Nokia Lumia 630 review

Whereas Windows Phone 8 would cover off all your media needs in just one app, the Music + Videos app to be precise, Windows Phone 8.1 has separated out the various media elements so you have an app for each.

As you can imagine, each app does exactly what it says on the tin. Your music is in the Music app, videos in the Video app and that's right, you've guessed it, your photos are in the Photos app and they are all quite standard.

Music

The music player works as you'd expect, you can create custom playlists or filter your library by artist, song, album or genre. Once a song is playing, you can view the album artwork, favourite it and repeat or shuffle it with the in-app options.

There are a few strange elements to the music player that I thought might have been addressed; there's no start screen controls for music but you can pause or skip songs from the lock screen. You also have to go into the main settings screen to change the equalizer settings, it can't be done in the app.

All that aside, the sound quality is quite good, though without speakers the sound can get a little tinny when the volume is up high.

In addition to the Music app you can also listen to music through MixRadio or you can copy songs directly from your laptop to your phone.

Video

There are two options for video viewing on the Nokia Lumia 630. Firstly, videos that you have taken yourself, these are stored in the camera roll. Simply select one of the thumbnails and tap to view it. Once in you can pause it, skip ahead or skip to the next video but that is it, it's quite basic.

The Video app also allows you to purchase or rent video content and thanks to the partnership with Xbox live there is an excellent selection to choose from.

Although the screen and the sound isn't the best quality it certainly does what you'd expect and a little bit more for the price, the colours are bright and the image is clear.

As with the music though, I'd recommend headphones because the sound quality isn't great, although it is loud. It's also a decent size for videos, of course there are bigger and better quality phones for viewing video but then you'll be paying bigger prices.

The Nokia Lumia 630 does support all major audio and video formats, including MP3, WAV, eAAC+, WMA, MP4, H.264, H.263 and WMV.

Photos

Aside from music and video, there's also a standard Photo app. Your photos can also be viewed in the camera roll alongside the videos but this app is dedicated purely to your still images. It's a straight-forward app that does what you need it to.

You can view your pictures, favourite them, upload them to SkyDrive or set them as lock screen wallpaper. It's also easy to share your photos from here via social media channels.

There are a handful of editing options but these are quite limited, simply cropping, rotating or 'fixing' the picture.

Windows Phone 8.1 now organises your photos with the new Storyteller function. This organises them by the date that they were taken – I'm not sure I like this new format, I was perfectly happy with seeing all my photos in one go.

Ultimately there's not that much to media on the Nokia Lumia 630, but what there is works pretty well.

The internal storage could have been a bit limiting for big media moguls, but with an additional 128GB available with a microSD card slot, there should be plenty of room. In fact more than some of the higher end phones.

With the screen size and low pixel density it doesn't pack a strong punch if media is a big deal for you, however if it's just an added bonus then the Nokia Lumia 630 does a good job.