And models. But until now, the most important vindophone remained in the shadows. No, this is not a cool cameraphone Lumia 1020, but the simplest and cheapest smartphone under the number 520. But it is he who sells the best and sets all new sales records. In mid-August, AdDuplex released a report that Lumia 520 sales accounted for 27% of total Windows Phone 8 devices, with its closest competitor lagging by as much as 10% in popularity.
Lumia 520 specifications
Operating system: Windows Phone 8;
Processor: Dual-core Qualcomm S4 MSM8227 Krait 1 GHz, Adreno 305 accelerator;
RAM: 512 MB;
Built-in memory: 8 GB, support for microSD cards;
Screen: IPS 4 inches with a resolution of 800x480 pixels;
Camera: 5 MP with autofocus and 720p video recording at 30 frames per second;
Wireless connections: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100 MHz, Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi Direct;
Battery: removable 1430 mAh;
Dimensions, weight: 119.9 x 64 x 9.9 mm, 124 g.
Contents of delivery
The Lumia 520 is hiding in a blue box, just like other Nokia smartphones. Rough cardboard with its recyclability will delight the "green", but will not impress other buyers. Under the tail for pulling the insides of the box, cardboard is painted in the color of the device case.
Inside is the usual set: a tray with a phone, some background information, a stereo headset, a charger and a Micro-USB cable. Running a little ahead, I will say that in the smartphone they saved on everything they could, it becomes surprising that the charger and the sync cable are separated. I expected to see collapsible charging similar to older devices.
Design and ergonomics
The Lumia 520 is available in yellow, blue, black, white and red. In all cases, the plastic is matte, which increases practicality and reduces the risk of scratching mesh after encountering uneven surfaces.
At first glance, it may seem that the body is monolithic, but it is not. First of all, you pay attention to the absence of a SIM-card tray on the case and a paper clip to remove it, and then a slight creak of plastic when you press the top and bottom of the smartphone reveals the presence of a removable panel.
I hate taking apart Nokia smartphones, because every time I am afraid to tear off part of the lid, and not remove it entirely, but with Lumia 520, the panel falls off without difficulty. It is enough to pick it up with your nails and pull it towards yourself, at the same time resting your thumb somewhere on the back. Exploded view of the removable battery and hot-swappable SIM and memory card trays.
The buttons are located on the right side of the smartphone, the headphone and cable ports are located on the smaller sides.
On the back there is a speaker hole, company logo and camera.
The smartphone is slightly larger in size than the Lumia 620 due to the screen diagonal, but thinner. It lies comfortably in your hand until you try to press one of the buttons, for example, to turn on the screen. On the sides, the case is strongly slanted back, so that the buttons are not located perpendicular to the screen.
You have to bend your finger unnaturally to press the button, and if you take the smartphone in your left hand, it seems that when you turn on the screen, it is about to slide out. Of course, you can try to press the button "as usual", but they do not want to work at an angle, they will be reluctant to respond to the finger.
Screen
If you look at the specs before you pick up the Lumia 520 in your hands, you can believe in a quality screen. Four inches, IPS-matrix, 800x480 resolution ... but in fact it corresponds to the price of the device. Shows the picture and okay.
It has no ClearBlack technology and no oleophobic coating. As a result, in the bright warm sun, the screen makes itself a siesta and completely refuses to show anything, when the angle of inclination is changed, the brightness drops noticeably, and it often has to be wiped off of stains. The difference from its neighbor in the Lumia 620 line is noticeable to the naked eye.
But we must admit that for its price, the Lumia 520 will not disappoint. Even if on fine days outside you have to practice looking at the screen, it will delight users with good viewing angles, sufficient brightness, contrast and color reproduction. Before testing, I thought things would get worse.
Sound
The main speaker of Nokia Lumia 520 loudly and clearly informs the world about what is happening, but it is easy to cover the small hole with something, thereby nullifying all efforts.
The complete headset, as in most smartphones, makes you smile sadly and put it aside. If you want to listen to music on your smartphone, you should buy normal headphones. Fortunately, the Lumia 520 copes well with this task.
Camera
The camera in Nokia Lumia 520 is ordinary, with a resolution of 5 MP. Judging by the quality of the photos, the module is identical to that used in the Lumia 620. In good conditions you can get good pictures, such a camera is just right for social networks and Instagram, but you can't count on masterpieces. The quality drops in proportion to the deterioration of the shooting conditions.
MWC is joining the Lumia 720 this year. Thus, the Finnish company is trying to focus on the lower end of the market. The gadget will be one of the most affordable WP8 smartphones. We can say that the phone is a stripped-down version of the Lumia 720.
We will present the main disadvantages that, in our opinion, this device has:
- some well-known applications are missing or incompatible with 512 MB of RAM;
- no FM radio;
- no front camera;
- no LED flash;
- no system file manager;
- SatNav voice navigation is limited to one country.
Let's start by unpacking. The kit didn't get anything new. Inside, in addition to the mandatory documentation, you will find a charger, microUSB cable and headphones.
The smartphone itself is very compact by modern standards. It is easy to operate with one hand. Its dimensions are 119.9x64x9.9 mm, and its weight is 124 g. The gadget is not the thinnest, but it cannot be said that it is too thick.
Nokia has created a simple and sensible design that works equally well across the entire WP8 line of smartphones.
The handset has a hint of a one-piece design reinforced by the firm grip of the phone, but the battery cover is actually removable so you can access the battery. There are also slots for a SIM card and for a microSD memory card. The Nokia Lumia 520 lacks some of the sophistication of the Nokia Lumia 720, but keep in mind that we are dealing with the cheapest device in this category.
The smartphone will be available in black, white, red, yellow and blue. Here you can, as in the Lumia 820, change the rear panels.
The layout of the controls remains the same across all Nokia WP8 smartphones. The hardware buttons are placed on the right side, a set of touch-sensitive control buttons are located under the screen, the left side remains blank.
So, under the display you can see the Back, Home and Search buttons. At the very bottom, you can notice a tiny microphone hole. Above the screen is a speaker, proximity and light sensors. Nokia Lumia 520 does not have a front camera.
The power / lock button, volume rocker and camera key are on the right side.
There are no buttons or slots on the left side, unlike the Lumia 720.
The 3.5mm headphone jack is located at the top of the Nokia Lumia 520.
The microUSB port is located, as usual, at the bottom of the smartphone.
The removable back cover is made of matte plastic and features a 5MP camera, Nokia logo and a speaker grill in the lower right corner.
Removing the back panel is easy enough. Then you get access to a 1430 mAh Li-ion battery, slots for SIM card and microSD memory card.
All in all, the Lumia 520 is a very pleasant smartphone to use. Although not the most compact, it will fit in most pockets and hands.
Performance and software
The Nokia Lumia 520 has the same Qualcomm MSM8227 chipset as other WP8 smartphones, with a 1GHz dual-core Krait processor, Adreno 305 GPU and 512MB of RAM.
This is close to what the flagship WP8 models are equipped with (and noticeably better than the lower end of the mid-priced segment of Android devices), which, when combined with the relatively light operating system Windows Phone 8, gives good performance.
Permanent memory in the smartphone - 8 GB. It can be expanded with 64GB microSD cards.
There is support for Wi-Fi, 3G networks, A-GPS / GLONASS and Bluetooth 3.0.
We expected the Lumia 520 to be in line with the other entry-to-mid-range WP8 devices we tested in the SunSpider and BrowserMark 2 benchmarks. ...
Screen
Nokia Lumia 520 is equipped with a 4-inch IPS-display with a resolution of 800x480 pixels, that is, the density is 233 dpi. That's higher than the Lumia 720's 4.3-inch screen, but that's where the benefits end.
The Lumia 520 does not use ClearBlack technology, it loses contrast. The viewing angles are quite good. It uses quite reflective glass, so the phone can hardly be used on a bright sunny day.
Camera
Nokia Lumia 520 boasts a 5-megapixel camera, which is capable of capturing images with a resolution of up to 2592x1936 pixels.
The physical camera button on the right side will turn on the phone and launch the camera app. Windows Phone 8's Camera app offers extensive settings ranging from scenes and effects to white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpness, ISO, and more. There is a dedicated macro focusing mode. Various lenses are also available in the application, such as Panorama, Cinemagraph and others.
The photos are good enough for a 5-megapixel camera: high level of detail, good contrast.
The noise level is quite high, and the colors are shifted into the "cold" range.
Nice photos are obtained when using the macro mode. The Lumia 520 can focus at a very close distance.
Now let's move on to filming. Nokia Lumia 520 can record video with a resolution of 1280x720 pixels. It turns out to be quite smooth, but there are few fine details, colors with a higher saturation than necessary.
Bitrate - 10.5 Mbps at 30 frames per second. Unfortunately, the Lumia 520 can only capture 98Kbps mono audio at 44KHz sampling rate.
Sample video.
Battery
The smartphone is equipped with a lithium-ion battery with a capacity of 1430 mAh. According to the manufacturer, one charge should be enough for 360 hours of standby time, up to 14 hours 40 minutes of talk time over 2G networks, up to 9 hours 40 minutes of talk time over 3G networks and up to 61 hours of listening to music.
Price
The price of Nokia Lumia 520 in the Russian market is 7990 rubles.
Nokia Lumia 520 video review:
Nokia Lumia 520 mimics the looks of other phones in the Lumia line - and that's a good thing. While most of the cheap smartphones look more repulsive, the Lumia 520's design is pleasing to the eye and comfortable in the hand.
On the front side there is a touchscreen with three buttons typical and obligatory for Windows Phone underneath.
All additional buttons are on the side (including power, which is convenient). I am glad that there is a separate button for the camera.
The buttons, however, are not signed in any way, but you can figure out where what, in fact, is possible without a hint.
At the bottom there is a micro-USB connector, and at the top there is a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
Screen
The Lumia 520 uses a 4-inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480x800 pixels. The screen supports multi-touch with recognition of up to 5 touches at the same time. The most interesting thing is that the sensor reacts not only to fingers (and even to fingers with gloves), but also to some (not all) other objects - for example, metal. At the same time, the screen is capacitive, not resistive.
| Model
|
Nokia Lumia 520
|
| Screen |
IPS, 4 '', 480x800 pix. |
| CPU |
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8227, 2 cores, 1000 MHz |
| GPU |
Adreno 305 |
| RAM |
512 MB |
| Built-in memory |
8 GB |
| Memory cards |
micro-SD (SDHC, SDXC) up to 64 GB |
| Wi-Fi |
802.11 a / b / g / n |
| Bluetooth |
3.0
|
| Rear camera |
5 MP, autofocus |
| Front-camera |
No |
| Additionally |
GPS, GLONASS, digital compass |
| Dimensions (edit) |
61.1 x 115.4 x 11mm |
| Weight |
127 g |
| Battery |
1430 mAh (up to 14.5 hours in GSM talk mode, up to 61 hours in music mode) |
| Price |
RUB 8,000 |
The quality of the screen is at a good level - there are no complaints about the color rendition and clarity, only the brightness in the sun is not enough.
Also, there is no oleophobic coating, which is why you have to periodically wipe the screen with a cloth so that no dry dirt remains on it.
Software
The phone runs on Windows Phone 8.0, the main features of which are a single interface for all phones of any brands, as well as smooth interface animation regardless of the installed processor. If inexpensive Android smartphones often slow down and use them is not always comfortable, with Nokia Luma 520, despite the price, this will not happen. If a game or application is launched on this phone (due to the small amount of RAM, 512 MB, not all three-dimensional games will work here), then most likely, unless the developers have messed up something, no problems with them will arise in further work ...
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In general, thanks to the integration of Windows Phone with social networks Twitter and Facebook, as well as a rich set of programs from Nokia, you can even use the Lumia 520 without installing anything at all. However, it depends on the preferences of the owner. If you need Skype or a client for ICQ, Jabber, VKontakte social network or Instagram photo-social network - all this can be found in the application store.
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But let's see what the Lumia 520 offers out of the box.
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First of all, it's worth noting Microsoft's mobile office. This application allows you to create and edit documents from Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, Power Point. Supported work with cloud storage SkyDrive - so, if you have the Internet, you do not even need to somehow separately upload documents to your phone.
Secondly, as I mentioned, the social networks Facebook and Twitter are supported. You can monitor the status of your friends, as well as post messages (including those containing images) without resorting to the help of other applications. The LinkedIn network, which is not very popular with us, is also supported, plus services (primarily postal) from Google, Yandex, Yahoo, Rambler and Mail.ru.
Thirdly, full-fledged Nokia navigation is available on the smartphone completely free of charge: this includes HERE Maps and HERE Drive voice navigation and HERE Transit public transport guide.
By the way, there are many Russian cities in HERE Transit - so the program is useful not only for Muscovites and Petersburgers.
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Fourthly, Nokia offers many interesting utilities for the camera, including: Smart Photo - a program that allows you to take several pictures of one scene (for example, a group photo), and then combine the best moments of all the pictures into one. So, if someone blinked in one picture, and someone blinked in another, and in the third picture they put horns on someone - it doesn't matter.
"Panorama", as you might guess, is intended for shooting panoramas.
The "Alive Photos" application is used to create so-called cinemagrams (or "gifs"): photographs in which one element can move. For example, such:
However, there are many examples of truly interesting cinemagrams on the Internet.
There is also a Photo Studio application that allows you to apply various effects to any taken photo in one click.
Multimedia
The smartphone can be used both as an audio player and as a video player (HD video is not a problem for it). The sound is slightly worse than that of the flagship Nokia Lumia 920, but if you are not a music lover, you may not even notice the difference. The main thing is that thanks to the support for memory cards up to 64 GB, the question of a lack of memory is unlikely to arise in the foreseeable future.
The camera here is quite ordinary - it's not a flagship, but it's not cheap either. Photos are fine for publishing on social networks, although they will visually lose to more expensive phones - especially the Lumia 920.
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Battery
Nokia Lumia 520 is an unpretentious smartphone, so in normal use it can live for two (or even three) days on a single battery charge. But even with the most active use, if you don't put it in your pocket at all, it will definitely survive until the evening. And the best part - 61 hours of music declared by the manufacturer (which is close to reality) - not every player is capable of this.
Total
It's cheap and good all the same. If you are not interested in gigahertz and you don't care how many cores a smartphone has, in general, if you need a modern smartphone, but no frills, then this is probably just Nokia Lumia 520. What else can you get for 8 thousand rubles? Numerous android phones from unknown Chinese manufacturers, or from well-known, but with constant "brakes" and "lags" of the interface. Either way, few brands like Nokia will sell a new 4-inch smartphone at that price point.
Of course, it is worth considering that the camera in the Lumia 520 is far from the flagships, modern three-dimensional games most likely will not start, and there is no oleophobic coating on the screen. But if none of this scares you, then you are unlikely to be disappointed in this smartphone.
We all know perfectly well the famous brand for the production of Nokia mobile phones. At one time, these were fairly reliable phones with advanced technologies and quality that were an order of magnitude different from competitors. However, as often happens, the white stripe is replaced by a black one. So it happened with everyone's beloved Nokia. A protracted downward slope began for her, along which she slid from the leaders to the outsiders of the world market of mobile technologies and the production of phones and smartphones.
After the deal with Microsoft, Nokia's business improved slightly, but the quality and rawness of the products is alarming.
I will describe one of the examples in today's article. Go!
So, we have in our hands the Nokia 520, which won't turn on.
Oddly enough, it stopped working without any extraneous influence from the user. Almost…
At one time, the phone began to respond worse to the power / lock button. For its normal operation, it was necessary to press the power button on the plastic harder and harder each time - until at one moment it was not possible to turn on the phone at all.
Disassembling revealed the following:
The power button came off the board at the soldering points
Based on what happened, we can conclude that the fact that the button was detached was the fault of the user himself. After all, significant efforts were used to press. However, there was a reason for that, right?
Reason # 1. Apparently, the button had a leaky body and the contact group of the button oxidized over time. As a result, the user had to press excessively on the button in order to push through the oxide film and the contact group was closed.
Reason # 2. The contacts of the button and the corresponding pads on the board were not sufficiently tinned, and during soldering, the area of coverage of the areas to be soldered with solder was significantly limited. Accordingly, the rigidity required to hold the button in place of soldering under mechanical stress was insufficient and manifested itself over time in the form of this malfunction.
To eliminate this defect, it is necessary to carefully tin the contacts of the new button and contact pads on the board and solder it.
After carrying out this procedure, the normal operation of the phone was restored.
Eh, Nokia (and your partners)! We hope you will pay more attention to the selection of components and adherence to all technological processes in the production of your smartphones. And we, users, will use them carefully ...
That's all! Yes, and .....
Successful repairs !!!
