[shannan_a]

I'll be buying this phone next month, just want to get the views of those who have already got their hands on it.

I had the Nokia C7 whose audio quality was good (apart from the bass levels being low and treble a little high), but with the Bass Booster equalizer setting and good Sennheiser earphones the output was great.

I had a look at the Lumia 820's in depth review on gsmarena and found that the audio quality isn't that great when compared to the C7. Can anyone share their experience in terms of the sound of the phone especially with earphones plugged-in?

[johnnylai]

with speakers, i love it!
with earphones, i dont really like this kind of ear-plug but the sound is superb.

[th0mas96]

the built-in speaker obviously sucks, but that's normal for a phone.. with inears (Shure SE 215) it sounds really good, better than on my old iPhone which had a bit too much middle tones, the high ones got lost (for reference: Evanescence - Bring me to life), but overall, it's really good. What I'm really, really missing is FLAC/ALAC support. atm, I have everything coded to 320 kb/s, but according to the internet you can play WMA lossless files, so that shouldn't be the problem. And if you're sure you want a Windowsphone, Nokia is definitely the right choice, in contrast to the other OEMs they have a pretty basic but not bad equalizer. like expected, the bluetooth music transfer is another little loss in quality, but it's ok.

With headphones, it's equal or better than an i4S, so I don't think you'll make a wrong decision.

[pmhgeneral]

I have the 822 I say the sound is so so not that good, I had the HTC Trophy and was great. I use a set of Bt headphones which is much better.
Sent from my {Nokia 822} using Board Express.

[th0mas96]

wait, did you mean the headset they give you with the phone? well, it's not good at all, like every headset you get with a phone (don't mention beats, they suck too). but with good headphones, the sound is really good.

[shannan_a]

wait, did you mean the headset they give you with the phone? well, it's not good at all, like every headset you get with a phone (don't mention beats, they suck too). but with good headphones, the sound is really good.

I won't be using the Nokia Headset WH-208 which comes with the phone, I've got a pair of Sennheiser earphones.

[Jrexxx]

Don't know if this helps, but I've got the 920, and I use it with my Sony MDR-7506 which usually need an amp to run well. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the 920 was more than able to drive them and delivered excellent sound! To tell you how good they are, here's a comparison with the rest of my gear: iPad 2 < Sony Vaio Laptop < Lumia 920 < MacBook Pro. Only thing left to figure out is if the 820 and 920 have the same sound chip....

[th0mas96]

I won't be using the Nokia Headset WH-208 which comes with the phone, I've got a pair of Sennheiser earphones.

then you're good to go, I can only agree to the post below. my old iPhone was at least equal, my 820 is at the same level as my macbook.

[shannan_a]

Now that I own it I can confirm that the audio quality is impressive, especially the Dolby effect.