Nokia Lumia 735 Review: The latest mid-range from Microsoft

[Scorpus]

Selfies are a really, really big thing. Walk around any major city or tourist attraction and you’ll see loads of people holding their phones at arm’s length to get themselves into a front-facing-camera photo. You even sometimes see people with their phones on poles to get the most epic wide angle shot, looking silly at the same time.

The problem with selfies is that the front facing cameras on most smartphones suck. A two megapixel sensor with awful low light performance and weak optics is a hardware combination I would verbally annihilate if it were the main camera on a smartphone. Some manufacturers have noticed this, promising to deliver significantly better sensors to facilitate higher quality selfies that we all love to take.

And so the Nokia Lumia 735 was born. Under the command of Microsoft, the company’s devices team has produced a mid-range handset dubbed the “selfie phone”, complete with a higher resolution and better quality five megapixel front facing camera. Although the 735’s standout feature is the selfie cam, it also packs other things we’ve come to love from Lumias.

Read the complete review.

 

[Cryio]

Luckily (or sadly?) in Romania the Lumia 720 was at the same price as the original Moto G and was it was a great device back then. The Lumia 730 is at the same price or slightly more (40 USD) than the Moto G 2014.

Eh, good trade for two better cameras, better design and for guaranteed smooth experience. Plus vastly superior micro SDCard implementation out of the box.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

A Selfie camera is the least important aspect of a phone as far as I'm concerned, I couldn't care less if my phone never even had one at all.
It sounds like a decent phone all round but as the reviewer stated, it's far too expensive for what you get. That and the fact that it's a Windows phone with it's gaudy live tiles and pathetic app store.

 

[Guest]

Selfie or not, it's a nice, well-sized, thin, vivid and affordable phone we haven't seen for some time. I got one recently and very happy with it.

 

[drjekelmrhyde]

Most people I know take selfies outdoors to avoid others seeing things in their house

 

[tipstir]

How does this work as a phone? That's all I care about. All these benchmarks for phone that has no moving parts all electronic ROM/RAM, MPU an etc. So this phone is 98% faster than 520 version. If it cost less I'll get it.

4.7" panel is okay really don't want over 5" then it won't fit in your shirt pocket. So now it has a flash in the back and front facing camera since MS does run Skype so the need for that feature.

Your review was top notch, but most won't care too much about benchmarks a mid price cell phone. As alone as it can run Windows 8.1 or higher that's all they care about. I don't use my 520 too much as camera, I use SONY SLR or my Olympus SLR for those purposes.

At one time 1.2 mp was top of the charts for digital camera. If this has 2 mp in the front which is a lot better than VGA that's okay!

As long as this phone block callers by number or name or both that's a plus and more memory and storage. MPU cores on cell phone might never be use at the max, but still comes in handy.

MicroSD or Nano types? for internal storage. 520 max out at 64MB what does the 735 128MB for external storage?

 

[SOU55]

Very good phone for a midrange device, hate it has windows OS tought

 

[gamoniac]

It's time for WP to come up with a high-end phone. We can't even find a Lumia 930 anywhere in the US except for the Icon with Verizon. MS really shot themselves in the foot with the carrier exclusivities, first 920 with AT&T, then 930 with 930. If they are trying so hard to widen their market, I don't understand why they did this. Hopefully we won't see more of them.

 

[Guest]

At the time of writing I think this is a pretty good value phone. My only major gripes is the length of the phone (with unused space above and especially below the screen) and the implementation of on screen buttons. Personally I think dedicated buttons just below the screen are much better.