Nokia Lumia 830 Review
by Brett Howse on November 25, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
CPU Performance
Performance is where the “flagship” name falls apart. The internals of the Lumia 830 are essentially identical to that of the Lumia 635, and that model is cheaper. The Lumia 830 does have 1 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of onboard storage, but the MSM8926 cannot be the SoC in any device labeled as a flagship.
The Lumia 930 with the 2.2 GHz quad-core Krait CPU is very fast, and changes the way you expect Windows Phone to operate. Microsoft has done a great job with the UI and animations of Windows Phone to make them fast and without the jitter of some platforms, even on low end hardware. But that does not help in-app performance, nor the app loading times. The Lumia 930 was a breath of fresh air in regards to performance of a Windows Phone, and unfortunately the Lumia 830 lags behind.
To test CPU performance, we use some standard web based benchmarks as well as BaseMark OSII from Rightware. This gives us a comparison across operating systems. For the graphs, I have tried to get a representation of devices that might be shopped against the Lumia 830 in order to keep the graphs reasonable and meaningful, but if you are curious to see how it compares against any other device we have tested, please check out our benchmark comparison pages in Bench.
Performance is poor across the board. The Snapdragon 400 with quad-core Cortex A7 just cannot compete with many other phones in a similar price range.
Next up, we will take a look at the GPU performance. This is measured with Basemark X 1.1 and GFXBench numbers, and with a caveat – the current GFXBench version is 3.0, but only 2.7 is available on Windows Phone at the moment (3.0 is listed as coming soon) so we do not have as large of a list of comparable devices for the GPU results.
GPU Performance
The Lumia 630 with only 512 MB of RAM is unable to install GFXBench, but we can still compare the 830 to the 930, 1020, and a couple of other devices. The Adreno 305 GPU in the Snapdragon 400 can be compared to the Adreno 225 in the Lumia 1020, but regardless is quite a step down from the Snapdragon 800’s Adreno 330 GPU found in the Nexus 5 and Lumia 930. Apple has consistently pushed for a better GPU in their products and that shows again here even though these are not the current flagship models from Cupertino.
The biggest disappointment with the Lumia 830 is performance. The Lumia 1020 outperforms the 830 in Basemark X 1.1, but both devices fall well short of the Snapdragon 800 Nexus 5. With a device marketed as an “affordable flagship” it would have been nice to see a step up in performance here. The Snapdragon 600 for sure seems like it would have been a perfect fit to fill out the Lumia lineup.
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cheshirster - Friday, November 28, 2014 - link
There is no available S600 soc now. It is not MS|Nokia's fault.Harry_Wild - Saturday, December 6, 2014 - link
There is the 610 and 615 SoC! http://www.postslush.com/2014/02/610-snapdragon-an...Drumsticks - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Lumia 830 the last phone designed and launched under Nokia, hence the 'Nokia' name?Drumsticks - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
EDIT: My other thoughts: I agree completely with the review. I love the design of the 830 and there are so many things to like about it, but it is hamstrung by not having either (if not both) a snapdragon 6xx class SoC or a cheaper price.OddTSi - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
None of the phones that are announced or released originated under Microsoft. Not even the ones with the Microsoft branding.It takes a long time (well over a year) to take a phone from design to release. Microsoft has owned Nokia's device business unit for about half a year now.
Michael Bay - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
Yep, if recent 535 announcement is anything to go by, better phones should be coming soon.Nokia was crazy to expect that brand alone will carry their lowend Lumias with those prices. Outdated SoC I can handle, but asking more than your average chink manufacturer for a 5MP camera without flash or autofocus and lowres display is madness.
Klug4Pres - Saturday, November 29, 2014 - link
You cannot use the word chink these days.BMNify - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
Thanks for the detailed review Brett, i agree with you that the SD400 SOC is the single factor which has undermined this phone and Microsoft should have gone with SD800 but you know the product pipelines have long duration and we can't expect Microsoft input until 2015.Also, hope you do a review of Lumia 730, its one of the most exciting mid-end phone with dual sim capabilities and Paul Thurrot has reviewed that 730 is better than 830, 50% price difference notwithstanding :)
Drumsticks - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I'd love to see a review as well. I think they could have done fine with a SD610 though. Just not those A7's again. Microsoft is shipping the same SoC in a $400 phone as they are in a $40 phone. >.<invinciblegod - Tuesday, November 25, 2014 - link
I suspect a SD801 would be too expensive. If only they had a hypothetical in between option, a SD600 if you will. That would make the more expensive budget offerings more palatable.