Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five Review: Affordable Windows Phone but also uninspiring
The Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five is a very crucial device for the Redmond giant. You could very well call it Microsoft’s poster child. Why, you ask?
If you haven’t noticed yet, this is the very first Lumia handset that comes sans the Nokia branding. Now for most of us, ‘Nokia’ is not just some brand. It means so much more: takes you back to the good old days, doesn’t it?
Quick forward to April, two thousand fourteen when Microsoft took over Nokia’s Devices and Services business (including both brainy as well as mobile devices) and you knew things wouldn’t be the same again. Love it or loath it, the Lumia five hundred thirty five is the very first handset of the Microsoft-Nokia era, and is a very first of many to come.
At Rs 8,999, the Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five takes a path no other Lumia handset has dared tread upon with respect to specifications on-board. All this while its design aesthetics will keep you well within familiar territory that Lumia devices have been known for. Sadly, as a product the Lumia five hundred thirty five has several shortcomings that stop it from challenging other top budget phones in the market. What are these? We explain.
In our opinion the Lumia five hundred thirty five is a mixed bag with respect to design and build. While the front panel is rather abate and pallid looking, the back is cheerful and youthful (in our case a hearty green) consisting of a removable plastic panel that gently forms to wrap around the display screen. Of course, you can switch the back cover to suit your mood swings as a number of interesting colour options are available.
The Microsoft logo on the front panel is way too pallid to notice at very first glance; in fact it emerges washed out. Adjacent to it is a 5MP snapper, also hard to notice at very first. There is no LED notification light, which is frustrating to say the least.
The back is where the Microsoft logo stands out, along with another 5MP camera with LED flash. However the rear snapper looks somewhat out of place as it protrudes out in a rather unusual way.
The plastic build of the Lumia five hundred thirty five doesn’t disappoint and offers good grip. However, both the front and rear seem like haven to fingerprints and smudges.
The Lumia five hundred thirty five has a 5-inch display; however, it somehow feels smaller in palm. At 140.Two x 72.Four x 8.8 mm, the Lumia five hundred thirty five is smaller than the Moto G and Asus ZenFone Five. At 146g, it is also less bulky than the Moto G.
The power button and the volume rocker occupy the right edge of the device and suggest good tactile feedback. These emerge rigid and well put together.
The back houses the dual micro-SIM card slots along with a micro-SD card slot. The Lumia five hundred thirty five comes with a removable battery, a infrequent look these days.
The low pixel density means on more than one occasions you’ll be ending up zooming into text and pics, particularly while browsing the web. High resolution pics tend to look little pallid and abate on the device.
Colour reproduction, saturation and peak brightness are average on the device. The device is able to provide fairly accurate colours on most occasions and is able to maintain a consistent display output even in outdoor conditions.
Sadly, viewing angles are well below average with colour distortion clearly visible upon tilting. The display surface is very reflective; hence it is almost unlikely to read text/observe movies when light is reflecting directly at the device.
The fact that the Lumia five hundred thirty five is a dust and fingerprint magnet adds to its outdoor visibility woes.
A lot has been said and done about the Windows Phone OS, if at all it is as functional and effective as Android or iOS. If you have earlier used Windows Phone, you would be quick at home with the OS on-board the Lumia 535. For very first time users, yes they’ll be perplexed with what’s in store primarily, just like in the case of BlackBerry OS. They will take some time getting used to the begin menu and the entire tile interface, but once they are through, Windows Phone 8.1 is every bit a functional platform that is indeed joy to work with and as effective.
Quick word about the settings menu: Microsoft needs a better arrangement of its sub-menus, as most of them are rather oddly placed and often difficult to find.
There’s of course Cortana, sadly it still doesn’t understand our language (powerfully accented English) all that well.
While the Lumia five hundred thirty five is way far off from setting benchmarks, the 1GB RAM on-board ensures you can do your everyday tasks without much hiccups. Beyond that, it’s certainly a lost cause. The underpowered CPU disappoints when challenged.
Albeit the device metes out a lag-free practice on most occasions, opening and closing of apps seems to be fairly a challenge for the device as we were subjected to frequent dangle ups during both.
Upon launch, the Lumia five hundred thirty five was in news for its low-responsive touch display. Microsoft did bring out a fix for the same; sadly, we found the problem persisting in our review unit even post the update.
Combine the low-response display with the app opening delay and you have a situation where the practice is not all that good.
The Lumia five hundred thirty five is not for those vying for graphics intensive gaming. While lighter games like Candy Crush run alright, the phone cannot treat games like Asphalt 8.
The Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five comes with 8GB of internal storage of which about 5GB is available for use. The device supports expandable storage of up to 128GB via micro-SD card.
The speaker vent on the Lumia five hundred thirty five is located on the lower back end of the device. The speaker is not indeed all that noisy and punchy, but it is certainly not very quiet either. For example, we found it as noisy as the Moto G. That said the sound output is slightly muffled when the device is placed back facing down.
Phone calls made with the Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five are of acceptable quality and we did not see any call drops with our review device. Both the earpiece as well as microphone sound quality is good with respect to loudness and detail.
The camera UI again is a mixed bag. Lumia devices are known to give users better control over their photos and the trend proceeds with the Lumia 535. While the UI is fairly plain and clutter-free, it gives you enough manual control over your ISO, Exposure, Shutter time and Flash settings. On the downside, you don’t get a preview of your click as well as thumbnails of your latest clicks directly within the camera app.
Pics captured in outdoor ambient lighting conditions are of acceptable quality and retain their colour and details on most counts. However, owing to the low pixel count on the device, photos viewed on it tend to look little abate and underexposed.
Meantime, photos captured in indoor but well-lit conditions are passable with little or no noise.
Low light pics are prone to abate colours and noise.
Unlike most devices, the Lumia five hundred thirty five gives you an independent app for the front camera, called the Lumia Selfie. Clearly, even Microsoft had little choice but to bow down to the selfie phenomenon.
Selfies clicked with the front snapper are of acceptable quality with almost accurate colours and detailing in ambient lightning. All in all, the snapper is fairly adequate for your Facebook/Instagram posting needs.
The rear camera can shoot eight hundred forty eight x four hundred eighty pixel movies at harshly thirty FPS. Movies shot with the Lumia five hundred thirty five are prone to noise even in well-lit conditions.
The Microsoft Lumia five hundred thirty five decks in a removable battery with a capacity of 1,905mAh which is rated to produce up to thirteen hours of 3G talk time and twenty three days on stand-by.
Don’t let the low battery capacity idiot you tho’. The Lumia five hundred thirty five has been designed to be a low resource hogging device, and it has the Windows Phone 8.1 OS to thank for it to an extent.
Also, the low resolution display and the modest CPU ensure you don’t run out of juice so lightly. Therefore, battery life in the case of the Lumia five hundred thirty five is above average. Normal or moderate usage will make you sail through an entire day fairly lightly.
Strenuous usage, particularly playing movies and browsing the internet and gaming does drain the battery quickly. However, the device has a very capable battery saving mode that could help churn out an extra hour or two off the device.
In our battery benchmark, we subjected the device to almost an hour of gaming, web browsing (desktop mode), music on speakers (max volume) and phone calls every now and then (to the tune of an hour) and we got almost four hours out of the device.
Should you buy it?
Well until now, features like a large display and selfie cameras were reserved for high-end Lumia devices. The Lumia five hundred thirty five is out there to switch this trend. Sadly, its under powered processor and sluggish display bring it down.
We don’t see why an experienced Windows Phone user would spend their money on this. However, if you’re a very first time user looking to give the OS a attempt for joy/practice or whatever but don’t want to burn your pockets at the same time, the Lumia five hundred thirty five entry level handset is just what the doctor ordered for you.
As for Android/iOS device OEMs, well, they have no reason to be threatened by the Microsoft Lumia 535.