Nokia Lumia 735 Review
by Brett Howse on February 3, 2015 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Lumia
Wi-Fi
Windows Phone does not give us as much access to the hardware as Android, making outright declarations about hardware difficult. However, it is most likely the Wi-Fi solution in the Lumia 735 is the Qualcomm VIVE which is part of the SoC. Unlike the Lumia 830 though, this is a single band only, with one spatial stream. The maximum connection speed is 72.2 Mbps.
Maximum transfer speed that I achieved was only 29 Mbps, which is not fantastic. Many people have faster internet connections in their home, so the 735 will likely not be able to max those out.
Cellular
The MSM8926 SoC supports up to Category 4 LTE, which offers a maximum of 150 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload, depending on tower traffic, provider hardware, and location of course.
The model shipped for review can support GSM at 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz, along with WCDMA Band 1 (2100 MHz), Band 5 (850 MHz), and Band 8 (900 MHz). LTE FDD is on bands 3 (1800 MHz), 7 (2600 MHz), and 20 (800 MHz). In North America, the main LTE band is band 4, which is not available on this sample to allow LTE speed testing.
GNSS
Qualcomm’s IZat Gen8A is the GPS in the Snapdragon 400 SoC, and as with most modern Qualcomm location solutions it is fast and accurate. With location services enabled on the phone, GPS lock happened within a couple of seconds. Going from location services disabled to a GPS lock took around thirty seconds, which is pretty good.
The Lumia 735 supports A-GLONASS, A-GPS, BeiDou, and assist from cellular and Wi-Fi networks to get a quicker location fix.
Speaker
The Lumia 735 has a single speaker on the back of the device, which reduces bezel sizes but does not give you the optimum location for a speaker. The maximum SPL playing music is around 81 dBA, and the sound quality is as expected not fantastic, with very little low range and a very tinny sound.
If you are to play music on this device, it would be best to do it through either headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. It does have a graphic equalizer, which can be used for the internal speaker or headphones.
Due to technical issues, I am unable to do a recording for call quality at this time.
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maximumGPU - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
i don't believe glance is just software, it actually requires a special type of display with "memory". Apparently none of the amoled lumia's have that, therefore glance is missing from even the top end phones like the 930. It is however present on lcd displays like the 1520 and 830.It still baffles me that Nokia/microsoft agreed to ship all those new phones without the required displays for Glance to work. It is afterall one of the best lumia featurs. As if they didn't need all the help they can get flogging phones.
Brett Howse - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
It's true that none of the AMOLED phones this year have Glance, but they all did last year, so it seems to be more of an issue with Nokia not being able to find displays with memory, but that's not going to excuse the feature missing in my review because I love Glance.melgross - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Price. These are not expensive phones. And when you sell as few as they do, likely losing money on every sale, you try to keep cost down as much as possible.Thermogenic - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Lumia 930 is not a cheap phone and does not have Glance.melgross - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
That's true, but it's more of an exception, isn't it? Or else, Microsoft is going to eliminate it entirely over time.Brett Howse - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The just launched Lumia 532 has Glance. So it's not price, and it's not getting phased out. I'm sure it's more to do with sourcing the correct components, but now that Lumia falls under Microsoft this will hopefully end.http://www.anandtech.com/show/8893/microsoft-launc...
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The 620 supports Glance with an LCD (thus being highly inefficient because it needs the backlighting permanently on). I don't think that display memory makes such a huge different in power consumption especially in "peek" mode. So it's really more a matter of software rather than hardware.Dorek - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link
I have a 920, which is an IPS LCD screen, and the battery hit from Glance is miniscule.Brett Howse - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
It's only slightly larger, which may bother some people, but not all. And the 830 is only 15 grams heavier. Noticeable with both in your hand, but not huge.Cpt. Obvious - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The Glance Screen is available as a download from the app-store. See: http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/glance...