Nokia Lumia 620 review

Nokia made some nice high-end phones in years gone by, like, for example, the N95. But Nokia was never really about those phones, it was about affordable, reliable phones that everyone wanted to own, and that everyone could afford. There's not always money to be made at the top and bottom of the market, but if you can sell a lot of mid-range devices, you're likely to do well.

The Lumia 620 is something of a return to form. Removable covers, a sturdy feeling device, reasonable price and a solid operating system. It's all here, but with Nokia struggling to capture the market it used to dominate, does the 620 offer enough to lure people from those mid-range Android phones, or is it on a hiding to nothing?

Xpress-on covers!

We never understood the hysteria about interchangeable phone covers. Perhaps it's aimed at a demographic in which we do not belong. But they were a big deal on Nokias of old. And here, on the 620 they're back, to some extent.

Now, of course, covers are all about the back of your phone, because there's no front that isn't just screen. Nokia makes several different covers for the 620, but there's likely no end in sight for what third-party manufacturers will come up with. And, with the 820 Nokia has released 3D printing information, so customers can design and manufacture their own covers. It's only a matter of time before 620 owners can do the same.

What we love about the Nokia-supplied rear covers is that they have a two-tone free. This is most obvious on the lime green and yellow cover, where the outside is a fabulous bright green, but visible around the bezel is an inner yellow line. It looks top-notch and although green wouldn't be our first colour choice, it looks amazing.

Nokia sent us cases in white, bright blue, a pink and solid yellow. We liked them all, and they all cheer up the phone a great deal. Interestingly, all have a matte feel to them, except the lime green and yellow, which is very smooth and shiny.

Compact and solid

As for the rest of the design, beyond the cover, it's all quite standard.

On the right-hand side, there is a button for controlling the volume, power button and a hardware camera button. The micro-USB is at the bottom, leaving the left-hand side free of controls and sockets. On the top, there's a headphone connection and slip off the cover and you'll find the removable battery, microSD card slot and micro-SIM tray. We like how the 620 handles your SIM - it sits in a pull-out metal holder - it's a much more sensible method than others we've used and feels much less likely to get caught with hand-cut SIM cards.

The speaker is concealed at the bottom right of the phone, on its rear case. Covers therefore need to have a hole of some kind to allow the sound out unimpeded.

Interestingly, the headphone jack also forms part of the case, it connects to the phone with some recessed connections. This is worrying because if you pop the back on and off a lot, it could stop the headphone jack from working. And second, anyone who does want to make third-party or 3D printed cases will need to include this, adding to the complexity.

Screen and shout

The smallish screen was actually quite a surprise to us. At first glance, there's a little flicker and it looks like it might not be that good. But given a few moments during set-up - perhaps the coldness of the day and newness of the phone have a bearing - and things soon settled down. The screen is actually bright, more than bright enough to be seen outside, and reasonably detailed. We're not talking about high-end type resolution, but it's certainly good enough to use for any purpose.

Video looks great too. Fire up Netflix or any video app and you're looking at some really impressive quality within minutes. The screen also manages to control its brightness well - it's much less flighty in auto mode than most Android handsets we've seen and used.

Sound too, is an area in which the phone seems to punch above its weight. When it first rang, we were amazed by the amount of sound that came flooding out of the small speaker. It's loud enough to be heard in a busy room, or when tucked in your pocket. And when it comes to watching video, it's loud and clear too, so if you don't have headphones, or want to share with a friend - not on the N71 please - then that's an option too.

Via headphones, music sounded good, but not amazing. We flicked on Dolby Mobile though, and that seemed to improve the situation. Further improvements were to be had from tweaking the full EQ, and eventually we managed produce a sound that was very nice indeed. It might not be good out of the box, but there's certainly scope to get the sound you want from the 620.

Windows Phone 8

We've written about Windows Phone 8 at length, so there's no point going over it all here again. Let's say though, that we're fans. This might not be an operating system awash with third-party apps, but the favourites are here and work as well, or better, than they do on Android.

There are quirks, of course, but these are mostly quite minor troubles. We noticed that contacts from Google would sometimes be a bit sketchy. One of our friends, for example, could be found via the phone portion of the handset, but not via the SMS bit. Once we tweaked the options in his number to be a "mobile" not landline, we could see him in the text messaging area. It's sort of obvious why that's happening, but it still doesn't make any real sense.

In terms of apps, there's pretty much everything you want, although some parts are dire. Games, for example, are still a bit of a mess. But there are games, and when you play them there's no difference to how they work on Android or iOS. We love the fact that there's a Netflix app - that's a big part of our video-based entertainment these days. Twitter has an official app, it's beyond hopeless. When we tried it, it wouldn't let us sign in because our phone's clock was "set to the wrong time zone". It wasn't, but the Twitter app would have none of it, and refused to work.

Aside from that, the things you really want to do with the phone can be done out of the box, for the most part. Email support is utterly brilliant, with Hotmail - or Outlook.com as it's becoming - Gmail and Exchange support all provided without any real need to configure settings. It has to be said too, you'll love the Windows Phone email interface. It's clear, crisp and makes a lot more sense on these phones than the equivalents do on Windows 8.

The built-in keyboard is really good too, and that's something that honestly surprised us with a phone this small. The correction seems to get it bang on, most of the time, and the keys, while small, don't seem very hard to hit. It's actually just about the best virtual keyboard we've used, honestly. And voice recognition is good - actually, really good. In fact, it's usable for replying to text messages it's that good.

Navigation is good through Nokia Maps. It's a little less easy to use than Google Navigation, and it never feels quite as slicks as Google's app. But there's traffic information and the usual map and satellite views, which make it a decent tool for getting around. We like that you can download maps too, for when you're not in the UK and don't want to pay for data. Oh, and don't forget to download a voice pack too, so the phone can yell instructions at you. 

The SD Card

It's a bit confusing how Windows Phone handles SD cards. It turns out you can put music on your phone by simply chucking it on to a microSD card. Although the music app is, honestly, a little confusing and reluctant to tell you where it's sourcing its music. If you have an XBox music subscription, you can listen to lots of music while online. If not, then you'll be restricted to files on the phone or SD card.

If you're Windows 8 user, there's a "Windows Phone" app that allows you to copy data to and from the phone. It's a bit iTunes in some ways, as it also makes back-ups of your photos while you're syncing, which is nice. Music can be selected from your PC and synced via the app too, and it's both quick and easy to use, although it obfuscates what's going on, as is the current trend in Windows.

There's also Nokia Music, which is another way to get loads of free music. We love this service, and while it's somewhat limited, it's such a nice free benefit that it makes us smile every time we use it. Just as well there's Nokia Music though, because there's still no damn Spotify app. Boo!

When the phone detects a new SD card, it will also ask you if you'd like to use it for storing new photos and video. This is actually a very neat little feature, and we're pleased to see the phone using its brain, and asking logical questions, something that's all too rare in mobile devices.

Battery

The battery is our one area of real concern. It's a modest, 1300mAh pack, which we think will struggle to get you through a whole day, especially if you're using push email and surfing the web a lot.

The good news is that you can just plop it out, and shove a new one in if it does die. That won't suit everyone, and it's a massive faff, but it's a lot better than on most phones these days, with their absurd sealed-in cells.

Camera

We actually like the camera on the 620. It's not going to blow your socks off, but neither is it a disappointment. One of the things we like is that its modest megapixel count make images fairly small but the detail in them is good, colour natural and there is much less of that smooshyness you get in the fine detail on budget Android cameras.

Video at 720p is fine, especially for YouTube and Facebook. Detail isn't amazing but, we have to say, the autofocus is exceptionally good. It's both quiet and quick, and within a few seconds has a lock. It's also good in close up mode, so there's more to the video of the Lumia than perhaps we expected.

Beyond the Dead review - Build a settlement of zombie killers on iOS

There’s no shortage of zombie games in the modern age, not even on mobile. And while zombies lend themselves especially well to action and shooter games, they also pop up in many other genres.  A couple of iOS examples: The Walking Dead is quite a popular adventure game, and cult favorite Zombies!!! mixes the undead with a dice-rolling board game.

Mobile publishing giant GREE has recently tossed its own hat into the world of zombie games with Beyond the Dead. Coming from GREE’s Vancouver-based studio, Beyond the Dead is more of a traditional mobile game than the two titles I just mentioned. But this one’s mixture of card collecting and town building with a zombie apocalypse still makes it worth a look for zombie-loving casual gamers.

Building a base

In Beyond the Dead, the world has been overrun by a plague of flesh-eating zombies. The player’s first order of business is to establish a base to defend against the undead. This begins with staking out a patch of land in the wilderness and setting up a tent to sleep in.

As time goes on, players can purchase new buildings and items for their settlement. These all fit the in-universe fiction of survival versus the zombie plague, such as a chicken coop producing food for your team. In actual gameplay terms, buildings mostly just produce silver (soft currency) over time. Checking in and collecting money to spend on further buildings and supplies becomes a core part of the gameplay routine.

Missions

From the homebase, you can browse and take on missions in the outside world. Again, bite-sized missions are a common component of mobile city building games. But Beyond the Dead outdoes many such games with the complexity and variety of missions it offers. You’ll have loads of them to choose from at any given time. Many are available for only a limited time, which creates a sense of urgency that you don’t usually get and also matches the desperate nature of the game’s setting.

Missions include such objectives as defeating certain enemies in an area, searching specific buildings, challenging other players, and more. The best part of these is that most involve visiting areas with actual complex maps and wandering zombies and then doing some exploration or combat. You can’t be killed while out in the wild, but looking around an area and hunting zombies is far more interesting than your average city builder’s gameplay.

The actual combat is still casual game simple, though. Just select the correct target enemy, tap Attack, and you’ll deal some damage. Each attack costs energy, as does searching buildings. Energy refills over time – remember, you’re supposed to return to Beyond the Dead throughout the day. But the energy costs and slow rate of refill do slow the game down and make it less exciting than it should be.

Completing missions gets you experience, silver, and battlefield lockers. These lockers contain random rewards of varying rareness. As for experience, you’ll level up when you gain enough of it. Level ups refill energy, unlock new items and buildings for purchase, and give you Skill Points with which to boost your team’s abilities.

Survivors

Building that team (only five survivors can fight together at a time) is the real draw in Beyond the Dead. Over 100 unique survivors wait to be found and join your team. Each survivor’s card displays beautiful artwork (much better drawn than the actual sprites, as usual with these games) and a backstory that fleshes out the game’s setting.

Survivors have their own attack and defense stats that determine how effectively the will perform in battle. They also come equipped with special abilities like the chance for the whole party to deliver extra damage during attacks. You can also boost their damage by finding or purchasing new weapons, each with its own range, rate of fire, and ammo capacity.

The ability to develop survivors adds depth as well. Each one can be not only leveled up, but also evolved into stronger forms. To level up a survivor, you must pay a silver fee and then combine him or her with other survivor cards or items. Fusing two similar survivors will evolve them into better ones. It takes a mixture of leveling and fusion to create a formidable team.

Dealing with other players

Another promising feature in Beyond the Dead is the ability to battle other players. You can challenge other teams at any time, as long as you have the adrenaline for it. Adrenaline is the PvP-specific energy currency and refills over time.

Fighting other players is not as exciting as it could be at this stage in the game. The screen displays each team’s lineup of character portraits and then simply tells you who won based on each team’s stats. No action scene, RPG-style combat, or anything. Hopefully GREE adds some visual pizazz to player challenges in a future update.

Still, player battles are worthwhile because the winner gets silver and Reputation Points. Consecutive wins provide better payouts, as does graduating to higher reputation tiers. You have to fight more PvP battles within a set time period if you want to stay within those better tiers.
The zombie apocalypse isn’t all just fighting other humans for supplies and fame, however. Likeminded players can also team up to form alliances. As an alliance member, you’ll receive team boosts and even free items on occasion. Of course, even the alliance feature has some competitive elements…

Beyond the Dead offers alliance-specific live events, not unlike an MMO. The first of these starts on January 31st - not far from now. During the event, alliances will be able to declare war on each other. Each war lasts an hour, and the victor gains Prestige Points. At the end of the event, alliances will receive rewards based on their Prestige ratings compared to the other alliances. Read more about the Bloodbath Alliance event here.

In-app Purchases

As a free to play game, Beyond the Dead relies on optional In-App Purchases (IAPs) in order to turn a profit. Some of these include Starter Packs that range in price from $1.99 on up and contain an assortment of items and survivors for the taking. If you want to build your team in a hurry, Starter Packs will get you on the right foot without breaking the bank.

The remaining IAPs consist of either silver or gold packs ranging from $4.99 up through crazy amounts. Gold, the hard currency, pays for a variety of functions. As you’d expect, energy and adrenaline refills cost gold, not silver. Paying for energy in games is like a bottomless well to throw money into, so you might be better off using gold for other purposes. The best of these is buying rare and powerful survivors.

Keeping ahead of the undead

Beyond the Dead is off to a great start. It’s simple enough that anybody can play it, but the dark zombie theme, diversity of mission activities, collectible survivor cards, and PVP elements all make for a compelling experience.

The one complaint that practically every player seems to share concerns the game’s stinginess with energy and the high energy costs of mid-mission activities. Of course GREE needs to make money from the game, but trying to drain players of their life savings on energy (something you’ll always need) is not the best way to do it. Far better to sell interesting items that will make missions easier or give alliances an edge in PvP, if you ask me.

The Beyond the Dead team plans to support and improve the game in the long term, which means the energy situation and other bugs might get better as time goes on. Those enhancements and the promise of more live events certainly bring some hope to this particular zombie apocalypse.

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini review

There's a division in the world of smartphones. There are phones that are normal-sized and phones that are super-sized. You will like one type or the other, more than likely, and we naturally seem to fall into the latter, rather liking the bigger phones such as the HTC One, Galaxy S4 and the Note II. But what if you're not a monster-phone fan? What then?

Then say hello to the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, or from here on, SGS4 Mini or just, plain Mini. This phone is designed to offer the features of its bigger sibling but with a more compact footprint and a marginally cheaper price. It could be ideal then, but like anything, there could also be some downsides. 

Less screen, less power and less storage

The first and most obvious thing to understand is that the Mini has less power than the standard SGS4. We're not talking massive differences here, but you're certainly not getting a Galaxy S4 shrunken down to iPhone size, although the device is, in terms of dimensions, pretty close to the iPhone.

In terms of specs, what you get in the Mini is a dual-core, compared to the SGS 4's quad-core. There's 1.5GB of RAM, which is half-a-gig less than in the full-sized phone, and you get a maximum of 8GB of storage. In fact, the storage situation is slightly worse than that, because there's only 5GB available to the user.

We used to dismiss the internal storage moans of some people, especially when handsets had the option of adding a microSD card, but things are changing, and it appears that Google really wants to get away from external storage. For one thing, it's no longer possible to move apps to the SD card on a standard phone. This is a problem, because some games and the like are absolutely massive. Real Racing 3 and The Dark Knight Rises are over 1GB each, in fact, Batman clocks in at 1.8GB. Install both those games and a few other apps, some photos and you're officially done.

To access that microSD card slot, just pop the back off the phone, remove the battery and you'll see the micro SIM and SD card sockets. It's worth noting, in some regions, this handset is available with dual-SIM slots, something we'd quite like to see in the UK. 

Gorgeous screen

Although the pixel density here is lower than the SGS4, we adore this screen. The AMOLED does what it does, and has those colours that are super-vivid, this is great for normal phone stuff, but when it comes to photos and videos, it's hardly super-accurate. Even so, it works well and has plenty of brightness.

Although the screen is small, typing is okay, but you have to use one hand. We're used to the Note II, which is a two-handed affair, but try that here and you'll end up with nonsense instead of words. But the phone is small enough to use with one hand, so this all makes plenty of sense.

The detail is amazing though, and despite having only a 540 x 960 resolution 4.3-inch screen, that's still got 256ppi which is a decent amount. You could, if you wanted, compare that to the 441ppi on the SGS4, but even so it manages to look pretty stunning. Proving, we suppose, that there's a lot more to a screen than just a number.

Samsung vs. Android

Some pundits have noted that, for the most part, Samsung doesn't really want to be associated with Android. The firm does all it can to differentiate its product from the Google Android look and feel. This is something of a double-edged sword, because Samsung brings an enormous amount to its phones, and this is all stuff that's not possible with vanilla Android.

On the flipside, the look of Android with Touchwiz is not something that goes down well with everyone. For one, we get quite tired of Samsung's insistence that everything has an S in front of it. S Voice, S Translator, S Memo and, easily the worst and most counter productive: S Planner (it's a calendar). S Planner is awful to use, but you can get the proper Google Calendar app in the app store, so no harm, no foul.

Despite the silly names, almost all of Samsung's apps are really good. S Translate is well done, simple to use and you can opt to download HD voices that improve the spoken quality of translations. What's more, you can control S Translate with your voice - speak English to it, and it will transcribe what you say, and present a translation. And, the same in reverse. This is the closest thing to the Star Trek universal translator you can imagine, and it's possible now, in a handset that costs a few hundred quid. If that doesn't impress the hell out of you, you're already dead inside.

 

We've used "car mode" for navigating too, and it's clever. What it does is give you the usual S-Voice interface, but it remains permanently active, waiting for you to say "Hi galaxy" or your own wake up phrase, when you do this, you can use the phone through voice command. Ask it to find you a petrol station, and it will do so and push the answer to Google Maps. It's actually really good, and a feature that a lot of people probably ignore. It munches battery though, so be careful.

One thing that does continue to annoy slightly, though, is the Samsung notion that it must have a duplicate of every Google service. Presumably, if Samsung thought it could get away with it, it would remove the Play music, video, app and bookstores, and just use its own. But it can't do that, and keep the "Google experience" so it has two of everything.

There's a Samsung apps store, which keeps the Samsung apps up-to-date, and which you are therefore forced to use. There's the Samsung Hub, which contains the book, movie, game and music stores. This is all just the Google Play suite all over again, with vaguely different selections that add to the confusion of media rights ownership.

And then there's the Samsung account thing. You have a Google account, but Samsung also wants you to have a Samsung account. Without it, you can't access the Samsung stores - perhaps no bad thing - but it's yet another account to sign in with, and to remember the password for. It's a pain, and it's redundant.

None of this spoils the device, but it does make Apple look good, because its product has one of everything. That might be locked down too far for some, but it's a lot simpler for the customer.

Group Play

One of the features that Samsung has promoted heavily, is Group Play. The idea here is that multiple Samsung devices can be paired and combined to play music together. It's a sort of "down-and-dirty" way of making a speaker system out of phones.

Obviously, you need to have Samsung phones to make this work, and they need to be recent ones, running the latest software. In Samsung's world, this is no problem, because everyone has Samsung phones, and everyone has the lastest software. In the real world, that's unlikely.

We tested it with two recent Sammys, and the results were, honestly, a bit mixed. The pairing is easy, and you'll have them working together in no time at all. It sort of works by joining one wireless AP, and that's all fine. What we did find though, is that the music wasn't quite synced perfectly. It was really hard to tell by how much they were out, or which one was fast and which was slow, but the music just didn't sound right.

It's a nice idea, but it needs some tweaking to really be of much use.

Performance

One of the things we have noticed on the Mini, is just how slick the Samsung implementation is now. TouchWiz feels more lively and looks more pretty than stock Android, at least in some regards. Hit the multitask button, for example, and the dominant window beautifully reduces in size to show the list of recent apps. Press the one you want, and it smoothly expands. It's a small thing, but it gives the phone a really solid feeling.

Speaking generally, in terms of the way the phone runs, it feels to us as slick as the SGS4, and it's doing that on a processor that's much less advanced, and with less memory. It really is very impressive, and it means that anyone buying this phone will feel they're getting a mini Galaxy S4 experience, rather than a budget experience - which at this price would have been awful.

We also played some 1080p video, with DTS sound, and it worked. This is high-bitrate 1080p too, and we have to say that this is seriously impressive. Of course, 1080p is a bit of a waste on a phone this size, but what it does do is prove that Samsung understands what consumers might want, and it gears its devices up accordingly. So both games, and HD video work really well on this phone, and that's something that matters to us, and a lot of other people. 

Camera

As with most phone cameras, there are a lot of possible options here. There are two groups: the more sensible shooting modes, which include HDR, auto and sport, and the silly filter stuff that makes your £300 phone look like a pinhole effort from the 1900s. Filters schmilters, that's what we say, but you might use them if you hate photography and want it to die in a filtered mess.

The camera itself is nice to use. It's not a megapixel monster or anything, but the images it produces have a natural look to them, with nice colours and plenty of detail. None of that budget phone camera stuff here, just a really nice crisp image.

The front-mounted camera is fine for selfies, although any self-respecting duckface should really be pulled in a mirror, with the rear camera. It's also decent enough for video calls, like anyone bothers with those.

Call quality

One thing that really did strike us was just how good this phone was at being a phone. Calls were really nice-sounding. There was plenty of volume, and the quality was absolutely great. It's nice to use as a phone, because its size and shape lend it to being pushed against your ear. This is something missing from larger phones like the Note, and even the full-sized Galaxy S4. If you're on the phone a lot, we can't name a handset that's nicer to use than this one. 

Battery

There's something odd going on with the Mini, but the battery life - even with all the gubbins turned on - is really good. We had two email accounts pushing our mail to us, Frequent messing about with the screen on, playing Real Racing 3, forgetting to close Real Racing 3 so it was running - and playing music - for 30 minutes. We used it for text messages, and calls, and at the end of the day, it's only 38 per cent drained after 16 hours.

Now, caveat time. We used the phone, and installed a bunch of our favourite apps, but this was not like our day-to-day phone, which has all manner of things installed, and now doesn't see a day out, despite having as much as two-day capacity when new. Some of this might be battery stability over time, and some of it will be because we have a lot of stupid apps running, but even so, from a base level the Mini has impressed us, far more than other phone put in the same position.