Microsoft Lumia 640 is one of the latest smartphone introduced by Microsoft and it is pretty popular in its price segment. It was launched along with the Lumia 640 XL and in terms of hardware specs, it is just the younger brother of the phablet Lumia 640 XL.

We were trying our hands on Lumia 640 since last few days and after using it extensively, we are going to share the detailed and in-depth hands-on review of Microsoft Lumia 640 in this post with all Geeky Stuffs readers.

This Microsoft Lumia 640 hands-on review is different section considering various aspects of the device and its pros and cons of each of them.

Microsoft Lumia 640 : Hands-on Review, Specs and Features


Retail Box and Unboxing


Microsoft Lumia 640 comes in the standard Lumia retail box and the content inside is similar to rest of the Microsoft Lumia offerings in the market. Inside the retail box, you will find a Microsoft Lumia 640 smartphone, a battery, charger and user manuals.

Just like other Lumia devices, there is no earphone included in the retail box of Microsoft Lumia 640 and you will have to buy a pair of them if you want to listen music on it. You can watch our Microsoft Lumia 640 unboxing video below.



Design


Microsoft Lumia 640 sports the standard Lumia design which is quite popular among with the Windows Phone lovers. The device is having very minimalistic look. On the front side you will find a 5-inch 720p HD screen with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, 1 MP front camera and a set of sensors.

There are no capacitive navigation keys provided separately and like few other mid-range Lumia devices, you will have to use the on-screen navigation keys. On the right side, power key and volume rockers are given. Since Microsoft Lumia 640 is not a PureView device, there is no dedicated camera key.

Lumia 640 is really strong and performed really well in our hard bend test. You can watch our Lumia 640 bend test video below.



On the back side, there is 8 MP primary camera along with the flash and Microsoft branding in the middle. The tiny circular speaker hole is given at the bottom right corner and chances are high that you will keep putting your fingers on it while playing games.

The back panel can be removed and interchangeable, so you can always have a new look and color with different back panels. Depending on the variant of Microsoft Lumia 640, you will get one or two SIM card slot along with a microSD card slot after opening the back panel.

Hardware Specs and OS


Microsoft Lumia 640 is having the same kind of hardware used like Lumia 640 XL and most of the mid-range Lumia devices. It runs on 1.2GHz Snapdragon 4000 quad-core processor. GPU used is Adreno 305 and supported by the 1GB of RAM. There is also NFC included in this device.

There is 3G and 4G LTE variants of Microsoft Lumia 640 are available. There is also dual SIM version of the device and due to this, there will be slight changes in the hardware used for the signal reception and frequency supported.





The internal memory is just 8 GB, out of which half of the memory is used by the system. So you will have to use a memory card if you like to install heavy games and lots of HD videos. The memory card slot supports up to 128 GB memory card and you also get the 30 GB of Cloud storage with OneDrive.

Lumia 640 is powered by the latest Lumia Denim Update 2 version of Windows Phone 8.1 OS and it is going to get the Windows 10 for Mobile update first of all. So, you will have the benefit of the most recent OS with this device.

Though the hardware used in Lumia 640 is quite old and the RAM is just 1 GB too, the overall performance of the device is pretty good. The gaming performance for high end games was smooth and so the multitasking. Though there were few minor frame drops while playing games with high graphics, the overall performance was still nice.

You can watch the below videos in which we have compared the speed, performance and benchmarking scores of Lumia 640 and Lumia 930.







Screen and Display


Lumia 640 comes with a 5-inch IPS LCD screen with 720p HD resolution and ClearBack display. So, the PPI which you get on this device is 294 which is very close t the magic number of 300 PPI. The screen-to-body ratio 67.6%.

The screen of Lumia 640 is protected by the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. We performed a key scratch test using a knife, keys and coins on our Lumia 640 and the performance was brilliant. Even after stroking the screen violently with a knife, we were failed to make any damage or scratch to the screen.



The display is sharp and clear. The sunlight visibility is very nice as well along with the viewing angles. Though Lumia 640 got a nice screen and display, we noticed the same issue of blurring the black texts on white background like the Lumia 640 XL. So, seems like it is due to the OS issue as both devices got the same latest version of Windows Phone 8.1

Camera and Imaging


Lumia 640 comes with an 8 MP primary camera which is capable of taking 3264 x 2448 pixels images and 1080p full HD video recording. There is no dedicated camera key in this device as it is not a PureView device and it is not having the Zeiss lens as well.

You will find Lumia Camera preinstalled in Lumia 640 like any of the Lumia devices. The interface is standard which let you use manual settings live while taking images. You can install many Lens apps to enhance the features of your camera app too.

Images coming out of Lumia 640 are pretty good. You will find good details along with sharpness and color rendering. Noise is also less and images look as good as the 13 MP images of Lumia 640 XL.

The 1 MP front facing camera is nice as well. Though the images are not big enough in size from the front cam, the details are impressive. Specially the 720p HF video recording from 1 MP front camera of Lumia 640 is just great as you can see in the below video.



When it comes to video recording, Lumia 640 can shoot 1080p@30fps full HD videos. The video quality is good and having nice details. It also provide the option to choose the Audio Bass Filter to reduce the noise while recording the video.

Entertainment and Gaming


The gaming performance on Lumia 640 is good considering the old hardware and GPU it is having supported by just 1GB of RAM. We have felt a bit frame drops sometimes but the device was able to play all of the heavy games easily we tried on it. You can watch our gaming performance test video below.



You get the MixRadio and Xbox Music apps to listen and enjoy music on Lumia 640. Music app let you stream the song from your Xbox Music account without saving them on your device. Unfortunately, the Music app does not support the FLAC file format and playback.

There is also FM Radio provided which can be played on speaker but you will have to connect the earphones still as it works as the antenna. The sound quality is good and loud in speakers and gets better on a good quality headphones. So, Lumia 640 scores pretty good when it comes to entertainment and gaming.

Battery


Microsoft Lumia 640 comes equipped with 2,500mAh battery and the performance is really impressive. With moderate usage, you can go nearly three days without charging. In our tests, Lumia 640 lasted nearly 10 hours with continuous video playback. It can still increase a bit if you reduce the brightness to minimum.

Also for web browsing, it lasted around 12 hours. For gaming with high quality graphics, it was pretty much similar to video playback. So if even if you are a heavy user, battery Lumia 640 will easily survive more than a day for sure.

Conclusion




Lumia 640 is a great device considering the price tags it comes with. It is having a nice display, great battery life, good overall performance, NFC. LTE (model dependent), good quality audio and speaker, nice imaging at a very competitive price.

If you are looking for an entry level Windows Phone device with good performance then, Lumia 640 is a nice option for you. If you are looking for even better battery, bigger screen and better camera, you can go with Lumia 640 XL.
 
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