Having had a brief peek into the design aspects of the Lumia 630, It’s only fair to take a look into the hardware that makes the phone tick. The Lumia 630 brings in many first for the Lumia series. It’s the first dual SIM smartphone on the Windows Phone platform, the first phone to feature onscreen buttons, the first (well almost the first) to run Windows Phone 8.1.
As you can see the phone has many firsts to it’s credit. When there’s so much riding on it and the stakes so high, the phone needs to be running hardware that will not be its Achilles’ heel. Whether that’s the case here or not, remains to be seen.
Before I get started let’s take a look at the hardware specs on the Lumia 630
- 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor
- 512MB RAM, 8GB internal memory with Micro SD card slot for cards up to 128GB
- 4.5” ClearBlack IPS LCD 854 x 480 pixels
- WiFi (b/g/n), Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou, Bluetooth 4, HSPA
- 1830mAh battery
A look at those specs and one is left wondering whether the 512MB of RAM will suffice or not. Let’s be honest, the specs aren’t exactly going to set the specs sheet on fire. It just won’t. The Lumia 630 isn’t intended to be the speediest, flashiest of the Lumia devices.
I’ve got the benchmarks you want to go through and they’re posted below for you to see.
However, I’m going to delve into the real world experiences of the device running the hardware it is packing.
Hardware:
The Lumia 630’s processor is quick, it’s not blazing fast and truth be told I don’t expect it to be. The real world performance wasn’t too bad on the phone. the quad core processor handles most of the things thrown at it with aplomb. There are moments when you can feel a lag in the device. That moment’s lag is enough to tell you that it needs better hardware, however I do believe the processor is not that badly taxed. The processor by itself seems quite capable enough to take on rigours of daily computing to fulfil all that you ask of the phone. I suspect the problem to be with the RAM or rather the lack of adequate RAM. The Lumia 1020 also suffers from a similar problem however I think while symptom might be the same, the causes may be different. Personally, I feel 512MB of RAM is little for a device like this, Nokia should have probably introduced it with 768MB of RAM and may be things could have been better than it is.
However I’m talking of a moment’s freeze, something that is anaemic to the device, but won’t lead to an app crashing or the phone randomly rebooting due to the stress of too much data processing. When it comes to gaming, the Lumia 630 performed admirably. I tried Asphalt 8: Airborne on the device and it seemed to work just fine. the graphics was a bit off, but then again this isn’t the Lumia 1020 or even a 930 for that matter. The phone performed quite well with games like Temple Run 2 and Subway Surfers. The games support 512MB devices and one can see how they achieve it, however it’s nice to know that Microsoft has ensured that even with 512MB of RAM, yo won’t be left out with half an experience from the platform. However the Lumia 630 needs to have a little bit more RAM to allow it that little bit extra punch. Daily tasks that aren’t graphics intensive or battery intensive will run smoothly and RAM won’t be an issue at all really. However you can and will notice that loss of smoothness just that little much to remind you about the RAM.
8GB of internal memory seems okay for a phone at this price point, more so because the platform now allows for high speed Micro SD cards to actually have apps installed on it so that the phone never utters that it is running on low memory. I popped in a 4GB card only and things worked pretty well until I installed some big apps. I’d recommend a high speed memory card for the device as it will most necessarily be needed. Using lower speed Micro SD cards might do the job, but don’t complain if the video recording is not what you expected or there is a lag in the overall performance when using an app.
The only piece of hardware I was disappointed with is the screen. I won’t mince words, the screen used and the resolution used just isn’t good. Things appear choppy. At least the OS does. I’m not expecting 720p screens or anything to that order, but I do feel that better resolutions screens and maybe an AMOLED screen would have done the trick for the Lumia 630. The current screen – just disappointing. For everyday tasks and office work, the Lumia 630 screen doesn’t pose problems, but when you are watching videos, playing games or surfing the internet, the screen resolution just takes away the fun from it all. In terms of economics, it may seem unreasonable to outfit a high resolution screen in a budget phone such as the Lumia 630. I hope Nokia don’t use this screen in the forthcoming models.
The speaker on the Lumia 630 is situated at the back of the phone. The speaker is loud enough in a relatively quiet room. In a noisy environment, the speaker isn’t as audible as you’d like it to be. It’s not so muted as the Nexus 4 was, however I think it could have been a tad louder. The Lumia 630’s speaker doesn’t disappoint and performs well, If the songs are bass heavy, then the speaker gives out, but that is to be expected, after all it’s just the speaker in a phone.
Battery life on the Lumia 630 is not bad. The newer generation processors along with improved software means that the 1830mAh battery manages to last a day with heavy usage. I was able to get about 21 hours with a data connection on, about 5 email accounts syncing, social network notifications, lots of calls and messages, WhatsApp. I had two SIM cards in the phone as well. With my typical usage, I was pretty impressed with the performance of the phone. While earlier generation WP phones have been good too in their battery life, the 630 has been the most impressive primarily because the newer WP8.1 software brings in many an updates to the platform, one of them being the push notifications support. The Lumia 630 certainly made me less worried about the charger during the review period. The last time I felt this with a WP device was during the 1520 review period. Nokia’s decision to use the Snapdragon 400 solution has worked out to be a good decision as the hardware not only offers dual SIM but also very good battery life at the same time.
In this hardware review, I’m deliberately keeping the camera, music and call quality aspects aside as they will be reviewed individually.
Overall, when it comes to hardware, Nokia, with the Lumia 630 have delivered a good product, one that is very good for the price. There are areas when Nokia could have stretched a bit like RAM and screen, but addressing them both or even one may have been a challenge for Nokia as it would have increased the retail price. The Lumia 630 doesn’t feel handicapped or like a compromise. It is certainly a marked improvement from Nokia over the 620 and 625 devices. The 630 is also available at a very good price point (AED 589/- in UAE) making it a very good option over many Android offerings in the market.
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