Physical Features and Call Quality
The Lumia 530 is shorter and chubbier than the last model year, the 4.7 by 2.45 by 0.46 inches (HWD) and 4.55 ounces. It comes in gray, green, orange, or white, and the back snaps off the smooth plastic to reveal the microSD and SIM card slots, as well as the removable battery. Like all Nokia phones, it is made of high quality plastic. In front, there is not particularly bright 800-by-480, 4-inch LCD screen.
Quality is called positive good, and this is a major reason to buy this phone. The Lumia 530 has a strong, clear earpiece and noise canceling techniques significantly lower cost; do not knock all the background noise, but run your voice over better, and it never sounds robotic. Speakerphone is very loud given the size of the phone, and shipping by speakerphone is clear. The phone is no working with Bluetooth headset.
The Lumia 530 also has Wi-Fi calling, but it is the old, Problem version, not the new, sleeker Wi-Fi calling to see on the iPhone 6 That means you can connect calls over Wi -fi, but it has dramatically Scratchy background Hiss, they begin to pop and fade to 50 feet, and cut them off rather than handing off the cell. It's better than nothing, but after seeing the iPhone 6, we know can do better T-Mobile.
The 530 can not achieve a new way of Wi-Fi calling because it lacks LTE, a major downer. We try to recommend only LTE phone around here, but at this very low price, we ensure exclusion. The Lumia 530 has 3G HSPA + 21, not the fastest HSPA + T-Mobile at 42, so net about 5-6Mbps down and 1Mbps up. It is also, oddly, missing 1700MHz band T-Mobile, which further restrict the performance data. That'll all crawl along fast LTE vs. T-Mobile, but you can not get an LTE phone for under $ 200 up front now.
Battery life is middling in 1,430mAh cells. We took 3 hours, 48 minutes in our new test video streaming battery life, which is not good. But I expect that this smartphone will be used throughout the day less than more powerful, higher-end devices.
OS, Performance and Multimedia
The Lumia 530 runs Windows Phone 8.1, which we reviewed recently. There are several Microsoft Lumia additions, most notably the Nokia Camera app, which gives you the shutter speed and exposure controls that you normally get with a cheap camera on this phone. The 530 also has auxiliary Cortana Microsoft and MixRadio streaming music app Nokia.
For basic usage, performance is fine, if low end. The Lumia 530 has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor 200, and benchmarks are slow. Animation crawl a bit. That said, Antutu and SunSpider benchmark performance scores came out a little lead in both Alcatel One Touch will change and the Moto E, competitive devices. All of this is about expectations for the price.
Whether it's about the limited 512MB RAM phone or tight 4GB of storage (2.4GB free only), the Lumia 530 actually had problems downloading and running apps from the Microsoft store in my test. At the very least you'll want to add a microSD card for more storage. The entire app store is plagued by long delays. It can not install either Asphalt games, and both games Minion Rush and Max and the Magic Marker required a reboot before they are following. Animation Minion Rush is also rather jerky.
The phone has a 5-megapixel main camera that records video of 480p, and no front camera. (! Without Skype video chat, sorry) The camera takes noisy, sometimes blurry pictures; locking the shutter speed to 1/60 or higher on Nokia Camera app ensures pictures are sharp, but at the cost of noise. No Hdr, so bright background get whited out, but once again, you can manually adjust the shutter speed and exposure. Low-light performance is not good at all, and the camera has no flash. Included in the standard Windows Phone music and video player, there are mentioned MixRadio streaming app and an FM radio.
Comparison and Conclusion
The only other T-Mobile phones even Lumia 530 price range, unlike last year's Lumia 521, the Alcatel One Touch will change and the One Touch will change 2 Do not expect too much from either this phone, but the Samsung models also look like good choices in this price range.
Deciding it comes down to simplicity versus flexibility. The One Touch phones run Android, with a wider range of third-party applications than the 530 can support. But Android has a slightly messier, slightly more complex UI than Windows Phone super simple, and the quality of the voice call the change was not as nice as our test Lumia 530's. That makes the Lumia 530 a better bet for casual users without a lot of coins.