As some of you may know, my usual daily driver is the Nokia Lumia 925 on T-Mobile since it’s got wireless charging, T-Mobile’s LTE, WiFi calling, and a decent OIS camera, but since I’ve been running the Windows Phone 8.1.1 developer preview and since T-Mobile still hasn’t released the Cyan firmware update, my Lumia 925 has been freezing randomly, over heating, and stuttering during music playback over Bluetooth. So when MixRadio sent a new Lumia 530 over with a couple of Coloud Bang portable speakers, I decided to switch my SIM card into it for the weekend.
Ergonomics are great
When I first opened the box I knew I was going to like the Lumia 530 as soon as I held it in my hand. It’s shape reminded me of one of my favorite phones, the Lumia 710. It’s curved on the back and its size is perfect for fitting ergonomically in the palm of my hand, which is definitely not true with larger-screen, thinner phones.
The Lumia 530 is meant to be the successor to the extremely budget friendly Lumia 520 which was released last year and can be found for no-contract prices as low as $40. The Lumia 530 increases the processing power and improves the 5 megapixel camera a bit, but it also loses the dedicated camera button and capacitive back, start, and search buttons. The Lumia 530 also downgrades its storage capacity from 8Gb on the 520 to 4Gb on the 530. Luckily the 530 comes with Windows Phone 8.1 which enables much better Micro SD card storage usage including app installation and offline map storage. That means a huge amount of storage hogging aspects of your smartphone can be offloaded to a Micro SD card. I, of course, had to install a 32Gb card if I was going to use it for a weekend.
Just pop in that spare $4 battery
One other great feature of the Lumia 530 is that it still uses the same BL-5J battery used by the Lumia 520, Lumia 521, and a slew of other older Nokia phones. The spare batteries can be found for about $4, and for the weekend I kept a spare one in my wallet.
It took a while to get all of my email accounts synced and my favorites apps installed, but soon all of my stuff was back and I was ready to go. Since this Lumia 530 is the European version, I was expecting slow EDGE internet speeds and that’s what I got. It doesn’t even have LTE radios, so the best that you can hope for is HSDPA.
Trying to survive on T-mobile’s EDGE network wasn’t easy. I was reminded how especially difficult maintaining a connection while in motion could be. While on Randall’s island, the connection often died completely, but the thousands of other people and mobile phones attending the Electric Zoo concert may have contributed to that.
Speaking of loud music…
At the park, I took along the inexpensive Coloud Bang speakers. These cost about $25 each and are very loud. You can daisy chain the speakers by plugging one into your phone, then another into the first speaker. This does not make for a stereo effect, but it does increase the loudness capacity. Turning the volume up on the phone with these two speakers attached and playing Nokia MixRadio certainly brought music to the whole park. The speakers have internal non-removable rechargeable batteries that charge via a MicroUSB cable. They also have a power switch on the bottom and last for about 8 hours.
Understanding the camera’s limitations
When it comes to photos, don’t expect too much from the Lumia 530. Its 5 megapixel camera has problems with high dynamic range lighting, there’s no autofocus, and no flash. Oh, there’s no front facing camera for Skype either, but you probably weren’t expecting that anyway. However, without any autofocus slowing you down, there’s no lag when pressing the on-screen shutter button… although saving the picture to the SD card can take a few seconds. Nokia’s Camera app is included, but I would recommend using Microsoft’s default camera app instead since it’s faster. This can be set in the settings preferences pretty easily.
The worst things about the Lumia 530 when it comes to photography is the lack of a dedicated camera button; you have to turn the phone on, unlock the screen, swipe the top edge down and press the “Camera” quick action button to get to the camera now… and the other worst thing about it is the screen’s visibility outdoors. In order to get good lighting for this camera you really need to be outside in the sunlight, but when you’re outside in the sunlight, the phone’s screen becomes practically impossible to see even after manually setting it to its highest brightness level (there’s no automatic brightness).
At the movies, I turned on Cortana’s Quiet Hours so that notifications would not interrupt and any incoming text messages or phone calls would get automatically replied to. It’s a good thing the Quiet hours option is so easy to turn on too since this phone is very loud. The speaker quality isn’t that great, but it’s plenty loud enough for you to hear Cortana read text messages out loud from another room.
I especially enjoyed taking the Lumia 530 on my bicycle work-outs since it is so much smaller and lighter than the other “high end” phones. I wasn’t afraid of it bouncing out of my pocket and it kept Endomondo tracking my speed, altitude, and route just fine.
Conclusion
There are a few things that I absolutely love about the Lumia 530 and a bunch of things that are barely tolerable.
I loved the Lumia 530’s pocketability and form factor. The 4 inch screen is easily navigable with one hand which is definitely not true of larger phones. The price is another huge selling point of the Lumia 530. While it’s not widely available just yet, I can see it being sold for the $40-100 range just like its Lumia 520 predecessor. The removable battery is another huge advantage. Smartphone batteries don’t last all weekend. Being able to keep a little $4 replacement battery in my wallet knowing that more power is just a swap away is very liberating. No longer do I have to think about carrying a giant external back up battery for some expensive phone that doesn’t have a user-replaceable battery.
Of course, I greatly missed wireless charging. Having to plug a wire into my phone feels so 2005. I missed the gorgeous outdoor visibility of the Lumia 1020’s screen as well as its unmatched 41 megapixel image quality as well, but sometimes it’s fun to challenge yourself with a camera that has some serious limitations.
In the end, it’s great to see Nokia releasing more extremely inexpensive yet absolutely usable smartphones.
Originally published on Pocketnow on September 2, 2014. More from the Pocketnow archive.