better grip on the phone unlike 8S whose back was polished too much resulting in not so good grip. On 8X its definitely better. HTC 8X has tapered edges which make the handset comfortable to use. On the right edge, from top to bottom, you’ll first see a microSIM slot, a  volume rocker and then a shutter key. Left edge has nothing on it. The audio jack and the power button are on the top edge of the phone. The power button can be easily reached without any inconvenience. microUSB port sits alone on the bottom edge.

On the back sits the 8MP camera with a LED flash. The loudspeaker is situated near the bottom. There are lot of stamps and logos near the bottom which might turn off some of you. It did turned us off as well.

Hardware, Performace and Battery:

HTC 8X is the company’s flagship device so obviously it has top end hardware. It uses Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual core processor clocked at 1.5GHz along with 1GB of RAM. We have seen the same hardware on Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 and since Windows Phone 8 itself is very polished OS, there’s no sluggishness or stuttering while using the. The only concern we’ve with this SoC is that it gets significantly hot after decent amount of usage. If you’re into using internet over 3G or Wi-Fi, no matter what, or lots of calling you’ll notice it immediately. We hope Qualcomm improves the thermal solution with next hardware revision.
We already told you about the display about of 8X. Another thing that is worth mentioning here is that, it has very wide viewing angles. No color degradation at all. Images look same as you would see while directly looking at the display.
HTC 8X comes with just 16GB of inbuilt memory and no option to increase it further by the means of microSD card. We wonder if at this price tag it would have costed HTC much to include higher storage, say 32GB or 64GB or a simple microSD card slot. We prefer more internal storage since Windows Phone 8 doesn’t allow storing apps on memory card.
8X comes with 1800 mAh battery and we have no issues with it. It would give us around 10-15 hrs. Well that’s less than what we got on two Lumia’s and 8S.

Camera:

The HTC 8X has 8MP AF camera with f/2.0 aperture making it a good photographer in the dark environments. Then there’s a LED flash light as well. The camera captures good photos but not remarkable for the 8 MP sensor. HTC cameraphones suffer from some traditional problem. HTC 8X again concentrates on aggressive noise reduction while compromising on the quality and details. Colors were off too. But if you compare it to previous HTC phones, it’s still better yet not significant improvement.

Vidoes were compartiviely better. HTC 8X can record videos in FullHD (1080p) resolution. Last time when we reviewed HTC 8S, it disappointed us with its poor video quality but that is not the case with 8X. Videos preserve very good amount of details. The camera has agressive continuous auto-focus so camera tries to re-focus frequently. Still, FHD (1080p) videos produced with HTC 8X and sometimes dropped frames. Ironically, 720p videos turned out to be better. But since our unit was pre-production one we think it’s natural since actual device would have improved software.
HD 720p Video Sample:

FullHD 1080p Video Sample:

The front camera on HTC 8X is also noticeable. It uses wide angle lens and has 2.1 MP resolution. This basically means that you get better self portraits and can also cover wide area behind you. And since it also has same f/2.0 aperture as main camera, you can expect some good self portraits in low light conditions. The camera can also record videos 1080p FullHD resolution.
Camera has familiar Windows Phone interface. One thing to note here is that the settings available on Windows Phone handsets differ from one OEM to other. For example, settings that you get on Lumia’s are not present on HTC’s 8X or 8S.

Connectivity:

HTC 8X comes equipped with all forms of connectivity. It has GSM/3G network. For internet it relys on EDGE/3G or Wi-Fi (b/g/n). Windows Phone now even supports file sharing over bluetooth, it’s not straight forward though. Windows Phone does not enable the Bluetooth automatically when you want to send files, rahter you’ll need to go to settings and enable it before you can send the files. Still it’s better than not having sharing at all. In case you find doing this very complicated, 8X has NFC as well which should ease your job. Only requirement is that the other party should also have the support for NFC.
HTC 8X has both GPS and Glonass for positioning and navigation. Both did their jobs very well. 8X was quick to get the GPS lock.
The HTC 8X has excellent network reception. In our tests, we didn’t encounter any call drops or connection problems. Earpiece was loud and clear enough and microphone could transmit the voice without any background noise.
Multimedia:
HTC 8X is one of the first Windows Phone handsets from the company to get “Beats Audio” treatment. As a result HTC 8X comes with dedicated audio cheap and amplifier. The inbox headsets provide very good output. We just wish if the loudspeaker was little more loud actually. Watching videos on 8X is a pleasure since display has very good viewing angles and crisp image quality. And Beats Audio should increase your joy. HTC 8X lacks FM Radio but we’ve been hearing that future update of WP8 will bring it back and if it’s present on existing phones, then it’ll be simply enabled.

HTC Apps:

Compared to Anroid phones of the company, the possibility of the customization is very much limited on the Windows Phone. From end user’s perspective it’s good because they do not have to get used to new interface everytime they switch the devices. Yet, Microsoft allows OEMs to put their own apps on the phone. So far, only Nokia has been taking full benefit of it. HTC also pre-loads some apps on theirs but they are pretty simple apps which you can anyways download from Store or have similar alternatives. The only useful apps are the “HTC” app which gives you weather information and a cool time tile.  The other app is HTC’s “Photo Enhancer” app which gives you the ability to touch up your photos on the device itself and also allows you to aply filters to your images. We plead HTC to provide more custom apps on their phones to make them competitive. For instance, company provide good suite of apps containing a SatNav app on its Android phones. Compared to that, Windows Phone handsets come in pretty much vanilla flavor.

Conclusion:

HTC Windows Phone 8X as HTC and Microsoft jointly called it has the potential to be a signature device. But it needs more attention from the company. In almost all areas HTC has nailed it, especially design and audio. But company also needs to understand the importance of apps. Well, they do actually but it’s their reluctance towards the Windows Phone. Another thing is that such a gorgeous device is crippled by just 16GB of inbuilt memory and no option for expansion. It should have either bigger storage or an option for extension.
As far as the comparison is concerned, it can comete with Nokia Lumia 820. Lumia 920 is out of its reach anyways. Yet, Lumia 820 has qualities to trump 8X anyday with excellent suite of apps from Nokia and extendable storage.
Its value for money quotient isn’t impressive as well. For the price, Rs.33,500, that goes near that of Lumia 920 and way more than Lumia 820, 8X hardly has handful of features to call its own.
Now come out of Windows Phone and you shall see the high-end Android prediators around. HTC’s own OneX+ got a hefty price drop recently; the 64GB retails for around Rs.29,500. It is better than 8X in every aspect. Want more choices? There’s Samsung Galaxy S3 waiting for you. Then there’s LG Optimus G as well for around the same price as 8X.
HTC Windows Phone 8X is seriously a good device but the companies negligence stops us from recommending it. Most of the things are just within the reach of a software update. And another thing is pricing. If HTC brings a 32GB/64GB variant with good homebrew apps and aggressive pricing then we might take our words back. We hope they do get it right.

Lumia 920 is that one and the only phone to come out of the Finnish HQ making lots of noise. After some not so good quarters with not so good phones, Nokia finally seems to have got it right. Lumia 920 has that real Nokia DNA. From PureView camera and highly praised design to the display, everything that one would boast about.

But as they say “with great powers come great responsibilities”, Lumia 920 has lot of burden on its shoulders than its predecessors had. It would need to help the former Finnish giant hold its ground in the highly competitive market where there’s very less left for others after Android and iOS. It’s not just the Nokia that needed a phone like this but the whole Windows Phone camp desperately needed one. Today, Lumia has become synonyms with Windows Phone so it has a task to represent the Windows Phone in the perfect suit with all its glory. Let’s see if it lives upto all these expectations.

Design:

Lumia 920 is based on the same design as older Lumia 900/800 which again have their roots in N9, where all this started. But the design has been tweaked to suit the needs of the flagship. First of all, there is no curved glass display like on the three devices we devices we mentioned above but it’s not completely flat either with the main body. Lumia 920 again uses polycarbonate unibody design which makes it one of the solid devices out there but it has gained some fat also. At 185gms, Lumia 920 is certainly bulkier and when you compare it to its lighter competitors like HTC 8X the difference becomes even more significant. Well that’s the trade-off for the number of technologies it brings along.

Lumia 920 has a 4.5″ display, biggest in Nokia portfolio so far. Unlike Lumia 800/Lumia 900 which had AMOLED displays, Lumia 920 uses LCD IPS display. If you thought there’s no fancy then wait. Don’t come to conclusions so soon. It has HD+ (1280x768p) display which gives the pixel density of 332 ppi. Plus it’s the first to have 60Hz refresh rate, first on smartphones which prevents ghosting. And Nokia didn’t forget to put their ClearBlack technology atop it. We guess it’s getting too technical here but the truth to be told. Although it’s just a LCD display, it has surprisingly great contrast ratio. Sure, it will not be able to catch AMOLED displays here but it goes near it by producing very deep shades of black. That’s not the usual stuff for sure. It also has good viewing angles something which you don’t see in LCD segment very often.

Display mixes so well with the bezel that if the device is locked you won’t be able to tell where it starts and where it ends exactly. Thanks to the ClearBlack (polarization layer) equipped glass above it which makes all these possible. The so called ClearBlack also has great readability even under the direct sunlight. The same glass also encloses the buttons, front camera, ambient and proximity sensors and even the earpiece grill.

The Lumia 920 has a curved back which gives it the good grip and the polycarbonate body isn’t too smooth. Just perfect we’d say. There is a small yet much needed improvement since N9. The silver plate around the camera in the previous devices would get scratched easily and to a magnitude that it’d become a spot on the gorgeous design. This time it’s made up of ceramic zirconium which makes it less vulnerable to scratches.

The top of the phone has a microSIM slot and a 3.5mm audio jack. Nokia provides a nice little pin to open the microSIM tray. The design is much of a standard across the WP8 portfolio. The benefit here is that you don’t really have to get used to the new things when you switch the devices. Given the dimensions of Lumia 920, another sensible thing that Nokia has done is putting the power button on the right side. Lumia 920 design is very comfortable to hold as well. The height to width ratio is very good which makes it easy to hold the device and makes it possible to use it with one hand. You can reach the extreme corners easily without any hassle. This is where Lumia 820 misses the mark. On the right there is also a volume rocker and camera key.

Much like other WP 8 handsets Lumia 920 doesn’t have anything on left side either. “Bare nothing” kind of. Although there are two loudspeaker grills, Lumia 920 has mono output only. Don’t mistake it for the stereo output. Lumia 920 design also exposes couple of screws on both bottom and top. To make the servicing easier, maybe. It’s not for you and us, we think. And there’s also a microUSB on the bottom. We wonder why much useful lanyard socket is vanishing from new smartphones. Now only if it could be lighter. Don’t wear low waist jeans if you’re gonna carry Lumia 920 around. Oh, we’re just kidding.

Hardware, Performance and Battery:

Lumia 920 is powered by the dual core Snapdragon S4 Krait core CPU while graphic operations are handled by the Adreno 225. This configuration is quite powerful. We didn’t bother to run benchmarks since most of them are optimized for Windows Phone 7 phones with single core processor. But in the real life we didn’t face any lag or sluggishness. It’s not just the hardware but operating system is very well tuned which results in the lag free experience.

The Lumia 920 has 32GB of internal memory and there’s no microSD slot for further memory expansion. Windows Phone 8 doesn’t allow apps to be stored on SD card so the phones like Lumia 820 are crippled. But that’s not the issue with Lumia 920 since it has plenty of internal space. Out of 32 GB, only 26GB is usable. Then there’s wireless charging present aboard as well but you need separate accessory for that.

The battery life on Lumia 920 was just excellent. The 2000 mAh battery has enough juice. Our usage pattern would return more than 20 hrs of battery life. Our handset would be tied to WiFi for syncing mails, surfing and tweeting and sometimes gaming. It could be different for others. If in case you’re getting not so good battery life, we’d advise you to turn off the NFC or tap-to-send in phone settings which in our case was initially the culprit for low battery life.

Camera:

If there’s one feature of the Lumia 920 that made lot of noise on the web then it’s its PureView camera. Thank 808 PureView for giving the meaning to that word. For anyone hoping to see 41 MP camera, no Lumia 920 doesn’t have one. Rather it has a 8.7 MP camera which is still termed PureView. As Nokia calls it, it’s the PureView phase two. 808 PV was for lossless zoom and superb picture details while Lumia 920 is for better night shots. It does what it is supposed to do and is excellent at its job.
The Lumia 920 has f/2.0 compared to f/2.4 of 808 and the sensor produces 1.4 micron pixel. All these combined lets the more light in which in turn produces better photos in low light environment. We all have faced blurriness photos while taking photos in low light since camera is exposed for the longer duration of the time. And not that everyone has steady hands. Nokia has tackled this issue by embedding the OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). The OIS in Lumia 920 moves the entire optical assembly whenever the shakes are detected. OIS has been used in only high end stand alone cameras. Lumia 920 is the first cameraphone to embed this technology and improved it further. As Nokia claims, it’s around 50% more improved than the conventional OIS system. It can detect 500 movements per second. This helps to eliminate the possible blurriness in during low light shots. It’s not limited to just low light shots; it will help you take photos irrespective of the lighting condition.

We put Lumia 920 against Lumia 820 for low light test. Note that even Lumia 820 takes good low light photos but there are some conditions where no phone can catch Lumia 920. In low light conditions such as evening time, the photos taken will look like the ones taken in bright light. Things seem very bright. In the clear daylight condition though, it slightly disappoints. Sometimes even in very well lit conditions it tends to over expose the photos. And secondly, photos in the daylight are sometime not as sharp as you’d expect. That seems to be the more of the software problem. Here are some samples,

Photos:

Videos:
Sample 1

Sample 2

Sample 3

Nokia Apps

The great thing about having a Lumia Windows Phone device is that you get lots of stuff which are otherwise not available on other handsets.

First off, it’s Nokia’s mapping and navigation suite. It consists of Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive+. Both of them are proven to be one of the solid SatNav solutions out there. With Windows Phone 8 it gets even better. Previously on Windows Phone 7, offline maps were only available for use with Nokia Drive but with Windows Phone 8 the Nokia Maps app can use them as well. Now you might argue that offline maps are now standard option in Windows Phone 8. But that’s it. Nokia takes the experience to the next level. It offers precise walking, driving or even public transport directions. There is a dedicated app for public transport called Nokia Transport. So if in a case you’re planning for a journey using the available public transport it’ll give you all the info you need. Additionally Nokia Maps has public transport view and traffic view to show you detailed information about each.

Unlike standard Windows Phone maps, Nokia Drive+ offers full fledged voice guided navigation. Nokia Drive+ immediately calculates the new route in case you miss a turn on the suggested route. And you don’t even need to have active data connection for it to work.

           Nokia Drive+                           Nokia Drive+

             Nokia Transit

Couple it with Nokia City Lenses and you have even better experience. It makes use of the camera viewfinder to show you the places around you. You hold your phone horizontally, it switches to the maps mode. Hold it vertically in 90 degress it starts showing list of the places to choose from.

Nokia also has special apps to use with the camera on your Lumia phones. Nokia Cinemagraph to create animations on the go, Nokia Creative studio for image editing, Smart Shot lens for brilliant group photos and Panorama lens to obviously capture panoramic photos. We’ll see them one by one.

Nokia Cinemagraph basically captures multiple frames of some duration,let’s you choose which part of the frame stays in the motion while rest of the frame stays still. Final output is a gif file. Next is Nokia Creative Studio. It offers a basic set of image editing tools. For starters it lets you quickly add funky color effects to you pictures. If you hit the more advanced edit mode, you get to fix the color balance, brightness etc. in your pictures. You can even remove red eye effect too.

    Nokia Creative Studio

Panorama lens by Nokia is pretty much self descriptive. Let’s talk about Smart shot. We all have sometime captured photos of friends or family in which someone has closed their eyes or is making a weird face and you always wished to correct the photo which is nearly impossible unless you’re really good at photoshop. For users like me and you Smart Shot is the solution and it works on the spot, on demand. When you use Smart Shot it captures around 10-15 frames. From there you can chose the best shot. It doesn’t end here. You can even replace the faces from the selected frame with the one from another frames.

Nokia Music is another hit feature. Music lovers are so in love with it. What makes it special is the unlimited access to the huge song library and it’s absolutely free. You just need to register your phone with your Nokia account. And the music is also DRM free. Mind you it’s free only for a year, thereafter you’ll need to purchase the subscription.

Conclusion:

Lumia 920 makes for a proper flagship not just for Nokia but also for the whole Windows Phone series. It holds its ground against all the odds and rival Androids. Lumia 920 is sure to blow your mind away. Lumia 920 doesn’t just talk about number of cores and megapixels. It does what it says and does it 100% right. The only thing that would turn off some of you is the limited 32GB memory and the hefty price tag. And anyone who is going to use it’s camera to the fullest they are right. The camera features that Lumia 920 is offering were hard to find even in top-end Androids. The only recent phone that offers similar features is HTC One. It is yet to hit the shelves.  If you’re not convinced with its hardware features, it comes with apps that only Nokia provides like HERE Maps and excellent navigation with Nokia Drive. And their camera apps make full use of the camera like never seen before. It’s retailing around Rs.36,000 which seems not too fair even to us but that’s the truth. Apart from these there’s nothing in Lumia 920 that should disappoint you.

If you’re a loyal Nokia user who has been waiting for the proper Lumia phone this is the one you should get. Talking about the consumer’s perspective, yes Windows Phone 8 is much better and usable than Windows Phone 7. If you’re concerned about your favorite apps, then we gotta tell you that the scene is improving. Developers are showing willingness to develop for it but the change is not going to happen overnight. But there are now plenty of apps. There are still few quirks that Microsoft still needs to iron out but the current state isn’t bad either.

We’re not going to talk about the competition today because for us there’s nothing that comes close to this phone. This one has a class of its own. Take it or leave it.

Dual SIM Androids are not new to us. We’ve seen many of them in last few months especially from local OEMs. In global OEMs, Samsung has already been on the lead in providing dual SIM phones to the market. So how could HTC stay away? The Desire SV is the companies first ever dual SIM handset. Well it doesn’t share the same table as cheaper Galaxy Y Duos, rather it tries to fit itself with mid-range Androids with the power of yesteryear’s flagships. It carries the design for which HTC is famous and comes with a hefty price tag too. We will try to explain why it’s worth your money.

Design:

Desire SV has 4.3” display. In the times when competition is going for bigger and bigger displays, this sounds small but it gives the Desire SV the perfect dimensions. It fits your hand perfectly. Display is big enough to type comfortably or viewing pictures or even watching movies while you travel. The display is Super Clear LCD 2 type and has FWGA resolution (480×800) which gives it the pixel density of 217 ppi. Although the display is LCD, the color reproduction is brilliant. Colors are saturated but not over-saturated. The black are reproduced are also very well. The display doesn’t have good viewing angles but that matters only if you’re going to see it from 0 degrees.

Below the display there’s a usual set of Android buttons and by now you might know that the previous ‘Options’ key has been replaced by the ‘Recent apps’ key from Anrdoid ICS upwards. Above the display, there is a large earpiece grill which apart from a earpiece itself, also covers a notification LED and sensors like proximity and ambient light sensor. There’s no front facing camera by the way. Lot of dust gets accumulated in earpiece grill. There’s a metal frame around the display which definitely looks nice, better if the back is of different color than black.

On the right side there is a volume rocker and left side is completely bare. On the top there’s a 3.5mm audio jack and power button. We don’t like this particular placement of the power button on any device with display bigger than 4”. The MHL/microUSB port is located on the bottom of the phone.

We’ve always admired HTC for their design. But they did something wrong with the back of the Desire SV. The camera is recessed under the back cover. There’s a significant gap between the camera lens and the camera hole on the back camera. It acts as a door for lots of dust on underneath the cover and especially the camera lens. This wasn’t quite expected from HTC. Moving ahead, the back cover has matte finish which gives it overall a good grip. A 8MP camera and flash are placed vertically on the back. Go down almost to the bottom and you’ll see a loudspeaker grill. HTC didn’t forget to tell us that the audio is powered by ‘Beats Audio’. In the middle of the back, there’s a stylish and big HTC logo as well.

Underneath the cover you’ll find the 1620 mAh battery. On the each side of the camera there is a microSIM slot. Of them, the one right side is capable of 3G while the second one only runs on 2G networks. Just below the SIM card slots, there’s a microSD slot.

Software:

The Desire SV runs on Android ICS 4.0.4 which is quite old now with HTC Sense UI version 4.1 atop. It’s more fluid now. Though the changes are visible they are just minor ones. It now offers a better way to put widgets on homescreens. From one place, you can place widgets from any of the homescreen  .It still doesn’t offer ability to arrange icons freely. Widgets as usual come in various sizes. You get seven homescreens and no option to add new or remove existing ones. HTC Sense’s “Scenes” feature was the one we liked because of its usefulness in different scenarios. We dearly missed it in the latest version. Unlike previous versions, you can’t download more scenes. We wish HTC enables it again. You can still create new scene if you like too. HTC has also reduced the number of skins to just three and again you can’t download more. Even the lockscreen which used to most customizable has lost its shine. We don’t understand why HTC had to strip down all the customization.

The menu is the same old story. The main menu is made up of horizontally scrollable pages. Each page has 4×4 grids of app shortcuts i.e. 16 apps on every page. Additionally apps are also sorted as frequently used apps and downloaded apps. There’s still no way to arrange them in the order user wants.  There’s a shortcut to Play Store present and you can also quickly manage your apps. We missed the presence of quick toggles for various settings such as Wi-Fi or Flight mode from earlier versions.

Hardware and Performance:

Desire SV is powered by Qualcomm S4 1.0 GHz dual core processor with 768 MB RAM. It has 4GB of inbuilt memory. Hardware is by no means 2012 suitable but enough to pull the phone through daily multi-tasking. The device handles apps and tasks very smoothly with lags occurring rarely which we would attribute to the Android system.

Fresh design, funky colors, easy on budget are the few things Lumia 610 has to offer. But when you spend Rs.12,000, the obvious question is, is it worth my money?’ We try to find out.

Design:

Lumia 610 has completely fresh design, not inspired by any of the Nokia’s existing phones *cough*N9*cough*. The 3.5 incher also comes in various, funky colors, from professional black to girly fuchsia.  The screen is just 3.5” tall but neatliness of WP7 makes it look even bigger. The shiny strip that runs around the display gives it cool looks and whatever your favorite color is, you’ll like it.

The front is taken up by the 3.5” LCD screen, below which are the three standard WindowsPhone keys which are also touch sensitive. Above the display there’s an earpiece and two sensors, ambient light sensor and proximity sensor, sit next to it. Just like Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 there’s no front cam on Lumia 610 as well.

Back of the phone hosts 5MP AF camera with a LED flash. The loudspeaker grill is near the bottom. On the top of Lumia 610 there are 3.5mm audio jack, microUSB port and  lanyard socket respectively. The right side has the volume rocker and power/unlock key. We liked the Nokia’s decision of keeping it on the side of phone instead of the top. In case of taller phones if the unlock key is on the top, to reach it, you have to stretch your hand more than necessary. The left side of the phone is completely bare.

Overall the design is simple yet attractive, represents fun mood; it’s rounded corners represent an average user who just enjoys his life and colors don’t scream but they calmly make an impression when you hold the phone.

Whats up WP7.5 Tango?

As we mentioned before, this is the first phone to run on WP7.5 which enabled OEMs to create low-end WP handsets by lowering the hardware requirements. So the Lumia 610 must be lacking something. Well yes. Compared to the elders in the Lumia family, this one has the 800 MHz processor with 256 MB RAM. And it comes with 8GB of storage. When you hear these specs in the era where all phones trying to knock out each other on spec sheet, those of Lumia 610 are at least 3 years old or it sounds so. What does it translates to then? To be honest Lumia 610 will offer better performance any day compared to any other phone with the same specs (Read:Anrdoid). Microsoft has really managed well to optimize their OS for this fella so it doesn’t exhaust while doing your daily tasks. Yes, the lesser amount of RAM affects the performance but only in 3^rd party apps and Mircosoft has already published the guidelines for developers on how to optimize their apps for 256MB RAM devices. Now it’s up to the developer of your favorite app. And there are few apps too which would not run on Lumia 610 and you’ll be sad to know that it can’t run Angry Birds. We know how much it hurts but it’s better than getting ugly performance and then crying foul.  Nevertheless, Lumia 610 offers fluid performance. We are not bashing the Android but it’s now the universally accepted fact that the Android is a resource hog, that is, it needs powerful hardware to run smoothly.

The interface isn’t changed than what we have seen on previous builds of WP7. A homescreen which is a home of your shortcuts cum notifications or simply saying that’s where you put all your live tiles. The menu is a simply a list of your apps. It will grow longer and longer as you add more and more apps. Thankfully you have an option to quickly find the one you want.

The WP 7.5 Refresh a.k.a. Tango also brings in the internet sharing feature so that you can share the data connection on your phone to work with your PC.

“Wherever I carried this phone along with me, people couldn’t take their eyes off this gorgeous device. They asked me about it. They asked me about its price. I’ve reviewed many devices but I don’t remember any of them getting this level of attention.”

 

 

  

In-box contents:

Our review unit came with the standard accessories like charger/data cable combo, a headset and the special accessory for Rhyme, Charm. Charm is the HTC’s way to notify you of incoming calls or messages silently. It’s actually the flashlight which starts flashing as soon as you get any call or message. You just need to insert it into standard audio jack and it works. Good thing is that you can hang it to your shirt or keep it outside the bag so that you get notified. It also flashes if you miss a call and the flashlight is very strong as well.

Design

Design wise rhyme is another proof of HTC’s brilliance. As any other HTC phone, Rhyme also comes with slim profile. Everything has been fit into the compact body. And like many other HTC phones, this one also has traditional unibody design, which in our opinion is just excellent. If you think we’re praising HTC a lot then it’s not so. There are few drawbacks of this design as well which are surely not big but still worth mentioning. We’ll tell you as they come along.

Starting from the dimensions, they are 119 x 60.8 x 10.85 mm. Front is occupied by a not so huge 3.7″. Yes,it’s not big in the era when competition is offering 4″ as a minimum. While the display is big enough for most of the use cases including movie watching the device can still be used with one hand. Resolution is 480×800 which gives pixel density of 251ppi. Above the display you will find large metal grill which accommodates earpiece and a multicolor notification LED. On the left side of the grill there’s an ambient light sensor and a proximity sensor while on the right side there’s front VGA cam mainly used for video calling.

Below the display there’s a usual set of capacitive Android buttons. Top and bottom edges are slightly tapered. The Gorilla Glass protects the display on HTC Rhyme from scratches and some pressure.

What we liked most about HTC Rhyme is its touchscreen. After using so many phones this is the first phone which has such a smooth touchscreen experience. We dare to say but it’s really comparable to the touchscreen on iPhone. It’d register even the slightest of the touch. On the back of phone there’s a 5 MP auto-focus camera along with the LED flash and a loudspeaker, all three on the same line. The big silver strip on the back has HTC logo engraved on it. Under the back cover of there’s a SIM card slot and a microSD card slot.

Thankfully the back cover isn’t hard at all to remove like few HTC phones we reviewed in the past. The 1600 mAh battery isn’t removable or user replaceable. The back of the Rhyme was slippery to our hands, especially the strip part. Maybe it’s just us.  On the left edge of the Rhyme there’s just microUSB cum charging port. This port is placed near the bottom of the phone which becomes obstacle in using phone when any cables like charger or data cable are attached. HTC should have put it on the upper side of the phone instead to avoid inconvenience. Thankfully there’s a cap on the microUSB port which should prevent the dust from getting in. On the right edge, there’s a volume rocker which also doubles up as a zoom in camera app. On the top of the phone there’s a 3.5mm audio jack and power cum lock/unlock key. Frankly speaking we feel that on any phone with display bigger than 3.3-3.5” the lock/unlock key should be placed on the either side of the phone. In our experience reaching the top of the phone to unlock the phone frequently become inconvenient. In an attempt to keep number of hardware keys low, HTC has not provided dedicated shutter key on Rhyme which makes it tough to take self portraits using the main camera. Well we’re done with the design part here.

Hardware

The HTC Rhyme has 1GHz processor ticking at its heart. To be honest 1GHz isn’t the thing to boast about, at least in this price segment where the competition is offering at least dual core processors. And there are few cheap Androids too in sub 20k category which come with dual core processors. Still it does the job of handling the OS and other operations very efficiently. Hardly any lag while using the phone. The HTC Rhyme has the huge amount of RAM to run your applications, 768 MB to be precise. And there’s Adreno 205 GPU to take care of graphical operations.

Performance:

In our tests, HTC Rhyme returned some commendable figures. Performance is comparable to some better speced phones. If we go all subjective then the device showed no lags in day to day use. It worked perfectly, smoothly and executed everything at right pace. As far as the battery performance is concerned, it was poor in the case of HTC Rhyme. Even though there’s 1600 mAh battery and just single core CPU, Rhyme struggled to live for 12hrs. It’s really poor by any standard.

When Nokia announced its agreement to sidetrack Symbian and use Windows Phone instead to make their smartphones nobody could have thought that it’ll deliver its first Windows Phone before 2012. But in merely eight months Nokia gave us a couple of Windows Phones, Lumia 800 and Lumia 710. While Lumia 800 is targetted at the higher end of the market (and now Lumia 900 ready to take that position away), Lumia 710 is more suited to newcomers to the platform. For people worried about the processing power, it uses the same hardware as Lumia 800 while staying in the reach of the masses. For Nokia it’s the reach of Lumia 710 than Lumia 800 which will decide if their Windows Phone strategy is successful or not.

Design:

Nokia Lumia 710 doesn’t come with all the perks its elder sibling carries like AMOLED display or polycarbonate body but looks are not cheap either. Though it’s on the cheaper side, Nokia has managed to balance between the quality and the price. Given the price segments it’s put in it was obvious but Lumia 710 still has its own skin to show off. The design of the Lumia 710 is actually inspired by the Symbian Belle running Nokia 603. The device is all plastic and by no means it feels cheap. The back of the device has rubber coating over it which apart from giving it a good grip also gives classy look and feel. The good thing with 710 is that its back cover can be changed and you can pick from variety of colors.

The top of the phone hosts 3.5mm jack, microUSB port and a power cum lock/unlock key. The right side of the phone has volume rocker and a shutter key. The flaw with the shutter key is that there’s very less space between half-press and full-press. This becomes irritating while clicking photos because even the slightest push fully presses the key and images may turn out be out of focus because you’re not able to ‘focus’ on the object first.

There’s a charging port also on the right side. On the bottom you’ll find the lanyard socket alone. On the left side there’s actually nothing but the latch which is used to open the back cover.

The most of the front is taken by the 3.7” display. The display used in the Lumia 710 is the normal TFT type but Nokia has added its own polarizing layer to make it ClearBlackDisplay (CBD) which enhances the sunlight legibility. Despite of this addition we found that the display of Lumia 710 had yellowish tint. Above the display there’s a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor. Below the display are the three regular keys found WP handsets. The back key is as its name suggests, used to go backwards in browser and exiting apps. When long pressed it brings up the task switcher. The ‘Windows’ key in the middle isn’t a menu as one would think but it takes you directly to the homescreen from any app. Again, long pressing it will launch voice commands. The search key is useful to launch Bing search.

On the back of the Lumia 710 there’s a 5 MP AF camera and single LED flash. As we open the back cover of the Lumia 710 we find a big 1350 mAh battery and a microSIM slot. Like every other Windows Phone handset in the market (with the rare exceptions) Lumia 710 too doesn’t have memory card slot. Rather it comes with 8GB of inbuilt memory but the actual memory available for use is 6.28GB. You’ll also find the loudspeaker below the battery.

Hardware:

Lumia 710 shares its hardware platform with Lumi 800. It comes with 1.4 GHz CPU assisted by Adreno 200 GPU and 512 MB of RAM.  The Lumia 710 doesn’t come with Nokia’s new pentaband WCDMA (3G) platform instead it has usual Quad band GSM/EDGE and triband 3G connectivity.

When we first heard about Nokia N9 through rumors and saw it through leaked images we’re so excited to have our hands on it. A phone with lots of potential to be a true flagship for the Finnish company but unfortunately it’s like a son who got thrown under the bus by his own mother. The phone glares through every aspect, be it design or the OS. It’s going to be the only one of its kind, forever. Let’s keep the tragedy aside and focus on the review.  So before we move ahead have a look at its specs,

•  1GHz ARM Cortex A-8 processor,PowerVR SGX530 GPU
•  1 GB RAM, 16 or 64 GB mass memory (depending upon the variant)
• 3.9″ AMOLED ClearBlack display with Curved Glass, Corning Gorilla Glass, FWGA(854×480) Resolution
•  8 MP Auto Focus camera, Carl-Zeiss optics, Dual LED flash,
• Unibody Polycarbonate Construction
• Quadband GSM/EDGE, Pentaband WCDMA (3G)
• Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, NFC
• MeeGo 1.2 (Harmattan), Full Touch only phone

Design:

This is the most important aspect of the N9 for which it’s been praised from the moment Nokia announced it. The design of the N9 is like never ever seen in mobile industry. It’s tough, solid yet attractive and beautiful. The phone is made up of polycarbonate and it’s a unibody construction. That is there are no separable parts of the body except for the microSIM card slot and microUSB port door. The color is mixed with the material of the phone itself instead of painting it from outside. The benefit of this is that it becomes somewhat scratch resistant and any scratch, if you manage to get one, is barely visible.

The another aspect of this design is the display and the glass above it. There’s no space between the display and the protective glass. So when you see things from some angle it feels like they are printed on the glass itself. This gives the lively feel to the experience. Nokia has used the scratch resistant ‘Gorilla’  glass from the now well known brand Corning. This glass has especially been curved to complement the gesture based UI. The curves act like guides to your fingers. Additionally Nokia has added a polarization layer to the display, ‘ClearBlackDisplay’ in their terms. This polarization boosts the visibility of the already great display. Even in strong daylight everything on display remains perfectly visible. The AMOLED display has good contrast and just like any other AMOLED display it renders blacks perfectly and offers great viewing angles. Plus the resolution is also higehest we’ve ever seen on Nokia phones. Lately they have been using nHD resolution on all size of displays like ‘one size fits them all’. This new resolution is crispier and gives more clarity to on-screen objects.

Moving ahead there isn’t much on the exterior of the phone which needs explanation. The right side of the phone houses the only hardware keys of the phone. There’s a volume rocker and a power/lock key and a 3.5mm audio jack on the right side.

Power/lock key and Volume Rocker

While on the top there’s a microSIM card slot as well as microUSB slot. Your normal size SIM card won’t work here so you’ll either need to cut it using a special cutter or get the new microSIM from your operators. Few operators have started keeping microSIMs now so we guess you should get one easily. On the front of the phone, except for the display which we discussed earlier, there’s a ambient light sensor and proximity sensor which sit together at the top right corner. The earpiece is situated above the Nokia logo on the phone. The front camera is situated at the bottom right corner. The front camera also boasts VGA resolution.

Top of the N9.MicroSIM tray,microUSB port and 3.5mm jack

Earpiece,Ambient and Proximity Sensors

Front Camera

Notification LED

The left side of the phone is completely bare while there’s a loudspeaker grill at the bottom. For the matter of fact we couldn’t find the microphone anywhere on the phone so our closest guess would be that it’s inside the loudspeaker grill. The back of the phone boasts 8 MP Carl-Zeiss camera and dual LED flash. There’s a secondary microphone very closely located near the LED flash for active noise cancellation.

Bare left side of N9

Back of the N9

8MP Carl Zeiss Camera,Dual LED Flash

Hardware:

At the heart of this phone is the ARM Cortex-A8 processor running at 1GHz clock speed and it is complemented by 1GB of RAM which is again highest on Nokia smartphones. The graphics department is handled by the PowerVR SGx530 GPU which does the job perfectly. The handset also boasts the pentaband WCDMA (3G) radio which makes it a true globetrotter.

The OS and the User Interface:

The Nokia N9 runs on the MeeGo which is a Linux based OS. MeeGo though sounds new it’s not the completely new concept.MeeGo is the child of two companies whose marriage didn’t last long to say. Nokia already had their Linux based OS and the user interface Maemo. We saw the Maemo 5 running on the Nokia N900. And Intel was developing their own Linux based OS Moblin. Both the companies decided to merge their OSes in each other and MeeGo was given a birth. While it retains the Linux as its backbone, both the user interface and user experience are raised to such levels which no other OS/company has been able to attain. The UI is created with maximum simplicity in the mind. There’s no pressing keys to navigate and open menus or switch applications. All things are controlled by the gestures. Even unlocking the phone works without any hardware key, that is ,you just need to tap twice on the lock-screen and it unlocks the phone and then you need push away the screen which you there.

The Lockscreen.Swiping it in any direction will unlcok the phone.

All you get as a part of the UI is a set of three panes which have different functions associated to them. The main menu is at the center of the three.  When you’re in main menu and swipe from the left to right it takes you to the feeds screen. Here you can see all your feeds from Facebook and Twitter. It also notifies you if you have new mails or missed calls in a separate notification area. This screen also shows current date and weather. If you again swipe from left to right you’ll reach the third screen which shows open applications or just call it the task manager.  Here you can see all your apps in either 2×2 or 3×3 grid. You can end each app individually or all at once.

You can put the currently open app in the background by swiping from three directions except from the top. Swiping down from the top when an app is running will simply close it.

The concept of the notification bar has become so popular and it’s useful too even MeeGo has got one for itself. At first the notification bar of MeeGo and that of Symbian Belle look similar but the one in MeeGo uses different logic. It’s not pull bit-by-bit as it is in Belle rather it’s ‘tap-to-open’ and ‘tap-to-close’ concept, similar to the bada OS. There are toggles for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi/Internet are available but they are also different than their Symbian counterparts. When closed, notification bar has indicators for 3G/GSM networks,battery level, Wi-Fi, new emails and few others along with the clock at the end. Opening up the notification bar gives you more control. Apart from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth you can quickly change the profile or increase or decrease the ringing and general volume. You can also control your availability on chat networks like GTalk and Skype and Facebook as well.

Performance:

Given its hardware specification, one would expect N9 to run flawlessely and smoothly. But in our case it showed many hiccups. It would slow down noticeably when there were many apps open in background. Still the internet browsing experience even with heavy sites was good. Our N9 also dropped  regular mobile network very frequently and couldn’t connect again until we re-inserted the SIM card. We guess all these has more to do with software than hardware. The battery life was another issue. The battery lives less than 24hrs once fully charged with moderate usage, you can activate the power saving mode though.

Nokia 701 is one of the trio which runs on latest Symbian Belle. Taking a clue from the stylish C7 design and upgraded hardware it comes to attract us again. The 701 doesn’t have any specific feature which should be its USP but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worth a look. Certainly it’s the 1 GHz processor and 3.5” screen and Symbian Belle which runs butter smooth on it is what we liked about it in the first look. But does it satisfy the price it’s asking for?

Design:

Nokia 701 is purely the upgraded the version of the good old C7. And its design is the key witness here. It’s built on exactly same design, only few bits have been changed. The oval shape and rounded edges and corners remain same.

Starting from the front it retains the same 3.5” screen of C7 but this time instead of AMOLED display of C7 you get IPS LCD on 701. Above the display, near right top corner you’ll find front camera, ambient and proximity sensors sitting in the line. Extreme top houses the earpiece. About some changed bits. First of all, Nokia has replaced the mirror-finish plastic strip on C7 (which runs around the front of the phone) with that of matte finish on 701. We wish they had kept it intact. Maybe it’s just for differentiation between two. Same goes for earpiece too. Another thing is that they have changed the location of the menu button by a little. On C7 there was some space between menu key and the screen but on 701 its size has been reduced a little and it’s now very close to the screen. This effectively makes it little hard to use it without touching the screen. In our experience we ended tapping the screen every time we clicked the menu key.

The right side of the Nokia 701 is very much crowded. It features volume rocker keys and exactly between those two keys there is a voice command key. Going down further, there’s a keyguard key which is used to lock keys and screen. Near the bottom there’s a shutter (camera) key. At times it feels like it’s placed down few centimeters more than necessary. The bottom of the phone features only lanyard socket. Same goes for the left side where there’s just 2mm charging socket. Top of the phone has microUSB port, 3.5mm earphone jack and a power key.

On the back of the phone there’s 8MP fixed focus camera along with dual LED flash inside the silver color frame. On either sides of the camera there’s loudspeaker grill. The loudspeaker of the Nokia 701 is weaker than we expected. The battery cover of Nokia 701 is made up of metal just like it was on C7. Under the cover the first thing you’ll notice is big 1300 mAh battery. Just above the battery there’s SIM card slot which seems hot-swappable but it’s not. Unfortunately the memory card slot is under the battery and thus it’s not hotswappable. Though the phone comes with 8GB of mass memory which is enough for most users but those who want to use more than 8GB will find it inconvenient. In our opinion memory card slot should have been at the place of SIM card and not under the battery.  Near the latch of the back cover there’s second microphone which is used to record sound in stereo.

Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Nokia 500, company’s first 1GHz phone. We know Nokia is going to discontinue Symbian but that doesn’t mean they don’t have any love left for it. We heard Nokia CEO saying powerful Symbian to come out in future and he kept his promise. Nokia 500 is not only the first device to run 1GHz processor but also the first device after they changed silly naming convention to something meaningful.

Much has been talked about how Symbian is resource efficient and runs smoothly on low end hardware when compared to competitors. But finally new management has decided to raise the standards of Symbian smartphones, Nokia 500 being the first. Without a doubt Symbian is resource efficient but competition and community both were asking for new hardware, for them Nokia 500 is the answer.

So let’s see if it’s able to handle all the pressure from competition.

A quick look at Nokia 500 spec-sheet:

• 1GHz ARM11 processor, GPU with 2D support  (only)
• 3.2” TFT LCD, Capacitive Touchscreen, 360×640 resolution
• 256MB RAM, 2GB mass memory, microSD support upto 32GB
• Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Pentaband WCAMA(3G)
• Bluetooth 2.1(A2DP), Wi-Fi b/g/n
• USB 2.0 via microUSB, USB OTG, USB mass storage
• 5MP fixed focus camera, VGA video recording @15 FPS
• 1110 mAh BL-4U battery

What’s inside the box:

Remember the oldy goldy  days of Nokia 3310 when you could actually personalize your phone by changing its dress? xPress on color covers anyone? Yes, you get them back with Nokia 500. With our black trial unit we received two extra back covers, red and blue. We pretty much liked the idea of bringing them back.

This is how it looks,

You also get a stereo headset which comes with some cheap S40 phones too, a very short USB cable and a charger. And of course some manuals.

Design:

The design of Nokia 500 takes clues from X6 we’d rather say it’s X6 plus Symbian Anna plus 1GHz processor minus 5MP carl zeiss camera. Nevertheless device is simple yet attractive. Thanks to its 3.2” display, Nokia 500 is very handy, especially for those on move. You don’t need to worry about it being too big to handle or use both hands to use.
The Nokia 500 has simple monoblock form factor. On front it has not too big-not too small 3.2” display Beneath the display Nokia has left some space and accommodated microphone since it was not possible to put it on bottom side which is not the part of its main body. Below it are three hardware keys, make/receive call, menu and call end key. First look at them gives the impression that they are capacitive keys which they are not actually. Above the display there’s usual earpiece and proximity and ambient light sensor sit together aside it. Both of them mixed so well with the bazel Nokia has put around the display that most people will not even notice them there, some may see proximity sensor at best and to see ambient light sensor you’d need to focus torch light there.

The back of the phone is nothing but the removable cover. That’s not all. There’s a 5MP camera along with the loudspeaker. There’s no flash of any kind to help you take photos in dark, quite a disappointment there.

The top of the phone hosts 3.5mm jack, microUSB port and 2mm charger port. We felt like taking a look under its back to find memory card slot. Yes, memory card slot is under the back cover and it’s not even hot swappable because it actually lies under the battery. So swapping memory cards will be a tiresome job for you.

On the right hand side of the phone there is volume rocker and keyguard. The ‘keyguard’ on Nokia 500 acts strangely than the one on other Symbian^3 devices. Pressing it locks the keys but it won’t help you to unlock again, instead it’ll just make the display active and present the on-screen ‘Unlock’ button. We don’t understand why Nokia used the keygard in first place if it wanted users to use on-screen button.

The left side of the phone is completely bare.

Nokia hasn’t used any metal in its body, it’s completely made up of plastics. But the material is no-way cheap class. Front gets smudged very quickly but that doesn’t affect viewing quality. Back covers also has a rubber coating over them which give good grip.