Nokia Lumia 525 Review: The Carbon copy of Lumia 520

Nokia Lumia 525 has been awaited only to solve one single problem- App incompatibility with Lumia 520 (having 512MB RAM). The device fits in the clothes of Lumia 520. In fact it is a Lumia 520 with addition of 512MB RAM to its previous list.

The phone is great for Windows lover. But is it worth spending more than 10k for this stuff? Is it any better than its predecessor? Check out the complete Nokia Lumia 525 Review to know more.

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Pros and Cons

• Pros
• Cons

PRO’s

• Brand Value
• Windows Environment

CON’s

• Front Camera
• Single SIM

What does the Retail Package come with?

1. The Handset, Battery.
2. USB Cable, charger, Headphones.
3. Manual, Warranty Card. 

User Experience

i. Design: Ditto Lumia 520

Lumia 525 has the same plastic body as you see in other Lumia devices. You might not be able to differentiate it with the other Lumia devices that you see in your daily commute.

First Impression: Just another Lumia device.

The sides of Lumia 525 are covered with the back panel itself. The hardware buttons are also located on the back panel.

The back panel has the same plastic like other lumias; no difference. It can be opened very easily by pressing the camera & the panel pops out.

Back Panel: Colourful Plastic.

Overall the grip on the phone is good due to the round curves around the edges. The phone is not very bulky & the size is ideal for single hand operation. The edges of the phone are poky in the jeans pocket. Hardware buttons are sensibly placed on the left side of the phone.

Summing it up, Lumia 525 is exactly similar to Lumia 520.

ii. User Interface:

Nokia Lumia 525 comes with Windows Phone 8.0. Unlike Android, there are very few customization options available with Windows & those are same with every windows device.

Themes: 2 backgrounds & 20 Accent colours.

Home screen: Tiles could be added & resized.

Lock screen: Shortcuts available.

Overall transitions are very smooth & fluid except changing the orientation.

iii. Display:

Nokia Lumia 525 flaunts a 4inch IPS LCD Capacitive touchscreen having resolution of 480×800 pixels & pixel density of 233.24ppi.

The display is crisp & sharp. The contrast of Lumia devices is always adjusted such that it makes the reading experience much better.

The auto brightness is quick in adjusting the display lights according to the surroundings. 525 also has good viewing angles.

Single handed reach: Little stretch of fingers.

iv. Typing: 

Single Handed: Typing in portrait mode is better than landscape mode due to long buttons.

Dual Handed: Typing in dual-handed landscape mode is a little clumsy due to inadequate height of the keys.

Swipe: No

Prediction: Average

Auto-correction: Good

Dictionary: Yes

v. Browsing:

Browsing experience with the Lumia 525 was very good, mainly due to the improved readability with the Lumia devices. It has Internet Explorer as the inbuilt browser. And unfortunately you won’t find Google Chrome browser.

Scrolling, pinch-to-zoom & double tap zoom worked fine with the default browser. You can find multi-tabs options with IE but no private browsing or incognito mode.

Pre-installed browsers: IE

Multimedia:

Audio-

Nokia Lumia 525 Speaker

Lumia 525 has high audio levels which makes it audible at crowded places. Audio quality is equally good at max volume.

Speakers are placed at the bottom back side & are usually left out from being occluded by your hands.

The main problem with the inbuilt music player is that you cannot use tap-to-seek feature. It has features like shuffle, repeat & playlists, but it misses on features like equaliser.

Formats supported:

• mp3- Yes
• aac- Yes
• wma- Yes
• wav- Yes

FM Radio

Video-

525 could play videos upto 1080p resolution without showing any lags in the play. It does not support flv & mkv format videos. Overall, the UI of video player looked very simple.

 Formats supported (480p):

• mp4- Yes
• flv- No
• avi- Yes
• mkv- No

Resolution Supported (mp4):

• 480p (SD)- Yes
• 720p (HD)- Yes
• 1080p (full-HD)- Yes
• 4K (Ultra HD)- No

Gallery-

Windows does not allow users to access the internal memory of the device. So unfortunately you will not be able to find a file manager for yourself. The file managers that are available would be used to view files on external SD card.

The gallery does not have any options like- sorting, hide, etc. It has sharing feature available in the gallery. You will be able to share via Bluetooth only if you have turned on Bluetooth at before clicking share.

Notifications & Ringtones-

The ringtone volume levels are loud enough but the vibration levels are average. There is no notification LED in the front.

Camera:

Nokia Lumia 525 Camera

Nokia Lumia 525 comes with a single 5MP primary camera with auto focus & 4x zoom. It misses the LED flash & front camera.

Is this affordable at the price tag of ~10k?

The camera UI is very simple & very similar to any other Lumia device. Main problem with the device would be the Capture on tap feature. It is irritating. And, if you disable it then you will not be able to use the tap to focus feature.

Pinch to zoom feature is available but it does not show the current zoom level. The dedicated camera hardware button could be very handy.

Front camera- ABSENT

Images are sharp at no zoom; but as you zoom after 1.5x, the photos show poor quality. Colour representation of the images is good. Auto focus is very fast.

Lumia 525 shoots 720p videos @ 30fps with average quality represented by a 5MP shooter.

Camera UI:

Camera Samples:

Zoom Test:

Hardware Performance:

Nokia Lumia 525 got a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8227 processor under the hood. It has Adreno 305 GPU along with 1GB RAM.

It has 8GB internal memory out of which 4.38GB is available for the users. You can expand the memory capacity upto 64GB using external SD card.

Performance wise, the phone is average. It might not beat the local Android devices that we get below the price range of 10k. In terms of multi-tasking, you can store a maximum of 8 apps in the queue. The first app in the queue gets dropped as you go more than 8. In-fact, each setting option is treated as an app.

Here are some timing benchmarks which might come in handy:

Memory Stats

Pre-installed Apps & Games

Useful Apps: Data Sense, Here Maps, IE, Nokia Beamer, Nokia Smart Cam, Office, Store

Extra Apps: Adidas miCoach, App Highlights, Big Flix, Flipkart eBooks, Here Drive, OneNote, Wallet, Your Movies, Zinio.

Games: Rail Rush

Lumia 525 comes with Rail Rush as the only game installed out of the box. The game did not lag in 2 hours of play.

Connectivity options

Battery:

Battery did not heat during the entire process of testing. It has power saving mode which will help your battery to last longer when it comes below a particular mark. You cannot check the percentage of battery available in the phone unless you download an app which will create a tile for you on the home screen.

Nokia Lumia 525 is definitely built out of the 520 hardware. It has got 2 updates. One of which is 1GB RAM from 512MB in the predecessor & the other is the PRICE difference.

With the app compatibility problem with 512MB (RAM) phones, Lumia 525 comes out as a solution. But is it worth spending ~3000 more for this?

App developers are now solving this compatibility problem. Fortunately there are only ~1% apps which are not compatible with 512MB RAM phones. So the Nokia Lumia 525 doesn’t offer more bang for the buck than the Nokia Lumia 520.

If you want to save money and 1% apps are not an issue for then:

Buy Nokia Lumia 520.

However, if you want your phone to be able to run all the apps in the Windows Phone Store then you should buy:

Nokia Lumia 525.

Recommended: Best Phones under Rs. 10,000.

• Buy If You Are-
• Skip If You Are-

• Windows Phone Lover
• Looking for a Branded device.

• A photographer
• A Gamer
• A movie buff.

Nokia Lumia 525 Specifications:

You ought to know this- Why we don’t trust specifications?

Share your views in the comments below.