Nokia Lumia 735 Review
by Brett Howse on February 3, 2015 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Lumia
Display
Smartphone displays are one of the most important features of any device. It is the prime method of interaction, it provides information, and for a lot of people, it is their window into the world. We put a lot of testing into displays because of their importance. The Lumia brand contains both Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) and Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) panels depending on the model, and in the case of the Lumia 735 it has a 1280x720 resolution OLED in an RGBG format. While not as high resolution as many flagships today, the 4.7 inch display still packs in 316 pixels per inch, so based on that number alone it should be fairly sharp.
Lumia displays often pack in extra features as well, and the Lumia 735 is no exception. The protective outer shell is Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which has an “Easy to Clean” coating on top. The lower end Lumia phones lack this coating, and it can give them a surface with too much grip, making it difficult to move your finger around smoothly. Thankfully the Lumia 735 has no such issues. Nokia added ClearBlack to most of their models, and the Lumia 735 does have this polarizer to help with outdoor visibility and improve black levels. Another feature of many Lumia phones is the Super Sensitive Touch which allows the display to be used with gloves on – a boon when you live in colder climates or on Hoth. It also features the same Sunlight Readability Enhancements as other Lumia models such as the 930, which is content-adaptive backlight control software called Assertive Display from Apical. This makes the screen much easier to use outdoors, as this image from our Lumia 930 review shows.
Sunlight Readbility Off (upper picture) vs On (lower picture)
To test the displays characteristics and accuracy, we turn to SpectralCal’s CalMAN 5 software suite with a custom workflow. The X-Rite i1Pro Spectrophotometer is used to test color accuracy, and the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter is used for contrast ratios and brightness. Since this is an OLED display, we generally ignore contrast ratios and black levels due to the black level of OLED being zero, meaning the contrast ratio for OLED displays is infinite. I once tried to graph infinity but it did not go over well.
At about 300 nits, the brightness of the display is on the low end. This is fairly common with OLED displays, and high white levels can be a real strain on the battery. LCD panels can generally have higher brightness levels, although at the expense of true black, so as always, this is a compromise. The Sunlight Readability Enhancements and ClearBlack polarizer do help with outdoor viewing though, and I never had any issues using it outside.
The white point and grayscale accuracy of the Lumia 735 is very good. Greens get a bit high in the middle of the range, but overall a dE value of 3.01 along with a white point close to 6505K makes this panel a lot better to use than older OLED, which tended to have a very blue cast to it.
Moving on to the saturation sweep, we can see the Lumia 735 is not as accurate with colors as it is with grayscale. Measuring to sRGB, you can see that the panel is oversaturated on all of the colors, which once again is a tendency of OLED displays. It does hit the entire sRGB gamut though, which is something that we still do not see on many notebook computers. The saturations are not terrible, but they are far from perfect.
We can see that in our colorchecker test, the good grayscale helps the poor saturation sweep in the overall result. It is a better result than the Lumia 930 gave, but we want to see values under 3 if possible. When I originally tested the Lumia 630, I was pretty amazed at the display accuracy and hoped that it would continue with the other Lumia reviews, but that has not been the case.
The debate about OLED vs LCD may never end, but we have seen some accurate OLED displays in the past year. The Lumia 735 is not a terrible display by any means, and has a good white point and solid grayscale performance. Brightness could be a bit higher for outdoor use, but with the other display features I never found it to be a chore to use it outside. The OLED display shines in any sort of use case where darker subject matter is being displayed, since the LCD has always had poor performance with dark scenes.
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Mondozai - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
I have a Lumia 1520, which I am very, very satisfied with. Nokia makes some really sturdy phones. I have dropped it quite a few times, around 4-5 times, over the last 7 months. It's something that happens to me maybe once a month or less, but it happens.Not even a scratch on the screen or even the body. It's high-quality. The 1520 was also relatively cheap when I bought it(around 380 euros off-contract).
So that is my disclaimer. But here's the thing about these phones. They are very underspecced for a high price. Nokia(or now Microsoft) does awesome high-spec phones, but they are terrible at the lower-end.
The Lumia 520 was a hit for its time, when most budget stuff was terrible. But now, it is not hard to find decent quality low-price phones. It's not just Xiaomi. In places like India, you now have MASSIVE choice. Even the mid-range is getting serious competition from players like the Moto G, who in turn are getting disrupted by even cheaper alternatives. The Micromax Yu phone, the upcoming Zenfone 2(flagship specs for 200 dollars).
The short summary is that Nokia/MS is getting increasingly less competitive with the market. They used to do well in the low-end but now they are getting crushed there. They still do very good high-end phones but that is not where the market is going.
I hope, for selfish reasons, that they get their act togther. More WP users means more attention to the app ecosystem, but my god, you gotta do better than this MS.
Mondozai - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Just an addendum, the app ecosystem in WP is today massively improved. I'm anxious to get ahold of the WP 10 technical preview, since the changes there will essentially bring the OS into parity with iOS/Android on a technical basis. The OS is very fast, has no jutter and no lag.I feel like the Nokia/MS thing have gotten in reverse in a sense. They used to make killer phones but with a faltering OS and a poor app ecosystem. In my view, the latter part has been largely fixed, while the strong suits of WP (the speed, the lagless experience etc) have been strengthened.
Now, most Lumia phones we're seeing are not that competitive with the market. The L920 was an amazing deal for its time. In my view, if you can get the 1520 for cheap, it's the equivalent of that phone(if you are comfortable with big phablets). But if you're not into the high-end, you're going to overprice. A flagship Zenfone 2 for 200 dollars will simply crush what they have on offer. The OnePlus, the Micromax Yu, it just continues. Android is becomming ungodly affordable, and WP isn't keeping up. Apple has the premium segment increasingly sewn up.
kspirit - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The lagless experience hasn't improved, it's gotten worse. When Microsoft started moving apps from Silverlight to WinRT and encouraging devs to make apps in WinRT for universal apps, it killed a lot of the smooth experience. My 925 was way faster on WP8 than it is on 8.1.1. The app load times are the actual offenders.The "loading" and "resuming" screens have become painful. Sure there might be runtime optimizations that MS has yet to do since WinRT is much newer than Silverlight. WinRT apps can't run under the lockscreen either, they reload when your phone locks over them. I am hoping they fix it with Windows (Phone) 10.
hwangeruk - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
kspirit. That's does not tally with reality. WinRT is native code (COM wrapped Win32 API)Silverlight comes out as IL , so runs managed. My universal apps start, and run faster so note sure what your issue is.
Wolfpup - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
I have no idea how they're selling, but in the U.S. at least, the cheaper Nokias are still the only good cheap phones. For several times more than like a 635 you can get a Google Play Edition Motorola, but even then it lacks LTE (and costs much more, even if it's still pretty cheap).kmmatney - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
For cheap phones for my family, I just buy used phones. I think the best deal is the Galaxy S3 - I bought a used one in excellent condition (looked brand new) for my wife for $90.mymy - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Excellent choice. I have had my S3 since inception, around 2.5 years. A solid performer. A good phone, great screen. Have not had a single problem. Skipped the S4/S5, just getting to large.hwangeruk - Saturday, February 7, 2015 - link
I have a Lumia 735, iPhone 6 and Samsung S4. The S4 is the worst hardware (plasticy) worst OS (Android is ugly anyway, and Samsung ruin it with their bloatware). The Lumia 735 is on a level playing field with the iPhone 6, both high quality OSes, both much more modern than Android. The only thing I really like about my iPhone is the touch ID. Other than that the Lumia 735 is comparable. Ignoring "spectard" comparison, but in real life usage all 3 are almost exactly the same size, all run just as fast. The iPhone is super expensive but I didn't pay for it. If it was my own money i'd get the 735 every time. Best value by miles.Jon Tseng - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Have to say I do love the design. When I clocked it in the shop I thought it was the Nokia N9 brought back to life.It looks like its a monolithic unibody, but actually the seam for the removable back is right around the screen edge so you get unibody looks but removable/replaceable back.
Daniel Egger - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The 830 has another couple of disadvantages over the 735 except for the price: It's too big and it's too heavy and if you happen to have one x20s with x > 7 then it's also a step sidewards feature wise.The slow WiFi is not really a problem since in 99% of all cases you'll have to process the data in some form anyways so the bottleneck will be the CPU. 5GHz would have been nice though.
The only real letdown as you've correctly identified is the lack of Glance, but since that's only software anyways I don't see any reason why the might not be added at a later point.