Nokia Lumia 530 review summary
The Nokia Lumia 530 is an excellent entry level phone from Microsoft and it is mighty impressive for what it does and costs. While there are few things the Nokia Lumia 530 could do a lot better but we feel it does a lot for little money.
Pros and cons of Nokia Lumia 530
+ Great value for money
+ Excellent performance
+ Good battery life
– Low built in storage – you must have a micro SD card to make most of it
– No front facing camera
– No 4G LTE model.
Full Review of Nokia Lumia 530 and its specifications
After success of Lumia 520, it appears that Nokia has struck gold with the Lumia 530. The phone is equipped with everything that is required to outsell every single windows phone released till date and other smartphones in the below 100 euro range.
Windows Phone runs amazingly well on low end hardware and it totally flies on the Lumia 530 thanks to the quad core Snapdragon 200 processor. Phones in this range lag as they Android which is a bloated operating system.
It is safe to say that Nokia is back with the Lumia 530 in the budget smartphone game and will strike lightning twice with it.
Nokia Lumia 530 – Power for the people
Display
The 530 comes with a 4 inch display packing the same number pixels as the Lumia 630 but since the display is smaller than 630, PPI is 245 which makes it look very sharp.
In comparison the high 4” iPhone 5S packs 960×540 so 854×480 pixels don’t look bad on a 4 inch screen. However the screen quality is bog standard LCD type and not IPS like the one on iPhone.
Nevertheless it is much better than the phones in its class.
Design and Build Quality
From a 5 meter display you will easily be able to identify 530 as a Lumia. The back cover is removable and Nokia offers them in variety of colors.
It weighs a modest 129 grams and it feels just right in hands. It measures 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7mm and feels compact in hands.
Performance and Gaming
The phone comes with a quad core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 200 processor by Qualcomm which brings almost lag-free experience to the end user.
For many 512MB sound too low but since it runs windows phone OS which is super optimized for such hardware, you will find it quite nippy. In fact you would be able to run a CPU intensive game like Halo on it without any lag. We ran it and were pleased with the results.
In other words you will never feel like you are using the cheapest windows phone in the market.
Battery and storage
It comes with a 1430 battery that gives you a full day of good use. The battery runtimes are better than the Lumia 520 thanks to more optimized OS and processor.
Built-in 4GB Storage could have been a big problem if it did not come with WP8.1 but since WP 8.1 lets you move application and games to micro SD card, you can easily overcome this problem by using a good class 10 card.
Camera and Video quality
We really did not want to discuss the camera quality of a budget phone because we thought it would be unfair.
Let us keep it short and simple – it is disappointing because it has fixed focus and thus the photos do not turn out super crisp. However they do seem to do an “ok” job for Facebook and Twitter.
The 530 is the first windows phone that is incapable of recording 720p videos. That said it can perfectly play them back.
Verdict – Lumia 530 is more capable than you think
Yes you read that right. While the phone is not impressive the storage and camera department, it offers a very compelling package in areas like performance, gaming, expandability and display.
Nokia Lumia 530 Specification
Dimensions : 119.7 x 62.3 x 11.7mm
Weight: 129 grams
Screen size: 4.0” TFT (480 x 854)
Screen Resolution: 480 x 854 display resolution
Pixels Per Inch (PPI) : 245
Processor: 1.2GHz Quad core application processor
RAM: 512MB
On-board Memory: 4GB (microSD support)
Camera: 5MP (rear) 480p@30fps (no front-facing camera)
Operating system: Windows Phone 8.1
Ultrafast / 3G / 4G LTE: Yes/ Yes/ No
Bluetooth / NFC : Yes/ No
Battery capacity: 1430mAh
Colours: Bright Orange, Bright Green, White, Dark Grey
Launch Date: August
Price: £79 / 99 euro