Priced just shy of Rs 20,000, the Lumia 720 is designed to offer the best of both worlds – stellar multimedia performance and a good battery life. Here’s our initial impression of the phone before the full blown review.
With the Lumia 820 and 920 being super sales duds, all hope for Nokia’s resurrection in the smartphone game seemed lost. With the road to Symbian left in ruins, coupled with its reluctance to adopt Android, Nokia had no choice but to stick to Microsoft's mobile platform. Things have been looking up lately, though, after Nokia announced its budget Lumia 520. And now, its mid-range Lumia 720 is starting to hit store shelves. Priced just shy of Rs 20,000, the Lumia 720 is designed to offer the best of both worlds – stellar multimedia performance and a good battery life. Here’s our initial impression of the phone before the full blown review.
Design and Build
The Lumia 720 is hands down the best looking Lumia till date, with the 520 coming in a close second. The unibody chassis is extremely well-built and there’s a seamless transition from screen to chassis. The Lumia 720 is available in multiple colour options with a mix of gloss and matt finishes. Despite the glossy finish, the handset is surprisingly grippy and feels really good in your hand. Finger prints are unavoidable, but it’s not too much of an issue to get rid of. The squared off front is reminiscent of the Lumia 920, but the rest of the chassis is similar to the 820 and the 520.
Camera
The Lumia 720 packs in a 6.7MP main camera with a wide angle lens. The front camera has also been upgraded from a VGA camera on the 820 to a 1.3MP snapper with the same wide angle lens. The camera also boasts of Carl Zeiss optics, which actually manages to capture some pretty good shots. With all the settings on auto, we managed to get some pretty good macro shots. Video recording maxes out at 720p. This is not a limitation of the chipset, but rather a deliberate attempt to keep some features exclusive to the 820.
First Impressions
The Lumia 720 may look like just another Lumia clone, but the feel is completely different from any other handset in the series. It’s also the best looking handset out of the lot. The screen size is perfect for most hands and the chassis offers a good amount of grip. The 720 expands upon the Lumia 620’s feature set by adding Carl Zeiss optics, IPS display, better camera sensor and a much larger battery. However, it also has some of its shortcomings, the biggest of which is just 512MB of RAM, which heavily limits the availability of apps, which as it is are sparse.
The battery is fixed, so we have side-loading slots for the SIM and memory card. The buttons have a good tactile feed and are ergonomically placed. Even though the 720 lacks interchangeable covers, Nokia has a wireless charging jacket that clips on to the back.
Display
The 4.3-inch IPS display is an upgrade from the AMOLED display on the 820, which wasn’t very good. The resolution is still WVGA, but that’s hardly noticeable on a WP8 device. The display is also hyper sensitive, which means you can use it with gloves, just like the 920. The display is sharp and vivid and is easily visible under most lighting conditions. It also fares pretty well outdoors under direct sunlight.
Features
Inside, it’s business as usual. You get the same fluid Windows Phone 8 experience with all of Nokia’s exclusive apps like HERE Maps, HERE Drive, Nokia Glam Me, Panorama, PhotoBeamer, SmartShoot and many more. The Lumia 720 is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8227, which is part of the S4 Play series of chipsets and is the same one that’s used in the Lumia 620 and 520. The two CPUs onboard run at a speed of 1GHz and are accompanied by 512MB of RAM. The lack of 1GB RAM is a big sore point for the 720 since many apps, especially games like Temple Run, Asphalt, Modern Combat, etc., don’t even show up on the app store as they aren’t compatible. As it is, there are just a handful of good games for the platform and you won’t be able to play any of them due to the lack of sufficient RAM.
Camera
The Lumia 720 packs in a 6.7MP main camera with a wide angle lens. The front camera has also been upgraded from a VGA camera on the 820 to a 1.3MP snapper with the same wide angle lens. The camera also boasts of Carl Zeiss optics, which actually manages to capture some pretty good shots. With all the settings on auto, we managed to get some pretty good macro shots. Video recording maxes out at 720p. This is not a limitation of the chipset, but rather a deliberate attempt to keep some features exclusive to the 820.
First Impressions
The Lumia 720 may look like just another Lumia clone, but the feel is completely different from any other handset in the series. It’s also the best looking handset out of the lot. The screen size is perfect for most hands and the chassis offers a good amount of grip. The 720 expands upon the Lumia 620’s feature set by adding Carl Zeiss optics, IPS display, better camera sensor and a much larger battery. However, it also has some of its shortcomings, the biggest of which is just 512MB of RAM, which heavily limits the availability of apps, which as it is are sparse.
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