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
Still Image Performance
Now that we’ve gotten the basics of the Lumia 640’s camera system and camera software out of the way, we can move on to evaluating the actual image quality. The most relevant phone to compare to will be Motorola’s Moto E, which sells for around the same price but sports only a 5MP rear-facing camera.
The first photo comparison is the standard daylight test scene that I use. The branches of the trees in the frame are a good test of spatial resolution, while the various different textures can be examined to see how the phone handles noise reduction and maintains detail during processing.
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With ample lighting, the Lumia 640 performs very well considering its price. I do find that the Lumia 640’s white balance tends just a tiny bit too far toward yellow in this case, and colors are a bit undersaturated, but the overall image quality is pretty good. When you compare it to the Moto E, it’s clear that the Lumia 640 is much sharper across the entire frame, and ends up maintaining much more detail. A good example is the brick texture of the red building on the left, which is maintained in the Lumia 640’s shot but completely scrubbed away in the Moto E’s photo.
As for comparisons to other 8MP smartphones, the Lumia 640 tends to fall behind when it comes to sharpness. The Nexus 5 with its larger sensor ends up capturing the tiny interlocking branches of the trees with much more sharpness, and maintains the black bars of the furthest gate on the left which have become a grey unresolved area in the Lumia 640’s photo. This doesn’t mean that the Lumia 640 performs poorly relative to its price. On the contrary, its performance in daylight is extremely good for a $129 device.
While even the most inexpensive devices can now produce usable photos when there's good lighting available, low light photos tend to be where devices stumble. To see how the Lumia 640 performs in low light, I've taken photos of the same scene as above but at night. With the sun having set, the only sources of light in the frame are a handful of lamps on buildings and along the red brick road.
In the low light scene, the Lumia 640 actually performs better than I had expected. I would say it actually outperforms the Nexus 5. While it doesn't show as much in the scene as the Nexus 5 due to its exposure, and not near as much as the iPhone 5s, it has very fine noise and good sharpness in the areas that are exposed. The Nexus 5 by comparison shows a small bit of the sky and the leaves of the first tree, but the entire image suffers from distracting chroma noise which ruins much of the detail. I certainly didn't expect this from a 1/4" sensor without OIS, and much of it is thanks to Microsoft's superb image processing. My one complaint is that there's a lot of flare from all of the light sources in the scene, and the lamp on the right is particularly distracting because of it.
As far as smartphones in the $100-150 range go, the Lumia 640 definitely has the best camera I've seen to date. The Moto E simply can't compete with its smaller 5MP sensor, and Microsoft's high quality image processing ends up producing photos that are better than the 13MP ZenFone 2 in many ways, which goes to show how a device's image processing is just as important to image quality as the actual sensor itself.
Video Performance
The other side of a phone's camera quality is how it performs when taking video. Taking videos is also arguably a more intensive test of a device's camera system than taking still photos, as device's image signal processor has only a short time to process images. There's also no way for devices with OIS to use it to enable long exposure times, as the exposure time for each frame can't be any more than 42ms, and usually less.
The Lumia 640 can capture 1080p video at 24, 25, and 30fps. For this test I opted for the 30fps mode, as the higher frame rate comes with less motion blur. The Lumia 640 encodes its 1080p30 video with an average bitrate of 17.6Mbps using the H.264 Main profile.
Video footage from the Lumia 640 ended up being quite decent. The bitrate is just as high as high end smartphones, and the footage isn't really any blurrier or noisier than what you'd get from something like the iPhone 6 at the same resolution and frame rate. My one complaint is that Microsoft's EIS doesn't seem quite as effective as the EIS that I've seen on other smartphones, and as a result the footage is a bit shakier. There are also some fairly dramatic changes in exposure and white balance when changing the target of the shot, and in certain circumstances such as when the camera is being pointed at red flowers it actually ends up making the video look too cold. However, the overall video quality is very good, and is miles ahead of other inexpensive devices that I've looked at recently like the ZenFone 2 and the Moto E.
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BabelHuber - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
It depends on the software you use - nobody forces you to use the software the phone shipped with. For teh SGS4, I prefer AOSP-based ROMs or GPE-versions.Margalus - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
oh, and I am not ms propaganda. The phone wasn't bloated. Brand new out of the store with no apps it wouldn't last more than a day. The person at the store even told me that I would have to charge it every day. I also bought a replacement battery to use since it died so fast, that replacement battery works exactly the same as the stock battery. Barely 24 hours.BabelHuber - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
You claimed your WP-phone lasts 5-8 times longer than your Android phone, didn't you? Perhaps this was slightly exagerated?But be it as it may, when I have battery problems I actually tend to install a tool to analyze things. Then I can deinstall or freeze the app which causes the problem or block its wakelocks. Problem solved.
Some other people may prefer to whine because of their low battery runtime instead, to each its own.
leexgx - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link
most avg for battery life is a Nearly a working day for most smartphones (8-12 hours)(if you turn off mobile data 3 days is easy maybe even 5 if you can get your phone to use 2G only) and Most people do not AOSP ROM there phone
we - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Two things I cannot confirm (using a fully updated HTC 8X). 1. Action center always flows smoothly. Never had any stuttering or freezing. 2. Generally Scrolling speed is proportional to swipe speed. I can scroll from top to bottom of the "Windows Phone" page of this review within 5 seconds if I swipe quickly, or 15 seconds if I swipe slowly. Top scrolling speed could be faster though.Zizy - Thursday, June 11, 2015 - link
Currently using lowly HTC 8s which was the worst WP8 phone till 435, no issues with action center - no delay or freeze. It has somewhat strange/unexpected opening, because it can be fully opened or just enough to play with those 4 buttons and or go in settings. I never had enough unattended notifications to be able to test scrolling there.Camera - This isn't a proper camera with viewfinder or at least tiltable display. Ever tried underexposing something under bright sun? You wouldn't be able to see anything on the screen. But it would be good to have some notification to tell how many stops below the preview the image is going to end. If you are serious enough about manual stuff this should be enough to know how will the image turn out :)
As for idle battery drain - try activating battery saver and see the power draw then, plus check which apps drain the battery. If it is the same, probably screen, something failed to close / is intentionally running in the background or some other hardware/software bug. Shouldn't happen but does. Manually closing apps usually resolves the problem.
If battery saver does help, play with sync settings for mail and similar. For me, syncing mails as they arrive instead of manually every now and then drops battery life from 3-4 days to 1-2 (light use - no demanding games). If you get tons of mail it will be even worse.
Harry_Wild - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link
I just purchased an international version of the 735 and I love it for $300. It is unlocked. I purchased a cyan battery cover too. It feels like a iPhone 6 with a case on it! Same thinnest! The 400 is slow in some operations; but overall it pretty good overall. I switch to the iPhone 6 and back from day to day since they use the same nano SIMs card inside. My iPhone cost $900 so performance is quite a bit faster on everything. But still I like the change of environments. The WP does not have all the apps that I use so most case I pin the webpage and create an icon tile as a substitute. It works for a lot of Apple apps except for Apple Pay and Starbuck's Pay.SirPerro - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link
I'm just amazed at how people can deny the reality in front of them.This phone has a better camera/screen than a Moto E and it is MUCH worse in every other regard. The app selection and quality of the apps is orders of magnitude worse. The web browsing experience is laughable. The overal OS experience and fluidity is worse, no matter how much iOS/WP fanboys keep repeting stupidities about android performance.
The only reason Windows Phone is alive is because Microsoft has a HUGE pile of cash they can burn if they want to stay in the game, and I seriously pity everybody who puts they hard earned money in such a shitty and undeveloped ecosystem.
Even with the screen and camera, I find no single person in the planet to which I'd reccomend this phone over a Moto E. And while I'm probably much less polite, the bottom line of the review is Brandon & Anandtech agree with that.
Zizy - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link
Quick check whether you need Android/iOS ecosystem:Need an app not on WP? Don't get WP.
Really want anything social (games or apps)? Don't get WP.
Completely tied to Google/Apple? Don't get WP. Note that plenty think they are tied to google but only really need their search, mail and youtube and could easily ditch the rest.
Not found yourself up there? You will bitch about WP... but you will bitch about Android and iOS as well :)
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Want better hardware? Go with Lumia. Software? Moto E.
Would I buy Lumia 640 though? Heck no. I have a WP dev phone already, don't need another. As a primary phone, this one still has too poor camera for my wishes. Lumia 830 is much more tempting, but costs quite a bit more.
BaronMatrix - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link
MS is so pissing me off... First they destroy how I use my desktop, now since they bought Nokia NOT ONE NEW PHONE HAS COME OUT...You can't get the 640 anywhere... T-Mobile has it coming soon for MONTHS... And no 640XL even mentioned... Even the MS Store doesn't mention the 640...
I'm through with Windows Phone... I'll keep one for DEV, but I'm getting an Android phone... I'd rather be able to get all the cool apps that don't come on Windows Phone...