[IFA 2014] Hands-On: Nokia Lumia 830

As reported yesterday, Microsoft has officially introduced two new additions to its Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8.1 family of smartphones. One of them is the Nokia Lumia 830 which has surprisingly been touted by Microsoft as an “affordable flagship” device.

For many of us, a flagship device is a reference given to products that are positioned at the top of their family members since they usually feature top notch hardware, features and design. In the Lumia series, that role is currently fulfilled by the Lumia 930 as well as the Lumia 1520.

Take a quick look at the Lumia 830’s specs, and you might be baffled to see that its hardware is nowhere near the Lumia 930 and Lumia 1520. So, how can the Lumia 820 be called a flagship device then?

It turns out that the reason why the Lumia 830 is referred in such way is due to the fact that it features quite a number of traits that Microsoft considers flagship innovations, all within an affordable price point. While some might not agree with this particular definition, it is rather interesting to see the way Microsoft is starting to use the word “affordable” more often than before.

Moving on, let’s take a closer look at the Lumia 830’s exterior. Mirroring the design language of the Lumia 930, the smartphone is built with a brushed aluminium frame, removable polycarbonate back cover and a 5-inch ClearBlack IPS display that is covered by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. With a thickness of 8.5mm, this means that the Lumia 830 is actually slimmer than the Lumia 930.

Despite that, it is actually still quite hard to differentiate both devices from each other when they are viewed from the front side. Turn them around though, it quickly becomes easy to determine which model is which as the black-coloured circular housing of the Lumia 830’s PureView camera module is highly visible; similar to but slightly smaller than the famed Lumia 1020.

Within the housing lies a 10-megapixels PureView camera with F2.2 Carl Zeiss optics and an optical image stabilization (OIS) system that is said to be the thinnest OIS module that Microsoft has equipped into a Lumia device to date. The same camera is also equipped with Nokia Rich Recording technology which utilises three High Amplitude Audio Capture (HAAC) mics within the Lumia 830 to allow the smartphone to record videos in surround sound.

Unlike the Lumia 930 and 1520 though, the Lumia 830 doesn’t come with directional stereo recording capability due to the mic setup. Accompanying the device’s PureView rear camera is a single LED flash, while the Lumia 830 is also equipped with a 0.9-megapixels wide-angle F2.4 front facing camera.

Apart from the PureView rear camera, other features of the Lumia 830 that Microsoft deemed as flagship innovations are integrated wireless charging capability and the SensorCore technology. Not to forget, the Lumia 830 also comes with LTE connectivity, 2200mAh removable battery, supports up to 128GB microSD cards, and is one of the first devices to come standard with the new Lumia Denim update.

If there are so much flagship-level features (according to Microsoft) that are available on Lumia 830, then which part of the phone that actually challenged the Lumia 830’s status as a flagship device? Well, that would be its 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor which is accompanied by 1GB of RAM and 16GB internal storage, as well as the 720p display.

As a flagship, one would expect at least a Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB RAM and full HD display in the Lumia 830. Then again, to include these components into the Lumia 830 would obviously increase its price point. Nevertheless, the Lumia 830 still performs rather smoothly without noticeable lag as far as our first impressions are concerned despite its mid-range processing power – which is to be expected from a Windows Phone device anyway due to the highly optimized nature of the operation system.

In other words, what we are looking here is essentially a PureView Lumia LTE smartphone with a mid-range price tag or if you may, a toned down version of the Lumia 930. Priced at EUR 330 (RM 1,360), the new Nokia Lumia 830 will be made available globally starting from this month onwards.