Microsoft Lumia 730 Review
The Lumia 730, rightly christened “Smartphone made for Selfies” by the good people at Microsoft features a 5MP selfie-centric wide-angle front facing camera but there’s more to it. It has a very solid build and proper battery. It also sports a dual SIM and Microsoft’s latest Windows 8.1 Denim update. Read further for a detailed review of Microsoft’s “flagship midrange smartphone”.
SPECIFICATIONS
The Lumia 730 packs a Quad core 1.2 GHz cortex-A7 processor with 1GB RAM and graphics is handled by the Adreno 305 GPU. Internal storage is 8GB extendable by up to 32GB via a micro SD card. The screen is 4.7 inches OLED which we will talk about later.
DESIGN
The Lumia 730 is a sleek smartphone which is made of solid polycarbonate finish, while the Lumia 730 doesn’t have the premium feel of top flagship phones, it doesn’t feel like a cheap phone either. It measures 545mm by 677mm by 788mm and is certainly one of the thinnest Lumias out there. At 848g it is definitely light and will fit perfectly in your hands/pockets. It also comes in various colours like black, white, orange and green.
DISPLAY
The Lumia 730 packs a 4.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a HD resolution of 720 by 1280 pixels and protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, the display is crisp with very good colours and deep black, sunlight visibility is also good. The touchscreen is super sensitive and even responds to touches from under hand gloves.
CAMERA
The Lumia 730 comes with a 6.7MP snapper at the back of the phone which produces good photographs, it surely isn’t the best camera phone out there but it is great for a mid-range phone. The front facing selfie camera boasts of a high resolution 5MP snapper and I can categorically tell you this is one of the best front facing cameras I’ve ever used. The Lumia 730 comes is preinstalled with the proprietary Lumia Camera app which has a simple interface and taking a photo is as simple as touching anywhere on the screen. You can also take panoramic photos.
CONNECTIVITY
The Nokia Lumia 730 has quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support, quad-band 3G with HSDPA on both SIMs. In terms of local connectivity, it offers dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n with DLNA and Wi-Fi Hotspot, and stereo Bluetooth 4.0, with file transfer support. The Lumia 730 also sports NFC connectivity. NFC is useful for file sharing and it works across other platforms with NFC support. Sending a picture to a Samsung phone, for instance, wasn’t a problem and the same goes for web pages.
PERFORMANCE
Nokia Lumia 730 is powered by the widely used Snapdragon 400 chipset. It has four Cortex-A7 processor cores clocked at 1.2GHz, Adreno 305 graphics common for most of the Windows Phone gang and 1GB RAM.
The phone offers a lag-free experience and didn’t stutter in every day usage. Some of the more heavy apps opened with a slight delay, but that’s about as slow as the phone goes. The Lumia 730 offers pleasing performance that would be more than enough for non-power users.
APPS
Internet Explorer 11 is the newest version of the Microsoft’s mobile web browser. You bet it went through an extensive upgrade and is a marked improvement over previous versions. IE 11 is what the Windows Phone browser should have been from the get-go.
Microsoft took several cues from the competition and now provides private browsing, a Reader mode, unlimited tab support with new UI, saving passwords, tab and bookmark sync across devices and support for inline videos to name a few. Back and Forward gestures have been added too — just swipe from the left or right edge of the screen.
Once you open an article on the web you’ll notice a small book icon appearing in the address bar. If you tap it you’ll activate the so-called Reader mode. It does the same as its iOS namesake — it strips down the article you are reading down to the text and images. This way you can enjoy seamless reading of long articles without any unnecessary content or ads. You can configure the Reader background colour and font size from the IE 11 settings.
Microsoft Office Suite is preinstalled and you can use it for Document/Excel/PowerPoint viewing and editing. It is absolutely free and integrated into the OS. OneDrive integration is available as well. Docs are automatically synced between the phone and your computer through OneDrive.
Other preinstalled apps include Microsoft’s OneNote, Travel, Sports, Finance, Food & Drinks and News apps.
BATTERY LIFE
Battery performance is pretty good as the 2200 mAh battery lasts for four days with normal use which consists of an hour each of browsing, video watching and calling but it only lasts 7 hours when used rigorously for example taking 500 pictures then streaming videos on H+
CONCLUSION
Build quality is great and the phone has excellent handling. The polycarbonate shell is a bit hard to pop open but the flipside is the handset feels rock solid. The display is bright, contrast is excellent, and sunlight legibility is very good. Battery life is solid. While the speaker is not very loud, audio quality is still solid. Front camera is super and the phone is snappy and powerful Windows Phone 8.1 with the Lumia Denim firmware. Pretty good buy if you ask us.
All in all, it is an above average smartphone for people on a budget trying to avoid the crowded space already occupied by Android devices.
You can buy it on Konga.com for 52,000
