The Nokia Lumia 520 does definitely feel cheaper than the Lumia 620; the plastic on its rear is less soft-touch than the 620's cover, for example, and we much prefer the 620's rounded edges to the 520's sharper corners. Its screen has the same 480x800 resolution, but the 520's display has significantly less contrast and much less saturated colours. Like the 620's screen, the 520's is extremely sensitive, and can be operated with your fingernail or when wearing gloves.
Nonetheless, the 520 still feels like a well-made phone for the price, and the bright snap-on covers add a dose of personality sadly missing from many cheap Android smartphones. It also has all the performance we’ve come to expect from Windows Phone 8. The dual-core 1GHz processor is certainly powerful enough to run the operating system smoothly, and a score of 1,473ms in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark shows the Lumia 520 to be as quick as the Lumia 620 for web browsing and up there with all but the quickest Android handsets.
As with the Lumia 620, though, one area where you do miss out is in battery life. The Lumia 520's 1,430mAh battery only gave it 6h 36m of continuous video playback, which while better than the 6h 16m we saw from the Lumia 620, is still on the mediocre side compared to the eight-hours-plus we’ve become used to seeing from Android phones.
Being a Nokia Windows Phone 8 device, you also get Nokia's built-in navigation apps, now renamed HERE Maps for general mapping and HERE Drive for turn-by-turn navigation. A huge advantage of both is their support for offline mapping. In Maps, for example, you just need to go to Offline Maps in the menu and select the maps you want to download to the phone's internal storage, which will save you any worry about getting lost in low signal areas or racking up huge data costs when abroad. You'll probably want to supplement the phone's internal 8GB storage with a microSD card if you want to cover a great deal of the world, though.
Free professional-grade offline maps are a definite bonus, especially on a cheap handset, but the Lumia 520's big disadvantage over the 620 is its lack of a built-in compass, which may make orientating yourself a bit trickier.
The Lumia 520 has a five-megapixel camera, and it's impressive for such an inexpensive handset. Shots taken outside showed plenty of detail and well-judged exposure, with none of the bleaching-out of the sky we often see from phones, even expensive models such as the Samsung Galaxy S3. When compared side-by-side with the more expensive Lumia 620 we saw similar levels of detail in outdoor shots, but the Lumia 620 had slightly more saturated and marginally more accurate colours.
High-quality outdoor shots are possible with the Lumia 520 - click to enlarge
We just prefer the Lumia 620's colour reproduction, but there's not much in it - click to enlarge
We saw more of a difference between the phones in our indoor test shots. Under moderate indoor lighting the Lumia 520's shots showed considerably more noise than the 620's, and far less punchy colours.
Indoor shots with the Lumia 520 show plenty of noise, though - click to enlarge
Considering its price, the Lumia 520 is an impressive handset. Like all Nokia phones it feels well made, and it's a much more interesting design than the boring Android slabs you tend to get at this price point. We have no complaints about performance, and the camera is superb for a budget phone, at least in daylight. It's a Budget Buy Windows Phone 8 handset. However, the Lumia 620 does give you an awful lot more, including a more pleasing design, a better screen and superior low-light performance from its camera, so we think is worth the extra £50-£60.
Details |
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|---|---|
| Part Code | Nokia 520 |
| Review Date | 18 Apr 2013 |
| Price | £150 |
| Rating |
|
| Award | Budget Buy |
Hardware |
|
|---|---|
| Main display size | 4.0in |
| Native resolution | 800x480 |
| CCD effective megapixels | 5-megapixel |
| GPS |
|
| Internal memory | 8192MB |
| Memory card support | microSD |
| Memory card included | 0MB |
| Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 900/2100 |
| Wireless data | GPRS, EDGE, 3G |
| Size | 120x64x10mm |
| Weight | 124g |
Features |
|
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows Phone 8 |
| Microsoft Office compatibility | Word, Excel, PowerPoint |
| FM Radio |
|
| Accessories | headphones, data cable, charger |
| Talk time | 15 hours |
| Standby time | 15 days |
Buying Information |
|
|---|---|
| SIM-free price | £150 |
| Price on contract | 0 |
| Prepay price | £110 |
| SIM-free supplier | www.carphonewarehouse.com |
| Contract/prepay supplier | www.carphonewarehouse.com |
| Details | www.nokia.co.uk |
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