TOKYO: Nokia and Motorola have launched their smart phones with the names of Lumia 520 and Moto E respectively In Fact these are mid-range phones, which means that users won’t get a fast processor or a camera that takes incredible shots, but at least they’ll have a nice looking phone, not too fancy, and they will use it for basic needs.
Designs
If users don’t mind having a phone with a glossy plastic rear panel which is prone to fingerprints, then they can buy the Lumia 520 model, a solid device with a curved back and almost sharp corners. The phone is perfect for the one-handed operation and fits in every pocket because it’s kind of small, measuring 119.9x64x9.9 mm, and it’s not heavy either at 124grams. Like many of the Lumia models, the 520 comes in bright colours, being available in 5 variants.
The Moto E is also made of plastic, but it has a matte effect and comes only in black and white colours. Its body is thicker at 12.3mm, but it’s also taller at 128.8mm and has a width of 64.8mm. It weights 142grams and features Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on its screen. The back is curvier with more rounded corners and a dip at the top and the front panel has two horizontal bars above and below the screen.
Displays
The Moto E has a 4.3inches display with a higher resolution of 540×960 pixels and which supports 256ppi pixel density. The Lumia 520 features a 4inches IPS LCD screen that renders 480×800 pixels and 233ppi. The Motorola device has a sharper screen and users will see the difference when viewing photos.
Processors and Memories
The Moto E has a slightly faster processor because it has a higher clock speed of 1.2GH and the CPU is Cortex-A7 with two cores, supported by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 chipset along with an Adreno 302 400MHz GPU and 1GB of RAM. These specs are impressive compared to Lumia 520’s components which consist of a Qualcomm MSM8227 dual core 1GHz processor paired with 512MB of RAM, but it has bigger storage capacity of 8GB, expandable up to 64GB, compared to 4GB and increasable up to 32GB.
The Lumia 520 runs on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS, but users can install the new 8.1 update, while the Moto E came with Android v4.4.2 (Kit Kat), then the 4.4.4 update was made available for this device too, and soon it will run on the latest v5.0 (Lollipop).
When tested, the Lumia 520 showed some signs of lag when opening the camera and when running third party applications, but only for a few seconds. Although Android might be lagged on some devices, on Moto E it responded very well.
Cameras
Both phones have only one camera on their backs, with the same resolution of 5MP and which lack LED flash. However, the Lumia 520 provides autofocus, a 1/4” sensor size and video recording capabilities at 720p@30fps, while the Moto E records at 480p@30fps. The photos taken with the Lumia 520 look kind of washed out, and Moto E’s advantage is the HDR mode.
Batteries
The Lumia 520 has a removable battery of 1430 mAh, which should last over 9 hours and a half when talking on 3G. The Moto E features a much bigger battery of 1980 mAh, but it’s non-removable.
Prices
On Amazon, the price of the Lumia 520 is 82 dollars and the Moto E costs 120 dollars.