In an age where even my 9-year-old is tapping away at a smartphone and texting her friends about important 9-year-old affairs, the quality of the product is essential to reducing frustrations that will make you want to chuck your phone into the nearest body of water (and greatly regret it later).
Microsoft aimed to directly attack these frustrations by releasing a line phones with Nokia, simply called Lumia. Although Lumia phones can reach high costs, the Lumia 521 model is within the average person’s budget with a retail cost of around $150 without a contract, which is ideal for students
The Lumia 521’s design is a standard, rectangular shape that is 4.7 inches by 2.5 inches. The size would probably be good for someone with big sturdy hands, but for someone with small hands like me, the harsh angles of the phone can be uncomfortable when trying to browse. A white backing with a black screen gives the phone a sterile feel, but the Live Tiles that bring updates right to the Start screen are a wonderful feature and helpful for staying organized.
The buttons on the phone can take some getting used to, especially the power button which is located on the right side of the phone, rather than in the top right corner of the phone, like most smartphones. This might cause you to lose your grip on your Lumia 521 while trying to turn the screen on and off, so I would suggest getting a sturdy rubber case to put on it.
The automatic brightness of the screen is a little dull; I had to manually go to settings and turn the brightness all the way to high to get to the optimal contrast. But graphics on the screen are fairly clear, and the theme can be changed from a white background to a black background, which I prefer, but it’s a nice touch to further customize the Lumia 521.
The camera is actually quite impressive for such a low price phone, which is really nice in this generation of Instagrams and Vines. The camera is 5 MP with auto focus, which is a great addition to the Lumia 521
The Nokia Lumia 521 Windows Phone is also equipped with built-in Office Mobile and OneNote, so you can edit documents and take notes on-the-go; giving you access to your work anytime, anywhere. In addition, you won’t have to worry about losing information since all of your documents, pictures and notes automatically save to SkyDrive, which you can access later from your desktop
The phone has a built in battery saver, which saves the phone user the trouble of having to download the battery saver app. Probably the best feature of this phone is the 4G network. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to throw my 3G Huwaei phone from the top of a 40-story building because of how slow my Internet goes. The Lumia 521’s 4G network goes smoothly without a hitch, and it loads videos and pictures extremely fast.
