Nokia Lumia 730 Review

At the IFA 2014 in Berlin, Microsoft announced its mid range device, the Lumia 730 which is the successor of the popular Lumia 720 and will compete with likes of Moto G, ASUS Zenfones and also other devices in the price point. The device comes with a 4.7 inch HD display and is powered by Snapdragon Quad Core 400 processor with 1GB RAM. The phone also ships with 8GB internal storage which is expandable to 128GB via microSD card. The phone also comes with 6.7MP rear camera and a 5MP front facing wide angle camera for selfies.

The device was announced couple of weeks back and now available for purchase in India for Rs 14999. We review the Lumia 730 for its design, build, display, software, performance and also the camera aspects to see if it is really worth the buy.

Here is the video review of Lumia 730. If you want the text version read on.

Design, Build and Display:

The Lumia 730 design looks very similar to the Lumia 920 with curved edges on the sides and flat edges on the top. It comes with the usual set of hardware keys. The power and volume buttons are located on the right side. The 3.5mm audio jack is at the top while the micro USB charging slot is at the bottom. On the rear panel you have the 6.7MP camera along with LED flash and the Nokia branding. The speakers are located at the bottom of the device.

The build quality of the device is really good and the rear panel has a matte finish (depending on the color) and feels really premium. Lumia 730 is no exception when it comes to the excellent build quality of Lumia phones. The rear panel is removable and you need to open it to insert the battery, SIM and micro SD card.

The Lumia 730 comes with a 4.7inch HD display and it is a treat to use. The display size is ideal for one handed use. The display is an OLED panel with clear black technology and 316 pixels per inch. It also has the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display is vibrant and the colors look great on the clear black HD display. There is also good sunlight readability and the viewing angles are also great.

Software and Performance:

Lumia 730 comes with Windows Phone 8.1 out of the box along with the Lumia Denim update which is the latest software from the company.  With 8.1 update, Microsoft has added lots of new features and the most prominent one is the notification center. Apart from this, there are other customization options in the start screen along with storage sense, Wi-Fi Sense, Data sense, VPN support and many more features.

With Windows Phone 8.1, Microsoft has bridged the gap between Android and WP in terms of feature set.

You can also customize the start screen with background images and also has the ability to manage one more tile. Additional tools like data sense allows you to keep control on your data usage. The storage sense app is very handy to manage the storage and set the default location for saving photos, videos, apps and more on the phone.

The device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Quad core chipset with 1GB of RAM. The performance is really good with no lag or issues. The touch response is also really good. The gaming performance of the device is also good with really great graphic quality and not too much of heating while playing the games.

Related Watching: Gaming Review of Lumia 730

This is also dual SIM Windows Phone and Microsoft has added a dedicated section for managing dual SIM. You can have two tiles on the start screen for two SIM cards and also link it to make it into one tile. The phone has an onscreen buttons and you can also customize the background color for the navigation bar. And for the first time, you can minimize the navigational buttons and auto hide them.

The call quality on the device was really good and we didn’t have any issues with the signal strength. The speaker volume is pretty decent and good if you listen to songs. The device comes with 8GB of internal storage and is expandable via microSD card to 128GB. Another great feature of WP8.1 is that you can install apps directly on to the card, saving the internal storage.

Camera:

The Lumia 730 comes with a 6.7MP rear camera with LED flash. The phone comes with Nokia Camera app pre-installed and also has the default Windows Phone app for camera. Microsoft has done a lot of work with the Nokia Camera and it has improved in performance and is much faster now. We tested the Lumia 730 camera with different light conditions and here are the results.

As you can see from the image below, the shots taken with the 6.7MP camera has come really well. When you view the photos on the phone, you might get a feeling that photos are a bit over saturated. The amount of detailing in the photos is really good and the macro shots are almost closer to real objects in terms of color reproduction for a device in this price point.

The photo taken in low light were are decent. The captures with extremely low lighting conditions were noisy, but with adequate lighting and with flash, the photos have come goo.d Although the camera is not a PureView, it is still one of the best in this range.

Here are some of the camera samples taken with the rear camera on the device.

The device also comes with a 5MP wide angle front facing camera for selfies. This is the first smartphone from the company designed specifically for selfies and Skype video calls. And you won’t compromise quality with the 5 MP front-facing camera and wide-angle lens. Here are some of the samples from front camera.

Even the front camera does produce decent shots even though there is slight focus issue when taking macro shots.

Summing up, the Nokia Lumia 730 is one of the best cameras we have seen on a device below Rs 15000 and it easily beats the competition.

Battery Life:

The phone comes with a 2220mAh battery and we performed a standard test on the battery. We had social networking apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram running the in the background, 2 emails accounts configured, screen brightness set to automatic, attended some 10-15 calls, some casual web browsing and gaming. We charged the battery full and we got close to 1.5 hours with the Lumia 730 battery which we feel is pretty good for a mid range device.

With Windows Phone 8.1, you can check which all apps are taking up the battery on the device. So if you are a heavy user, you should still be getting a day of battery life with the Lumia 730. Here is the battery performance review.

Verdict:

Priced at Rs 14999, the Lumia 730 is slightly above the competition which includes Moto G (Review) and also the ASUS Zenfone 5 (Review). But the strong point for Lumia 730 is the camera, excellent build quality along with good battery life. If you are ok with the app eco system on Windows Phone 8.1, then without doubt this is the best mid range device you can pick for less than Rs 15000 in India.