NOKIA Lumia 630 Pro Reviews

All in all, with the Nokia Lumia 630 and Motorola Moto G, we’re looking at some of the best affordable handsets out there - both offer larger than its peers screen sizes, snappy performance with a quad-core chip inside on both, and decent cameras. The Lumia 630 comes with a very lucrative price tag of just $100 when you buy it locked to AT&T GoPhone, and if that’s an option for you, the 630 offers tremendous value for its money. If you are buying unlocked or in Europe, the Lumia 630 will cost you around $160 (130 euro). The Moto G, on the other hand, is now selling for around $150 (150 euro) for the 8GB model, which makes it also a great value for the money. The main difference, of course, is the operating system. Windows Phone has grown much more versatile, but it still lacks many apps and when it comes to games you get the popular titles late if ever. The Lumia 630 also has a downside in the form of its limited, 512MB of RAM that stop it from supporting some popular apps and games. The Moto G suffers from no such limitation, has a sharper display and leverages the richer Android ecosystem, all of which make it the more favorable device of the two.

The price will move this device, no doubt. Microsoft has effectively re-branded a device from two years ago (the Snapdragon 400 was slightly behind when it debuted on the Nexus 4) and sold it anew. The hardware breaks no new ground, and our overall takeaway was one of mere acceptance; we didn’t love it, but it didn't necessarily leave us shaking our heads at it, either. Those in the market for a fairly solid mid-range device who have an aversion to Android, this one may suit you. As a Windows Phone, it left us wanting, but that’s just the mid-range game sometimes. Windows Phone begs for better hardware all around, and the Nokia 630 doesn’t deliver. For the market it’s aims at, though, it will likely be a good foot in the door for Microsoft.

I'd like to take my hat off to Microsoft and Nokia who have built on the success of the Nokia Lumia 520 brilliantly to design and build yet another respectable budget phone in the Nokia Lumia 630. For a low price it does all the basics and does them well but also offers a decent battery, solid quad-core processor and a whole host of new features in Windows Phone 8.1. Don't get me wrong; it's not the perfect phone, but for a bargainous £89.95 it's a brilliant addition to the market and I foresee it becoming even more popular than the Nokia Lumia 520.

The Nokia Lumia 630 is a handset for the masses. Its full retail (off-contract) price stands at €160 ($200), on par with some very popular offerings like the Motorola Moto G. Motorola’s handset is - naturally - the Lumia 630’s biggest rival. It runs on the competing (and richer in terms of apps) Android 4.4 KitKat, and has got a sharper 4.5” 720p display, slightly better camera, and is simialrly well-packed in terms of specs. An even cheaper option is the recently launched Moto E, a phone with just a slightly smaller, 4.3” display, but also with good performance, offering great value for the money. If you’re gunning for a larger display, Android again has you covered with the only slightly more expensive Samsung Galaxy Grand 2, a phone with a 5.25” display, Snapdragon 400 chip, and better, 8-megapixel camera. On its own, the Nokia Lumia 630 has a lot to offer - the mostly smooth performance, more mature Windows Phone 8.1 with improvements from Nokia Cyan, the good display, and it’s definitely a good value for the money. Truth is, however, that Android has picked up the pace in the past few months, and now offers stronger performers that cost even less than Nokia’s handset. All in all, the Lumia 630 is not a bad phone - but unlike previous affordable Lumias (like the 520), where others had to chase it for its price, now, it feels like Nokia is playing catch-up.