It’s a sad, sad day when companies start reviewing their own products. Today is a sad, sad day.
Nokia has just posted their review of the Lumia 620 budget Windows phone to the Nokia Conversations blog. And guess what! Author Adam Fraser had only good things to say about the little mid-range Lumia.
He just so happens to be a “Writer and Reporter at Nokia Conversations Blog”, who “has owned more Nokia handsets than he can count” and receives his paycheck from Nokia, but just ignore that bit. I’m sure he’s totally objective about the whole thing.
Here are some of my favorite, unbiased bits:
From the front, you’ll see a double layer of colours, but from any other angle, all you can see is a vibrant, luscious lime colour.
Comparing the weight with my Nokia Lumia 800, the Lumia 620 feels lighter, but not in a cheap way. It feels solid and heavy enough to fit snugly into the palm of my hand while the smooth back and rounded edges give the whole phone a comfortable feel.
Read: This phone may feel cheap and light, considering that it’s made of cheap, light materials like polycarbonate thermoplastic. But don’t mind that. Look! Pretty colors!
The 3.8″ TFT WVGA ClearBlack display produces some vivid colours, equally on par with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the Lumia 820.
Read: The smallish display looks really pretty with all these live tiles!
Once I’d made some more adjustments to my Start screen – resizing Live Tiles, adding email tiles, and moving tiles around – it was time to delve into the Windows Phone Store to download some great games and apps.
I made sure I covered the basic, and essential, as far as I’m concerned, apps/games; Cinemagraph, Creative Studio, 4th & Mayor, Weather Flow, Draw Something and Angry Birds.
Read: The Windows Phone Store has a ton of apps, almost one quarter of the App Store’s app selection. Download them, even if you don’t recognize their names, because our partner Microsoft spent a ton of money getting developers to build for Windows Phone 8.
You’d be mistaken in thinking that because a device has 512MB of RAM, it would run slowly and you’d experience a certain amount of lag. However, this isn’t the case.
The dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon CPU does a fantastic job at keeping everything running as smooth as any other – more expensive – smartphone.
Read: Who needs 2GB of RAM or a quad-core processor when there are hardly any apps to require that level of performance?
We’ve written a lot about how the review process has changed in tech media. Newspapers and magazines used to receive review units months or weeks in advance of some arbitrary embargo date, at which point they could post 3,000 words about the latest feature phone from Samsung.
Then, with the introduction of the internet, reviews became a race of sorts, with each media outlet having maybe a week’s lead time with a device. Sometimes, less than that.
This is a flawed process, to say the least, but those journalists who do review a product usually take the responsibility very seriously. For example, TechCrunch reviews include intensive battery testing, stress testing, graphics and processor testing, and our reviewers usually ditch our primary device altogether for the review period.
It’s hardly enough time to notice certain bugs, or other device flaws that show up with a lot of wear and tear.
It’s not perfect, but it’s honest.
This is why we don’t always get every review unit. Back in the CrunchGear days, Range Rover stopped talking to us because of the comments (subsequently lost when we transitioned to Facebook comments) in this Range Rover Supercharged review.
Sending out units for review is a risk that companies run.
They may get a glowing review and sell more devices because of it. In that case, it’s the most effective form of free marketing ever concocted. On the other hand, they may get a negative review which might hinder sales.
Luckily, Nokia has solved that problem altogether. Instead of running the risk, they just published their own review. It includes an unverified defense of the less-than-impressive Lumia 620 specs, as well as a nice little promotion for some of Windows Phone 8 apps. The review is a beautiful mix of marketing speak and review terms, woven so intricately together that the reader may entirely forget the URL of the blog.
Which is why I’ll remind you: http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/02/04/compact-vibrant-and-lots-of-fun-our-nokia-lumia-620-review/
Editors’ Note: We’ll have our own Nokia Lumia 620 mini-review up very shortly.