Microsoft Reveals The Lumia 535 Low Cost Smartphone
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2014 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Lumia
It has been a while since the official Nokia smartphone acquisition was completed, but to date all of the current Lumia phones have carried the Nokia brand alongside Lumia. Microsoft has been busy going through the Nokia apps over the last while, and updating them to be Lumia apps, and as of today, they have now done the same with the latest Lumia smartphone to be announced. The Microsoft Lumia 535 will be the first official Lumia smartphone to drop the Nokia name. With this being a 5xx series of Lumia, it is aimed at the value conscious end of the market.
Microsoft is calling the Lumia 535 their 5x5x5 proposition. The first of the fives is five free integrated Microsoft experiences with the company listing Skype, Office, Cortana, OneDrive, and Outlook. Astute readers will recognize that these free experiences are available on all Windows Phones though. The second five is a five megapixel front facing camera which is one of the latest trends in “Selfie” cameras, which is good to see regardless of if you take selfies or not. Horrible front facing cameras have been a staple of most smartphones for too long. The final five is a five inch display, but this time with a qHD (960x540) resolution IPS LCD.
The press release does not include full specifications for the phone, but as a 5xx series we can expect it to be fairly low end parts. The 530 is powered by a Snapdragon 200 with quad-core Cortex A7 CPUs at 1.2 GHz, so it would make sense for the 535 to offer the same. The Lumia 530 is only equipped with 512 MB of RAM, but hopefully the 535 bumps that to 1 GB to allow the entire Windows Phone app store to be available to this device. Storage on the 530 is only 4 GB of internal NAND with microSD expansion up to an additional 128 GB which would fall in line with the low cost of this device.
Update: The full specifications are now available. It is indeed a quad-core Snapdragon 200, but included is 1 GB of memory and 8 GB of storage. The battery is a 1905 mAh 3.7 volt part, for just over 7 Wh of charge. Although the front camera is indeed 5 MP, it can only record FWVGA resolution video (848 x 480). For a complete listing of specifications please check here.
There will be two versions of the Lumia 535 with both a single SIM and dual SIM model to be made available. As is often the case with Lumia phones, there are colors aplenty with bright green, bright orange, white, dark grey, black, and making its return to the Lumia fold, cyan. The 535 will be available in “key markets” beginning in November, with an expected price of around 110 EUR before taxes and carrier subsidies.
People looking for a new flagship Windows Phone from Microsoft will have to wait a bit longer. Microsoft has clearly targeted the low cost segment of the smartphone market, but they now have an almost dizzying array of devices for different regions. The Lumia 535 joins the already launched 530, 630, 635, 730, 735, and 830 as low cost devices. Not all devices are sold in all regions, and it appears Microsoft is happy to continue with the multitude of devices to serve different markets much like Nokia was doing.
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eddman - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
It seems that some people don't get it.1) 110 euros is considered cheap in europe, for a just launched low-end phone.
2) All new phone models, no matter from which brand, are priced rather highly in their respective segments. Just wait a month or two and 535's price will fall like a rock.
3) As for 480p recording; something had to give. They basically took a 530, increased the display size and resolution, doubled the RAM and internal storage and even added a camera flash, and a few other minor things. That's already quite good for the price.You can't have it all in such a low-end phone.
coburn_c - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
What gave was the Snapdragon 200, its imaging processor can't do HD video. The only things that gives me pause is the 635 has their clearblack LCD bonding and the 535 has a small battery for the size.Yakero - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
I love the Windows Phone experience, still don't see a reason to change from the physically perfect NOKIA Lumia 800. The Lumia 735 is tempting though. A quality compact phone please, Microsoft, with Intel inside. Way too many models in their lineup now, it makes differentiating a low end purchase too confusing, for me anyway.Wolfpup - Tuesday, November 11, 2014 - link
Thumbs up! This is really kick ass for a cheap phone. I love that it's got 1GB in an entry level phone and a big screen.Bear in mind that a quad A7 would be painful under Android, but run Windows Phone fine.
Guess I'd just want a higher end version with LTE.
BrokenCrayons - Friday, November 14, 2014 - link
I don't know about anyone else, but 5 inches is just too much for me to handle every single day without getting really sore about finding a good place to stick it. I mean really, I'd be constantly moving it from one place to another because of its tendency to stretch and tear anything you stuff it into. And don't even get started with the idea of clipping it at my waist. I don't want it just hanging out there for everyone to gawk at. Seriously Microsoft, not everyone likes it that big so follow suit with nature and offer us different sizes to suit our individual tastes.abufrejoval - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
I couldn't agree more that people come in different sizes. For me anything below 5" is just unusable both in terms of screen size and in terms of entering text: My piano teacher was always envious of the fact that my fingers had proper key size and no issues way beyond an octave.Had a Galaxy S as my first smartphone, but that was painfully small and slow.
Got a Note (1) the minute it came out and loved it, except for being a little slow and eating battery too fast for my taste. The Note 3 took care of both, but I always loved the 16:10 of the Note 1 better than the 16:9 of the Note 3.
No problem at all finding a (front) pocket for these Notes to fit in pants or jackets, so sores, no tear nor stretching.
No waist nor gawking either :-)
abufrejoval - Friday, February 6, 2015 - link
Use a Note 3 for personal stuff. Corporate IT "upgraded" my Blackberry Torch to a Lumia 530: What an insufferable piece of crap!Looked for an alternative and ran across the 535 for €110. Simply bought it because I felt I deserved something that I wouldn't hate to touch.
It's a lot like the Archos Platinum 5 I got for a son of mine some time back. Couldn't get a silicion cover for that and sure enough it got cracked in weeks. But it lasted long enough to convince me that a 5" phone at that resolution using a Snapdragon 200 quad was a rather useful phone.
And that is what the 535 is: Windows phone 8.1 is pretty usable for a guy using Android 5.x for all primary drivers and it gets the job done on corporate mail and scheduling.
Touch screen, even after the Denin update is a little tricky: It seems to prefer macho gestures, then it's allright.
Found a Mumbo Silicon cover none of my phone survive long without and that left me with only one major issue: The "Gorilla Glass 3" on the 535 is a sucker for grease! It positively wallows in any grease it can find! Finger that leave no trace on a Note 1, Note 3 nor even a Nexus 7 with a cheapish screen protect cover, will be smeared dry on the 535 screen.
Spend another €10 on an iProtect (or similar) real glass, anti grease screen protector and that worked out the last kink: Now only swapping from a grease dripping sandwitch to the phone will leave a faint trace, not normal operations.
Windows phones are absolutely boring, no rooting, no apps, no custom ROMs etc. But when it comes to recommeding a phone to the elderly or young and irresponsible kids or simply a corporate driver I find myself thinking that this Lumia 535 isn't too bad.
And at that price, Microsoft absolutely can't be making any money of the phone, so that's fine with me, too!