My 820 contract recently finished, and I went pay as you go in order to get the 830 when it comes out. Now I'm not so sure. I'm worried that the poor processor will be the equivalent of the 512mb bottleneck on low range devices. Especially with windows phone getting more app/game parity with ios and android. Developers will make more processor intensive games because they can be handled by other OS' - in that sense this phone could be obsolete in 6 months
Honestly, if you don't have huge gaming expectations, I don't think there is a rational reason to worry about the CPU in this device. The problem with that statement is that humans aren't rational beings.
When we buy a new device, we want it to be an upgrade over what we already had. Unfortunately, as far as the CPU is concerned, this isn't an upgrade over what you had in your 820. That is the problem. This won't be important to everyone, but for those of us who are interested in computing technology and view the CPU/GPU as the heart of any computing device, that is a bit of a let down.
The thing is, with over half of WP's market share being 512MB devices (some of which have slower CPUs still), there are few reasons to want anything faster. Nobody will develop apps that will push the 830 to its limits. Games however, particularly those that are demanding on hardware, and more importantly, those that are ported over from iOS and Android may be problematic. I doubt you'll find instances where a game simply won't work, but you'll likely not get the same fluidity or graphics fidelity that you would using a device with a better CPU/GPU combo.
Of course, using a CPU such as this also has an upside... longer battery life. For me personally, that is far more important than being able to play games (I hate the gaming experience on smartphones and much prefer a PC for such entertainment).
For me personally this is a pretty good device and I'll likely end up getting it anyway (mainly because I'm not thrilled with the 930 and even less so with the 1520). However, if I was on a budget, then I'd be taking a very close look at the 730 to determine if it doesn't also do the job just as well.
I genuinely feel misled. Aside from all the stuff about this being an affordable "flagship," he clearly said a "Snapdragon quadcore processor," which wouldn't be a SD400. I'm a bit disappointed.
If 2 being smaller than 4 is your only issue, then have at it! This does include a quad core SoC.