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
Camera Architecture
Due to the more closed nature of Windows Phone, I can’t do much poking around to find detailed information on the cameras in the Lumia 640. The information that I have been able to collect is organized in the chart below. The main omission is the sensor manufacturer, which I would suspect is Omnivison or Toshiba, but I can’t say for sure exactly what it is.
| Microsoft Lumia 640 Cameras | ||||
| Front Camera - Resolution | 0.9MP (1280x720) | |||
| Front Camera - Focal Length | 1.5mm (30mm eff) | |||
| Front Camera - Aperture | F/2.4 | |||
| Rear Camera - Resolution | 8MP (3264x2448) | |||
| Rear Camera - Sensor Size | 1/4", 1.12µm pixels | |||
| Rear Camera - Focal Length | 3.0mm (28mm eff) | |||
| Rear Camera - Aperture | F/2.0 | |||
On paper, the Lumia 640’s camera hardware is better than a lot of other devices at this price point. I recently reviewed the 2015 Moto E, and on paper the Lumia 640 has higher resolution cameras with larger sensors on the front and back, and the front camera has a significantly wider aperture. While the specifications of the camera sensor and lens aperture hardly tell the whole story when it comes to image quality, they definitely put the Lumia 640 in a better position when it comes to sharpness and low light performance.
The focus time on the Lumia 640 sits right in the middle of our comparison results. It’s slightly faster than many other devices that don’t have PDAF or laser based autofocus, but it’s not as fast as phones like the Nexus 6, and not near as fast as the iPhone 6 and Galaxy S6 with their PDAF. Shot latency is also right around the middle, and while there is a tiny bit of a delay between shots, I never felt like I was kept waiting for an unreasonable time when trying to take several photos quickly.
Camera UX
A device’s camera application has a big impact on the user’s experience when taking photos or shooting video. If the camera preview is cropped or badly scaled then it’s difficult for the user to gauge what their photos will look like. A high resolution preview and an accurate aspect ratio are necessary to frame and compose photos properly. For quite some time I’ve heard great praise for the Lumia camera application interface and the manual controls that it offers, so I was excited to have a chance to try it in depth.
Upon first opening the Lumia Camera app, I felt like the interface was fairly organized and well laid out. It was immediately obvious that tapping the right-facing arrow in the menu at the top would reveal more controls, and that hitting the gear in the upper right would show me options. Having a button to instantly record video is also very handy. The camera preview would definitely be improved if it were higher resolution, but this is mostly a limitation of the ISP so there's not much that can be done.
Once I started trying to use the manual controls I was very happy that the app uses what is basically a dial interface to make adjustments. It reminds me a lot of the control dials on a real camera, which is a good design decision, as anyone interested in these controls probably has prior experience with photography.
Unfortunately, I very quickly ran into a number of issues with the manual controls on the Lumia 640. The first problem was that I seemingly could only adjust one option at a time. While this is a common limitation of smartphone camera interfaces, it was very annoying because you had to continually move your thumb between the control wheel and the menu at the top. This is a much less ergonomic and more time consuming method of adjustment than something like ASUS’s camera interface where the menu for selecting each control and the menu for performing adjustments are beside each other.
After asking people who were more familiar with Windows Phone, I was told that you can pull outwards on the shutter button to bring up every control at once. I have two issues with this gesture. The first is that it’s not obvious at all. The only way I was able to find it was because I was told by another person, and that alone is a pretty massive design failure. My other issue is that it doesn’t directly solve my problem. I want the settings and the menu for adjusting them to be adjacent, not a giant menu of controls covering up the camera preview.
The fact that you wouldn’t be able to see the changes you’re making reflected in the preview because it’s covered by semi-opaque menus would be a big issue if it weren’t for an even bigger problem with the Lumia Camera application. The biggest issue of all is that camera preview does not change to reflect adjustments to ISO and shutter speed. At first, I had assumed my device was suffering from a bug, but after doing some troubleshooting I asked our editor Brett Howse to confirm that his Windows Phones behaved the same way. When he confirmed that they did I really didn’t know what to say. Having manual camera controls that aren’t reflected in the camera preview makes them essentially unusable. While changes to white balance, brightness, and focus do show up in the preview, your adjustments to ISO and shutter speed do not. This means that you have no visual idea of what the exposure of your photo is going to be.
I wasn’t near as impressed with the Lumia Camera application as I had expected to be based on what I had heard about how camera-centric Lumia devices are. While the interface for auto mode is fine, it’s basically impossible to mess that up unless you're trying to. The manual controls aren’t implemented in a very obvious and accessible manner, and the most important ones require you to just pray that the exposure meter is accurate, which ruins the entire concept of having full control over how your photos turn out.
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BestUsernameEver - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link
Brandon notes that the key app gap, for him, is the absence of Google services. I would agree that certain Google services, the biggies (map and search), are missed on WP. Sadly, that is by a very deliberate design on the part of Google (admirably noted in the review), which is actively avoiding any of its services ever making an appearance on WP (note the saga related to MS's own YouTube app for WP). This may change, and change quickly, if WP gains a user base north of 100 million users (they are not far away from this milestone now, in fact).However, I'm curious as to why he was so dismissive of the "alternatives," where they exist; in particular, OneDrive for Google Drive, and Skype for Hangouts. The MS alternatives are superior to Google's offerings here, and, unlike Google's versions, available on all platforms.
Also, why bemoan the fact that the official Twitter app is not as good as it is on iOS and Android, when the third party Tweetium app is clearly a superior app for Twitter over the "official" version on WP?
proheart - Tuesday, June 23, 2015 - link
overall a thorough review- but what's the point of it? as long as the "app gap" is present (always will be with windows phones), there's just no reason to get one of these phones for anyone in any financial bracket.i had the nokia lumia 1020 for a few months ( the allure of a 41 MP camera intrigued me) however i came to the same conclusion as the reviewer that that apps just are not there, or for some of the popular ones that are, there is limited functionality and virtually no updates. windows app store no longer has the chase bank mobile app or it's no longer supported officially by chase.
some folks are saying that with windows 10 things are going to change and it will be easier for developers to port apps to windows. i'm not buying it- they said the same thing with windows mobile 8 then 8.1 and it didn' t pan out.
why would any developer cater to a market that has less than 3 % of the market share with no viable growth in sight? microsoft and windows mobile is and always will be a niche market and a very small niche at that.
dustwalker13 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
actually it is growing. thing is it takes ages to get even from tiny to small. by the way market share in europe is around 10% not 3% and that market is way bigger than the us in terms of volume. android is loosing over there.the app gap is always stated and repels people as an argument which is odd seeing that research has shown that most users actually download less than one app a month on average and the overwhelming majority only uses standard apps that actually are available on all systems (like facebook, whatsapp, telegram, instagram, etc).
the real issue is 75% marketing 24% what the guy in the pub says and 1% actual problem with app availability for most people. the difference between the us and europe seems to be in europe the customers have realized this fact.
as for app development, the prospect to use microsofts new dev tools and crank out an app for all three platforms in one go with minimal adaptation, or import my android / ios app and create a unified windows store app for all windows devices with minimal effort ... hell yes this will work for me. the windows phone market is tiny ... but the pc/tablet windows market is not and if i can potentially just revamp my app in a few hours there, it basically is free money for me.
windows phone 8.1 was useless ... develop a new app for a tiny market? not gonna happen. reencode my existing app for the windows store or even creating one new app and exporting it easily to all platforms? no brainer.
rburnham - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
If Amazon's Music app was released for WP, I'd go back to it in a heartbeat.dustwalker13 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
A nice article just a bit of critizism here...If you are completely set to use googles apps there is only one system that makes sense for you anyway and that is android. Lamenting missing google apps on windows phone is like ranting about not having an itunes or facetime app on your samsung galaxy.
The battery life is something I was surprised about. We use 640s for our sales guys. They get through the day withput issues while working and those people are not light on battery life. We had constant complaints back when we used android based htc models.
Finally as for feeling slow, the only time I feel the system is slow is when loading up apps, which is to be expected on those old snapdragon 400. In the system itself, the settings etc. it feels smooth and more responsive than any android at the same price point I have tested, but that is just my subjective experience like you have yours.
As for the browser, that one definitely needs work, though I think this issue will disappear with wp10 and edge in a few months. Anyway browsing on a mobile is a pain in all cases in my opinion.
In the end, while the review tries to be comprehensive I think it is rather useless to have someone judge a system who is - through his app and cloud storage history - firmly set on using another system anyway.
Someone who uses icloud and apple services for any and everything will not find android all that appealing. You use google services extensively and preclude the possibility to switch to another environment ... windows phone is just not for you.
OoklaTheMok - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
I think you are wrong regarding how the Action Center should be displayed. In it's current form, the user can pull it down only a small amount to expose the Commands. In it's current form, I can pull it down an inch and expose the command I need to use at the moment, and I don't lose context of where I am. If it was implemented as you stated it should, I wouldn't be able to access the commands until the Action Center was completely opened.Smiles5525 - Thursday, August 20, 2015 - link
We own or ownerd Lumia 540, 635, 825, 925 and 640. One item you left out of your review is the new security feature that only the 640 currently has. They have this feature hidden under "Find My Phone" and is callled Recovery Protection/recovery key. No where in manual that came with phone from T-Mobile does it list this feature. I believe the feature mat have been listed during setup. When this feature is turned on, your phone cannot be restored or the ability to change/add a different Microsoft id. Preventing someone from stealing the phone and being able to reuse it. You have to make sure you register the phone on the Windows website so you can obtain a recovery code and don't' lose it, before something happens.The only problem with this is.....if your Microsoft account is ever hacked like my son's xbox account was over a month ago, Microsoft gave him a temporary id to use for 30 days and locked up the id that was hacked; which of course is the id registered on the phone. Once they locked up the hacked account, you are not able to turn off the recovery feature so you can put a new Microsoft id on the phone. Then when you call Microsoft lumia, or Windows phone, they tell you how to restore the phone so you can put a new Microsoft id back on the phone. However, once the phone restarts it gets locked on the recovery key request because your recovery key does not work because Microsft reported that I'd hacked. You cannot even access anything saved in the cloud, pictures, phone backups...nothing. The problem......no one at Microsoft even knows how to fix this, they don't even know about their own security feature. I've spent 40+ hours on the phone with numerous departments, filled out a million forms and finally 30 days later, this issue was escalated to much higher departments with no resolve. My son's 3 week old phone is rendered useless and Microsoft cannot unlock the phone, nor will they replace it. I am stuck paying for a phone that was used 3 weeks. Microsoft locked up the phone and all they can do is say...sorry, nothing we can do. Microsoft has the poorest customer support structure and won't take responsibility for their short comings. I used to love Windows phones....I'll never buy another!
sany666 - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
this is one of the best under 10000 smartphone. my full hands on review i've posted on http://sandeepyc.blogspot.com/2015/11/lumia640revi... if your interested in detailed review, sample pics also i've posted in this as i cant upload pics here.AMT03 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
I would like to ask: Is there any charging time limit for the Lumia 640 / Lumia 640 dual sim variant? Is there any way to prevent overcharging the battery? Also, how can I read / interpret the charging time / charging duration graphic? 0.6 means? 1.2 means? I dont know how to read the graphic made to show the charging time required to normally charge the phone from 0 to 100 %. Does overcharging the battery 1 to 2 hours affect the battery severely? Please reply and thank you.AMT03 - Friday, July 22, 2016 - link
I have a Dual Sim Lumia 640, if you could provide me the information based on this model it would be even better. Is there any charging time difference between the single sim and the dual sim variant? The user manual does not show any charging time information. Thank you.