Reviews
Richard Goodwin
21:39, 23 Apr 2013
We review the Nokia Lumia 720, a mid-range Windows Phone device with a big presence
Typical Price:
£250.00
Latest Prices:
Latest Nokia Lumia 720 prices
Pros:
Slimline design,
Very good smartphone price point,
Excellent battery life
Cons:
Pixilated screen,
Windows Phone OS still lacking apps,
Only 8GB storage
Verdict:
We sincerely hope Nokia takes its next flagship in the same design direction as it’s adopted here. The Lumia 720, for us, is representative of Nokia at its very best.
More Info:
Nokia website
Nokia might have been a bit late to the party but it now has a Windows Phone-powered Lumia for every occasion. At the bottom you have the £99 Lumia 520 and at the very top you have the chunky-monkey that is the Nokia Lumia 920.
But it’s in the middle where things start to get interesting, especially when you’re talking about Lumia handsets. The Lumia 720 is pitched as a mid-tier device, slotting in somewhere between the Lumia 620 and Lumia 820, with its £250 [ish] price tag.
On paper the Lumia 720 doesn’t sound all that great having much the same spec as last year’s Nokia Lumia 620: 1GHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and no LTE. In the flesh it’s a different story entirely – the Nokia Lumia 720 looks utterly superb with its angular body, polycarbonate plastic shell, and slim proportions.
Is the Nokia Lumia 720 the best Lumia yet? Find out below.
Nokia Lumia 720: Design
“It looks like a flagship!”
That was our immediate reaction upon seeing the Lumia 720 following its launch at Mobile World Congress 2013 back in February. Two months later, we feel exactly the same. For us, the Lumia 720 is by far the best-looking handset Nokia has produced since it started making Windows Phone devices.
Like many, we found the Lumia 920 unwieldy and cumbersome. We also didn’t appreciate its glossy polycarbonate finish and sharp angular edging. With the 720, Nokia seems to have taken elements from both the Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, melded them together, and has somehow created something far more appealing.
The 920’s glossy polycarbonate exterior is gone in favour of a grippier matte finish, and Nokia has shaved down the proportions significantly. Measuring in at 127.9x6.5x9mm and weighing just 128g, the Lumia 720 is a whole 57g lighter than the [185g] Lumia 920.
Our test handset was red but you will be able to pick up the 720 in a selection of colours – red, cyan, yellow, and black – direct from Nokia. On looks alone we cannot fault the Lumia 720, it has everything you’d expect from Nokia on a good day plus a whole lot more.
Nokia Lumia 720: Screen
It’s a 4.3-inch IPS LCD 800x480 pixel display complete with Nokia’s thoroughly excellent ClearBlack screen technology.
WVGA doesn’t sound all that great, we admit, especially with Full HD 1080p panels now being the norm, but the Lumia 720’s setup does not disappoint. In fact it’s actually rather impressive given the pitch and price point of the device.
Blacks are super deep thanks to Nokia’s ClearBlack screen technology, often blending right in with the bezel. Viewing angles are also impressive as is the depth and vivacity of colour generated by the 720’s humble WVGA display.
There is pixilation, of course, as you can see in the above shot. And you will notice a lack of clarity when reading articles online, with text appearing undefined until you zoom in, for instance, but overall the 720’s setup is a cut above the rest.
Add to that its sunlight sensor, which adjusts the display accordingly when used in direct sunlight, and the fact you can use the touchscreen with a pair of gloves on and the pros unanimously outweigh the cons here. Kudos, Nokia
Nokia Lumia 720: Operating System and UX
Windows Phone 8 is a rather divisive platform.
Some users are head over heels in love the platform preferring it to both Android and iOS, while others vehemently despise Microsoft’s vision for how mobile phones should work, lamenting the lack of applications, slow app-booting times, and rather rigid approach to UX design.
Windows Phone cannot yet compete with Android and iOS when it comes to applications and games. We think Microsoft and Nokia know this which is why both companies have made a concerted effort to create literally tons of unique features for the platform – many of which you cannot get anywhere else.
Features like Xbox Music, Nokia Music, HERE Drive, HERE Maps, Office, One Note, and Nokia’s market-leading camera technology, as well as things like its ClearBlack display tech and across the board advocacy of NFC, ensure Windows Phone isn’t just good but is actually a viable and rewarding alternative to iOS and Android.
There is a learning curve when you come over from Android or iOS, and there are core applications missing like Dropbox, Drive, and Tumblr, but you can easily find ways around these issues by adopting services like Microsoft’s Sky Drive, Office 365, and syncing your PC’s IE browser with IE on your phone.
Whether you’ll want to do all of that, however, is entirely up to you. Most of the Know Your Mobile team is heavily invested in Android and have found the switch to Windows Phone a little trying at times, but we won’t go into that here.
On the whole, we'd sum Windows Phone up as follows: if you’re a platform agnostic like the vast majority of the globe’s buying public then switching to Windows Phone will not bother you one iota. As a platform it offers excellent functionality, robust services, and seamless performance across the board.
For media it’s excellent and offers lots of choice in the form of services like Spotify, Netflix, Xbox Music, and Nokia Music to name but a few. And while many – including this particular reviewer – will miss some aspects of iOS and Android, even the most secular of users can find a lot to love about Windows Phone.
Nokia Lumia 720: Camera
Specs:
6.1-megapixel rear facing camera with Carl Zeiss optics, auto focus and LED flash
1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
It might not sound like much on paper but the Lumia 720’s 6.1-megapixel shooter delivers some of the best shots we’ve captured to date on a mid-tier handset.
The Lumia 720’s camera is bespoke – Nokia designed it specifically for use on this device. It features an f/1.9 lens, benefits from Carl Zeiss optics and as a result produces exquisitely sharp images packed full of detail as you can see below.
It’s not the best mobile shooter we’ve tested, but it’s still damn good – even more so when you consider the price point [this is a mid-tier phone we’re talking about].
Couple all of the above with better-than-average low-light performance, bespoke software like Smart Shoot, and equally impressive 720p video recording abilities, and you’re left with one impressive imaging device.
Nokia Lumia 720: Performance and Battery
Processor: 1GHz dual-core CPU
RAM: 512MB
Storage: 8GB of RAM + SD-support [up to 64GB]
Windows Phone is heavily optimised to a strict set of hardware requirements so as to ensure smooth performance across the board. Put in English, that means whether you have a top of the line handset or a middling one, like the Lumia 720, core performance should be the same.
In this context you have a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset clocked at 1GHz running alongside 512MB of RAM. Strict hardware requirements implemented at Microsoft’s end ensure decent performance at your end, meaning you don’t get any of that Android wobble, and GPU intensive games like the newly released Asphalt 7 run perfectly well on 512MB of RAM.
There’s no lag when scrolling around Windows Phone’s UX, applications opens and close at the same as they do on the higher specced Lumia 920, and image and video editing is handled with relative ease.
Storage is limited to a rather paltry 8GB, meaning anyone that likes to carry a lot of media around with them on-device will need to purchase an SD-card [the 720 supports up to 64GB], alter their usage patterns, or revert to cloud-based services like Spotify and Xbox Music.
The Lumia 720’s 2,000mAh battery is exceptional providing almost two and half days between charges when used lightly – that’s pretty much unprecedented unless you use a Razr Maxx HD. Left on standby it seemingly lasts forever [we gave up after a week and a bit].
Nokia Lumia 720: Conclusion
Great camera, excellent battery life, gorgeous design, detailed and vivid display, £300 offline – literally, what more could you want from a phone?
Three things: more RAM, better storage, and a larger selection of applications and games. If the Lumia 720 had those not only would it be a flagship handset, it’d also probably be perfect. Unfortunately for Nokia, this just isn’t the case.
No phone is perfect in its own right; each and every handset has its own individual nuances and foibles. Some are worse than others, but after spending almost a month with the Lumia 720 I can safely say the positives far outweigh the negatives.
We sincerely hope Nokia takes its next flagship in the same design direction as it’s adopted here. The Lumia 720, for us, is representative of Nokia at its very best.
Consider us impressed.
Specifications
Length
127.9mm
Width
67.5mm
Thickness
9mm
Weight
128g
Screen Colours
16 million
Screen Size
4.3-inch
UK Launch
April 2013
Phone Style
Touchscreen
Camera Resolution
6.7-megapixel
Flash
Yes, LED
Song Storage
8GB
Speaker
Yes
Nokia
Windows Phone
Nokia Lumia 720