Nokia Lumia 822

Overview

Slim and Stylish Windows Smartphone

Overview of Nokia Lumia 822

Nokia brings some exciting features like- Wireless Charging, Windows Phone 8, and 4G LTE into its new flagship device- Lumia 822. With such power-packed features, it’s also one of the most eagerly awaited smartphones to hit the markets. Forsaking the looks, Nokia Lumia 822 is undoubtedly one of the best Windows phone out there. Of course, it’s not as good as its bigger brother- Lumia 920, but given the price and the size, it’s a catch by any given standards.

Nokia Lumia 822 Design and Build Quality

Though Lumia 822 isn’t one of the best looking smartphones out there, but it isn’t that bad either. Unlike the design disaster- Nokia Lumia 810, it’s visually appealing and also fits comfortably into hands. Despite that, we would have liked the device to be a bit slimmer, light-weight, and classy. Its 0.4 inch thick-body, which spans over 5.03 x 2.69 inches, takes up a lot of space in your pocket. To add on the misery- it weighs just around 140 g, which also makes it bulkier than normal phones. The only tangible reason which explains Nokia’s uninspired design is the fact that Nokia had to cut the corners somewhere to make Lumia 822 feature-packed and economic at the same time. Ergo, Nokia Lumia 822 is not designed for people who want the best looking handset in the market. Instead, it’s designed for people who count of what’s inside and give little attention to exterior looks and charm.

Display

As they say, every cloud has a silver lining. Though the Lumia 822’s design looks all hunky-dory, its display is magnificent. The 4.3-inch Capacitive Multipoint-Touch AMOLED Display supports 800x480-pixel WVGA resolution, and comes covered by Corning Gorilla Glass, to it from undue wear and tear. Lumia 822’s display boasts some extremely vivid colours (16 million) and provides some surprisingly large viewing angles. Nokia’s ClearBlack technology helps in reducing the glare on the screen, thereby providing deeper blacks and richer colours. These qualities make Nokia Lumia 822- ideal for playing games and watching HD movies. Besides, thanks to the bright AMOLED display, Lumia 822 does not lose its charm even in broad daylight. The text and the images are equally crisper, brighter and readable.

User Interface – the all new Windows Phone 8

Trapped in between the highly monotonous iOS and Android interface, Windows 8’s Live Tile interface feels like a breeze in summer- refreshingly different. The Tiles are dynamic, which means there’s always something happening on the screen. Besides, the tiles can be resized to suit the context of the application. For instance, you can make the ‘People’ tile larger, so that it reads into more contacts. On the other hand, you can keep some tiles like music player smaller in size. There’s always something happening on the screen- no matter what. It’s perhaps the dynamicity of the OS, which makes it so easy and fun to use. However, the down side of Windows 8 is its high boot-up time, tangled up UI and lesser number of apps on Windows Marketplace.

Wireless Charging

With Nokia’s Wireless Charging, which paves its way into Lumia 822, you can charge your phone without plugging any sockets. Wireless charging (Inductive charging) uses electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects. Had you bought Nokia Lumia 920, you could have enjoyed Wireless Charging, without buying any extra accessories. However, unlike Lumia 922, wireless charging does not come directly integrated into Nokia Lumia 822 as it merely supports the feature. In order to charge Nokia Lumia 822 wirelessly, you would need to buy a Nokia Wireless Charging Cover and a charging plate. Not sure who would be getting more charged more after getting that- phone or you.

Nokia Lumia 822 Performance

When it comes to horsepower, Nokia Lumia 822 packs the same processor which comes with Nokia Lumia 810, Lumia 920, and HTC 8X. The 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Dual-core Krait Processor keeps the phone surprisingly fast and intuitive. Besides, the 1 GB RAM makes sure you switch from one app to another, in the blink of an eye.

Music Player and FM Radio

On moderate volume levels, the audio output from Nokia Lumia’s 822’s bottom mounted speakers is clear and loud. However, things do get a bit ragged when you pump the volume to maximum. Nevertheless, listening music through Lumia 822’s stock headphones is a rather enjoyable experience. Nokia Lumia 822 comes with built-in equalizer and Dolby Headphone settings, which brings the bass in line with the treble, and provides a very rich output. Windows 8’s default Music player- ‘Music + Video' is perhaps the most beautifully crafted music apps. It’s extremely easy to navigate and the app fetches full-screen wallpapers of the popular bands, along with their thumbnails. The stock music player supports almost all kind of audio formats like WAV, MP4, AAC, AMR, MP3, M4A, WMA, and more. Nokia also offers cloud music playback (online and offline), which means you can stream your songs directly from any cloud service (For example, SkyDrive) you might have subscribed to.

Nokia Lumia 822 Camera and Image Quality

Nokia Lumia 822 flaunts an 8 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash, which snaps highly detailed and mesmerizing shots. Though the images are not as sharp as anticipated, they do look vibrant and vividly colourful. While Nokia Lumia 920 may enjoy the much hyped ‘PureView’ feature, Lumia 822 captures images at the same resolution (3264 x 2448 pixels), and with the same clarity as Lumia 920. Some of the features which we loved about Nokia Lumia 822’s camera are the White Balance Modes, the Camera Roll feature, and the ‘Tap to Focus’ functionality. The front-facing 1.3 MP camera also captures some surprisingly sharp and colourful pictures, thereby making it a perfect fit for handling video calls.

Video Camera and Video Quality

Nokia Lumia 822 records some nice 1080p (Full-HD) videos at an impressive 30 fps. The phone does not stutter while recording high-definition videos and the camera captures motions amazingly well, even under low lighting conditions. The recorded video can be played via the default video player, or can also be shared via social networks, SkyDrive, or NFC.

Nokia Lumia 822 Apps and Maps

Microsoft Windows Phone 8 comes with the all quintessential apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype and Twitter, which help you stay connected to social media. Windows Phone 8 also populates the information received from these apps and synchronizes them with the ‘People’ tile, to provide a more unified look-and-feel. Nokia also offers some high utility apps like Nokia City Lens, Nokia Drive, and Nokia Music. Nokia City Lens is an augmented reality app, which overlays the name of the nearby restaurants, landmarks, and other locations, when you point the screen towards it. Nokia Drive on the other hand is a navigation which gives accurate turn-by-turn directions, using 2D or 3D maps. It can also be configured to provide voice directions, display points of interests and provide audio alerts. With Nokia Music, you can purchase and download songs from Nokia’s extensive catalogue of over 15 million tracks, and also stream music from popular radio channels. Windows Phone Store currently boasts 120,000 apps, a tiny number when compared to 700,000-plus apps available on iOS and Android. Though 60% of the most popular iOS and Android apps have been ported to Windows MarketPlace, the lesser number of apps on Windows Phone 8 would definitely haunt tech-geeks and app-lovers.

Connectivity and Storage

When it comes to connectivity, Nokia Lumia has everything a smartphone needs to have- Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth 3.1, 3G, and NFC. With NFC, you can exchange information between two Windows device just by tapping them against each other. Open any image on the phone, click on Settings, and select ‘Tap to Send’. Tap the two devices now, and the image would be transferred. As far as storage is concerned, Nokia Lumia 822 comes with 16 GB of internal storage and supports memory-cards up to 64 GB memory.

Nokia Lumia 822 Battery life

Despite all the good things, Nokia Lumia 822’s battery backup is simply unacceptable. Though Nokia’s 1800 mAh battery promises to provide a battery backup of up to 10 hours on 2G networks, in reality, even under minimal usage, the battery does not last for more than 5-6 hours.

Verdict

It’s a neck-to-neck fight between the HTC 8X Windows Phone and Nokia Lumia 822. HTC 8X and Nokia Lumia 822 have the same processors, the same Windows interface, and ironically, the same poor battery life. Though HTC 8X has an edge over Nokia Lumia 822, when it comes to the design and the style factor, Nokia Lumia 822 packs way too much under the hood than HTC 8X. The camera quality is much better on Lumia 822 than HTC 8X and the provision of Nokia Maps is a huge plus. Conclusively, overlook this phone, if you’re looking for a slim, stylish and light-weight device. Buy Nokia Lumia 822, only if you’re looking for a cheaper alternative to Nokia Lumia 920. However, if you are willing to spend just a bit more, going for the bigger brother- Lumia 920 is a wiser choice than buying Nokia Lumia 822.