Nokia has been getting the budget phone move right for so long, it feels redundant to appreciate it now. However, the company’s first device since it officially became a part of Microsoft, makes us want to praise the Finnish-smartphone maker for innovating in the budget phone space. We are talking about the brand new Nokia Lumia 630, dual-SIM smartphone that was launched recently.

Maybe with the exception of the plastic rear, nothing about the Nokia Lumia 630 gives away the fact that it’s a budget phone. The screen is reasonably sized at 4.5 inches, which gives the colourful Windows Live Tiles some space to shine. The phone has only two hardware controls – the power button and the volume rocker. The best part about the phone is that it now carries the latest Windows Phone 8.1 DNA in it. The operating system version name doesn’t give it away but the changes in the operating system are anything but minimal.

Windows Phone had, until now, lacked a dedicated notification centre. This has been corrected with the new Windows Phone 8.1. All your notifications – missed calls active SIM, unread messages - are displayed at the top of the screen. You can pull this down to catch up on notifications or tweak settings such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera and brightness, which are customisable. The main screen background too is now customisable, so you choose a photograph to be set as a background and the Live Tiles turns translucent to display the picture at the back. There are small but useful features tucked away in Settings. For example, there’s a Call-SMS filter where you can store numbers that you do not want to be contacted by.

Considering it’s a dual-SIM phone, it always displays which SIM you’ve received calls and messages on. It shows dedicated lists for each SIM card you use. Also, when you compose a new message, you can choose which SIM card to send it from with just one touch. This brings us to one of the best features on the Nokia Lumia 630 – its keyboard. Now, the company has developed Word Flow, a SWYPE-like feature, for the new Windows keyboard. It predicts words fairly well, but the best part is the more intelligent features built into it. For example, if you are writing about feeling happy or sad, it will automatically come up with the apt emoticon for you to insert into the text. It automatically corrects obvious typos, without you again having to choose the correct work to rectify the wrong one. Even if you aren’t sliding your fingers across the keyboard to indulge in some predictive typing, the experience still remains quite impressive. With the usual touch-and-type method too, the haptic feedback from the virtual keyboard is strangely, deeply satisfying and makes you want to keep on typing!

The Lumia 630 is powered by a quad core processor, one that managed to not let us down during the review. The phone is built with an enhanced camera which managed to pack in a lot of effects and customisable features but the lens didn’t really end up giving us great-looking pictures. Almost everything we clicked ended up a bit grainy, even under decent lighting conditions.

For its price tag, the Nokia Lumia 630 packs in a really intuitive interface, a good processor, a great keyboard to type on and allows you to use two SIM cards with ease. If a budget dual-SIM smartphone is what you’re looking for, the Lumia 630 ticks most of the right boxes.

₹11,500

Love – Great keyboard, doesn’t slow down

Hate – Average camera and display resolution

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