Nokia Lumia 510 review: Down a gear

Display

The Nokia Lumia 510 has a standard issue LCD screen of WVGA resolution. AMOLED is clearly out of the Lumia 610's league and even a Nokia ClearBlack display would've been way over budget. Overall, the difference from the ClearBlack screen of the WP8-powered Lumia 620 is easily spotted - and it's certainly not in favor of the Lumia 510. The 4.0" diagonal translates into a pixel density of 233ppi: WVGA is stretched quite thin on the 4" screen.

Contrast is quite poor and the Modern UI that we quite like doesn't look its best. The sunlight legibility is mediocre at best. The highly reflective display is nearly unusable outdoors on bright sunny days, so untypical of Nokia phones.

The 4-inch WVGA TFT display of Lumia 510

Here's how the Lumia 510 stacks up against the competition.

Contrast ratio

• Nokia 808 PureView
  4.698
• Samsung I9300 Galaxy S III
  3.419
• Samsung Omnia W
  3.301
• Samsung Galaxy S
  3.155
• Samsung Ativ S
  3.129
• Nokia N9
  3.069
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2.970
• HTC One S
  2.901
• Samsung Galaxy S II
  2.832
• Huawei Ascend P1
  2.655
• Nokia Lumia 900
  2.562
• Apple iPhone 4S
  2.269
• HTC One X
  2.158
• Nokia N8
  2.144
• Apple iPhone 4
  2.016
• Sony Ericsson Xperia ray
  1.955
• Sony Xperia U
  1.758
• LG Optimus G
  1.753
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1.691
• HTC One V
  1.685
• LG Optimus Vu
  1.680
• HTC Desire V
  1.646
• LG Optimus 3D
  1.542
• Nokia Asha 302
  1.537
• Nokia Lumia 610
  1.432
• Gigabyte GSmart G1355
  1.361
• Sony Xperia miro
  1.324
• HTC Desire C
  1.300
• LG Optimus L7
  1.269
• Nokia Lumia 510
  1.268
• Meizu MX
  1.221
• Samsung Galaxy Pocket
  1.180
• Sony Xperia tipo
  1.166
• Samsung Galaxy mini 2
  1.114

And here's the screen under a microscope to get a better idea of how the pixels are arranged, and how big they are.