Nokia Lumia 735 Review
by Brett Howse on February 3, 2015 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Microsoft
- Nokia
- Lumia
CPU Performance
This is the third Lumia smartphone that I have reviewed in the past year with the same SoC inside, so there should be no surprises as far as performance. The 1 GB of RAM is important, as some Windows Store apps are only available to devices with at least 1 GB of memory. The Snapdragon 400 MSM8926 provides plenty of power for navigating the OS, but lacks the grunt of devices like the Lumia 930 and HTC One M8. It is more forgivable in a device at this price point than the Lumia 830, even though there are other devices that may have higher specification SoCs for at or around this price point.
As this is the third device we have tested with the same SoC, there is not much to discuss about performance, but if you would like to compare this device to any other phone we have tested, you can use our online benchmark comparison database, Bench.
Quad-core Cortex A7 is not going to light the world on fire, and the Lumia 735 performs very similarly to the Lumia 630 and 830 that we have tested previously.
GPU Performance
Although the GPU powering the Lumia 735 is the same as the 630 and 830, we can now compare the Adreno 305 graphics in Windows Phone with the same GFXBench version as is available on iOS and Android. Kishonti, who are the developers of GFXBench, recently updated the Windows Phone version to 3.0.4, up from the old version 2.7. BaseMark X 1.1 is our other GPU benchmark for mobile phones, but it would not launch on this phone, and seems to have some compatibility issues with Windows Phone as I have seen this before with the Lumia 930. Performance should be the same as the Lumia 830 for BaseMark X 1.1.
Having GFXBench 3.0 now on the platform, we can now analyse the performance degradation over time.
There is no throttling at all on the Lumia 735, with the first and last set of runs for GFXBench at exactly the same frames per second.
Compared to the Snapdragon 800, performance is not even close, but with the pricing of the Lumia 735, and other advantages of the Snapdragon 400 such as battery life, the performance is not too bad for basic apps. The Lumia 930 can open apps quite a bit quicker, but with Windows Phone, animations are always smooth and fluid.
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Brett Howse - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
The Glance screen app is only available to phones with the correct hardware to use it unfortunately. Would be nice if it was just an app.noblemo - Friday, February 13, 2015 - link
The slow Wi-Fi means disabling your 5GHz radio or upgrading to an access point with simultaneous 2.4/5GHz coverage. I ran into this issue when I bought a Lumia 635 as a house phone. Now I have to run my laptop and Icon on congested 2.4GHz when no one else in the area is running 5GHz. First World problem, but still annoying.nathanddrews - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
In all honesty, I'm waiting to upgrade my S3 to an Intel-X86-powered, Windows 10 phone. We're almost there.http://makeameme.org/media/created/almost-there-al...
juan96 - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
For display test, I know that Anandtech uses Calman SW and i1Pro for measuring . But I curious, how they input test pattern to cell phone? As anybody knows, MicroUSB port of cellphone is output only.deltaman - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Actually, Lumia phones DO support transferring data in BOTH directions via the micro USB port; the phone mounts like any other USB storage device when connected to a Windows machine, & M'soft offers a free utility for file transfers to/from Mac OS devices...juan96 - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
Yes, I misunderstood. MicroUSB is not only for output. But I still didn't find the solution to use Android tablet uses as display device like monitor.tipoo - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
With 720p and MicroSD thrown in, it could be a decent Moto G competitor. I wish they at least upgraded to the Snapdragon 410 though.tipoo - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
It's pretty silly how poorly the WP browser does against the equivalent SoC in an Android phone. Sunspider is the only thing it does well in, and we know Microsoft targeted that for optimizations, making it less of a real world result. They don't even have a terrible rendering engine on the desktop side, so I don't get why they continue to underperform so much on the mobile side.tipoo - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
And the GPU too, what is with that?Brett Howse - Tuesday, February 3, 2015 - link
This will finally be resolved when Spartan is the new browser in Windows Phone 10. Not that this is any excuse for the poor implementation now, but finally, browser performance seems to be a priority.