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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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.