Review: Microsoft Goes Big Screen With The New Lumia 640 XL
Review: With the XL on its tag, this Windows smartphone goes many inches further to win over its Android rivals.
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Microsoft catches up with the big daddy’s of the Android world when it comes to making a big screen smartphone.
The have tried their hands on the big screen phablets in the past with the Lumia 1520 and the Lumia 1320 in the past. With the new Lumia 640 XL they are trying to improvise here a little.
Priced at just a little under Rs 15, 000 the phone offers a good windows phone experience. But is it worth your money? Let’s see.
What’s Good?
As the name suggest, Nokia Lumia 640 XL is a huge phone which kind of works in the favour of this one. The phone is not that difficult to hold and also has a very good build quality to it. The edges are well rounded and the matte finish back is actually very soothing to have on a phone.
The 640 XL features a 5.7 inch HD, ClearBlack IPS LCD panel with a pixel density of 259ppi and Gorilla Glass 3 protection.
The display quality is really good and the viewing angles are also better than many sub Rs 15K android phones out there.
If you are a Windows phone user, this phone is also as seamless for your daily usage. The voice assistant Cortana actually works pretty nicely on the Lumia 640 XL. The App selection on a Windows phone has never been great, it’s unfair to compare it with Android but then the Windows Store is getting more apps every week. So in a way it’s a good sign.
The Lumia 640 XL comes with a 13 megapixel camera with a Zeiss lens and a f 2.0 aperture. There is no optical image stabalisation on this phone, still it manages to capture images fast enough and in focus. The images are crisp and sharp and even the one’s clicked in low light are not that bad.
The Microsoft Lumia 640XL is powered with 1GB of RAM. As Windows phones are not that power hungry as their Android cousins, the phone offers seamless performance without any lags. The 1.2GHz Snapdragon quad-core processor handles graphic intensive games pretty smoothly.
What’s Bad?
Microsoft Lumia 640 Xl is a dual-sim handset that offers 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity options. A lack of 4G connectivity for a phone that is priced at Rs 4,790 is bit of a downer.
Also the 3000 mAh battery on the Lumia 640 XL should have lasted more than two days considering that the phone is not so power hungry, but sadly it struggles to last 24 hours.
Just like the Lumia 730, the Lumia 640XL also comes with a 5 megapixel front camera for selfies. However, the image quality is not even close to what you get on a Lumia 730. So not a great smartphone for selfies.
Why Buy it?
Microsoft’s Lumia 640 XL actually packs in decent hardware specifications, good build quality and camera. There will also be a Windows 10 update coming on the phone.
So if you are sick of the iOS and Android War and want to shift to a Windows platform, the Microsoft Lumia 640 XL is an amazing budget smartphone choice.
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