Nokia’s followup to the mid-range-to-budget Lumia 620 has gone bigger than ever, taking Windows Phone to an Android-like 4.7 inches. Shame about the resolution.
The budget phone will come packing an 800×480 IPS 4.7-inch LCD with “supertouch”, so you can use it with gloves on; great, I guess, but it looks decidedly low-res these days. Guts-wise we’re looking at a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro backed by just 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage plus a microSD card, a rear 5MP snapper with Nokia’s Smart Camera, a VGA front-facing chat cam, plus your usual Bluetooth 4.0 LE, Wi-Fi, GPS and even LTE (but no NFC). A 2000 mAh battery should keep it ticking along nicely considering the relatively low-end specs.
The beauty about Windows Phone 8 is that the general OS experience is pretty much the same across all levels of phone, but just 512MB of RAM is disappointing, even at the budget end of the market. Still, if you’re after a cheap Windows Phone that’s got the legendary Nokia build quality, then the Lumia 625 might be worth a punt in orange, yellow, green, black or white (with changeable back shells). It’s no 41MP 1020 though.
It will be available for all good networks by early September for something in the region of $US300 all-in, which is pretty cheap for a phone this size. We will let you know of availability elsewhere soon.
