NOKIA Lumia 720 Pro Reviews

We really like the Nokia Lumia 720, it's a great all round smartphone and while it doesn't do enough for us to love it, we would seriously recommend it. It falls into a difficult place in the market with strong competition from the Samsung Galaxy S3 mini and HTC One S, but both of those handsets are getting on a bit and the Lumia 720 has the vitality of youth in its favour. If Samsung does launch a Galaxy S4 mini later this year the Lumia 720 may meet its match, but it's certainly got the grunt behind it to put up one hell of a challenge.

Ignoring the huge price gap between the two devices for a moment, it would be an easy win for the Nokia Lumia 720 - it’s got sleeker looks, longer-lasting battery and a brilliant display. In reality, though, price matters and that’s why we ended up very impressed with the cheaper device, the Lumia 520. Yes, it has a dim display that makes it very hard to use outdoors, and yes it lacks some features like NFC, but it compensates for that with extremely capable hardware, smooth performance throughout and a very decent camera. Finally, putting the pair in the general context of smartphones, we ought to give credit to Nokia for managing to pull two well-balanced devices for the masses. Objectively, the Lumia 720 is better, but in reality Nokia innovates more with the Lumia 520, a well rounded device at a surprisingly low price, and finally a capable fighter against an onslaught of cheap Androids.

Looking back through the comparison, it’s clear that the Nokia Lumia 720 gets the upper hand. It’s got a vivid and larger 4.3-inch display, but it’s biggest advantages come in camera performance, battery life and call quality. Its unibody slim design is also extremely nice. What about the Lumia 620, though, should it be off your list? Not exactly. First, the device is a bit more affordable, and second it’s much more compact and friendly to single-handed use. It’s got an extremely bright and vivid display, and provides the same fluid Windows Phone 8 experience at a lower price. If you are ready to spend a little more though and would actually prefer a larger screen, the Lumia 720 is one step ahead.

Nokia's Lumia 720 is the Lumia design I've been waiting for, but it's not the whole package. It's the design and the body that should house the Lumia 920, but its mid-range specifications make me long for Nokia to put its high-end camera and components from the 920 into the shape and weight of the 720. The 512MB of RAM restriction will lock you out of some apps and games (and more all the time), and the camera performance of the Lumia 920 is still the king. If Nokia can create a combination of its 920 internals and 720 exterior for the next flagship then they're onto a winner, but for now the Lumia 720 sits firmly in the mid-range. I wish the Lumia 720 were the answer, but it’s just part of the puzzle. On the other hand, While the Lumia 820's numbering might place it above the Lumia 720, I would confidently recommend the 720 over the 820. The forward-facing camera improvement and optional wireless charging make the 820 tempting, but the lightweight frame and impressive battery performance really makes it an easy choice over the 820. It’s a solid mid-range device, and while the display should really be 720p, Nokia has made it readable and one of the best WVGA screens I’ve used recently.

At first glance, the only difference of the Lumia devices is the screen size. The SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 MSM8227 with 1 GHz is often used for entry-level and mainstream devices. A closer look however reveals other differences that make the Lumia 720. The IPS display is unrivaled in its brightness levels and has high viewing angle stability. The battery was also improved by the Finish manufacturer; the 2,000 mAh battery is significantly more enduring than the smaller siblings. NFC and dual band WLAN are also integrated. We can find a reason for the existence of the Lumia 720. The SoC delivers sufficient performance and the hardware is decent enough. One major drawback is the high retail price of 379 Euros. Some online shops are a bit cheaper selling the device at around 330 Euros (~$430) - but you can get more powerful devices for that kind of money, for example, the Google Nexus 4.

The Nokia Lumia 720 may be some of the best work we've seen from the Finns recently - not a pricy best-of-the-best flagship, but an affordable, well-built phone that packs more than enough features to get users interested. It has its nagging flaws, but as an overall package it's hard to beat.

In a way, the Lumia 720 is an honourable successor to the old Nokia 6230, it's just that the 'basics' have changed since 2004, when the 6230 first appeared. This was not a phone for boy racers, but people who wanted a durable, reliable and longlife phone. The kind of person who will appreciate the Lumia 720 will not be somebody who purchases £35-£40 per month contracts for technology they're not going to need - such as eyeball-tracking sensors. It's a kind of Ford Cortina - and that's no insult.

Do the small perks afforded to the 720 justify that price? You get a slightly better shooter than all the other models, a bigger screen at the same resolution and peripheral-assisted wireless charging. The only real specification that excites us is the longer battery life, but we're all now accustomed to the nightly charging ritual, so we're not convinced it's worth the price hike. We can't exactly ignore the extras -- each has their own cost, and we understand it adds up. However, it would make more sense to ditch the half-baked Qi integration and upgrade the RAM instead. We get the appeal of the 520: it's entering as the cheapest way to get that colorful Lumia style. We imagine Nokia's attempting to place the 720 as a mid-range device, but what's fundamentally wrong with the handset is that it represents slowly aging hardware in a pretty dress, with a few catchy slogans attached.

An excellent camera and this month’s best battery life make the Lumia 720 our favourite mid-range smartphone

The Nokia Lumia 720 is a Windows Phone 8 phone that hits the sweet spot: it's not as expensive as the top Windows Phones, but it offers good performance and specifications. Here's our Lumia 720 review.

Announced at MWC 2013, which took place this February, the Nokia Lumia 720 seemed like a promising mid-range smartphone. Now that the handset has visited our office in all of its retail glory, we're eager to see if this Windows Phone junior can really be a worthy competitor to the Android horde.

In some ways, the Lumia 720 is everything we’ve asked for from Nokia. It’s slickly designed and has superlative battery life, the camera out-performs rivals in the same price bracket, and the screen – though lower resolution than we like – is a nice compromise of size, outdoor usability, and general clarity.Letting the show down are the absence of LTE and the potentially limiting 512MB of RAM. You could well say that the Lumia 720′s target audience won’t miss 4G, but there’s a growing cadre of people wanting higher-end features without a massive display, and they already know they want LTE. As 4G spreads, more and more people are going to expect it to on their phone. As for the RAM, that’s a more obvious drawback: games like Temple Run are quietly omitted from the Store, since they demand twice the memory the Nokia has. It’s a frustrating flaw in what could’ve been a fantastic device, though the strengths in camera and battery life still make it a solid choice in the midrange.

There’s a lot to like about the Nokia Lumia 720. As a device, the design is fantastic and the build quality is great. It might not be the slimmest, or boast the greatest specs, but it is a nice comfortable phone to use day-to-day. But it sits close to the excellent Lumia 620 in terms of some of the specs, which might be its downfall. Where the Lumia 620 feels like a great performer for the low cost, the Lumia 720 doesn’t feel like the step-up it perhaps should be. That might not be a problem if you’re after a larger display, but you’re paying that little extra for it.

A lovely mid-range Windows Phone 8 handset, but we don’t think it offers enough over the cheaper Lumia 620