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.
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peterfares - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
PenTile screen? Yuck.Paulo Constança - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Great article as always! I decided to finally create an account just to comment on this one. I have this phone, bought it 3 when it barely came out to replace my old and ageing trustworthy Nokia 5800. I tried several phones before making the decision to buy this one, several androids from several brands, i even glimpsed at the iphone (but that one was is too expensive for my poor pockets), and then i tried windows phone on a low end device. After seeing how fast it was, i decided to search for the lumia phones. Seeing this one had just came out 2 weeks ago back then, i decided to check for the pricing, and it was with a great discount: Unlocked for 189€ (it was, and still is, 249€ in most stores), so I decided "what tha hell, let's jump into the windows phone and see what's it about.", as i pretty much already knew well what android and ios could offer me, and kept hearing how "bad and lacking windows phone was".God damn it's great!
Phone runs super smooth, the hand feel is just right, screen has incredible colous, love the blacks, the entire system just pieces together incredibly well, and the so called "app lacking" problems are not nearly as close as people say it is: actually so far i haven't felt the need for any app that's lacking, even multilayer games a few of my collogues have and want me to play with them, i have them available on the store.
I can't believe i went for 6 years with Nokia 5800 thinking not a single phone could replace it anytime soon, and it seems this one was a heck of a deal for the price i got it (it was back in November, it had just arrived to my country it seemed).
Battery lasts for me 2 full days, and i do use the phone quite a lot during my day. Only thing i found sad to discover this one didn't have is the glance screen, but it's not that much of a big deal breaker.
A few stores have knocked the price down to 199.90€ (unlocked, it's at 168€ in Vodafone right now, locked of course) recently, so this phone should start being a hit, IF people stop being idiots saying Windows Phone isn't any good and actually try it out.
So far I don't have any problems with it, except for one: My wallet is screaming right now, as i just bought a second one to offer my sister for her 38th birthday haha. Got the Orange one for her as well, mine's the dark grey one.
Slap on it a SD card and you wont have any storage issues. 16GB fast mSD cards run so cheap this days (8€), it's a steal really. I got a 64GB card for mine to store all the things and more though :)
faizoff - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Just to piggyback on your comment, before I bought my first smartphone (iphone 4) in 2010 I had the Nokia 7250i since 2004. I too went with the older nokia phone for 6 years. I bought a cheap lumia 525 and I'm seriously thinking of getting a high end windows phone once my iphone 6 plus dies (probably another 4 yrs).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...AlluringRaja - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
Yes I saw that but I think glance screen is not available to download for Lumia 520. There is no download button.atata - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Why you never test audio output quality from jack? Is no one listening to the music anymore?cbf - Wednesday, February 4, 2015 - link
Well, I guess this is good review for users outside the US. But why does Microsoft give you a phone to review that's not really available for sale here, or support the common US LTE bands?BMNify - Thursday, February 5, 2015 - link
Thanks for the review Brett, I have bought the dual sim Lumia 730 for $200 factory unlocked version, so its a very good deal when compared to the $375 Lumia 830 in my country. I was sick of carrying two phones and badly needed a dual sim phone and the Lumia 730 announcement got my interest.I don't like huge phones, so the 4.7inch screen is perfect for me, the OLED screen is of good quality, windows phone has the best implementation of MicroSD cards and thus storage is a non-issue, the phone design is nice with light weight and comfortable curves, got the Matte finish dark grey colour as i prefer matte finish and dark colours. The camera quality is actually good and can be bettered only by flagship phones, no other $200 phone can compete with Lumia 730 in this department !!
Now, looking forward to Windows 10 technical preview, i know that the final W10 launch will be in Fall-2015 but its nice of Microsoft to allow direct OS updates via technical preview or preview for developers app.
loimlo - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
The charge time is incredibly long given its battery capacity! Is it possible to charge the Lumia 735 using beefier chargers like 5V/1A or 5V/2A so as to reduce charge time?BMNify - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
Definitely, you can charge 730/735 with the beefier chargers, i charge my Lumia 730 Dual Sim with a 2A charger and i haven't timed it but its much much faster than the 0.75A charger i got in the box.