Microsoft Lumia 435 review – accessible Dual Sim smartphone

Given the steady decrease in the average sale price of a mobile phone, and the registered success in the lower segment of the market, Microsoft decided that is appropriate to launch a wide and accessible range, and the Lumia 435 has become the less expensive member of this famous family of smartphones. Lumia 435 is not just the Microsoft terminal (and of course, Nokia) with the lowest launch price, but is also one of the cheapest Dual SIM options offering a dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and a screen having reasonable resolution. Fortunately, for those looking for a cheap and reliable Dual SIM smartphone, Lumia 435 finally proved better than we expected.

Design and screen

Lumia 435 looks so similar to the late Nokia X, and is almost certain that someone superficially modified and reused the old molds. Between the two phones there are some minor differences, such as slightly different positioning of the three buttons in the left corner, and more prominent corners of the case appearance of a large speaker, but all other elements seem identical. Like all other Lumia handsets with removable cover, the structure is built around the screen and the rigid plastic inner shell.

The front is common, it offers three capacitive buttons without illumination, specific to Windows Phone platform, the tiny front camera objective and the headset discreet grid. Fully glass covered, the front is surrounded by a black plastic frame, but this is not prominent enough to effectively protect the screen. The locking system is firm enough, it just slightly creaks, when in a more serious longitudinal torsion and the cover is rigid enough not to flex noticeably, except in the central area.

source http://geekongadgets.com

 

The colors have remained as aggressive as the previous Lumia generation, green or orange shades are so striking, that they seem downright phosphorescent. Under this cover are hidden the two Micro SIM bays with lappets, which are easy to open, and the narrow slot where you insert the Micro SD card. The SIM bays or Micro SD card can’t be accessed without removing the battery first.

Microsoft Lumia 435 features a 4 ” diagonal screen, and a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, this resolution being the lower limit imposed by the Windows Phone 8.1 platform. The 233 ppi density is not great ( Lumia 735 has 312 ppi ), but at least ensures minimum acceptable readability. The screen has a high maximum brightness, and good uniformity, but these are the only positive aspects.

The black level is good enough, the contrast is mediocre, and visibility in sunlight is weak. It offers a poor color reproduction and worse viewing angles, inversions or variations in color and contrast range becoming extremely annoying to the smallest rotation of the screen. In addition, the panel has a too high latency, and this makes the text become blurry during rapid scrolls. Fortunately, Microsoft has not forgotten about proximity and light sensors, as it happened last year with the Lumia 530 and Lumia 630.

Performance

The hardware platform chosen by Microsoft is a Snapdragon 200, the MSM8210 model being one of the youngest members of the lower range of Qualcomm processors, providing two ARM Cortex-A7 cores, with a 1.2 GHz frequency and having an Adreno 302 graphics processor. Hardware platform power is modest, and will not excite anyone, but this is enough to give a more than satisfactory Windows Phone experience.

The processor comes along 1 GB of RAM, enough for comfortable multitasking, and internal capacity of 8GB which offers 80 MB / s reading speed and 30MB / s writing speed. None of these figures is impressive, but for a phone having such a good price, these are more than satisfactory.

Autonomy

Microsoft Lumia 435 is powered by a 1560 mAh battery. In a use mode involving use of Wi-Fi and 3G connections 8 hours per day, also using push support (email, contacts, calendar, calendar, Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, and Skype) and using the various applications in a normal mode, Lumia 435 offers an average range about 25de hours. These results have been obtained with a single SIM card, the two cycles of use made with two SIM cards, showing an autonomy decrease with about 4 hours.

Software and apps

If the experience offered by an Android phone in this price range is invariably disappointing, Lumia 435 has done much better. It is obvious that Lumia 435 can’t provide a like Lumia 930 flow when used, but the differences between them are surprisingly small. Hardware platform limitations are observed by a taking more time during initialization of demanding applications, such as HERE Maps or Facebook, and by slower indexing of content in Xbox Music, but they are about the only times when Lumia 435 can be considered slow. Both the operating system interface and applications have a good performance, whether for loading speed and zooming in the Internet Explorer browser or 3D navigation HERE Maps. Games are an exception, but the hardware is sufficient to power a simple 3D game like Temple Run.

Camera and video

The second major compromise is the camera. It uses a tiny sensor with 2 MP resolution and 1/5 inches diagonal, and accompanying camera lens only offers fixed focus and unimpressive F / 2.7 aperture. Captured images have natural pleasant colors, good contrast, exposure is generally fair and reasonable dynamics. The sensor though has too small resolution to capture an even acceptable level of detail, the noise level is pretty high, and post-processing algorithms break what was left to be broken. Night capture is surprisingly bright and clear, considering the mediocre specifications.

The phone can record in H.264 format at a resolution of 800 x 448 pixels. Video stream of the captured image is stable and image has a good exposure, but the level of detail is mediocre.  Media playback is satisfactory for a user without too many expectations. GPS module in the Qualcomm chip provides a very good performance, hot or cold localization being fast and location precision is high. We would have expected the humble Snapdragon 200 to make us problems, but computing power was sufficient to rapidly and without delay updating signal on the go. The GPS module is backed by HERE Maps guidance application and HERE Drive+ navigation solution, that offers maps, voice support and route calculation in offline mode. Since Lumia 435 does not provide a magnetometer function magnetic compass and directional orientation don’t work in HERE Maps.

Conclusions

Lumia 435 is a very attractive option for those who want a very cheap Dual SIM smartphone, but also able to provide a good use experience. The case is a little bulky, the camera has a low resolution, its screen is downright bad, but Lumia 435 is one of the cheapest Dual SIM phones with 1GB of RAM and dual-core processor, offers a fluid operating system, has an acceptable autonomy, and is an alternative to consider for Android models in the same segment.