Nokia Lumia 720 Review

Launched together with the Lumia 520 during this year’s Mobile World Congress, the Nokia Lumia 720 is the Finnish firm’s latest mid-range offering under its Windows Phone 8 lineup. A refresher to the Lumia 710, the 720 packs a handful of nifty features found on its high-end siblings whilst keeping the mid-tier price range.

nokia lumia 720

Display and Multimedia

As we’ve pointed out during our first impression , the Lumia 720’s WVGA display may seem unimpressive on paper, especially when placed beside a flagship Android smartphone. But what it may lack on pixel density (which is barely noticeable), the Lumia 720 compensated it with stellar color reproduction, decent viewing angles and good outdoor legibility.

The handset’s color reproduction prowess is very evident when we tried out WP Bench’s display test on it. All the colors in the “Color Band” test are distinguishable as well as in the Black and White tests. As for the “Viewing Angle” test, we noticed some slight fall-off of colors at the corners when the screen is tilted, but nothing really alarming as we are still able to view/read contents without any problems.

lumia 720 philippines

Because of this display feature, watching flicks on a Lumia 720 is nothing short of outstanding. The colors are vibrant, the sound is rich and thanks to its able engine, movie playbacks were smooth with no signs of lag.

OS, UI and Apps

Much like the newer breed of Lumia handsets, the 720 enjoys the full slate of features (and drawbacks) brought by Windows Phone 8. On top of the basic in-built WP8 apps, the handset is also equipped with Nokia’s proprietary apps such as Here apps (Drive and City Lens) right out of the gate.

here city lens

While it may seem that Nokia has everything covered in terms of native apps, the same cannot be said for third party apps. Apart from the fact that “Store” is still catching up with Play Store and App Store, the 512MB RAM of the Lumia 720 also added to our gripes as most of the popular game titles such as Temple Run and Asphalt 7 requires at least 1GB of RAM in order to install.

Performance and Benchmark

Besides not being able to install resource-heavy apps, we really didn’t have any major concerns with the Lumia 720’s hardware configuration. Almost all apps ran without any sign of hiccup even when multiple apps are running in the background. Perhaps the only thing that we’d like to see improved in the future releases or firmware update is the load time when opening or switching to an app.

benchmark

In terms of synthetic benchmark tests, the Lumia 720 fared slightly worse than the more affordable Huawei W1 which a couple of weeks ago. It got a score of 7214 from AnTuTu, 168.52 on WP Bench and 657 on PhoneMark.

phonemark

Camera

A feature that’s unique to the Lumia 720 is its 6.7MP autofocus main camera. Apart from the odd number, the snapper also has a weird way of coping with different lighting conditions. It performed well on dim situations, even without flash, which is a rare feat for smartphones.

[fancygallery id=”14″ album=”14″]

However, in broad daylight, the 720’s camera failed to deliver accurate and consistent performance. In short, it’s gonna be a hit or miss with the Lumia 720’s main camera. Another thing to note here is the camera’s excruciating slow shutter speed that oftentimes results to blurred images due to shake.

Fortunately this is not the case for video recording. Although it’s only capable of shooting 720p clips, the quality we got out from is pretty respectable. Sure, it’s not as good as the one we saw from a Lumia 920, but it’s definitely not as bad as the performance we got when we used the camera for stills.

Battery life

Unlike the Lumia 820, the battery of the Lumia 720 is not user replaceable. However, the latter is equipped with a larger battery, 2000mAh to be exact, compared to the 820’s 1650mAh. As a result, this handset was able to give us 2 days’ worth of battery life on moderate use.

battery

On moderate-heavy use, the handset was able to last for 20 hours with still 10% left. On video playback, we were able to watch a total of 5 movies with an average length of 2 hours and 20 minutes. During watching the film/s, the Lumia 720’s screen brightness and volume are set to 50% and all wireless connections were disabled.

Nokia Lumia 720 specs:
4.3-inch ClearBlack IPS LCD display @ 800×480 pixels, 217ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 2
Qualcomm MSM8227 Snapdragon 1.0GHz dual-core
Adreno 305 Graphics
512MB RAM
8GB internal memory
microSD card up to 64GB
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band
HSDPA 21.1 Mbps
Bluetooth 3.0
NFC
6.7MP AF camera, Carl Zeiss, with LED Flash
720p video recording at 30fps
1.3 megapixel front-facing wide angle camera
Li-Ion 2,000mAh battery
Windows Phone 8
Wireless Charging support
GPS w/ aGPS, GLONASS
Dimension: 127.9 x 67.5 x 9mm
Weight: 128g

Conclusion

It ain’t easy being the middle child in the family, such as the case with the Lumia 720. While it may not the most affordable or well-endowed among the siblings, some consumers opt for these kind of devices (mid-range offerings) because they feel that it’s the perfect balance between price and performance.

nokia lumia 720 philippines

And that’s exactly what we think of the Lumia 720. Of course, as with any mid-tier handsets out there, Nokia had to cut some corners in the attempt to keep the cost at the bare minimum. But considering the additional stuff that comes with the package (proprietary Nokia apps and Wireless Charging feature) on top of its other great features (battery, display and storage expansion), we feel that some of the drawbacks can easily be outweighed by its strengths.

The Nokia Lumia 720 currently retails for Php14,500USD 247INR 20,947EUR 235CNY 1,799.

What we liked about it:
• Great performance for a WVGA screen
• Snappy performance
• Outstanding battery life

What we didn’t like about it:
• Inconsistent camera performance
• Lack of apps because of 512MB RAM

Ronnie Bulaong

This article was written by Ronnie Bulaong, a special features contributor and correspondent for YugaTech. Follow him on Twitter @turonbulaong.

https://www.yugatech.com

8 Comments

nameless says:

12 years ago

This phone is cool! But Instagram…. oh why..
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nameful says:

12 years ago

yeah no instagram. and i dont think it is cool too. boring icons in solid colors?

Komputerman says:

12 years ago

Lower benchmark performance than Ascend W1??! This should be priced lower than 8k…
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eric says:

12 years ago

i have this phone.. and i love it..there are many alternatives for instagram on windows store like itsdagram..and if you think the start screen is boring take a look at this site http://mytil.es/
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Mark says:

12 years ago

Dude, how do you do those? App ba yan? (The picture collage thingy)
Kyle Kevin Ken Eraño says:

11 years ago

You can actually personalized it using an app in the windows store. free lang naman xa

Name: shellax doria says:

11 years ago

magkano po?
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Kyle Kevin Ken Eraño says:

11 years ago

I have this phone and I got it for only Php.14, 990 at SM Cebu’s Nokia Store.It’s actually NOT boring. How I define boring is yung palaging napepersonalized. kasi the more you personalized the more you become discontented. sa Lumia 720 kasi sa start screen palang kita muna lahat ng mga importanteng APPS na gagamitin mo on daily basis. tapos it’s so organized. tapos it’s only almost 15k so why should we expect for more? It’s only a midrange phone yet it competes with the high-ends one. I also have an Xperia z10 and I must say na mas satisfied ako sa performance ng Lumia 720 ko kasi nga simple lang xa at hindi mahirap gamitin.

to be tell you in black and white.
social talagang tingnan ang Lumia 720 kasi nga premium ang design ng chasis nya tapos mabilis naman mag load ang browser pero take into considerations na kahit pa OCTACORE pa ang processor mo kung wala namang kwenta ang net provider mo hindi parin bibilis ang takbo ng browser. Tapos matagal talagang ma drain ang battery ng Lumia 720 it almost stayed alive for about 24 hour-full multi-task.it laso has a very nice front feature like ClearBlack IPS display protected with a Corning Gorilla Glass 2 so scratch resistant xa.

and downside nga lang is UNIBODY xa so kung may mangyari mang sira sa battery ay hindi mo ito instantly palitan. tapos hindi mo mapepersonalized ang screen with different launchers gaya ng android.

all in all I would rate Lumia 720 9 out of 10.
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jim says:

11 years ago

hindi mo naman kailangan ng instagram..hype lang yun at maraming alternative sa instagram na way better pa…i own a black lumia 720 at masasabi ko na maganda siya at ito ang una kong WP8 kasi ive been using android phones for 3yrs and i must say na hindi sya laggy compared sa android phones w/ the same hardware specs…my only concern is wala mabilhang wireless charging back cover ang unit na ito sa pinas kahit saang nokia stores…
try nyo gumamit ng lumia para macompare nyo rin and at least unique ka sa nagdadagsaang android phones.XD
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