[cycloneslider id="nokia-lumia-625"]

Nokia's Lumia 625 is the immediate younger brother to Lumia 620. Does this sharp looking device come with most of the things that you could ask for in a midrange smartphone? Well, we are about to know. First, let's come to the display. It has by far the largest screen on a Lumia ever. Honestly speaking, I am not that big fan of Windows phones. But the touch sensitivity of this gorilla glassed IPS display was able to create a somewhat awe within me. Unfortunately that feeling was short lived. The 480X800 resolution of the screen managed to kill it mercilessly. Talking about performance; for a phone that only packs 512MBs of RAM in this era, it was quite good. It managed to perform all the tasks without lagging a bit. It even managed to load mediocre games with an acceptable delay. Oh! Forgot to mention the processor of this phone is a Dual Core 1.2GHz. That explains a lot now. It also supports 4G-LTE. Unfortunately 4G is still a distant dream in this country.
The interface of the phone is pretty decent too. It comes with Windows Phone 8 with Amber update added with Nokia's own tweaks. Good thing about this update is that now some service of Google can be integrated in this phone. In contrast to Android, Windows is fairly stringent about customizing the interface. Only the size and color of live tiles can be changed, but that's about as far as it goes. It also lacks the sophistication of Android and the unified notification center of the new iOS.
The apps support of this phone is a bit frustrating. Though Vimeo, Temple Run, WhatsApp etc apps are there. But essential apps like Prey (as in track your mobile devices), Wordpress app, Instagram etc are not there. But most of the popular games (both free and paid) are available for download. The built in apps are okay. Not great but okay. Microsoft Office, like always, was pretty awesome. We also found two particular apps that were very good: Nokia Smart Cam and Nokia Music. The smart cam takes multiple shots simultaneously. It then does some post processing, removes red eyes, moving objects and brings the best shot out of it. But you can see all the under shots too. In smart cam mode the flash and zoom neither can be controlled which is unfortunate. When you switch to the regular camera mode then you can control those. Not to mention, it has a VGA front facing camera for taking grainy 'selfies'. There are built in apps to add Instagram-like effects in the images.  The other app- 'Nokia Music' offers free unlimited music streaming for six months. You could continue to stream music even after this period but of course for a nominal fee. Another app in this phone that is supposedly brilliant is 'Nokia Here'. According to reviewers abroad, this app takes offline navigation to a new level. Unlucky us, it does not support in Bangladesh yet. This handset also supports 4G, which again is not available in Bangladesh.
The build of the handset is robust; a thing we like very much. The plastic feels good in hand and does not feel cheap at all.   It can also be observed that it is skinnier and has a refined form factor than its predecessors. And this translucent plastic shell of the phone is removable and you can see the battery underneath it. Speaking of battery, it has 2000 mAh. And the battery life is simply awesome. After being extensively abused for the entire day, it managed to keep on going for six more hours. Probably the credit goes to the low rez. display.
As always, check out the sample shots in the online and fb page! Thanks to Tanver Ahmed Ovi for lending his phone for the review.

Verdict:  Though this handset has a long list of things that could have been included, still we find the design and the built inspiring. The decent battery life impressed us too. The phone's camera is decent but average.  Its display is resplendently touch-sensitive. On the downside, it has really poor resolution. Also the performance is to some extent limited by the low RAM of the device. The apps eco system is not on par with android and iOS. Compared to the specs that it offers, it is bit overpriced. May be one good reason to buy this handset is because it's the last piece of hardware from the dying Finnish giant (since Microsoft acquired Nokia's Handsets Division).

Words: Shahriar Rahman