The Microsoft Lumia 640 Review
by Brandon Chester on June 9, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Mobile
- Lumia
- windows phone 8
Battery Life
One thing I distinctly remember about the Samsung Focus is much of an improvement the battery life was compared to the original Galaxy S. Windows Phone 7 was a very well tuned OS, and it managed battery life very well. When the first waves of Windows Phone 8 devices were launched, I heard complaints about battery life, and I was very surprised. The Lumia 930 review here at AnandTech confirmed that there were issues with battery life on at least some Windows Phone 8. However, the Lumia 735 achieved a very respectable battery life in our web browsing test. With both of those results in mind, I was very curious about how the Lumia 640 would fare when it comes to battery life.
As always, our first test is the WiFi web browsing battery life test. Since this Lumia 640 is locked to Cricket Wireless, I'm unable to also test it on LTE, which is unfortunate. However, Qualcomm's radios have evolved to the point where there's only a very small difference the between power usage with a good LTE signal and WiFi.
With a 9.5Wh battery and Snapdragon 400, I had expected the Lumia 640 to last much longer in this test. It shares many components with the Lumia 735, including the SoC, yet the Lumia 735 lasts significantly longer. I can only attribute this to display power usage, and even that seems strange as the Lumia 735 uses an OLED panel which will consume a lot of power when displaying the large white areas of web pages. To ensure there wasn't any sort of issue, I re-ran the battery test and achieved roughly the same result. 8 hours is not the lowest result we've seen, but it's ultimately disappointing when you consider how long other budget devices like the Moto E can last.
In GFXBench's battery test we see that the Lumia 640 sits between the Lumia 735 and the Moto E. However, it should be noted that although these three devices achieve a much longer battery life than other devices, this is a result of their relatively low performance during GFXBench T-Rex HD.
One observation that doesn't show up during out battery tests is idle battery life. During my time with the Lumia 640, I noticed that Windows Phone seems to have an abnormally high battery drain when devices are idle. Even though I was only able to use it on WiFi and had no cellular connection when I wasn't at home, I still found myself having to charge it in the early evening. The Lumia 640's battery life is certainly better than devices like the ZenFone 2 and Lumia 930, but it definitely doesn't compare to the Moto E and the Moto G.
Charge Time
The Lumia 640 ships with a 5V, 0.75A charger. This is a lower wattage than the 5W chargers that ship with most phones, and it's significantly lower than the high power chargers that are now reaching as high as 18W. Something worth noting is that at least with the North American Cricket Wireless version I received, the cord on the charging block is permanently connected, so you can't separate the block and the cable like on most devices.
With its relatively slow charger, the Lumia 640 has a fairly long charge time. It's actually the fastest of our group of low end devices though, with the Moto E being noticeably longer, and the Lumia 735 being substantially longer at 5.57 hours. Not including a super fast charger is obviously done for cost reasons, but I do wish these devices would ship with at least a 5W charger. Thankfully, if you do have 5W charger it will charge the Lumia 640 faster than the one included in the box.
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tuxRoller - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
Does anyone know why wp is so, relatively, inefficient?I'd been told that wp was going to offer so much better battery life than android b/c it didn't require a vm:)
MrSpadge - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
In the test the glance screen with the LCD being always on probably killed idle battery life. The load results seem fine, but could certainly use a boost from a faster browser.Margalus - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
I just switched to Window Phone, with a better phone and same size battery as my Android. The Windows phone batter lasts 5-8 times longer than the Android phone...Voldenuit - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
"Windows Phone isn’t going anywhere"Ironic double entendre is ironic.
Margalus - Wednesday, June 10, 2015 - link
I just made the switch to a Windows phone 8.1 about a month ago. I bought the HTC One M8. Here is a tidbit of my opinion.One issue I have with this review is the scrolling speed on Windows. It must be specific to the this phone that is being reviewed here, not specific to Windows as the reviewer says. On my HTC One M8 Windows 8.1 I can scroll slow or fast. A gentle push and the screen scrolls slowly, a fast flick of the fingertip and the phone will scroll almost instantly to the bottom, too fast to see anything, just like my Android.
Going with the HTC One M8 and Windows was the best move I've ever made. The phone experience on Windows is so much better than Android (coming from an Galaxy S4) it's ridiculous. Everything is so much faster and smoother it's unbelievable. And I no longer have that stupid Android bug that would eat up the phones battery in 4 hours on occasion. On The best day with the S4 I could go about 24 hours before charging, on a high usage day, it would be dead by the afternoon and on a portable battery. When the bug hit, 4 hours or so and it was dead. This HTC One M8 with Windows will easily last 4 days with even heavier usage. I've just gotten into the habit of charging it on Mondays and Fridays, with no fear at all of running out of power, and that is with the battery saver feature disabled.. It's crazy how much better it is.
The phone app connects instantly, no delays like on my Android where I would hit a contact and sometimes wait 5 seconds for the phone to connect and dial.
It is missing a few apps I used on Android, and that is very disappointing. But the overall phone experience is so much better it's worth giving up a couple of those apps.
BabelHuber - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Sorry, but what you are stating here is quite fishy:I have a Samsung Galaxy S4, under heavy use I get about 4h of screen on time. For light use, it can easily last 3 or even 4 days - the battery drains about 0.9% per hour if in deep sleep (albeit with an AOSP ROM, not the bloated Samsung original)
When a phone drains battery like there is no tomorrow, usually some app prevents the deep sleep of the phone. There are tools like GSAM Battery Monitor and Better Battery Stats in the Play Store to analyze this.
But lots of users prefer blaming Android instead of having a look at all the crap they have installed on their device, it is so much easier.
Also, your claim that the phone held only 4h on standbye really looks strange: To suck up the battery so fast, the load on the SoC would need to be incredibly high - such a phone would be _VERY_ warm - in fact so warm that you having a phone call would be displeasing!
As a matter of fact, the SGS4 holds quite long under some load if the screen is off - when I use WIFI tehering with the screen off, the battery consumption is about 10% per hour.
So if I assume that you posted true numbers (and not just some MS-propaganda), you either have bloated your phone with tons of crap software or your battery was broken.
Zizy - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Bugs happen. That same bug he describes happened several times to my wife on Android and to me on WP.If you have phone in your pocked you usually notice this because the phone gets warm. If the phone lies on the table, you don't notice it until you pick the phone and see 0 battery left.
BabelHuber - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
You are correct, this also has happened to me once, albeit not so severe (the phone had ~5% per hour battery usage on standby or so)But instead of throwing a tantrum and blaming Android, I installed GSAM Battery Monitor Plus, found the App which caused the wakelocks and deinstalled it.
Alternatively, it is also possible to install a wakelock blocker. Then you don't have to deinstall the app, you just block its wakelocks.
Margalus - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
I didn't throw a tantrum, the tantrums are being thrown by people who apparently don't want anybody to criticize android. I'm sorry to say, android is not perfect.Margalus - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
You are the first person I have ever heard say that they could more than 24 hours with a galaxy s4, or any galaxy. That's why had the replaceable battery...