Try the Tech Lumia 640LTE Review

[Anonymous]

Nokia Lumia 640 LTE review

About me and this review

OK so I was lucky to be given the chance by 02 to road test the Microsoft Lumia 640 LTE and a Microsoft band (more on the band later) and if I am being honest I was less than excited at getting a windows phone because you see I am an android guy through and through ever since the inception of android I have been there usually through the nexus programme aka google flagship phone or a HTC flagship device either way it’s been android.

So to make this review fair and honest I decided against a shoot-out between this device and an equivalent android (moto G of you are interested) because as I found out during my test the specs of a device means nothing it’s the overall package of the software and the hardware combined.

One thing I want to make also clear during this review if I mention a particular thing that annoyed about the operating system before you shout at your screen and tell me the way to do it please be aware I only had the device for a week due to me wanting to make sure it was back with 02 before the Christmas shutdown.

You can just skip to the end if you wish and read the summary

So here we go…

• Unboxing initial thoughts and switching on

The first thing I noticed was wow its bright orange and I mean bright orange I had a bit of a faff getting the rear cover off to place the battery which is a rather large 2500mah Is a big plus the screen is nice 5inches running at 720 with 294ppi the processor is a snapdragon 400 with 1gb of ram.

One word of caution on this phone the screen seems to be a magnet for anything like finger marks just by handling the device I managed to make it look like I had fried an egg it and it don’t have greasy hands as a rule and nor do I get the same problem with any other device.

Thankfully the garish orange backing can be swapped over to another colour if you are looking for a more discrete phone.

The phone in hand feels light and I don’t mean flimsy just comfortable having said that I had just stopped using a nexus 6p to road-test this so it felt small compared to that but very comfortable, as with all modern phones one of the first purchases a new user should make would be a case as the glass protrudes the case and would not stand up to a fall even at hip height

The usual micro sub cable on the base for charging and a headphone jack on the top and the volume up and down plus the power button on the right hand side which at first were the wrong way round to what I am used to i.e. power button on top of the volume but it’s easy to get used to

On the back of the Lumia 640, there is a single rear-firing speaker, a neatly displayed Microsoft logo, a single LED flash and the 8MP rear-facing camera with the front camera being a 0.9 MP camera

I entered my sim plugged the charger in and switched it on and went through the usual setup and downloading of updates you always get with a new phone.

• Hands on

After the initial updates it then prompted me for windows update 2 now from what I have read on the net this comprises mainly of bug fixes and now the ability for the options to be lumped into a more organised list although if this is more organised I would have hated to have seen it before it seemed very cluttered and the same kind of options could have been streamlined even further.

I’ll give you an example there is an option for display which has a sub option of brightness yet a separate section for wallpaper and yet another option for wallpaper.

Like I said earlier it comes with a 5inch screen that is bright and vibrant in nearly all lighting conditions and it’s nice to see the blacks are crisp even on the a very bright day it runs at 720p which on such a budget phone is a very welcome addition as well as the auto brightness option

Moving on to Cortana not sure how to broach this I dare say given more time telling her what I like and what I don’t like she would give me the information I wanted and not Barclays bank share price but on first impressions it seemed to be very lacking compared to Google’s offering with google now, having said that I don’t use internet explorer or edge on my pc so I won’t pull my search history through.

Some of the searches through Cortana seemed to take an age to search it was worse on mobile internet but was pretty bad on Wi-Fi.

Overall I liked the layout of the desktop/home screen it seemed strange at first not being able to swipe left and the ability to be able to access all my apps relatively quickly on the windows phone it involved scrolling down and hitting the all apps option at the bottom of all the tiles

One of the Achilles heals of many a budget phone especially on android is the animations and rendering of swiping and open apps I found on the windows operating system this was not evident at and suffered no lag at all opening the majority of apps which was a refreshing change even traditional power hungry apps like maps it had little or no lag

The battery as I mentioned earlier is a big surprise I generally got 2 days of use out of each charge making probably half hour of calls each day numerous texts lots of emails and a lot of screen on time generally faffing around trying to get to grips with the operating system with its lower resolution display and the snapdragon 400 just ticking along at its own pace and a very well optimised windows platform these 3 ingredients make for a very happy battery life.

Should the battery dip windows has its own built in battery saver app this in essence shuts down all non-essential background tasks and syncing emails and when I used this the battery life extended by 4 hours a very welcome and useful option should you leave your charger at home or your commute is delayed for a few hours with no noticeable loss in performance as with some battery saving apps.

• Using the device on a daily basis

Ok straight out of the box I noticed one obvious thing I have a signal in my kitchen now that may not seem a big thing to many of you but certainly in the last few years I have been unable to get a signal in certain rooms of my house and next to nowhere at work except in one area no such problem with this Lumia it seems the radio is geared up well and very stable on a 4g signal

On the subject of calls the call quality was very good in my ear and the other person’s ear and the hands free is pleasingly loud allowing the phone to be on a desk and you the other side of a room and we could still have a conversation.

Talking of sound the rear speaker although not amazing its more than adequate on this level of device, I am not one for walking around with music playing through the loudspeakers but in the interest of science I did just that but  in private

The video quality of playback again is never going to match the powerhouse devices but the pleasant screen size makes for more than adequate viewing pleasure from numerous angles

Moving on to the app store this is where Microsoft is clearly lacking behind google and apple  I made a point of not installing any apps until I needed to use one and found no issue’s locating a particular app but during a search of the windows store its clear it is severely lacking in content.

The camera the main thing many people use on phones is always going to make or break a reputation of a handset on paper 8mp is nothing to shout about for the rear facing camera yet the reality is the camera is surprisingly good for the price point this phone is aimed at.

In natural light the camera takes a good strong image with vibrant colour pallet and good level of detail on close subjects.

In darker situations like the majority of phones it struggles this is not a put down on the device and a common problem on all but high end devices.

The front camera is a .9mp affair ok for the odd selfie or video chat but the overall image appears grainy and washed out only more emphasised in lower level lighting.

• Summary and conclusion

Things I liked

• Great screen at this price point
• Very good call quality and signal strength
• Really good battery life
• Slick windows os with little or no lag opening apps
• Being surprised how a camera that looks ok on camera managed to take some really good photos

Things I disliked

• the very slippery rear case that could easily skid across a surface
• low level light photos
• the blandness of the home screen
• the app store is sparse and what apps they have don’t seem to receive updates

Like I said earlier I am not a previous windows phone user but my relatively short time with the Lumia was surprisingly pleasant not sure my next phone would be this particular windows device but I wouldn’t be disappointed if I was to receive one and if the brand keeps improving then a windows power phone would be a good choice but here in lies Microsoft problem

Where do they go from here do they push as they have attempted to here for the mass market in which case the Lumia 640 will not cut it with its current setup as it stands the 400 snapdragon is ok and up to the job efficiently but things in the mobile market change so fast that Microsoft may find themselves playing catch up its main android rival moto g has the newer snapdragon 410

In my honest opinion Microsoft should forget for now competing with apple and google for the casual user and focus its attention on business users and pick up what’s left of blackberry’s crumbled empire and push the windows 8 and 10 link as an out of office device

Thank you again to the team at 02 for giving me the chance to test this device I have another review to post for the Microsoft band

• Overall ratings
• Quality 4/5
• Features 3/5
• Ease of use 3/5
• Wow Factor 2/5

Value for money 5/5