Lumia 730 Review: A Solid Phone With An Affordable Price Tag
What is it?
While the Lumia 930 is the flagship next-generation Lumia, the Lumia 830 is positioned as an affordable flagship alternative. However, the one which is really affordable and would make the numbers for the company is the Lumia 730, the successor to the very popular Lumia 720.
Who is it for?
While the Lumia 730 bets big on its front-facing camera credentials and targets the selfie-obsessed users, it packs in good enough internals and is a fine option for mid-range smartphone buyers.
Design
Unlike the chunky Lumia 930 and the slightly slimmer Lumia 830, the Lumia 730 is the only Windows Phone device that perhaps went to the gym. It's slightly bigger than the Lumia 720 and weighs 130 grams but is great phone to hold in the hand, and almost absolutely comfortable to use with one hand. Apart from the boring black and a classy white, there's also glossy orange and matte green color options. The glossy one picks up a lot of fingerprints, but looks rad.
Like most Lumias, the build quality is solid and the polycarbonate plastic looks great and stylish. The back shell is removable, and you'll find two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot. You can of course buy a different colored shell to refresh your phone after a few months or to match a certain dress for a special event.
Right away, you'll find the 4.7-inch OLED screen with Nokia's ClearBlack technology. The Lumia 730 sports a 720x1280 resolution. It's not HD, but the display looks great with vivid colors and wide viewing angles, and pretty good for a mid-range device.
One of the aberrations from a typical Lumia design, a dedicated camera button is missing on the Lumia 730. While it helps reduce camera shake when you're taking those selfies, it's a little unsettling for a user whose existing smartphone has a dedicated camera button.
Below the display you'd find the capacitive Windows buttons missing since the Lumia 730 uses on-screen navigation buttons instead. If you've used a Windows Phone before, you'd take a few hours to get used to the fact that you have to look at the edge of the display and not below it for hitting the buttons. Once you are sorted with the change, it's a non-issue.
However, a small niggle here is annoying. By default, the Lumia 730 is set to hide the navigation bar when you go full screen while viewing a web page or playing a game. When that happens, it's very confusing and you'd be stuck without the oft-required back button. Of course a swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen gets you the familiar buttons, but this would definitely confuse first-time Windows Phone users.
Hardware
Powered by a quad-core 1.2 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM, the Lumia 730 shares the same internals as the more expensive Lumia 830. That's good enough to have a breezy Windows Phone experience, especially since the operating system is definitely lighter on resources. You might see a few frame drops while playing graphic-intensive games or a few seconds of the loading/resume screen while switching between apps, but it's not a significant lag. The phone packs in 8GB of internal memory, and includes a microSD slot for expanding the same.
The Lumia 730 sports a 2200 mAh battery, which on a moderate usage would easily last beyond a day. That's pretty impressive, and even with my heavy usage, I managed to lug it for an entire day putting it to charge at the end of the day only. Unlike some budget Lumias, the 730 doesn't skip a proximity sensor or an ambient light sensor.
Software
Along with the other latest generation Lumias, the Lumia 730 is one of the first Windows Phones to run Lumia Denim, Nokia's firmware update with the Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1. There's also Cortana, available in alpha version, for India. It's not enabled by default, and you'll have to do a small tweak (change speech to English (UK)) to get started.
Unlike the Lumia 830, the Lumia 730 does not support the Glance feature, but does support Double-tap-to-wake and Flip-to-silence. All other signature services and apps from Nokia and the usual Microsoft services are of course included.
Camera
While the marketing folks for Lumia 730 prefer to flaunt the front camera, the rear camera on the 730 is pretty good as well. The phone boasts of a 6.7-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a single LED flash.
The photos captured are pretty good, easily better than most other smartphones in this price range. It doesn't match the brilliance of the PureView camera on the Lumia 830, obviously, but the color reproduction is great and the photos are nicely saturated. The camera captures fine details of the photos, evident when zoomed in or reframed. In low-light conditions, the details are softer and in some cases, the photos can be a bit grainy. They're not bad, even if viewed on an external, larger display.
The highlight of the Lumia 730 is of course the front facing 5-megapixel wide-angle camera with f/2.4 aperture and 24mm focal length. The optics not only allow clicking sharp selfies but also cram in a lot of people in the frame. Even if you don't click photos with a pout every couple of hours, the wide-angle front camera is a neat feature to have.
The video recording quality is pretty good, both from the front and rear cameras. Surprisingly, the front camera too can record up to 1080p HD videos like the rear camera. Most front-facing cameras can only record up to 720p videos, adding another feather in the cap for the front camera of the Lumia 730.
The Best Part
The Lumia 730 is a solid, affordable smartphone for a diverse audience, and not just the selfie-obsessed ones. Of course, if the latter is an indulgence, the Lumia 730 offers one of the better experiences around.
At Rs 15,299, Lumia 730 offers decent hardware, a pretty good camera, and an uncompromised Windows Phone experience. Unless Android is a definite need, I'd highly recommend the Lumia 730 at this price-point.
While the Lumia 930 is the flagship next-generation Lumia, the Lumia 830 is positioned as an affordable flagship alternative. However, the one which is really affordable and would make the numbers for the company is the Lumia 730, the successor to the very popular Lumia 720.
Who is it for?
While the Lumia 730 bets big on its front-facing camera credentials and targets the selfie-obsessed users, it packs in good enough internals and is a fine option for mid-range smartphone buyers.
Design
Unlike the chunky Lumia 930 and the slightly slimmer Lumia 830, the Lumia 730 is the only Windows Phone device that perhaps went to the gym. It's slightly bigger than the Lumia 720 and weighs 130 grams but is great phone to hold in the hand, and almost absolutely comfortable to use with one hand. Apart from the boring black and a classy white, there's also glossy orange and matte green color options. The glossy one picks up a lot of fingerprints, but looks rad.
Like most Lumias, the build quality is solid and the polycarbonate plastic looks great and stylish. The back shell is removable, and you'll find two SIM card slots and a microSD card slot. You can of course buy a different colored shell to refresh your phone after a few months or to match a certain dress for a special event.
Right away, you'll find the 4.7-inch OLED screen with Nokia's ClearBlack technology. The Lumia 730 sports a 720x1280 resolution. It's not HD, but the display looks great with vivid colors and wide viewing angles, and pretty good for a mid-range device.
One of the aberrations from a typical Lumia design, a dedicated camera button is missing on the Lumia 730. While it helps reduce camera shake when you're taking those selfies, it's a little unsettling for a user whose existing smartphone has a dedicated camera button.
Below the display you'd find the capacitive Windows buttons missing since the Lumia 730 uses on-screen navigation buttons instead. If you've used a Windows Phone before, you'd take a few hours to get used to the fact that you have to look at the edge of the display and not below it for hitting the buttons. Once you are sorted with the change, it's a non-issue.
However, a small niggle here is annoying. By default, the Lumia 730 is set to hide the navigation bar when you go full screen while viewing a web page or playing a game. When that happens, it's very confusing and you'd be stuck without the oft-required back button. Of course a swipe upwards from the bottom of the screen gets you the familiar buttons, but this would definitely confuse first-time Windows Phone users.
Hardware
Powered by a quad-core 1.2 Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor with 1GB of RAM, the Lumia 730 shares the same internals as the more expensive Lumia 830. That's good enough to have a breezy Windows Phone experience, especially since the operating system is definitely lighter on resources. You might see a few frame drops while playing graphic-intensive games or a few seconds of the loading/resume screen while switching between apps, but it's not a significant lag. The phone packs in 8GB of internal memory, and includes a microSD slot for expanding the same.
The Lumia 730 sports a 2200 mAh battery, which on a moderate usage would easily last beyond a day. That's pretty impressive, and even with my heavy usage, I managed to lug it for an entire day putting it to charge at the end of the day only. Unlike some budget Lumias, the 730 doesn't skip a proximity sensor or an ambient light sensor.
Software
Along with the other latest generation Lumias, the Lumia 730 is one of the first Windows Phones to run Lumia Denim, Nokia's firmware update with the Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1. There's also Cortana, available in alpha version, for India. It's not enabled by default, and you'll have to do a small tweak (change speech to English (UK)) to get started.
Unlike the Lumia 830, the Lumia 730 does not support the Glance feature, but does support Double-tap-to-wake and Flip-to-silence. All other signature services and apps from Nokia and the usual Microsoft services are of course included.
Camera
While the marketing folks for Lumia 730 prefer to flaunt the front camera, the rear camera on the 730 is pretty good as well. The phone boasts of a 6.7-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a single LED flash.
The photos captured are pretty good, easily better than most other smartphones in this price range. It doesn't match the brilliance of the PureView camera on the Lumia 830, obviously, but the color reproduction is great and the photos are nicely saturated. The camera captures fine details of the photos, evident when zoomed in or reframed. In low-light conditions, the details are softer and in some cases, the photos can be a bit grainy. They're not bad, even if viewed on an external, larger display.
The highlight of the Lumia 730 is of course the front facing 5-megapixel wide-angle camera with f/2.4 aperture and 24mm focal length. The optics not only allow clicking sharp selfies but also cram in a lot of people in the frame. Even if you don't click photos with a pout every couple of hours, the wide-angle front camera is a neat feature to have.
The video recording quality is pretty good, both from the front and rear cameras. Surprisingly, the front camera too can record up to 1080p HD videos like the rear camera. Most front-facing cameras can only record up to 720p videos, adding another feather in the cap for the front camera of the Lumia 730.
The Best Part
- Very good rear camera, and brilliant front camera
- Similar hardware as Lumia 830
- Price-tag
- On-screen navigation buttons
The Lumia 730 is a solid, affordable smartphone for a diverse audience, and not just the selfie-obsessed ones. Of course, if the latter is an indulgence, the Lumia 730 offers one of the better experiences around.
At Rs 15,299, Lumia 730 offers decent hardware, a pretty good camera, and an uncompromised Windows Phone experience. Unless Android is a definite need, I'd highly recommend the Lumia 730 at this price-point.
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