Nokia Lumia 720 – Hands-on Review

We got our hands on the new Lumia 720 is Nokia’s best effort as far as Windows Phone 8 handsets go. This could soon change once the Lumia 925 hits markets, but as it stands now, the Lumia 720 offers the best blend of features and performance, wrapped in a beautiful package that’s quite affordable. The only limiting factor we saw during our brief stint with the phone was the limiting 512MB RAM. But how much of a deal breaker is it? Let’s find out.

Design and build
The Lumia 720 features a polycarbonate unibody design, just like the Lumia 920 – only this time it’s slimmer, lighter and much better to hold. The 4.3-inch display has a much slimmer bezel as well as width, making it one of the slimmest Lumia’s at just 9 mm and super light at 128 g. The ClearBlack display blends seamlessly with the rest of the chassis, giving it a very elegant look.

Beautiful design
The button placement is very similar to the other Lumia’s; we have the volume rocker, power/sleep and the camera shutter all lined up along on one side. The button size and tactile feel is very good and it’s easy to figure out which one is which by just a simple touch. There’s a microUSB port at the bottom, microSD card slot on the side followed by the microSIM slot and headphone jack on the top. Around the back, we have a 6.7MP camera sensor with Carl Zeiss optics and an LED flash. The speaker grille is at the bottom and is fairly loud for alerts.

The Lumia 720 scores full marks for aesthetics and ergonomics in our books. The handset is very well put together – even better than the more expensive Lumia 820.

Features
Nokia hasn’t held back when it comes to the display. The Nokia Lumia 720 features a fairly dense 4.3-inch IPS display with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution. The ClearBlack technology certainly helps when it comes to viewing the screen under direct sunlight. The IPS panel produces bright and vivid colours with very good viewing angles.

Read more about Nokia Lumia Range Features Review  Click here

A familiar interface

The Lumia 720 runs Windows Phone 8 (WP8) OS and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm. This is the same MSM7227 SoC used in the Lumia 620 and the Lumia 520. The RAM configuration also remains the same, which is 512MB. The reduction in RAM is not much of a problem for the OS functioning, but it is a problem when it comes to using apps. Most of the good games for Windows Phone 8 require 1GB of RAM, so you’re straight away limited, which is a shame since there are just a handful of good games to begin with. Luckily, all popular apps make do just fine with 512MB of RAM and work well.

Good placement of buttons

The OS itself offers the same typical user experience as you’d find in the higher-end models, and it does so quite well for most part. The WP8 UI with its Live Tiles and social network integrated phone book worked seamlessly and was as smooth as they come.

Specifications

Display
Form Factor Bar
Screen Type IPS LCD Capacitive Touchscreen
Screen Size 4.3 inches
Screen Resolution 480 x 800
Number of Colours 16M
Processor
Processor Dual-core
Speed 1 GHz
Memory
Internal Memory 8GB, 512MB RAM
Extendable Memory microSD, up to 64 GB
Camera Features
Sensor Resolution 6.7MP, 2848 x 2144 pixels
Features Touch focus, Landscape Orientation, Still Image Editor, Full Screen Viewfinder, Geotagging
Digital Zoom 4x
Video resolution / frame rate 1280 x 720 / 30fps
Video Recording Yes
Front facing camera Yes
General Features
OS Microsoft Windows Phone 8
FM Radio Yes
Bluetooth Features Yes, v3.0 with A2DP
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
USB Connector Yes
NFC Yes
Available Colours White, Red, Yellow, Cyan/Black
Carrier Networks
2G GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100
Data
GPRS Yes
EGPRS or EDGE EDGE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Body
Dimensions 127.9 x 67.5 x 9 mm
Weight(grams) 128
Sound
Media Player Music formats: MP3, WAV, eAAC+, WMA
– Video formats: MP4, H.264, H.263, WMV
Alert Tone Vibration; MP3, WAV
Speakerphone Yes
Audio connector 3.5 mm
Battery
Type Li-Ion
Capacity(mAh) 2000
Talk Time with Standard Battery (Minutes) Up to 23 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 13 h 20 min (3G)
Standby Time with Standard Battery (Hours) Up to 520 h (3G)
Miscellaneous Features
Built in Applications Hotmail
– Yahoo! Mail
– Outlook Mobile
– Gmail
– Office 365
– Nokia Mail
– Windows Live / Hotmail / Outlook.com
– MS Exchange Active Sync
– Twitter
– Facebook chat
– LinkedIn
– Windows Live Messenger
– Skype IM
Other Features Calculator, Clock, Calendar, Phonebook, Alarm clock, Social networks in Phonebook, OneNote, Wallet, Family Room, Kid’s Corner
After Sales Service
Warranty Period 1 Year