Microsoft continues to focus on the affordable smartphone space because that is where the big sales volumes are. The dual-SIM Lumia 540 is the latest phone in that category. But is it really worth the money?
Good looks, but slippery
The Lumia 540 is a good-looking phone with a shiny plastic body. It looks very similar to the Lumia 640. It comes in funky colour options—orange and blue—along with the more traditional black and white. The back panel of the Lumia 540, however, can be a bit slippery. The screen lock/unlock button is placed in the middle of the right side panel and is easily accessible with one hand.
This is a phone that is nicely put together, and we did not notice any obvious measures to cut down on material quality to make it affordable.
Sharp and bright display
The Lumia 540 comes with a 5-inch IPS LCD display with ClearBlack technology, which deepens the black colours on the screen, thereby making all other colours look better. It also claims to make the display less reflective in bright light, thus the text appears crisper. Colours look quite natural and subdued, compared to some displays on rivals smartphones that boost colour reproduction to make the screen look better than it actually is.There is also a setting that allows the user to further tweak the screen’s colour richness and saturation levels.
The Huawei Honor 4X (Rs.10,499) has a brighter display comparatively, but the Lumia 540 is more user-friendly in bright light or outdoors during the day. The screen resolution is 1,280x720 pixels, which makes it a good option for watching movies and videos.
Lag-free performance
The Lumia 540 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 quad-core processor. It is not a very powerful processor, but because of Windows Phone’s better optimization and hardware, it handles games such as GT Racing 2: The Real Car Experience, with ease—though the load time is slow, the gameplay is smooth. For most users, this phone can handle movies, social networking and Web browsing with ease and can open six-seven apps at the same time before the lag starts to show.
The internal memory is limited to 8 GB, but there is a microSD slot that supports up to 128 GB memory cards. Microsoft is bundling 30 GB OneDrive cloud storage for backing up photographs and documents.
Despite the Lumia 540’s good showing, the Lumia 640 is a better option—it has a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor, which is better if you wish to use the phone for more than a year or if you will be running a bunch of apps at the same time, most of the time.
Latest OS but familiar UI
It runs on Windows 8.1 with the familiar-looking tile interface. Known as Live Tile, this feature enables app updates on the app’s time itself, such as the latest updates on the Facebook app and the newest updates in the news app. The level of customization features are limited compared to Android—such as themes that a lot of Android phones offer. But the good part is that if someone wants a simple smartphone, Windows Phone is most definitely a better bet than Android.
The Lumia 540 comes pre-loaded with Skype, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) and the mobile version of the Office suite.
Microsoft has said that the Lumia 540 will be among the list of phones that will get the Windows 10 for phone update later this year.
Slow camera, but good in low light
Affordable Lumia phones always have one big problem—the camera is extremely slow in capturing a photo, processing it and then saving it to the photo gallery. Lumia 540 with its 8-megapixel camera has the same problem. But if you are patient, this camera can capture details and colours very well. It is surprisingly good in low light too. The 5-megapixel front camera has a wide-angle lens which can easily fit three-four people in a frame. It is not very crisp but good enough for selfies.
Despite the positives, the Honor 4X has a better camera and the image processing is much quicker as well.
Battery that lasts a day
The Lumia 540 comes with a 2,200 mAh battery, which gave more than a day’s backup with reading, social networking, Web-browsing and watching movies.
Verdict
If you want an affordable smartphone, the Windows Phone Lumia 540, at Rs.10,199, is one option that doesn’t really do much wrong. But, the fact is that, its own sibling, the Lumia 640, does a much better job and cost less as well (Rs.9,999). Plus, if you are looking at Android options as well, the Honor 4x (5.5-inch display, 8 GB internal memory and 4G capabilities) is worth considering. You can also go for the Lenovo A7000 (Rs.8,999), which is powered by an octa-core processor, supports 4G network and has a 5.5-inch HD screen.
