Nokia Lumia 525 Review

In the past, Nokia was not too much of a success however, all this started to change with the Nokia Lumia 520 pulling up Nokia. With the attractive price tag offering more in terms of features and affordability, the device was an instant success.

In the recent times, Nokia has planned to keep the winning formula intact. With the Nokia Lumia 525 coming out as a successor of the Nokia Lumia 520, Nokia has held up the concept of consistency and similarities instead of flashiness and too much experimentation. With the Nokia Lumia 525 targeting to follow a huge success in the form of the Nokia Lumia 520 which played a pivotal role in the Windows phone success, it was only fitting to see the more than usual consistency between these two devices.

While unboxing the Nokia Lumia 525, you will get everything inside the retail box that you need to get started with this phone.

• Nokia Lumia 525 device
• Charger
• MicroUSB cable connector for data transfer
• Headset

The display of the Nokia Lumia 525 is a WVGA 480 x 800 IPS LCD display, with the 4 inch highly sensitive display. Unfortunately, this turns out a display with a very low pixel density of 233 only, which is too low for the devices being released post 2013 – we would have expected at least something close to 400ppi also, without the oleophobic on the scratch resistant display, there can be a lot of smudges appearing very quickly – still, the display captures touches through gloves too, which is a bonus.

The color reproduction is not too great with the IPS LCD display that Nokia has selected for the device and could have been better. Still, with the color saturation being on the lower side, and the addition of a pinkish hue to the whites in pictures, and most of all, the sunlight legibility, all of which can be marked as negatives for the device, we have to admit, this display is much better as compared to other displays in this range and class.

Nokia Lumia 525 follows in the same design footsteps as that of Nokia Lumia 520 on the outside. The devices look almost exactly the same, with the colorful outer cover, the device almost explicitly says that it does not have any high end or business end usage too much, but it definitely is a bit bulky, sturdy, and strongly built, which is always a good thing. The same three buttons of Back, Home and Search adorn the front side under the display, with the earpiece on the top, and sensors on either side. The device still has the broad plastic frame around the screen from the back cover, which reduces the same amount of screen size, as the Lumia 520. The back cover is glossy plastic, though we expected that the great feedback received on the matte finish would have motivated Nokia to go with that option.

The back of the device holds the 5 MP camera, but this is without any flash, and this can severely impact snapping in darker or overcast conditions. Near the bottom at the back is the speaker, which is a very good performer, producing very loud and decent quality sound. The back cover is replaceable and the 1,430mAh battery is removable. The SIM and expandable memory slots are present here as well.

The device is a comfort fit for the hand, with easy handling using the one hand as well, as compared to some of the larger sized devices coming out these days almost trying to creep into phablet territory. The old-school device size, with the curved sides, makes for a device that is nice on the eyes, plus comfortable in the hands. The volume rocker is placed where it is easily accessible, as well as the power and camera buttons. This means the device has all controls easily accessible via the same hand that is controlling it. All the buttons are placed on the right side of the device, with the sequence being the volume rocker at the top, followed by the lock key, both being in the top half of the right side, and the camera shutter key in the bottom half. The top of the device holds the 3.5mm audio jack while the USB port is present at the bottom.

As mentioned above Nokia Lumia 525 has followed the footsteps of Nokia Luma 520, making affordability its key priority – thus, there is nothing fancy in terms of processing power from Nokia, though, whatever is present is easily sufficient for the routine activities of a vast majority of users. The device has a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 of 1 GHz, which in turn uses two Krait 300 cores and an Adreno 305 GPU. Though the combination is all on the average side, the very light OS of Windows 8 allows for the combination to work smoothly, even the games.

The device has an improved level of multitasking, and the RAM has been raised from the 512 MB in the Nokia Lumia 520 to 1 GB. The device has 8 GB internal memory, as is the standard for this class of devices. The expandable memory is also a big plus.

The strengthened back and curved edges of the device make for a very pleasant handling experience. The device has a very nice performing audio, and listening becomes a pleasure. The sound is quite loud, so we doubt anyone will be using it at max, and the impressive thing was that there was no trade-off between loudness and quality. There are no distortions or background sounds.

The lockscreen and the app control of lockscreen display are consistent with other Lumia devices, as is the tile grid display. Keeping the Home key pressed displays all apps running in the background, and either any app can be clicked to enter that app, or to close any app, the X button on top right of that app.

The settings are divided into two categories, the system settings and the application settings. The system settings have all system related settings like color theme, accounts, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sounds etc. while the application settings allow configuration of all apps present on the device. It was a slight let down to see that the user has to navigate to the system settings to enable the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and others. Also, the tile size is too small for complete notifications to be displayed, and a notification area would have much improved the user experience.

The Drive navigation suite is the standard Nokia Lumia issue, with the standard features like voice guided navigation, route selection based on different variables, different icons for identification, and can work offline as well. The Maps app is the standard Windows Phone 8 issue, and has the same features like the Scout, City Lens, and walking and public transport help.

The Kid’s corner is present with this device, allowing users to create a separate section for kids and guests who may use the device with specific apps that can be viewed in this section – entry to and exit from this section is based on a different lock / unlock sequence. The Groups and Rooms have functionality that is same as other recent Lumia devices.

The gallery is the generic Windows Phone one, with sync functionality available with SkyDrive for added advantage.

An FM is also present on board. The device has very loud audio, and though that may mean the quality may not be good, which is actually close to the case with this device, we were pleasantly surprised that Nokia did manage to put in speakers that are loud enough to be heard in a gathering, or on the road.

The default browser in Lumia 525 is the Microsoft made Internet Explorer, the standard version on Windows Phone 8. With the setup that is at the back of the device, we wanted to test out how the browser would hold up against any speed limitations, but were happily surprised that the browser handled everything very well. The Snapdragon 400 in the device is highly efficient.

The device has the best document viewer around in Microsoft Office and all Office files can be viewed on the device oh, and it includes SkyDrive integration.

Nokia traditionally tries to impress many users with its cool cameras, the large pixel density, the improved lens and the overall capability of the device being improved with the camera. However, this time around, the Lumia 525 comes with a basic 5 mega pixel camera that can take pictures of up to 2592 x 1936 resolutions. The device does not have any front camera, nor does the device have the improved lens size, instead coming out with a 28 mm lens. The device also has taken out the LED flash making it very difficult for the camera to operate properly in conditions where light is not available.

Even with all the above, the device still manages to produce a pretty decent snapping display by the device in conditions where light is available. Even though the images are slightly darker than the average cameras, the device produces pretty well defined results, with a small hint of hue. The detail on the images is very nice for such a camera, and is impressive at 100% zoom as well, with tolerable digital noise creeping in, even when there is a slight lack of lighting.

The device can record videos at a maximum of 720p, on the lower end, but still acceptable level. Still, the camera handles exposures pretty nicely, although reduces the detail on images.

The Windows Phone’s camera app is the same simple interface we have been seeing in recent Nokia releases – it does provide more options though, from white balance, ISO, managing exposure levels, contrast, saturation, sharpness, to scenes (like the night, close-up, backlight, and sports) and effects, among other features. Keeping the shutter button on the side will awaken the device while also launching the camera app. The camera is not the quickest in the market, emphasized more so when competing with other devices in the market, and it takes up quite some time to load and take snaps. Nokia has the Smart Cam lens preloaded, which is the most powerful lens by a mile it provides the ability to animate some areas in the imaging, tweaking, trimming, and looping options along with the burst option, removing objects, changing faces, as well as the motion and action focus.

The camcorder in the Lumia 525 can capture 720p videos at 30 fps, and these videos are very smooth, with extremely good detail, color accuracy and great contrast.

Talking about the connectivity in the Lumia 525, the device has GPRS/GSM/EDGE, and the tri-band 3G with HSPA at 21.1 Mbps down and 5.76 Mbps uplink. The 4G connectivity is sorely missing, though it still technically is not being used widespread, so the device can be allowed to miss out on it.

The local connectivity is present via Wi-Fi, hotspot, and stereo Bluetooth 4.0, which includes A2DP. The device has A-GPS with GLONASS too.

A Mass Storage mode is available as well, which can be used for internal phone storage, allowing file transfer to computers without any software requirement. File storage does not require any location restriction, and if there is an app installed that uses the file type, the file will be available. The unrecognizable files though, can only be accessed with a computer due to the absence of a file management application.

Also, in addition to the phone storage, a minimal 7GB SkyDrive space gets allocated for file storage on the cloud, which increases file accessibility without overloading the device too much.

The 1,430 mAh battery in the Nokia Lumia 525 is very small in size, though it does pack a decent punch. The battery lies under the back cover and is removable, so this is a plus as we do not see too much devices with replaceable batteries these days, with the unibody design getting more and more common.

The device has some decent timeline response based on the basic services of the device, with an excellent music playtime of 15 hours, though the video playback and browsing are still the weak points at close to 6 hours, whereas the Wi-Fi usage can give over 7 hours we can estimate that even if a much focused usage is done, the device can still last for up to 2 days, which is an increase from the Lumia 520. The battery can give in about 14 days on standby, and can put out about 17 hours of talk time in 2G and over 10 hours in 3G networks.

The Lumia 525 has some drawbacks, a few of which are listed below:

• Very low ppi on the display
• Poor sunlight legibility
• No NFC
• App store has much fewer apps than that of iOS and Android
• Lack of flash hampers camera performance in a lot of scenarios
• System wide file management ability is lacking

Nokia has put out its aggressive side on display in recent time, allowing for some nice devices in the market and now goes with a near replica of one of its most favorite Lumia devices to further attract more attention towards itself. With every success Nokia is growing in confidence. The trademark Microsoft Office and the display quality always help the cause. Add to it the SkyDrive integration, and many would consider it a winner.

With exceptional call quality, as well as the internal speakers for music playback, along with good quality headphones that improve the sound quality even more, we are thinking a lot of people will be using the device for music though the device ppi is on the lower side to attract too much video viewing on the device.

We expect this device to perform decently, if not very well, in the market, similar to the last two releases, the phablets and some more recent Lumia devices. Even though the Windows Phone OS has a fairly depleted app store, it does have a giant like Microsoft backing it, and with its experience at value addition, it is growing at a very rapid pace.

Whatever may be said of the device, this goes on to show that Nokia is taking the competition seriously, and is here to stay.