Lumia 630 review: A Windows Phone on Android hardware

The huge Windows Phone 8.1 release made Windows Phone a very different platform than it had been before. As well as high-profile new features, most notably the Cortana digital assistant and major work enabling developers to use substantially the same code on both Windows Phone and Windows 8, it had one more important feature: it was cheaper than ever.

It’s not simply that the software itself costs nothing, though that certainly helps. It’s that Windows Phone 8.1 changes the hardware spec in some important ways.

Windows Phone launched needing an array of Windows Phone-specific buttons: the trio of buttons on the front, for back, Windows, and search, and the camera button—with half press to focus—on the side. Though the camera button requirement was relaxed some time ago, Windows Phone 8.1 went a lot further: the only mandatory buttons are the volume rocker and power button. The camera button and front buttons can be discarded entirely, with the former replaced by a tile for the camera app, and the latter by three on-screen buttons.

This makes Windows Phone 8.1 devices cheaper than ever before. There’s the obvious cost-savings from not having to include the buttons, but the advantages run deeper than that: manufacturers no longer have to customize their hardware for Windows Phone. With both Android and Windows Phone 8.1 supporting on-screen buttons, hardware companies can now build a single hardware model and install either of the operating systems onto it.

No doubt these relaxed constraints and lower prices are a big part of why Microsoft has announced a ton of new Windows Phone partners and a whole host of new phones that’ll be coming to different markets around the world.

However, one of the, if not first, Windows Phone devices to hit the market to take advantage of the new specs comes from one of Microsoft’s older and better partners. In fact, it was the partner that it ended up buying: Nokia.

The battle for the low end

A little surprisingly, when Microsoft announced Windows Phone 8.1, Nokia didn’t have a new flagship device to launch at the same time. It did talk about a high-end handset, the Lumia 930, but that is just a rebranded, GSM-compatible version of the Lumia Icon already available on Verizon.

The new devices it launched back at BUILD were a pair of sibling handsets, the Lumia 630 and 635, that are built for the new Windows Phone specs.

(Though Microsoft now owns Nokia’s handset division, calling it “Microsoft Mobile,” these phones are, for the time being at least, still Nokia-branded and were planned and designed when the division was under Finnish ownership.)

Both models are aimed at the lower end of the smartphone market, designed to be affordable without any contract subsidy. This is an increasingly interesting part of the market, with handsets like the Moto G and E, and Lumia 520 at the low end, and HTC Desire 816 in the mid-range, all giving people real smartphones for a lot less money than a new iPhone 5S or Galaxy S5.

The differences between the two models are few: the 630 is a 3G device, topping out at 21Mbps HSDPA, whereas the 635 is a 4G device, topping out at 100Mbps LTE (and also supporting 42Mbps HSDPA). The 630 has a dual-SIM option in some markets; the 635 is strictly single SIM. The 630 is unlikely to see widespread distribution within the US; the 635 will be coming to AT&T, T-Mobile, and MetroPCS. Both are or will be widely available around the world. Beyond that, the pair seem entirely interchangeable.

The back comes off, exposing the battery, SIM, and microSD slot.

The phones are built in the mold of previous low-end Nokia Windows Phones, with black glass fronts, wraparound removable covers in a range of colors (including the truly spectacular orange of my Lumia 630 review unit), removable batteries. The specs, listed in the table above, are unremarkable. Perhaps the most striking thing about them is the things that aren’t there; there’s no compass or front-facing camera, there’s only 512MB RAM and only 8GB internal storage (of which about 4 to 5GB are usable). And, of course, there are no front buttons or camera button.

The picture can’t actually capture the phone’s full orangeness; its safety orange color is outside both sRGB and Adobe RGB gamuts.

Software buttons

How does this work in practice? Mechanically, it’s all simple enough. The phones have an 854×480 screen, with the bottom 54 pixels reserved for the on-screen buttons. This reduces the screen’s usable display area to the standard baseline Windows Phone resolution of 800×480.

For now, the buttons look exactly like their physical counterparts. I can imagine that at some point they won’t—perhaps replacing the search magnifying glass with a Cortana logo, for example—but right now, they’re identical in design. The buttons do make some reasonable concessions to their on-screen nature. Hold the phone in landscape orientation, and the buttons neatly rotate so they remain right side up.

There are also limited customizations with three options: always white-on-black, match the current background, or use the accent color. Screen shots should make their meaning straightforward enough.

The regular black background looks almost like a phone with hardware buttons.

The regular black background looks almost like a phone with hardware buttons.

But if you like your accent color, you can use that.

But if you like your accent color, you can use that.

The regular black background looks almost like a phone with hardware buttons.

But if you like your accent color, you can use that.

And there’s a grey scheme for those who use the light background.

And there’s a grey scheme for those who use the light background.

And there’s a grey scheme for those who use the light background.

In practice, I was pleased to note that everything worked in much the way I would expect it to, which is about all you can hope for with this kind of thing. The on-screen buttons did not seem any more susceptible to errant taps than the capacitive buttons that most phones these days use for their hardware keys, so in spite of their tight placement against the screen, I didn’t find myself prone to pressing them by accident—at least no more often than I do with any other phone with non-mechanical buttons.

Less satisfactory is the removal of the camera button. Technically, this has been possible on Windows Phone for some time, and I believe there are some handsets out there that have dropped it, but I don’t think any of these have been mainstream devices.

Windows Phones with the button use it for two things. First, the camera button launches the camera app, and, if you choose, it can do so even when the phone is locked. Second, the buttons have two stages, with a half press to focus and a full press to take the picture, just like on a real camera. Now in fairness, the efficacy of this varies from model to model. On some of the devices I’ve used, using the camera button in this way will generally result in blurry pictures, because of the pressure required to actually click it. On others, it works well.

A camera button in the quick launch area is sometimes an adequate substitute for the hardware button.

However, on the Lumia 630, all this is gone. There’s no camera button at all. To launch the camera app, you have to actually run the camera app. By default, one of the quick launch icons in the notification center was set to the camera app, too, offering global access without having to go via the Start screen or app list.

This is OK, as far as it goes, but what’s missing is instant access from the lock screen. Both Windows 8.1 (on the PC and tablet) and iOS have decent solutions to this. On Windows 8.1, you can slide the lock screen in a different direction to go directly to the camera app without unlocking the PC, and on iOS you can tap the camera button on the lock screen for similar direct access.

I think this would be a simple enough change for Microsoft to make, but until it does, these camera button-free phones are a little awkward, and I think unnecessarily so. Instant access to the camera is a big deal, and at the moment, the button-light Windows Phone devices fall short of the ideal.

This gripe aside, the camera itself worked decently, turning in a solid daylight performance for a budget phone and showing respectable low light performance. The lack of flash means that it will never excel in the gloomier pubs and bars around the world, but I think in general it’ll get the job done. It can also manage recording 720p video.

An indoor scene.

An indoor scene.

An outdoor scene.

An outdoor scene.

An indoor scene.

An outdoor scene.

Flowers.

Flowers.

Cat.

Cat.

Flowers.

Cat.

Costs have to be cut somewhere

I generally enjoyed the Lumia 630. The IPS LCD isn’t the highest resolution in the world, but it had good contrast, decent viewing angles, nice rich blacks, good daylight visibility, and was perfectly fine for e-mailing, YouTubing, and so forth. The biggest flaw was that the backlighting was a little uneven along the top, mainly visible on white backgrounds. Compared to the bargain-basement screen used on the (somewhat cheaper) Lumia 520, it is a vast improvement. Compared to the Lumia 620, however, it has basically stood still for a year.

The 520, often available for around $60 carrier locked, $99 unlocked, is a remarkable value, but in use it’s abundantly clear that the screen has been severely compromised to reach a price point. I don’t get that same feeling with the 630; it’s not the highest resolution going, but it’s nonetheless a reasonable looking unit.

The screen does have one big annoyance, however, and that’s that Nokia has not included an ambient light sensor. As such, the screen has no automatic contrast adjustment. To get that good daylight visibility, you’ll need to manually bump the brightness up to maximum. To avoid searing your eyes once you’re back indoors, you’ll need to manually bump it back down again. This is an extraordinary omission.

Build-wise, while the 630 isn’t as solid as its pricier monoblock cousins, it still feels sturdy. The removable back cover has a little flex—necessary to peel the thing off and replace it—but it fits snugly and securely.

The cost savings are more apparent in some other areas. Users of high-end smartphones are used to them being packed with sensors; gyroscopes, compasses, multiple cameras, heartrate, and more. The Lumia 630 is not packed with sensors. It has neither compass nor gyroscope, which means that mapping apps can’t tell you which direction you’re facing. It also has no front-facing camera, which means you have to resort to mirror selfies, and the rear camera has no flash.

Given the price point, none of this (apart from the ambient light sensor) is tremendously surprising. I don’t feel that Nokia/Microsoft is skimping in an area where other phones are offering an abundance of riches; these are just some of the things you give up at the lower end of the market. With Microsoft owning Skype, too, I’d rather expect front-facing cameras to be prioritized, but it’ll be some time before we really see Microsoft’s influence on the company.

Memory’s too tight to mention

The one hardship I did feel was memory. The Lumia 630 has 512MB RAM and 8GB flash. The latter could be cramped with lots of apps or downloaded maps, but that’s a problem that’s quite easy to rectify, again thanks to Windows Phone 8.1: apps, music, photos, and so on, can all be stored on microSD, and the 630 supports cards up to 128GB. For a modest outlay, on-phone storage can be abundant.

… and also move apps on an individual basis.

… and also move apps on an individual basis.

I’ve filled the review unit with crap, mainly, but the actual system software takes about 3 to 4GB.

I’ve filled the review unit with crap, mainly, but the actual system software takes about 3 to 4GB.

… and also move apps on an individual basis.

I’ve filled the review unit with crap, mainly, but the actual system software takes about 3 to 4GB.

512MB, however, is tight. Tight enough to prevent quite a few games from working on the phone. For some recent high-profile titles brought to Windows Phone, we’ve seen a pattern where 512MB phones are excluded from the initial release, only to be patched in later. For others, the 512MB phones simply aren’t supported. Freshly booted, the phone has something between about 50 and 100MB RAM free, so it’s not hard to see why some apps won’t run; a 1GB phone, by contrast, will easily have 4 to 500MB free, if not more.

For me, this was the wrong compromise to make. The Moto E is another cheap smartphone. Comparing prices is a little tricky because of the complexities of cellphone pricing and international availability, but judging from popular smartphone vendor Expansys, the Moto E is a bit cheaper: £95 (about $161), compared to £130 (about $220) for the Lumia 630.

The Moto E shares the Lumia 630’s shortage of sensors and skimps in some areas that the Nokia branded device does not. For example, it has only 4GB internal storage (and can only add another 32GB with microSD), and only a two-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 processor, with a slightly inferior Adreno 302 GPU. Unlike the Lumia 630, its camera can’t record video at 720p. The Moto’s screen is a little higher resolution, at 960×540, but nothing too remarkable.

However, the Moto E has one spec that sets it apart from the Lumia 630: it has a full 1GB of RAM.

I’m certainly not pretending that the Lumia 630 is rendered useless by its memory configuration. In my experience, the only apps that consistently refuse to install on the 512MB handsets are games, and if you’re not a big smartphone gamer—which I’m not—then you may never notice the shortage. Other decisions, such as the faster processor and bigger built-in storage, may well be more useful. But personally, I think that something like the 1GB RAM/4GB storage configuration of the Moto E is a better decision. Lack of storage is easily remedied with MicroSD. Lack of RAM can only be fixed with a new phone.

In our browser-based battery test (tested at medium screen brightness), the Lumia 630 soundly crushed the Moto E and Moto G.

In our browser-based battery test (tested at medium screen brightness), the Lumia 630 soundly crushed the Moto E and Moto G.

The Lumia 630’s SunSpider performance is very close to that of the Moto G, which has a very similar processor.

The Lumia 630’s SunSpider performance is very close to that of the Moto G, which has a very similar processor.

Internet Explorer’s Kraken performance, however, is rather less impressive.

Internet Explorer’s Kraken performance, however, is rather less impressive.

The Lumia 630’s SunSpider performance is very close to that of the Moto G, which has a very similar processor.

Internet Explorer’s Kraken performance, however, is rather less impressive.

Performance in general felt OK. It’s not the fastest phone in the world, and some apps, such as Nokia Camera, took a little longer to start than I would have liked (the standard Microsoft Camera app is fine), but overall, using apps and browsing the Web was acceptably fast. The big performance limitations seem to stem not from the processor but, once more, the lack of memory; run more than a couple of apps simultaneously and switching between them will feel slow as they get resurrected and reloaded each time. I was unable to run the Octane browser test, which I suspect is also due to the lack of memory.

SensorCore has to be turned on before it does anything.

The battery life seemed acceptable. It held up to a day of occasional tweeting, e-mailing, browsing, and a little streaming music and YouTube video, which is about par for the course. The one thing to be wary of is that peculiar lack of ambient light sensor; if you set the screen to maximum brightness for outdoor usage, you’ll want to manually set it to something less once you go inside, or it will burn battery faster than necessary.

The processor does have one other trick up its sleeve. Nokia is calling it SensorCore; the Snapdragon processor has a small secondary processor that can track and record movement, allegedly with little impact on battery life. Once enabled, any location-aware app can use this SensorCore data, with Bing Health & Fitness being the first (and currently only) app to support this. Accuracy of this counter seemed so-so, though having not used a Fitbit or similar device, I’m not entirely sure how good the state of the art is.