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MagyarMicrosoft Lumia 435 Smartphone Review
For the original German review, see here.
It was a small sensation when Nokia launched the Android smartphone Nokia X last year, the first device in years with an operating system other than Windows Phone. One reason was probably the licensing fee for Microsoft's operating system that just makes a device more expensive in the price-sensitive entry-level class: The Nokia X was extremely cheap and designed primarily for poorer countries. However, the additional Android user interface was similar to Windows Phone.
Microsoft now builds the Lumia smartphones so there are no more licensing costs. The company probably acknowledged the success of the Nokia X in some markets, so now Microsoft is building a cheap Windows Phone that just looks like the Nokia X: The Lumia 435 is compact and has a detachable back cover. However, the competition from the same company is quite strong with the inexpensive Lumia 535.
Inexpensive Android smartphones are no longer rare: for example, Motorola offers the Moto E. The LG L40 and the Acer Liquid Z4 Duo are also designed for the same price-conscious users.
Case
If you have ever held a Nokia X, you will notice only minor differences when you use the Microsoft Lumia 435: Both cases are made of polycarbonate, you can obviously see the Microsoft logo at the back, the slot for the speaker is larger and the stereo jack is moved to the center of the top. Moreover, the Windows touch buttons are now underneath the display instead of the lonely "Return" button of the Android version. Otherwise, you can still remove the back cover, which gives you access to the battery, the microSD slot as well as the micro-SIM slot.
The stability of the plastic case is still decent, and you cannot hear any creaking even under strong pressure or when you twist it. However, the display is not quite as pressure resistant: You can see picture distortions. The material is grippy, but the corners could have been more rounded, which would improve the haptics even further.
In terms of design, the bright colors are the most interesting choices. Microsoft also offers the smartphone in neon green and neon orange, which are not uncommon colors within the Lumia product series. However, it is easy to replace the cover if you do not like the color.
The dimensions were slightly increased: With a height of 11.7 millimeters (~0.46 in) the Lumia 435 is not really a slim smartphone, for example, the Lumia 535 is just 8.8 millimeters (~0.35 in) high. However, thanks to its 4-inch screen you get a very handy device that is suitable for smaller pockets and hands.
Connectivity
You should not expect too much performance for under 100 Euros (~$112): The Lumia 435 has 1024 MB of memory and 8 GB of storage, which can be expanded via microSD card. Many competitors have only half the memory and/or storage. You can even listen to the radio with the Lumia 435, but it requires a headset, that is also used as an antenna.
Software
Version 8.1 was not only a big improvement for desktop Windows, but the smartphone version got some new features as well, which means the operating system is now even closer to Android and iOS. You now get a notification center, swipe inputs and a better calendar app. Working with Windows Phone was always quite pleasant, because the simple interface works intuitively and – unlike Android or iOS – uses high contrasts. Only the settings can be a little confusing. More information about Windows Phone 8.1 is available in the review of the Nokia Lumia 930. Thanks to 1 GB of memory, the Lumia 435 would also be ready for an update to Windows Phone 10, but there has been no official announcement so far.
The Lumia family also gets several goodies from Microsoft, including the free navigation app "Here Drive+" (all Windows Phone devices can download it), free music streaming with "Mix Radio" as well as the "Lumia Storyteller", which creates stories from your pictures and videos depending on the location. Most of the additional software is useful but it is easy to delete them if you do not want them. Beyond the MSN apps that may be useful for some users, there are no other annoying adware apps.
Communication & GPS
You really should not expect LTE for a price under 100 Euros (~$112), but with GSM quad-band and UMTS dual-band, the Microsoft Lumia 435 is on par with the majority of similarly priced devices in our comparison. Only the Motorola Moto E supports quad-band UMTS. The signal in the D1 network was decent in a rural area, but the comparison with the Windows Phone Samsung Ativ S shows the differences with better devices: While the Ativ S showed four bars, the Lumia 435 had only two bars.
The Microsoft Lumia 435 does at least support wireless networks according to the standards 802.11 b/g/n, which means it should work with most current wireless networks. The latest and very fast standard 802.11ac is missing, and you can only use 2.4 GHz networks. We check the signal quality at a distance of ten meters (~33 ft) from the router and three walls in-between. The result is a signal of 50%, but websites are still opened very quickly.
Windows Phone does not have the sophisticated GPS benchmarks that we use for Android and iOS, but the test suite "Hardware Tests" at least gives us an initial impression about the signal quality of the GPS module. It is not possible to locate the position indoors, even though this is not surprising since only high-end phones are usually able to do this. In the outdoors, connection to the satellites was established quickly and the location was accurate down to 3 meters (~10 ft).
However, a quick test run in the car and a comparison with the navigation device Garmin eTrex30 quickly shows that you should not trust the GPS module of the Lumia 435: Instead of following the path, it just calculates half of the way as a direct line and it looks like we would "fly" through buildings.
Telephone Functions & Voice Quality
The voice quality leaves mixed impressions: The sound quality of the integrated earpiece is actually decent, the other person sounds a little focused on the high tones and sibilants are unpleasantly powerful, but overall it is balanced, clear, and reasonably loud. The performance of the integrated speaker is quite clear, but there were occasional stutters when we switched between the earpiece and the speaker. However, the recipient only hears a distorted, muffled voice with signal noise; therefore, we are not satisfied with the microphone.
Cameras & Multimedia
Nokia has also equipped its cheapest and smallest smartphone with two cameras, but the 2 MP camera at the back does not have a flash or auto focus, and the front camera has a very low resolution of 0.3 MP. The Lumia 535 is currently available for just 15 Euros (~$17) more on the Internet, It has two 5 MP cameras and the one at the back even has a flash.
The 2 MP camera at the back takes decent pictures, and the color noise is still decent even when the lighting is not very good. However, you should look at the pictures on smaller screens; otherwise, you will quickly notice the low resolution: Edges and details become blurry. We liked the color reproduction in all scenarios. You should only use the front camera for selfies and only if you want to send them to another smartphone, since the quality is not very good. The same applies for video calls and you should only Skype with another smartphone via front camera.
Accessories
You will not find a headset or a USB cable in the box; instead, you only get a power adaptor with a fixed cable. Microsoft lists a headset in matching colors on its website, but like the switchable back cover of the Lumia 435, it is not yet available and we have no information about the pricing.
Warranty
Microsoft offers a 24-month warranty for the smartphone, but the battery and the power adaptor are only covered for 12 months.
Input Devices & Handling
Because of the small 4-inch display, the keys of the on-screen keyboard are naturally quite small, especially since Microsoft uses a layout that is rather high and not as wide. However, during our review we did not have the feeling that the input was imprecise and all our inputs were executed very well. The keyboard layout can be switched to another language directly on the keyboard, but numbers are only available in a special menu. Word predictions are displayed directly above the keyboard. The keyboard also learns and is able to recognize your name after a few entries. Swipe inputs are also possible, but you cannot activate voice dictation or handwritten inputs directly from the keyboard.
Windows 8.1 has also introduced the voice assistant "Cortana", which, like Apple's "Siri", is supposed to improve the operation of the device with your voice. However, the German assistant is still an alpha version, so many requests just lead to Bing instead of being answered directly. Overall, the accuracy of the voice recognition is rather good and the voice output is quite pleasant.
The touchscreen is sensitive up into the peripheral areas, executes inputs quickly, and provides good gliding capabilities that make inputs very comfortable.
Display
The 4-inch TN LED display has a resolution of 800x480 pixels in a 5:3 screen ratio. Obviously, the resolution is not very high in an age of 4K displays, and you can actually see the difference compared to a higher resolution screen: For instance, there are issues with the presentation of small texts. However, the resolution of the Lumia 435 is similar to the rivals in this price range: The Acer Liquid Z4 does not have any more pixels, and the LG L40 has an even lower resolution.
A brightness of up to 292 cd/m² is below average, but the brightness distribution is very even at 92%. Due to the small viewing angles of the TN LED technology, large colored areas still do not look evenly illuminated.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brightness Distribution: 92 %
Center on Battery: 284 cd/m²
Contrast: 507:1 (Black: 0.56 cd/m²)
ΔE Color 5.64 | 0.55-29.43 Ø5.1
ΔE Greyscale 5.69 | 0.57-98 Ø5.4
Gamma: 2.11
| Microsoft Lumia 435 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 8 GB eMMC Flash | Microsoft Lumia 535 Adreno 302, 200 MSM8212, 8 GB eMMC Flash | Nokia X Adreno 203, S4 Play MSM8625Q, 4 GB Flash | LG L40 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 4 GB Flash | Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 4 GB Flash | Acer Liquid Z4 Mali-400 MP, MT6572, 4 GB Flash | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Screen | 27% | -13% | 19% | 20% | -27% | |
| Brightness middle | 284 | 431 52% | 397 40% | 396 39% | 373 31% | 373 31% |
| Brightness | 282 | 424 50% | 397 41% | 380 35% | 365 29% | 348 23% |
| Brightness Distribution | 92 | 90 -2% | 92 0% | 91 -1% | 96 4% | 81 -12% |
| Black Level * | 0.56 | 0.64 -14% | 0.85 -52% | 0.51 9% | 0.5 11% | 0.6 -7% |
| Contrast | 507 | 673 33% | 467 -8% | 776 53% | 746 47% | 622 23% |
| Colorchecker dE 2000 * | 5.64 | 3.6 36% | 7.77 -38% | 6.01 -7% | 4.84 14% | 12.31 -118% |
| Greyscale dE 2000 * | 5.69 | 3.71 35% | 9.83 -73% | 5.45 4% | 5.62 1% | 13.06 -130% |
| Gamma | 2.11 104% | 2.4 92% | 2.59 85% | 2.29 96% | 2.59 85% | 1.88 117% |
| CCT | 7817 83% | 6878 95% | 10239 63% | 6954 93% | 7943 82% | 15301 42% |
* ... smaller is better
The black value, more precisely the remaining brightness with black areas, is not overwhelming either with 0.56 cd/m², even though the competitors are on a similarly bad level. With a contrast of 507:1, the Lumia 435 is still worse than the rivals because the maximum brightness is quite low. In practice, this results in very pale colors and dark areas that look more like dark gray than black.
Our tests with a spectrophotometer and the software CalMAN reveal the blue cast of the display, which is visible to the human eye: Bright shades of gray and white areas in particular shift towards blue compared to the sRGB reference. The average DeltaE deviation of the grayscale and the ColorChecker are both higher than 5 and therefore easily visible. However, the deviations of the Nokia X or the Acer Liquid Z4 were even higher. Overall, the colors are inaccurate and tend towards blue, so they appear quite cool.
The combination of low brightness, glossy surface and the limited viewing angle of the display make it difficult to see the display content in bright environments in the outdoors, and almost impossible under direct sunlight. The visibility is much better indoors and in darker environments.
Because of the TN LED technology, the viewing angles of the panel are not very wide: The brightness is reduced when you move to the left and the right, but the visibility is still decent. On the other hand, viewing angles from above and below quickly result in color shifts and the contrast collapses, so you cannot see all the details when you exceed a certain angle.
Performance
The SoC of the Lumia 435, Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 MSM8210, has two cores that run with up to 1.2 GHz. This SoC is designed for inexpensive entry-level devices and does not provide much performance, but it is sufficient to ensure the smooth handling of the operating system in most scenarios. You can hardly notice any stutters. Our benchmarks show a significant performance deficit compared to the Lumia 535 equipped with a quad-core SoC with the same clock.
The integrated graphics solution Adreno 302 provides sufficient performance for simple games. More complex 3D benchmarks like "Basemark X" or "GFXBench" can cause issues on the Microsoft Lumia 435: either they refused to start at all, or they crashed the system. However, most games did run.
Overall, we were satisfied with the web browsing performance, but the integrated Internet Explorer is not as fast as Google’s Chrome, which is also reflected in the benchmark results: The Motorola Moto E, for example, is much faster when you browse the web.
| Linpack Android / IOS | |
| Single Thread (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| Nokia X | |
| Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 | |
| Multi Thread (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| Nokia X | |
| Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 | |
| Mozilla Kraken 1.1 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 | |
| WebXPRT 2013 | |
| Overall Score (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Photo Effects (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Face Detection (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Stocks Dashboard (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Offline Notes (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Octane V2 - Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| LG L40 | |
| Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 | |
| Google V8 Ver. 7 - Google V8 Ver. 7 Score (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| Nokia X | |
| Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 | |
| Acer Liquid Z4 | |
| Sunspider - 1.0 Total Score (sort by value) | |
| Microsoft Lumia 435 | |
| Microsoft Lumia 535 | |
| Nokia X | |
| LG L40 | |
| Acer Liquid Z4 | |
* ... smaller is better
Gaming Performance
The integrated SoC is not really a gaming monster and the small graphics card is not powerful enough for current high-end games like "Asphalt 8: Airborne": Despite significantly reduced details (not adjustable in the Windows Phone version) you will have to live with some dropped frames. It is playable, but it is more entertaining and also looks much better with faster GPUs. Casual games like the "Angry Birds" series are not a problem for the SoC.
Inputs via the touchscreen and the position sensor are sufficiently precise, but sometimes we had the feeling that the touchscreen did not execute our inputs immediately. This could be due to either the low CPU performance, or slight inaccuracies in the touchscreen.
Emissions
Temperature
You do not have to worry about the temperature development of the Microsoft Lumia 435: The absolute maximum temperature under load is 34.1 °C (~93 °F), so only very sensitive users should notice it, especially since the difference compared to idling is less than 2 °C (~3.5 °F).
(+) The maximum temperature on the upper side is 34.1 °C / 93 F, compared to the average of 34.9 °C / 95 F, ranging from 21.9 to 55.8 °C for the class Smartphone.
(+) The bottom heats up to a maximum of 29.4 °C / 85 F, compared to the average of 33.7 °C / 93 F
(+) In idle usage, the average temperature for the upper side is 30.3 °C / 87 F, compared to the device average of 32.7 °C / 91 F.
Speakers
As with the Nokia X, you get quite a decent speaker: Medium tones and bass are not that present, but high tones are clear and just slightly distorted at the maximum volume. By the way: The Lumia can be quite loud when you crank it up and it is easy to fill a small room with sound. You do not get a headset, but you can enjoy a decent sound when you attach your own headphones.
Energy Management
Power Consumption
One of the major drawbacks of the Microsoft Lumia 535 was the high power consumption that also affected the battery runtimes. This is not a big problem for the Lumia 435, but the consumption values are still much higher compared to the Motorola Moto E or LG L40: Our review unit consumed at least 0.7 to 1.5 Watts while idling, and up to 3.5 Watts under load. The standby consumption is also slightly high.
| Off / Standby |   0 / 0.4 Watt |
| Idle |  0.7 / 1.3 / 1.5 Watt |
| Load |
2.8 / 3.5 Watt |
    
| |
Battery Runtime
The battery capacity of the Lumia 435 is 5.8 Wh and therefore similar or slightly smaller than the comparison Android devices. However, the Lumia 535 has a much larger battery with 7 Wh, but it also has to handle the high power consumption. Both Lumia devices manage very similar battery runtimes and even the result of the WLAN test is identical. 6:16 hours are practical, but still shorter than the Android rivals. The energy-saving mode, which is active by default, cannot really change this. It deactivates background services and can – in theory – increase the runtimes by a couple of hours.
| Microsoft Lumia 435 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 8 GB eMMC Flash | Microsoft Lumia 535 Adreno 302, 200 MSM8212, 8 GB eMMC Flash | Nokia X Adreno 203, S4 Play MSM8625Q, 4 GB Flash | LG L40 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 4 GB Flash | Motorola Moto E 1. Gen 2014 Adreno 302, 200 8210, 4 GB Flash | Acer Liquid Z4 Mali-400 MP, MT6572, 4 GB Flash | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Battery Runtime | 0% | 39% | 98% | 70% | 32% | |
| Reader / Idle | 735 | 948 29% | 1048 43% | 1336 82% | ||
| H.264 | 422 | 322 -24% | 350 -17% | |||
| WiFi | 376 | 376 0% | 598 59% | 860 129% | 846 125% | 498 32% |
| Load | 132 | 127 -4% | 152 15% | 221 67% | 248 88% |
Verdict
If you want to pay only 100 Euros (~$112) for your next smartphone, you will have to live with some restrictions: The Microsoft Lumia 435 cannot keep up with the much better Lumia 535, which costs slightly more than 100 Euros. The screen and the cameras in particular are worse and the chassis is quite bulky.
However, price-conscious users will get 8 GB of storage and 1 GB of memory, which is not a matter of course in this product class. You also get all the comprehensive software additions from the Lumia-series in the Lumia 435. The battery is replaceable and you can expand the storage via microSD card. The operating system runs smoothly and you really cannot feel a warming of the case.
The low price means that you just have to live with some drawbacks, including the unreliable GPS sensor, the display with pale colors and a low resolution, the front camera that is actually not really suitable for video calls and the bad quality of the microphone. Nevertheless, the performance of the Lumia 435 is not too bad compared with the similarly priced rivals, especially since Windows Phone 8.1 is running much smoother on weak devices than Android.
