Lumia 635 - Revisited
So back in August of this year - I decided to update my Lumia 521 and my wife's even older Lumia 710 to the new Lumia 635.
Since I was already very familiar with the 521, the 635 seemed like a natural replacement and the price was right @ $129 at the MS store.
LTE support was nice uprade. I'm on TMO and in travels to both coasts had no signal issues. Voice quality was fine and features like WiFi calling and Visual Voicemail were supported.
I expanded the base 8GB of storage via a 32GB SD card and have not had any issues with the 512MB of RAM as far as running all of my day to day applications.
However, some applications do load slowly, especially the Nokia Camera App and Good Secure Messaging - which is required for my work.
Obviously moving to a 4.5" screen was also a nice upgrade in real estate from the 4" 521. The DPI was similar to what I had the on the 521 so the clarity was fine. I don't watch movies on my phone so the lack of HD resolution was not really a big deal.
The camera experience has been mixed. My wife really missed the flash more than I thought and the lack of a dedicated camera button was missed. Photo quality is just ok. The 5Mp camera is okay for simple well lit stills, but trying to do anything more advanced is just not possible. Videos are also compromised - often grainy with poor sound..
Both phones are running WP 8.1 Update 1 with Cyan firmware and MS's Preview for Developers updates turned on.
So my experience so far has been relatively positive. The phone has been relatively stable and features like the larger screen, LTE support, etc have been good. I have had a few system hangs that required battery removal to recover and sometimes I run into some flakiness with the bluetooth stack that requires turning it off and on..
WiFi works well and I can easily connect at home and on the road. But leaving both WiFi and LTE on for long periods can cause some instability.
On the App side I have seen both good and bad. So on the good side - some new apps from folks like Hilton, National Car Rental and Uber and updates to all of the MSN and Lumia apps. On the bad some apps like American Airlines was pulled from the store and no longer works.
The Music app is still poor regardless of the at least 6 updates I've seen since August. Especially with locally stored ripped music.
The Here Drive app is also not very good. I drive quite a bit in SoCal and sometimes even when I know the route I use the app to estimate travel time with traffic. But often I find the app having me exit freeways early and putting me on a bunch of side streets when I could have just gone down 1 or 2 more exits and been right there. Also it drains the battery quickly. It can easily drain half the battery life in just a couple of hours. Honestly I miss the Bing Navigation that was available back with WP 7.5. To me it was superior to Nokia's offering.
My wife's experience has not been positive. Once the initial interest of the larger screen wore off - we started to notice some issues.
First her unit runs much hotter than mine. Sure - she stores her phone in her purse - but it's no more confined than in my pants pocket. The back at times gets so hot she can barely hold it. To be honest I probably should have taken it back to the MS store and replaced it.
Second even though she is at the same OS and firmware level as I am - her 635 is not as stable. We have had to reboot her phone several times and she runs far fewer apps than I do.
She has also experienced intermittent bluetooth connectivity issues with our car connection.
I recently performed a full reset to see if that corrects some of the stability issues.
She really misses the flash for the camera and she also misses the lack of a dedicated camera button.
So after just 4 months of use - I am considering changing from the 635 for both me and my wife.
Is the 635 a bad phone ? No. Not really
For a basic WP 8.1 device I think it is the best value out there. You can go buy one today for as little as $39 no-contract and so to be able to get a "Smartphone" with the capabilities of Windows Phone for that price is pretty amazing.
With that said, the phone is basic. Low end processor and ram, low end camera and screen. It can get bogged down with many of the more advanced applications and in fact can not run some higher end games.
Bottom line - the 635 is a nice starter phone and a nice upgrade from the 521. If you don't try and do too much with it then it can serve you well. It's a great value at less than $100 and the polycarbonate shell is much more tolerant of drops than other devices
Knowing what I know now - would I have still bought them - the answer is probably yes. But now the question is what do I replace them with ?
More on that soon...
Since I was already very familiar with the 521, the 635 seemed like a natural replacement and the price was right @ $129 at the MS store.
LTE support was nice uprade. I'm on TMO and in travels to both coasts had no signal issues. Voice quality was fine and features like WiFi calling and Visual Voicemail were supported.
I expanded the base 8GB of storage via a 32GB SD card and have not had any issues with the 512MB of RAM as far as running all of my day to day applications.
However, some applications do load slowly, especially the Nokia Camera App and Good Secure Messaging - which is required for my work.
Obviously moving to a 4.5" screen was also a nice upgrade in real estate from the 4" 521. The DPI was similar to what I had the on the 521 so the clarity was fine. I don't watch movies on my phone so the lack of HD resolution was not really a big deal.
The camera experience has been mixed. My wife really missed the flash more than I thought and the lack of a dedicated camera button was missed. Photo quality is just ok. The 5Mp camera is okay for simple well lit stills, but trying to do anything more advanced is just not possible. Videos are also compromised - often grainy with poor sound..
Both phones are running WP 8.1 Update 1 with Cyan firmware and MS's Preview for Developers updates turned on.
So my experience so far has been relatively positive. The phone has been relatively stable and features like the larger screen, LTE support, etc have been good. I have had a few system hangs that required battery removal to recover and sometimes I run into some flakiness with the bluetooth stack that requires turning it off and on..
WiFi works well and I can easily connect at home and on the road. But leaving both WiFi and LTE on for long periods can cause some instability.
On the App side I have seen both good and bad. So on the good side - some new apps from folks like Hilton, National Car Rental and Uber and updates to all of the MSN and Lumia apps. On the bad some apps like American Airlines was pulled from the store and no longer works.
The Music app is still poor regardless of the at least 6 updates I've seen since August. Especially with locally stored ripped music.
The Here Drive app is also not very good. I drive quite a bit in SoCal and sometimes even when I know the route I use the app to estimate travel time with traffic. But often I find the app having me exit freeways early and putting me on a bunch of side streets when I could have just gone down 1 or 2 more exits and been right there. Also it drains the battery quickly. It can easily drain half the battery life in just a couple of hours. Honestly I miss the Bing Navigation that was available back with WP 7.5. To me it was superior to Nokia's offering.
My wife's experience has not been positive. Once the initial interest of the larger screen wore off - we started to notice some issues.
First her unit runs much hotter than mine. Sure - she stores her phone in her purse - but it's no more confined than in my pants pocket. The back at times gets so hot she can barely hold it. To be honest I probably should have taken it back to the MS store and replaced it.
Second even though she is at the same OS and firmware level as I am - her 635 is not as stable. We have had to reboot her phone several times and she runs far fewer apps than I do.
She has also experienced intermittent bluetooth connectivity issues with our car connection.
I recently performed a full reset to see if that corrects some of the stability issues.
She really misses the flash for the camera and she also misses the lack of a dedicated camera button.
So after just 4 months of use - I am considering changing from the 635 for both me and my wife.
Is the 635 a bad phone ? No. Not really
For a basic WP 8.1 device I think it is the best value out there. You can go buy one today for as little as $39 no-contract and so to be able to get a "Smartphone" with the capabilities of Windows Phone for that price is pretty amazing.
With that said, the phone is basic. Low end processor and ram, low end camera and screen. It can get bogged down with many of the more advanced applications and in fact can not run some higher end games.
Bottom line - the 635 is a nice starter phone and a nice upgrade from the 521. If you don't try and do too much with it then it can serve you well. It's a great value at less than $100 and the polycarbonate shell is much more tolerant of drops than other devices
Knowing what I know now - would I have still bought them - the answer is probably yes. But now the question is what do I replace them with ?
More on that soon...
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