Lumia 640 Review
When it comes to mid range Lumias, there are not much options for consumers except for the Lumia 740, which is a brilliant all-rounder phone, but comes with a price tag of Rs 14,000. When Microsoft announced Lumia 640, consumers who were looking for a phone in between had an option.
Video Review:
Display & Screen:
The phone sports a display of 5 inch IPS LCD screen which has a resolution of 720P with Clear black Display and impressive 294 PPI. This combination delivers beautiful viewing experience for sharp display, deep colours and sunlight readability is at ease. To make sure you screen stays off the scratches, it is protected by conning Gorilla Glass 3. Those who love to read, will really like the amount of deep black, because of the clear black display, in the phone.
The colors on the screen don’t change much when you change the viewing angle. This will be same when you watch movie and playing game, as the screen doesn’t look black.
Glance Screen : The phone supports glance screen which allows you to see notifications on your phone without unlocking the device. This not only saves a lot of your time, but also battery which you spend on unlocking, checking your screen and then locking again.
Build & Design :
Lumia 640 will remind many of Lumia 630, but there are differences from design perspective. Lumia 640 has same design pattern as 640 XL, but when compared to 630, its flat. Lumia 630 has slanting edges which leaned outwards towards the screen, while this remains straight up.
Nevertheless, Lumia 640 delivers experience of solid build quality with rear matt finish which adds to the grip. It is very comfortable to hold, easy to use, but those who crave for one hand operation, you need a small phone as this is a 5 incher.
The screen takes up almost 67% of the front along with a camera. The rear holds the 8 MP camera, flash, and the speaker is located at bottom right. The phone does not have capacitive hardware buttons, and instead uses software button. I have used the 640 XL where it was very comfortable to use the on screen buttons, on 5 inch it might take a bit to adjust, but you get along with it well.
Camera (Picture and Video Quality)
REAR CAMERA
640 holds a 8 MP sensor which takes pictures at 3264 x 2448 resolution, comes with face recognition, autofocus & LED flash. However, the lens is not Carl Zeiss optics. It is capable of recording video at 1080p at 30 FPS. You can Zoom in and Zoom out when taking picture or recording video.
Rich Mode Advantage:
What makes this camera really stand out is the Rich Mode recording which comes with Lumia Camera 5.0. Many a times, I don’t want to use flash, because it over exposes the subject. So even if you have a camera with flash, you really can’t make the best use of it. This mode allows you take the picture with flash set automatic/ on all the time, and then readjust the amount of light later on. This is incredible, and gives every picture to get the right amount of light and be better.
Picture Samples:
In general the picture quality is great. You will love the day light shots, macros are very good and night shots are ok. It can be improved with Rich mode controls, but don’t expect it to be like the Lumia 640 XL. If you skip to use flash in night mode, the results won’t impress you.
FRONT CAMERA
The front houses a 1 MP 720P camera which shoots decent selfies and great for video calls. Check out the video for detailed comparison with Lumia 640XL and 730. It also includes sample video at the end.
Performance:
The phone is powered by Snapdragon 400 Quad core processor which is clocked to 1.2 GHz and Adreno 305 GPU. It houses a 1 GB RAM and 8 GB internal storage. This is a very good combination to keep up the performance, make sure every app runs and you aren’t running out of space as soon as you setup your phone. If you have never used a Windows Phone before, stay assured that this hardware is enough to get the same performance claimed by Octacore Android Phones. Its just not about the specs, when it comes to long term usage.
After using tons of apps like WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and other stock app, I failed to find any hiccups or lags with them. They switch back and forth nicely. You can have 8 Apps running in background. The phone comes with Windows Phone 8.1 Lumia Denim Update 2 which rolls in New Settings Page, Folder Support, Cortana and other things. One thing that has always annoyed us is the “Resuming” thing which happens when you switch between apps.
In my earlier review of Windows Phone devices, a lot of you asked me to check on the browser. Windows Phone 8.1 is loaded with IE browser and it performed decently. I explored sites like GSMArena, YouTube, Gaana.com and all media streamed well and without hiccups. The video playback was smooth as well.
Now, there is known thing about IE on Windows Phone that it does not render all website properly. If that is so, please use an alternate browser, like UC browser, till we get to see better rendering engine for IE which is expected in Windows 10. This phone is confirmed to get that update. Checkout our list of Best Browsers on Windows Phone.
Game Performance with Asphalt 8 : Airborne
Like always, I played a lot of games on this as well, and the best part of the gaming was Zero heating on the rear side. After 45 minutes of gameplay, the phone stayed cool which is something you will appreciate.
Those who crave for better graphics, you will be not be disappointed. The 720P resolution display of the phone, the zero changing color experience when you tilt the phone during asphalt 8, and quad-core processor with Adreno 305 just deliver what is expected. No Frame Skips, No Lags.
Causal games like Temple Run 2, Candy Crush, etc just work fine as well.
Battery:
The phone is packed with 2500 mAh battery power. This amount of battery is great for the size of the device. You can hammer the phone for Gaming, Multimedia and Office experience, but it will last long enough for your day to pass.
When tested under various conditions, an average of 18 hours is guaranteed on this phone. On casual usage, the phone lasts for a day easily, but battery goes down below 20%. After using it after 640 XL it feels a little low, but if you compare with same range phone 18 hours is great.
Store and Apps:
Windows Phone as a platform has come a long way now. Most of the popular apps are now onboard the platform which makes sure if you are switching to this platform, you won’t miss most of them. Now, It’s quite possible that when delivering the update, some of the apps might get the latest features a little later compared to other platform.
Microsoft Office Support:
Windows Phone comes with Office for Life. Since Microsoft is targeting business consumers here more, they have extended an offer by rolling out Office 365 Subscription which lasts for one year. While Lumia 640XL really wins because of the 5.7 inch screen, Lumia 640 ain’t that bad with its 5 inch screen. It’s a bliss to use Office documents on this phone. You can edit, add comment and view all the office document which you are using in your business.
Storage:
The phone comes with 8 GB of internal storage, of which 3.5 Gb is consumed by System update and 1 Gb by installed apps. Looks like this 8 GB internal storage is going to start falling short sooner. Though you do have approx 3 Gb to keep you going for long, but since this device will be used for media and clicking pictures a lot, you will need an SD card soon.
The phone does support microSD card of upto 128GB. Not only this, Windows Phone 8.1 does allow you to install apps on SD card as well, leaving you free to keep space on your primary storage. Like always, I will recommend you to use a class 10 SD card as it performs better when it comes to apps and games.
Video Playback:
HD (1080P) video play remains a concern on Windows Phone devices because of the native video player which fails to do well. Those who wanted to know if the processor supports it, yes it does, but there is something by OEM which restricts HD video play. Good news is that Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 lets you play .MKV files, a very popular media format.
Any resolution which is around 720P or less still works better. I tried playing video recorded at 720P and MP4 performed little better. So you cannot expect it to play every resolution and every file format. Even though we have MKV file handler now, not all common codecs are available.
The other way round to solve this problem is using third party players like MoliPlayer, VLC Player which were able to play the files smoothly. You will need to choose Software rendering instead of hardware to make it work.
When copying files to Windows Phone, directly, you get a notification about converting the format. If you follow that, it maintains the quality of the video, but lowers the resolution.
Audio Quality & Music Playback:
In-call: It’s very loud and clear.
On Speaker:
If its Lumia, you don’t have to doubt on its speakers quality, but Lumia 640 might put in a doubt as the speaker looks way too small but its pretty loud you get to use equalizer while listening to music on speakers.
Thanks to the protruded camera, there is enough space for audio to escape out when the phone is placed on a flat surface. I personally love listening to music over external speaker
Using Earphones:
No doubts here as well. You have access to equalizer and virtual surround. Launch MixRadio and stream the music and everything will be just awesome. MixRadio allows you to save music mixes offline and listen to this without need of internet connection.
Value for Money & Conclusion:
The phone delivers design, performance, solid build quality, excellent picture clicks, brilliant audio experience for music and in-call and not to be missed the Lumia experience of apps.
However, its priced a little high, and its mostly because the competition is pretty stiff for this range. The right price should have been Rs 10,000.
[wp-review]
