Nokia Lumia 521: Quality Smartphone on an Extreme Budget
by Vivek Gowri on August 8, 2013 1:08 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Nokia
- Mobile
- windows phone 8
- Lumia 520
- Lumia 521
I was surprised to see that the 521 (and 520) had an IPS display when the specs were finalized, because I fully expected the display to be one of the biggest sacrifices made for the sake of the budget. I suppose it’s not too much of a surprise, given that the 620 has quite a good display.
In person, the 521 display is pretty middling. It’s not a bad panel, but it’s not that fantastic either. Maximum brightness isn’t that great at 342 nits—that’s decent enough for most situations though not quite bright enough for comfortable viewing in broad daylight. The black levels aren’t anything to write home about either, so contrast ratio is pretty low by the standards of the phones we typically look at, though its worth pointing out that we focus primarily on far higher end smartphone hardware. Compared to a contrast ratio chart from a couple of years ago, the 521 is about average. The white point of 6336K is very close to neutral, and color reproduction is pretty solid as well.
What kind of kills the 521 display experience though isn’t the panel itself, since that’s pretty decent; it’s the gap between the LCD and the glass. That turns what would be a very respectable viewing experience into an ultra reflective mess anytime you venture outdoors. As a result, you end up wanting to crank the display brightness higher than normal (which is why I rarely used the automatic brightness setting). The extra glare brought on by the air gap is rather distracting and ends up being quite the downer in a lot more usage scenarios than just outdoor. In office-style overhead lighting, too, the glare can be quite terrible and generally ends up degrading display quality by a noticeable amount.
Given the price point, it’s hard to fault the 521 too much and I must admit that I have somewhat of a skewed perspective. When you’re used to carrying a One, an S4, or another device with a screen of that caliber, the step down to a far lower quality WVGA panel seems pretty drastic. But the colors are vibrant, viewing angles are predictably stellar, and overall the panel looks pretty good, so there are a lot of positives to focus on.
The brightness controls for Windows Phone are a bit finicky—you only get four options: low, medium, high, and automatic. The brightness steps are pretty reasonable, starting with low at 74 nits, medium at 191 nits, and high at 342 nits. There is no iOS or Android style brightness slider, so you’re basically stuck trusting the light sensor or one of the three presets.
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toraji - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
forgot to mention the home button.........OoklaTheMok - Friday, August 16, 2013 - link
Also, many of the Google issues are because of Google, not Windows Phone. Google finally just allowed Microsoft to release their sanctioned YouTube app. Microsoft had released it a long time ago, but Google intentionally kept breaking its functionality when the app would contact the YouTube service.And the Maps issue is another case of Google going out of their way to inhibit WP functionality with Google services. Their mobile maps implementation is hard coded to only work correctly, for touch, with WebKit based browsers. IE9 in WP8 is more than capable of being functional, but Google just doesn't want to allow it. Their initial arguments as to why have already been completely proven false. Besides, who would want to use Google maps when we have Nokia's Here Maps with offline support?
OoklaTheMok - Friday, August 16, 2013 - link
"There is no equivalent to Siri or Google Now."Windows Phone has had voice since search before iOS and Google had theirs, it just doesn't have a fancy name. Its not as sexy, or comprehensive as Sri, but it works better based on search competitions I have conducted with people. Frankly, I'd rather have it do a few things really well, than everything mediocre.
pandemonium - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Patiently awaiting the 1020 review. That'll be the deciding factor for me to upgrade to it or not.I've already played with it and I'm pretty impressed. The camera easily outperformed my N8 in both results and functionality. My curiousity is the battery life performance. I'm expecting good, but not great and just don't want to get results that are poor. :P
toraji - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
there are so many true reviews out there, don't wait for the one from anadtech. You want a true review? Look aroundthis one might put you in the right direction
http://www.tgdaily.com/opinion-features/73330-the-...
fabarati - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Hey, is that an Asus W3J?VivekGowri - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Hahaha, I think you know the answer to that.Nexus4Life - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Interesting review. It's good to also see what can be bought on a budget. Especially in these difficult times.asendra - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Not even 2 hours ago I had to decide for what budget phone to buy for my father and my sister. All the android options available were mostly crap (android on a low budget phone is just garbage..) so I started looking into windows phone options.Here in Europe Nokia has very good track record in this price range, so the options were the lumia 520, the lumia 620 (only 10€ more), and, surprisingly enough, the HTC 8X for the same price (yeah, I don't even know how, they were phasing them out at the store I went..)
I ended up getting them the 8X because hardware wise is night and day (the 8X being the same as the lumia 920, minus the camera). I hope I made the right decision.. the only thing which made me doubt is the HERE nokia apps, but I've read the maps one, and a few others are no longer nokia exclusive.
skiboysteve - Friday, August 9, 2013 - link
Wow what a find!