Nokia Lumia 520 vs. Motorola Moto E, the easiest room to compare budget smartphones is to look at their prices. According to The Fuse Joplin, the Nokia Lumia 520, which runs on Windows Phone 8 platform, can be bought with prices beginning at around $215 and the Motorola Moto E that runs on the Android 4.4 KitKat can be bought at around $130. Both smartphones offer high end specifications.
The Lumia 520 has a touch plasticky build and users can wipe away greasy fingerprints. According to PC Advisor, 520's body is solid that won't require a case to prevent scratches. Its rounded corners and sides makes it fit comfortably in a single hand making one-handed manoeuvre easy. Since it is smaller than other current touchscreen smartphones, it gives a more comfortable feel when use as a phone. There is a removable rear panel which is useful, but it doesn't creak or flex under pressure. It measures just 64x9.9x119.99mm and 124g with a 4in screen.
Lumia has colourful rear cover which users can easily snap off to swap in another color. The covers are available in yellow, cyan, red, white and black.
Lumia has a 3.5mm audio jack on top, a volume rocker, power switch and dedicated camera button on the right side, and a Micro-USB port on the bottom. On the rear is a 5Mp camera and a small slot for the speaker.
The Moto E also fits neatly into the hand and is easy to use one handed. However, its 12.3mm body at a shade over 140g is noticeably thicker and heavier than Lumia 520.
The Moto E has a curved rear cover and an edge-to-edge display with only a small amount of a bezel on either side. Motorola has decided to offer a black and white facia with the interchangeable shells other cases for the rear. The Moto Shell for the Moto E will come in nine different colours.
Though the rear cover comes off, users can't access the battery. You need to remove the rear cover only to insert or remove your SIM- or memory card.
The Lumia 520 has 4 inch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480p and a ppi of 235, as a phone it is good enough for viewing photos and text. Images are vibrant, colorful and rich. The Moto E has a bigger screen of 4.3 inches and a qHD resolution of 540 x 960, with a pixel density of 256 ppi. It offers a sharp and bright display.
In terms of hardware specifications and performance, both the phones are good.
Nokia Lumia 520 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, a dual core processor combined with a RAM of 512 MB, clocking at 1 GHz. The Windows phone is not too demanding on the processor and there is no lag while using the phone. As for the Moto E, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 200, dual core processor, clocking at 1.2 GHz powers it, combined with a RAM of 1 GB. Adreno 302 handles the graphics with a 400 MHz, single core GPU. The performance is generally quite good, as features are kept simple using the stock Android OS without customization.
The Lumia 520 has an internal storage of 8 GB with an SD card up to a maximum of 64 GB while Moto E, has only 4 GB of internal memory. The user gets about 1.5GB of free space for games, media and for applications. Users can also access additional storage with a micro SD card up to a maximum of 32 GB.
Both phones has a rear camera of 5 MP, but it the Lumia 520 does not have LED flash or a front camera. Video recording can be done at a resolution of 720p at the rate of 30 fps. The Moto E camera has an HDR mode and a panorama mode.
Both phones are feature rich, offering access to a world of media, apps and business tools.
