Bright, sturdy shell, HD screen, Microsoft extras, 4G, lowish price
Processor could be a little more powerful
Microsoft is expecting big things from the latest 'hero' in its budget stable -- and with a bigger and better screen, improved camera, 4G and more Microsoft and Nokia extras, it could be on to something.
Screen & chassis
On the surface the Lumia 640 is a pretty decent mid range phone with matching mid range specifications. But what lifts it out of the ordinary is a year's free subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Personal, giving you Office apps on this phone as well as an additional tablet and PC. So you get all the main Office apps plus Outlook, Access and Publisher, 1TB of online storage and a year's free Skype calls (up to 60 mins a month). That's normally worth £60 a year so it's a very nice extra to have.
The screen size has been bumped up from 4.5 inches to a full 5 inches and it's good to see that the resolution has improved too -- it's now up to an HD 1,280x720 pixels (294ppi) which is a pleasure at this price point. Nice to see also that it now has an automatic brightness option, so there’ll be less need to fiddle with the controls when you’re moving in and out of doors.
Software & processor
It's running Windows Phone 8.1 of course which is slick and functional and seems to require less grunt from the processor to deliver a quick and smooth performance. The Cortana 'intelligent' voice assistant offers good voice recognition and is genuinely helpful too. Incidentally, this is the first phone to run the Update 2 version of the software, which looks much the same but means that the extensive settings menu has finally been organised into sections.
The processor is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.2GHz and backed by 1GB RAM. That's the same as the considerably cheaper and generally lower specced 435 and while that should be a bit of a disappointment on paper, in practise it proved to be fairly fast and capable whatever we threw at it -- certainly nothing to complain about at this price. Our AnTuTu benchmark test gave it a score of 11,999, which looks very good indeed next to other Lumias.
Photography
The 8-megapixel camera is fairly basic, though you can add some additional apps to up the editing functionality like Lumia Creative Studio as well as Lumia Refocus (tags your pics), Lumia Panorama (duh) and Lumia Storyteller, which creates a short movie with your pics. It starts up fast and picture quality is pretty decent overall, with realistic colours and a fair degree of detail.
The 0.9-megapixel front-facing camera may seem a bit lacking on paper, but the Lumia Selfie app helps you make the most of it. Unfortunately, theres only 8GB of memory on board, but you can add up to 128GB via microSD card.
Battery life held up well -- you'll easily get a day and more out of it on a single charge.
Conclusion
The Microsoft Lumia 640 continues the Nokia tradition for solid, well-built devices that do what they need to well enough without breaking the bank. It's basic and unflashy, but the interface is slick and fast, the cameras pretty good, and you get Office, HERE Drive+, MixRadio and more as standard. A whole lot for your money in other words.
Software: Windows Phone 8.1
Processor: Quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400
Memory slot: Yes
Display: 5in, 1280x720 pixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0
Ports: microUSB, 3.5mm headphone jack
Camera: 8 megapixel; 0.9 megapixel front-facing camera
Video playback: H.263, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, VC-1, Windows video
Audio playback: MP3, WAV, eAAC+, WMA
Radio: Yes
Battery: 2500mAh
Size: 141x72x9mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
