Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
Wi-Fi
The Lumia 830 most likely unitizes the Qualcomm VIVE Wi-Fi available on the Snapdragon 400 SoC. In this particular case, it is nothing special. The 830 has a single stream only, although at least it is dual band. This gives us a maximum connection speed of 150 Mbps, which the Lumia 830 was able to achieve. However connection speeds rarely equate to real world transfer speeds.
I was only able to achieve 38 Mbps transfer speed with the Lumia 830, which is not a stellar result. On a device of this price range, it would be nice to see 802.11ac wireless and possibly a dual-stream solution.
There is one other note about Wi-Fi. On one occasion, the device stopped seeing any access points at all. I had to restart the phone, at which point the Wi-Fi worked normally again. I’ve contacted Microsoft and this is a known issue on some Lumia 830 devices. They have no fix for this yet, so if you do purchase one and have this happen, you may want to exchange it. It happened just the one time to me though.
Cellular
Qualcomm’s MSM8926 SoC supports up to Category 4 LTE which offers a maximum of 150 Mbps download and 50 Mbps Upload.
I was only able to achieve 6 Mbps download and 4 Mbps upload but these numbers have a lot to do with the traffic on the tower, as well as location and obstacles.
Reception is good but this is difficult to test unless you live on the fringe of a cellular signal and I do not.
GNSS
Qualcomm’s IZat Gen8A is the GPS in the Snapdragon 400 SoC, and as with most modern Qualcomm location solutions it is fast and accurate. With location services enabled on the phone, GPS lock happened within a couple of seconds. Going from location services disabled to a GPS lock took around thirty seconds, which is pretty good.
The Lumia 830 supports A-GLONASS, A-GPS, BeiDou, and assist from cellular and Wi-Fi networks to get a quicker location fix.
Speaker and Call Quality
The Lumia 830 has a single speaker on the back of the device, which is never the ideal location for maximum clarity and volume. The tiny speaker does get plenty loud though. I measured 88.7 dBA from the speaker from 3” away.
The Lumia 830 has four microphones for noise cancelling. Below is the audio of a call from the 830 to my personal cell, which I recorded on my PC. There is a bit of whine in the recording from my PC so please ignore that I will try and get that sorted out for the next review.
The 830 does a good job cancelling out the outside noise during a call, with it only struggling when the ambient noise was high enough that it would be difficult to speak face to face. The audio quality of the call was also quite good.
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CaedenV - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Totally agree, with SD800 I would not hesitate to pick this device up. The issue is that this was supposed to be launched along side new flagship and phablet devices that had the SD800 (or 801/805?) which had all of these features, better specs, plus 'hey cortana' and 3D Touch support. Sadly the 3D touch was not ready, so both devices were scrapped and we get the 830 by itself which is an OK device... but would make more sense in a larger product lineup.MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
The 830 could not easily be recommended with a price adjustment. Canada has it right, the Blue Deathstar does not. American carriers don't do WP any favors by mispricing or poorly supporting available models. Verizon did a bad job with Icon, though it doesn't seem like it's that great of a phone. The 1520 is the best thing you can get, IMO, provided you can deal with the size.MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Edit:"The 830 could easily be recommended with a price adjustment."
Price is too high. Mark it down and it would be a good phone.
Alexvrb - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Verizon is the worst offender. Not so much with pricing (well, on-contract pricing anyway), but with sales and support. If you walk into a Verizon Wireless store and ask about a Windows Phone chances are very high they are going to fight you tooth and nail, even if you just want to look at and play with a particular model. If you already know you want a certain model of WP, just order it online and save yourself the headache.Then there's situation with Verizon and WP updates. When every other major carrier worldwide has pushed 8.1 and Cyan to their Lumia devices (the ones they planned on updating in the first place anyway) and VZW still has zero ETA? Not cool.
Brett Howse - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Just got word that the Lumia 735 will be shipped soon, so keep an eye out for that.BMNify - Wednesday, November 26, 2014 - link
Awesome, waiting for your Lumia 735 review.djds20 - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Comparing this to the Moto G (2014) should be $250.BMNify - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Moto G should not be compared with Lumia 830 as there are a lot of other factors in a phone apart from the SOC, you can compare Moto G with Lumia 630 or Lumia 730.Infact Moto G ($250) can be compared with another Android giant Xiaomi Redmi 1S ($89), Xiaomi is selling 100k Redmi phones every week in India apart from few thousand sales in Indonesia and Millions in China and HongKong.
Flunk - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Yes, this actually sounds a lot like a competitor to the Moto G as basically the only two mid-range phones worth buying.Gunbuster - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Not to mention they should be selling them like the Moto G... From their own website (Microsoft Store) unlocked with GSM/LTE bands for the major carriers.