Nokia Lumia 720 review

The Lumia 720 is Nokia’s latest assault on the mid-range market, but you wouldn’t know it from the outside: its build quality and design are better than we’ve seen from many flagship handsets.

For starters, the unibody design looks fantastic. The rear is made from high-quality, solid matte red plastic, and it curves around the edges of the device before it meets the glossy black screen. The clean design of the rear is only disturbed by the camera lens, a speaker grille and a couple of small logos, and this Lumia isn’t available only in red – it also comes in black, white, blue and yellow versions.

The usual power, volume and camera buttons line up down the right-hand edge, and build quality is excellent. There’s barely any give in the back panel, and the screen itself is made from scratch- and shatter-resistant Gorilla Glass. The panel isn’t just tough, either; it’s also hyper-sensitive, so it can be used with gloves. It’s a feature that’s becoming more popular – it’s available on most of Nokia’s Lumia devices as well as the Samsung Galaxy S4.

We criticised the Lumia 920 for being too chunky and heavy, but this phone solves both of these problems. It’s only 9mm thick, and its 128g weight makes it comfortable to carry around. Nokia has even seen fit to include a microSD slot, although the unibody design means there’s no battery access.

The 720’s 4.3in IPS screen has more quality than we’d expect from a mid-range phone, too. The measured brightness of 625cd/m[sup]2[/sup] is the second highest we’ve ever tested, and it’s superbly readable in full sunlight. The contrast ratio of 1,157:1 is also excellent. In fact, there’s only one problem, and that’s the resolution: at 480 x 800, it isn’t quite as sharp as we’d like at this size, especially when the similarly priced Google Nexus 4 has a 1,280 x 720 display.