Nokia Lumia 630 launched in India: Should you pick this over the Lumia 525?

Microsoft has finally entered the lucrative dual-SIM budget market in India with the Lumia 630 . The Lumia 630 comes in dual-SIM and single-SIM variants priced at Rs 11,500 and Rs 10,500, respectively. The dual SIM variant will be up for grabs this week.

In many ways, it is quite similar to the Lumia 525 launched last year. The Lumia 525 is available online for around Rs 10,000. Now, with both devices on sale, do you pick the tried and tested Lumia 525 or go with the newer single-SIM Lumia 630? We try and tackle this dilemma.

Design The Lumia 630 features a curved design compared to the angular Lumia 525. However, if you are looking for a more compact design then the 525 steals the show. At 124 grams, it measures 119.9 x 64 x 9.9 mm, while the 630 is slightly heavier at 134 grams and 129.5 x 66.7 x 9.2 mm dimensions. This is a very subjective area so it’s hard to give a final consensus here. Both are attractive looking phones and are built well enough to endure the brunt of everyday use. The Lumia 630 comes across as a bit more striking due to the florescent shades as compared to the more subdued Lumia 525.

Display The Lumia 630 sports a 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 854 pixels of resolution and pixel density that goes up to 218 ppi. With a 4-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display, the Lumia 525 features 480 x 800 pixels of resolution. Its pixel density is slightly higher at 233ppi. The 525 gets a sharper display than the 630, but at the cost of a smaller size. The Lumia 630 also gets the coveted ClearBlack technology and Gorilla Glass 3, which give it better sunlight legibility and more resistance to scratches.

Operating System and processor The Lumia 630 debuts with Microsoft’s latest Windows Phone 8.1 OS and brings all the goodies that come with it including dual SIM support. Windows Phone 8.1 introduces the new Swype-like ‘Word Flow’ keyboard, new start screen and action center. Under the hood, it gets a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.2GHz and 512MB RAM. The limited RAM could prove to be a hindrance while running apps, especially games. The Nokia Lumia 525 runs the older Windows Phone 8 OS with the Nokia Black update, and is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8227 chipset clocked at 1 GHz. It clearly wouldn’t be as powerful as the Lumia 630, but it does come with 1GB of RAM.

Now all things considered, we doubt the quad-core in the Lumia 630 would give you any significant performance gains over the 525, given how flexible Windows Phone 8 is. The extra two cores would have probably come in handy when running high-end games. Unfortunately, you won’t see that since these games won’t even show up on the 630 due to the 512MB of RAM. Granted, there are just a handful of app that have this 1GB RAM restriction but this is an obstacle that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Specifications Just like the Lumia 525, the Lumia 630 gets 8GB of onboard storage. However, the latter comes with expandable memory up to 128GB while the Lumia 525 is limited to 64GB. Both devices come with support for Bluetooth, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and 5-megapixel rear camera. Take a look at the specs comparison table below:

Verdict

The Nokia Lumia 525 and Lumia 630 come with a very similar spec sheet. The camera and connectivity options remain almost same, while the display won’t make much difference either. However, the 630 has an edge over the 525 with more external storage, better battery and the latest Windows Phone 8.1 OS.

Speaking of the software, the playing field will even out soon as the WP 8.1 update will be coming to the Lumia 525 as well. In fact, you can install it right now along with Cortana if you want to. As far as the single-SIM version of the Lumia 630 is concerned, it’s doesn’t seem overly tempting when compared to the Lumia 525. We’ll reserve our final judgement till after we’ve spent a good week with the phone.

Check out our hands on with Lumia 630  and our full Lumia 525 review to find out more about the two budget Windows Phone smartphones.