Design
The Nokia Lumia 520 is the fifth Nokia phone launched with Windows Phone 8. It is a budget model similar to the Nokia Lumia 620.
The Lumia 520 has a fairly large 4-inch screen and a 1GHz Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. The phone has 512 MB RAM and 8 GB internal memory.
Like other phones in the Lumia line, the Nokia Lumia 520 has a removable back cover made of bright colored plastic. This phone is available in black, white, yellow, blue and red.
Perhaps, in terms of technical characteristics, this does not add any advantages to the phone, but it definitely sets it apart from the rest of the devices. It is also thinner than the Lumia 620 and has a thickness of 9.9 mm and a weight of 124 g. The plastic is pleasant to the touch and non-slip, the phone is pleasant to hold in the hand.
Below the screen there are control buttons typical for devices running on the Windows operating system: Start, Back and Search.
On the back cover you will find a camera lens, a small Nokia logo, and a tiny earpiece at the bottom. All physical buttons are located on the right side of the device: a sound rocker, a power button, a camera control button. On top of the device is a 3.5mm headphone jack, and on the bottom is a microUSB port.
Under the back cover there are slots for microSIM and microSD cards. Nokia Lumia 520 supports memory cards up to 64GB.
Screen
The screen of the Lumia 520 is slightly larger than the screen of the Lumia 620. It measures 4 inches, which is quite a lot for a budget phone. But the screen quality is far from ideal. It has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, a ppi density of 223. The image is not clear and the screen brightness is too high to look at comfortably.
The viewing angles are good, but there is no anti-reflective coating, which makes the phone difficult to use outdoors. The screen has a protective coating to keep the phone from scratches, but the display flexes if you press hard on it.
Operating system
The Nokia Lumia 520's interface is typical of Windows Phone 8. The lock screen displays the date and time, as well as reminders and messages.
The home page is a Live tiles system. Tiles with applications can be moved, resized, removed from the screen, changed colors. If you flick to the left of the start page, you will see a list of all installed applications. From this screen, you can select the programs to be installed on the main page.
Holding down the Back button will display all currently running applications, while the Start button on hold opens a voice search interface that you can use to launch applications, send messages, search the web, and more.
The Nokia Lumia 520 comes with a calculator, calendar and alarm clock as standard applications. The calendar automatically syncs with all social networks and email accounts that are added to the device.
Here is the Angry Birds Roost program, which is a repository of themed video clips and pictures.
The most significant applications are Microsoft Office and OneNote. Moreover, reading from a 4-inch screen is quite convenient.
The rest of the programs can be downloaded from the online store, although the selection is not as wide as in Google Play or the Apple App Store
Phone book
In Windows Phone 8, contacts are accessed through the People app, which gives you an alphabetical list of all callers, along with thumbnails of the contacts' photos.
Click on any contact and a page will open with the information you entered, ranging from your email address and phone number, to your work address, birthday and place of residence. You can easily call, leave a message or send an email.Scrolling to the right from the information page, you will be taken to a screen where your communication history with this contact will be displayed, as well as the latest updates and posts of this person on social networks. Contacts are added not only from the SIM card, but also from Facebook and Hotmail. You can combine contacts into groups.
Scrolling to the left from the home page will open the update screen, which merges all new messages from Twitter and Facebook.
To call a subscriber, you can click on his phone number in the list or use the Phone application. When you open this program, you will see the call history. Unfortunately, there is no smart dial support here.
The call quality is pretty good. It cannot be called ideal, but it qualitatively stands out among many modern phones. Thanks to the noise canceling system, you will be perfectly heard even in transport or a noisy crowd.
Communication
Text messages on the Nokia Lumia 520 are sent using the Messaging application, which is very similar to those on iPhone or Android devices.
The home screen is a list of all the contacts with whom you have exchanged messages. By clicking on one of the contacts, you will open a conversation with that person, which consists of messages in colored bubbles. Here you can easily type a new message, add files to it, or just turn on the voice dialing mode and dictate a new message. One of the disadvantages of this program is the lack of contact photos in the list, which is especially annoying considering that there are photos in the People application.
Scrolling to the side from the main page of the application will open the Online page, where you can chat with friends from related messaging services and social networks (for example, Facebook).
There is also an e-mail client, which has its own tile on the main page of the phone, which shows how many new messages you have received. Opening the application itself, you will see a black and white list of emails with a short description of their content. E-mail is easy to read on the four-inch screen. Letters can be easily enlarged and the text looks clear enough.
The virtual keyboard is hardly outstanding, but it does its job well. She has no delays when typing, there is an auto-correction function. But if you hold the phone in portrait orientation, the keyboard feels a bit squeezed.
Cards
The Lumia 520 comes with HERE Maps, a navigation software developed by Nokia. It is a worthy replacement for Google Maps, although it has the most basic functionality.
Maps are detailed and accurate, and when connected to a Wi-Fi connection, they are loaded in an instant. The situation is worse with 3G internet, but you can always download maps in advance to use them offline. The program shows a list of nearby interesting places (shops, restaurants, etc.), but you will not see traffic information.
In addition, there is also the HERE Drive program, which is a GPS navigator.
the Internet
The Nokia Lumia 520 has both Wi-Fi and 3G, and, as you'd expect from a Windows Phone 8 phone, Internet Explorer is installed as the browser. Despite not the best reviews about the computer version of this program, the browser works more than well on the phone.
At the bottom of the screen is a line for the address / search query, and to the left of it is an icon for updating the page. On the right there are three dots, by clicking on which you will be able to add the page to bookmarks, set it as the Home page, and access bookmarks. Searches are carried out using both Bing and Google.
The text on the screen looks quite readable, and the images are crisp.
Camera
The camera of Nokia Lumia 520 does not stand out from other budget models. A 5 Mpx sensor is installed here and there is no front camera, so you will not be able to make video calls. Which is especially disappointing given the good Skype support for Windows Phone 8 devices.
There are not very many settings in the camera either, you can change the white balance, ISO, exposure, aspect ratio, select several modes of operation. It is possible to focus on any subject, just click on it on the screen. There is also a smart shooting mode, thanks to which you can take a series of photos and choose the best one.
Being a Windows Phone device, this phone has a physical button for the camera, which is more convenient for taking pictures.
The image quality is not bad for a budget phone, although it cannot match the Nokia Lumia 920 or Sony Xperia Z. Photos are good, but there are problems with detail. The camera has difficulty focusing at close range, especially if there are many parts of the same color.
There is no flash, which means the quality of indoor photos is poor. They look dark and grainy.
Video filming can hardly be called high quality either. The Nokia Lumia 520 shoots 720p video at 30 frames per second. The camcorder has even fewer settings. You can change white balance, focus and quality (720p and WVGA). Since there is no flash, the quality of shooting in poorly lit places will be poor, but in daylight the camera works well. There is also no image stabilization, so for good video quality you will have to hold the phone very tightly.
Multimedia
The Nokia Lumia 520 is not marketed as a multimedia phone with 8GB of internal storage and a 480 x 800 display.
Music
The phone comes with the Music + Videos app and is a decent music player. You can filter your music by album, song, or artist. You can also choose a specific genre or create a playlist.
During music playback, player controls appear on the lock screen.
The Nokia Lumia 520 supports a fairly large number of music formats including: WAV, MP3, WMA and eAAC +. Sound from external speakers is surprisingly loud and crisp, although there is no bass.
You can download music to a memory card from your computer or purchase it from the Xbox music store. You also have access to Nokia Mix radio.
There is also a regular FM radio.
Video
The Music + Videos app is also responsible for the video, but the quality of work is far from the music player. For example, there is no online store here.
As soon as you download the video files to your phone, they will appear in a list with thumbnails in the title. The player controls are standard: Play, Pause, Skip, Fit on the screen.
The four-inch screen is more than enough for comfortable video viewing, while the phone itself is light enough to be comfortable to hold in the hands for a long time. The resolution and quality of the screen could be better, but in fact the video does not look so bad.
The player supports many formats: MP4, H.264, H.263 and WMV.
Gallery
Photos are in the Photos app. And this is also a great program. You can view your photos as thumbnails or as a slideshow. There is an editing option, which consists in cropping and rotating a photo, but there is a Creative Studio program that also helps to work with the color scheme of an image.
This application is synchronized with social networks and all albums with photos on your accounts will be displayed on the phone.
Battery
The Nokia Lumia 520 has a 1430 mAh battery. This is enough for the phone to work for a day. You will still have to charge it every night though.
The manufacturer claims that the Lumia 520 is capable of 360 hours of standby time, 14.8 hours of talk time on 3G and 9.6 hours of talk time on 2G networks or 61 hours of music playback. In addition, the device has a power-saving mode that disables auto-sync.
Output
Nokia Lumia 520 is a typical Lumia phone. This device has many functions, but none of them are perfected. The phone has a nice appearance, decent screen and good technical characteristics.This device is perfect for calls and messages, it is convenient to listen to music, watch movies and photos.
