Nokia Lumia 735 Review
by Brett Howse on February 3, 2015 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Lumia
Battery Life
Battery life on a smartphone is one of the more important aspects, but it is certainly not as high profile as a high resolution display or fast processor. The 735 has the same battery capacity as the Lumia 830 at 2200 mAh, and also has a 3.8 V chemistry for a total of 7.04 Wh. With the same internals as the Lumia 830, this will really come down to which device has a more power efficient display. The 830 has LCD, which generally comes out ahead on our browsing test due to the extra power OLED requires to create white, but the 735 display is also slightly smaller and thus requires less power.
As a note, starting with the Lumia 830 review I changed the testing methodology to leave the phone in Battery Saver mode for our browsing tests. We already do the same on Android and iOS by stopping background syncing. This will continue going forward, but I wanted to make note of it. I have updated the results in our graphs for the other Windows Phones I have tested to use the Battery Saver values.
To compare consistently across all devices, we set each device to 200 nits of brightness at 100% average picture level. We run each test several times to ensure we are getting a consistent result.
The battery life in the Lumia 735 is quite good. Nine and a half hours of screen-on time should easily get you through a day of use unless you are a very heavy user. This is not record setting, but it is very close to other devices in the same price range.
The Lumia 735 does support LTE, and normally we would test battery life over LTE as well, however the device shipped for review is designed for Europe, and does not have Band 4 support. HSPA is a lot more power hungry than LTE, so it would be a disadvantage to the 735 to not compare it on LTE.
BaseMark calculates its score based on the amount of battery life versus the amount of work done, however on Windows Phone, it cannot get the CPU frequency information, so the scoring is not as accurate as we would like. Because of this, I will ignore the battery life benchmark from Basemark for the time being. Now that GFXBench is available, we can get an idea of battery life during 3D games. The 735 does well here, but it also has low performance.
Charge Time
If you are ever far from home and running low on power, having a phone that charges quickly will be a blessing. The Lumia 735 comes with a 0.75 A charger, which is fairly small. This leads to one of our longer charge times.
The 735 does support Qi wireless charging, so if you have a charging mat you can utilise it to keep the device powered up without any cables. Microsoft also sells the DT-903 Wireless Charging Plate, which when linked to your Lumia over Bluetooth, can show you notifications while your phone is charging.
We also like to take a look at the charge rate over time. Total charge time can be deceiving because some phones charge very quickly for the first 80% or so, then slow down, with the final few percentage taking quite a long time. While the total charge time is still important, but if you need a quick top up, it is good to get some power in the battery quickly.
The 735 does slow down near the end, but only slightly. The extremely long charge rate means that for this phone, if you are traveling it would be good to bring a higher amperage charger with you.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
64 Comments
View All Comments
Mondozai - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
I have a Lumia 1520, which I am very, very satisfied with. Nokia makes some really sturdy phones. I have dropped it quite a few times, around 4-5 times, over the last 7 months. It's something that happens to me maybe once a month or less, but it happens.Not even a scratch on the screen or even the body. It's high-quality. The 1520 was also relatively cheap when I bought it(around 380 euros off-contract).
So that is my disclaimer. But here's the thing about these phones. They are very underspecced for a high price. Nokia(or now Microsoft) does awesome high-spec phones, but they are terrible at the lower-end.
The Lumia 520 was a hit for its time, when most budget stuff was terrible. But now, it is not hard to find decent quality low-price phones. It's not just Xiaomi. In places like India, you now have MASSIVE choice. Even the mid-range is getting serious competition from players like the Moto G, who in turn are getting disrupted by even cheaper alternatives. The Micromax Yu phone, the upcoming Zenfone 2(flagship specs for 200 dollars).
The short summary is that Nokia/MS is getting increasingly less competitive with the market. They used to do well in the low-end but now they are getting crushed there. They still do very good high-end phones but that is not where the market is going.
I hope, for selfish reasons, that they get their act togther. More WP users means more attention to the app ecosystem, but my god, you gotta do better than this MS.
Mondozai - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Just an addendum, the app ecosystem in WP is today massively improved. I'm anxious to get ahold of the WP 10 technical preview, since the changes there will essentially bring the OS into parity with iOS/Android on a technical basis. The OS is very fast, has no jutter and no lag.I feel like the Nokia/MS thing have gotten in reverse in a sense. They used to make killer phones but with a faltering OS and a poor app ecosystem. In my view, the latter part has been largely fixed, while the strong suits of WP (the speed, the lagless experience etc) have been strengthened.
Now, most Lumia phones we're seeing are not that competitive with the market. The L920 was an amazing deal for its time. In my view, if you can get the 1520 for cheap, it's the equivalent of that phone(if you are comfortable with big phablets). But if you're not into the high-end, you're going to overprice. A flagship Zenfone 2 for 200 dollars will simply crush what they have on offer. The OnePlus, the Micromax Yu, it just continues. Android is becomming ungodly affordable, and WP isn't keeping up. Apple has the premium segment increasingly sewn up.
kspirit - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The lagless experience hasn't improved, it's gotten worse. When Microsoft started moving apps from Silverlight to WinRT and encouraging devs to make apps in WinRT for universal apps, it killed a lot of the smooth experience. My 925 was way faster on WP8 than it is on 8.1.1. The app load times are the actual offenders.The "loading" and "resuming" screens have become painful. Sure there might be runtime optimizations that MS has yet to do since WinRT is much newer than Silverlight. WinRT apps can't run under the lockscreen either, they reload when your phone locks over them. I am hoping they fix it with Windows (Phone) 10.
hwangeruk - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
kspirit. That's does not tally with reality. WinRT is native code (COM wrapped Win32 API)Silverlight comes out as IL , so runs managed. My universal apps start, and run faster so note sure what your issue is.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
I have no idea how they're selling, but in the U.S. at least, the cheaper Nokias are still the only good cheap phones. For several times more than like a 635 you can get a Google Play Edition Motorola, but even then it lacks LTE (and costs much more, even if it's still pretty cheap).kmmatney - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
For cheap phones for my family, I just buy used phones. I think the best deal is the Galaxy S3 - I bought a used one in excellent condition (looked brand new) for my wife for $90.mymy - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Excellent choice. I have had my S3 since inception, around 2.5 years. A solid performer. A good phone, great screen. Have not had a single problem. Skipped the S4/S5, just getting to large.hwangeruk - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
I have a Lumia 735, iPhone 6 and Samsung S4. The S4 is the worst hardware (plasticy) worst OS (Android is ugly anyway, and Samsung ruin it with their bloatware). The Lumia 735 is on a level playing field with the iPhone 6, both high quality OSes, both much more modern than Android. The only thing I really like about my iPhone is the touch ID. Other than that the Lumia 735 is comparable. Ignoring "spectard" comparison, but in real life usage all 3 are almost exactly the same size, all run just as fast. The iPhone is super expensive but I didn't pay for it. If it was my own money i'd get the 735 every time. Best value by miles.Jon Tseng - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Have to say I do love the design. When I clocked it in the shop I thought it was the Nokia N9 brought back to life.It looks like its a monolithic unibody, but actually the seam for the removable back is right around the screen edge so you get unibody looks but removable/replaceable back.
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The 830 has another couple of disadvantages over the 735 except for the price: It's too big and it's too heavy and if you happen to have one x20s with x > 7 then it's also a step sidewards feature wise.The slow WiFi is not really a problem since in 99% of all cases you'll have to process the data in some form anyways so the bottleneck will be the CPU. 5GHz would have been nice though.
The only real letdown as you've correctly identified is the lack of Glance, but since that's only software anyways I don't see any reason why the might not be added at a later point.