Back in September, Microsoft launched what would be the last two Nokia branded Lumias. The Lumia 830 was announced as an affordable flagship, and we reviewed the 830 back in November. The Lumia 730 and 735 were launched with a different feature set, a lower price, and a higher resolution front facing camera. Microsoft announced them as “built for Skype calls and selfies” with the inclusion of the five megapixel front facing camera and put the package in a smaller, lighter body. It was launched with four colors, with the 730 being a dual SIM version and the 735 is a single SIM with LTE capabilities.

Right after our Lumia 830 review, Microsoft asked if I would like to review the 735 as well. Although many of the internals are similar or identical to the 830 and 630, there is enough different that this is really a unique phone in the Lumia range. It lacks the PureView branded camera system, but still has a good camera. The OLED display is 720p, which is a step up from the lower cost 630, and the same resolution as the 830, but in a slightly smaller screen size. At 4.7”, this is the only Lumia available at this size.

The Lumia 830 tried to put a higher end package together with the metal frame, 5” display, and a PureView 10 MP camera with OIS into a less expensive price bracket. Although the SoC in the 830 is only a Snapdragon 400, it is overall a great phone which is hampered only by its price. The 735 steps the price down further and packages the phone in a more traditional Lumia style with a fully polycarbonate body.

	Nokia Lumia 735	Nokia Lumia 830
SoC	MSM8926 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400	MSM8926 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 400
RAM/NAND	1 GB LPDDR2, 8 GB NAND + microSD 128 GB	1 GB LPDDR2, 16 GB NAND + microSD 128 GB
Display	4.7” 1280x720 ClearBlack OLED Corning Gorilla Glass 3	5.0” 1280x720 IPS ClearBlack LCD Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Network	GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA/LTE up to 150 Mbps	GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA/LTE up to 150 Mbps
Dimensions	134.7 x 68.5 x 8.9 (mm)	139.4 x 70.7 x 8.5 (mm)
Weight	134.3 grams	150 grams
Rear Camera	6.7MP, 1.4 µm pixels, 1/3.4" 16x9 CMOS, f/1.9, 26 mm focal length, LED Flash	10MP, 1.1 µm pixels, 1/3.4" 16x9 CMOS, f/2.2, 26 mm focal length, LED Flash
Front Camera	5MP wide angle, f/2.4, 1920x1080 video resolution	0.9MP wide angle, f/2.4, 1280x720 video resolution
Battery	2200 mAh, 3.8 V, 7.04 Wh	BV-L4A 2200 mAh, 3.8 V, 7.04 Wh
OS	Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim Firmware	Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim Firmware
Connectivity	802.11 b/g/n (2.4 GHz) + BT 4.0, USB2.0, DLNA, FM Radio	802.11 a/b/g/n + BT 4.0, USB2.0, DLNA, FM Radio
Location Technologies	Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou	Cellular and Wi-Fi network positioning, A-GPS, A-GLONASS, BeiDou
SIM Size	Nano SIM, Dual-SIM HSPA on Lumia 730	Nano SIM

Internally, it is very similar to the Lumia 830. The Snapdragon 400 MSM8926 provides the quad-core Cortex A7 at 1.2 GHz, as well as the LTE modem. Memory is identical at 1 GB of LPDDR2, which opens the entire range of Windows Store apps to this device. The OLED display also features ClearBlack, which is a polarizing filter to keep refractions and reflections from outside lighting to a minimum. Storage is less than the Lumia 830, with only 8 GB of internal NAND available. A micro SD card slot allows an additional 128 GB to be added, and Windows Phone’s Storage Sense app makes it easy to control where your data gets stored. The latest update to Windows Phone also allows future software updates to be staged to the SD card, making the 8 GB not as much of a detriment as on other platforms.

One rather large omission, which is available on the Lumia 830, is Glance screen support. Every Lumia should have Glance, as it is one of the best features. Because this one does not, it is a big knock against it, especially when moving from an older Lumia with Glance support.

Design

Mainstream smartphones seem to have settled in on a five inch display being the average, with a few just a bit larger and a few just a bit smaller. The Lumia 735, with a 4.7 inch display, is a great size for people who do not want the largest phone they can get.  Although the Lumia 735 is not created with ultra-high end materials, it carries the traditional Lumia design forward with a fully polycarbonate body finished with a glossy shell.

The 735 really feels like a successor to the original Lumia, the Lumia 800. Although larger, it features the same shape, with rounded sides and a squared off top and bottom. The curve continues into the display glass, with the sides of the glass featuring the same radius as the body, and it creates a great look and feel to the phone. The curved sides also compliment the smaller body size (as compared to the Lumia 830 and other five inch smartphones) and make it very comfortable to hold on to.

The top of the phone features the 3.5 mm headset jack, and the bottom of the phone has the micro USB connector for attaching to a PC or for charging. As with all Lumias, the left side has no buttons, and the right side features the power and volume rocker. Nokia has made a distinction with this year’s lineup of phones that any device without a PureView camera will not get a dedicated camera button, so the Lumia 735 lacks this. Windows Phone 8.1 does not have an easy way to access the camera through software other than to add the camera to the quick launch buttons in the Action Center, so this ends up being more of a burden than you would think. Also, unlike on the Lumia 830 and higher devices, the physical buttons are plastic, and are the same material as the body. They have great feedback though.

Speaking of buttons, the Lumia 735 follows in the footsteps of other devices like the Lumia 630 in that it lacks capacitive buttons for back, home, and search. The Lumia 630 compensated for this with on-screen buttons which had a dedicated number of pixels set aside for this task, but the Lumia 735 lacks this dedicated space on the display. The buttons will auto-hide when something like a photo is displayed, and can be accessed by swiping up on the display similar to modern HTC devices. I found this to be a less than perfect solution, and would prefer actual capacitive keys over losing display real estate to the on-screen versions but it does represent a dichotomy in the way of doing these - there will be users who prefer one over the other.

On-Screen Buttons appear in Screenshots since there is not a dedicated amount of screen for them

The back of the phone has a fairly minimalist look, with the Nokia logo subtly located in the center. The 6.7 MP camera sensor is in the center as well, near the top of the phone, and is flanked by the LED flash and one of the microphone grilles. There is also a faint Zeiss logo to let you know that this camera carries Carl Zeiss optics. The bottom of the back features the speaker grille. The back is also removable to get access to the micro SD slot as well as the battery. Even though the back is removable, there is no creaking or movement when installed. If you did not know the back was removable, you would think this is a unibody phone.

The Lumia 735 does not break new ground on industrial design or material choices, but it does continue with the traditional Lumia feel and look. The color choices are vibrant, and the orange that I received as a review unit looks great with the glossy finish. The phone fits well in the hand, and the curved glass on the front fits well with the design and provides a smooth transition to the body of the phone. Considering the back is removable, the smooth transition shows attention to detail.

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.

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.

Camera

The Lumia 735 is the first step under the other Lumias with PureView cameras. Although the definition of PureView has altered over the years, It appears that devices with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) are branded PureView, and those without are not. The 735 reaches a sort of middle ground though with it still having Zeiss optics on the 6.7 megapixel sensor. It only has a 1/3.4 inch sensor size, which is fairly small compared to something like the Lumia 930, but the aperture is f/1.9 which helps the camera bring in more light. The backside-illuminated image sensor is also in the 16:9 format, so widescreen images are not a crop of a 4:3 image.

One of the improvements on the Lumia 735 over higher model Lumias is the inclusion of a 5 megapixel front facing camera sensor, which is a big jump over the 0.9 megapixel version in the Lumia 830. This adds the ability to record 1080p on the front camera, in addition to the 5 MP stills. For anyone who uses Skype video calling often, or if you are enjoying the selfie craze, the much improved front camera will certainly be interesting.

Lumia 735 Front Camera (top left) Lumia 735 Rear Camera (top right) Lumia 930 Front Camera (bottom left) Lumia 930 rear camera (bottom right)

The specifications for the Lumia 735 do not give any more details on the front camera other than the increased megapixel count. The sensor size will certainly be much smaller than the rear sensor though, which means it will not be able to capture as much light. The aperture is f/2.4, further reducing its light gathering capabilities. We will not put the front camera through the same exhaustive testing as the rear camera, but to get a feel for the improvements to the front camera I did a couple of shots comparing the Lumia 735 front and rear cameras to the Lumia 930 front and rear cameras.

The 735 front camera is a big improvement on the 930. The Lumia 930 front camera image is washed out, dim, and full of jagged edges and loss of detail. However both front camera images lack the detail and capabilities of the rear cameras. It is certainly an improvement, but there could be a lot more improvement done to make this a true selfie phone.

To measure camera performance, we start with the ISO12233 test chart, which allows us to test for spatial resolution and what effect the ISP has on the image by attempting to remove aliasing.

ISO12233 Test Chart

The ISO12233 Test Chart is broken down into many sections to give a value to the amount of spatial resolution achieved in the overall image.

The 735 cannot resolve very fine detail, which means that when you start to crop the image, there is a loss of detail fairly early. This can be better viewed by looking at the Sagittal and Tangential lines.

The 735 starts to lose the ability to resolve detail around the 12 mark. It cannot quite resolve as much as the 830 can with the higher pixel count.

The same goes for the tangential lines, which begin to become murky around the 11-12 mark.

Controlled Scenes

To get a feeling for how the camera performs, we start with some controlled scenes and compare it to other devices. For the bright shot, there is plenty of light (well over 1100 lux) so you can get a feel for color reproduction. For the dark scenes, we set the lighting to 5 lux to get a feel for camera sensitivity.

The 735 does a nice job with the cast of this scene, getting the correct color balance and accurate colors from all of the items. This is a trend going forward on this phone. In well-lit scenes, it does very well.

The smaller sensor size and lack of Optical Image Stabilisation is counteracted by the larger pixel size and very low aperture on this phone. It does a reasonable job of pulling in light in dim scenes, but the images can be a bit grainy.

Outdoor Scenes (Night)

With a 1/3.4” sensor, the Lumia 735 is at a disadvantage against other Windows Phones like the Lumia 930, but it does share the same sensor size as the Lumia 830, which is a 10 megapixel camera versus the 6.7 megapixel camera in the 735. The smaller pixel size in the 830 is offset by Optical Image Stabilisation though, helping low light performance. Let us see how the 735 compares.

The f/1.9 and larger pixel size certainly helps the Lumia 735 with low light shots. There is quite a bit of graining in this image, but it is usable. That seems like faint praise, but truly it is a pretty demanding shot with the lighting in this scene.

Compared to the M8, the larger pixels in the HTC do a great job on this image, really pulling in a lot of light. The 735 does not fare as well.

Outdoor Scenes (Day)

During the daytime, there is generally enough usable light that even the smaller sensors have enough to work with.

I would have liked to get some images of flowers or something with more color, but this time of year there is not much color around. This shrub allows us to see the amount of detail available in the image though. At the default zoom, the Lumia 735 does quiet well. Where the sensor really loses out though is the ability to zoom.

Lumia 735 (top) vs Lumia 930 (bottom)

The Lumia 930 has a much larger sensor, and about three times the number of pixels, which gives it a lot more spatial resolution and the ability to crop photos without losing detail. The 735 camera is reasonable as long as you are not going to zoom.

I had the phone with me in Las Vegas for CES, so I was able to take some photos there as well. The results were all quite good for a midrange phone.

For day to day pictures, the Lumia 735 generally impressed me. It was always quick and easy to get a usable picture, as long as the camera app was set to quick launch. It does not have the imaging grunt of its higher priced brethren, but the camera is well suited for average scenes. It also does a reasonable job in lower light scenes with the larger pixels combined with the f/1.9 aperture. It cannot ultimately compete against the Lumia 930 or HTC One, but for a mid-range phone the camera can capture some nice images.

Capture Latency

Being able to take a picture quickly is important in many situations. There are a lot of factors that go into this, including camera app launch time, focus latency, and shot latency. We have seen a push in the smartphone industry to decrease the amount of time for focus, and some flagships have very good focus speeds now. Another latency is the shot time. Decreasing the amount of time between shots is very important as well. The Nokia Camera app has been very slow at this in the past, but Microsoft has updated the app tremendously to improve shot to shot time, as well as the camera launch time. The updated Lumia 930 does have this, however at the time of this review the new Lumia Camera app has not come to the 735, so we will also show the Microsoft camera app which is quicker.

The Microsoft camera app is likely going to get phased out with the Windows 10 update for phones. At the moment, it is only slightly faster for the overall image sequence, but it can capture images a bit quicker. The Nokia Camera app is a bit slower, but offers a lot more functionality such as full manual controls. This app will be superseded with the Lumia Camera app at some point, which should help with the shot to shot time. Some of the Lumia Camera features such as 4K video require a better ISP than the 735 has, but the increased shot speed, camera launch time, and image processing should get a nice boost with the update.

Looking at the times the Nokia Camera app is slightly quicker to focus, but shot to shot time is longer. Both values are unimpressive, so all we can hope for is the updated Camera app to trickle down to the lower end phones.

Video

The Lumia 735 will record video at 720p or 1080p, and at framerates of 24, 25, and 30 frames per second. The lack of 4K video is no surprise, since the ISP in the Snapdragon 400 cannot handle this, and the 6.7 MP sensor is too few pixels for 4K. The 735 also lacks the quad-microphone array of the 830, 930, and 1520, which allow those devices to record in Dolby Digital surround sound. Video recordings on the 735 are strictly stereo affairs.

The low pass audio filter helps with the wind noise, and the overall image quality is quite good for 1080p video. The 735 lacks Optical Image Stabilisation compared to the 830 and higher devices, so the video is not as smooth when walking around as one might hope.

Battery Life

Battery life on a smartphone is one of the more important aspects, but it is certainly not as high profile as a high resolution display or fast processor. The 735 has the same battery capacity as the Lumia 830 at 2200 mAh, and also has a 3.8 V chemistry for a total of 7.04 Wh. With the same internals as the Lumia 830, this will really come down to which device has a more power efficient display. The 830 has LCD, which generally comes out ahead on our browsing test due to the extra power OLED requires to create white, but the 735 display is also slightly smaller and thus requires less power.

As a note, starting with the Lumia 830 review I changed the testing methodology to leave the phone in Battery Saver mode for our browsing tests. We already do the same on Android and iOS by stopping background syncing. This will continue going forward, but I wanted to make note of it. I have updated the results in our graphs for the other Windows Phones I have tested to use the Battery Saver values.

To compare consistently across all devices, we set each device to 200 nits of brightness at 100% average picture level. We run each test several times to ensure we are getting a consistent result.

The battery life in the Lumia 735 is quite good. Nine and a half hours of screen-on time should easily get you through a day of use unless you are a very heavy user. This is not record setting, but it is very close to other devices in the same price range.

The Lumia 735 does support LTE, and normally we would test battery life over LTE as well, however the device shipped for review is designed for Europe, and does not have Band 4 support. HSPA is a lot more power hungry than LTE, so it would be a disadvantage to the 735 to not compare it on LTE.

BaseMark calculates its score based on the amount of battery life versus the amount of work done, however on Windows Phone, it cannot get the CPU frequency information, so the scoring is not as accurate as we would like. Because of this, I will ignore the battery life benchmark from Basemark for the time being. Now that GFXBench is available, we can get an idea of battery life during 3D games. The 735 does well here, but it also has low performance.

Charge Time

If you are ever far from home and running low on power, having a phone that charges quickly will be a blessing. The Lumia 735 comes with a 0.75 A charger, which is fairly small. This leads to one of our longer charge times.

The 735 does support Qi wireless charging, so if you have a charging mat you can utilise it to keep the device powered up without any cables. Microsoft also sells the DT-903 Wireless Charging Plate, which when linked to your Lumia over Bluetooth, can show you notifications while your phone is charging.

We also like to take a look at the charge rate over time. Total charge time can be deceiving because some phones charge very quickly for the first 80% or so, then slow down, with the final few percentage taking quite a long time. While the total charge time is still important, but if you need a quick top up, it is good to get some power in the battery quickly.

The 735 does slow down near the end, but only slightly. The extremely long charge rate means that for this phone, if you are traveling it would be good to bring a higher amperage charger with you.

Wi-Fi

Windows Phone does not give us as much access to the hardware as Android, making outright declarations about hardware difficult. However, it is most likely the Wi-Fi solution in the Lumia 735 is the Qualcomm VIVE which is part of the SoC. Unlike the Lumia 830 though, this is a single band only, with one spatial stream. The maximum connection speed is 72.2 Mbps.

Maximum transfer speed that I achieved was only 29 Mbps, which is not fantastic. Many people have faster internet connections in their home, so the 735 will likely not be able to max those out.

Cellular

The MSM8926 SoC supports up to Category 4 LTE, which offers a maximum of 150 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload, depending on tower traffic, provider hardware, and location of course.

The model shipped for review can support GSM at 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz, along with WCDMA Band 1 (2100 MHz), Band 5 (850 MHz), and Band 8 (900 MHz). LTE FDD is on bands 3 (1800 MHz), 7 (2600 MHz), and 20 (800 MHz). In North America, the main LTE band is band 4, which is not available on this sample to allow LTE speed testing.

GNSS

Qualcomm’s IZat Gen8A is the GPS in the Snapdragon 400 SoC, and as with most modern Qualcomm location solutions it is fast and accurate. With location services enabled on the phone, GPS lock happened within a couple of seconds. Going from location services disabled to a GPS lock took around thirty seconds, which is pretty good.

The Lumia 735 supports A-GLONASS, A-GPS, BeiDou, and assist from cellular and Wi-Fi networks to get a quicker location fix.

Speaker

The Lumia 735 has a single speaker on the back of the device, which reduces bezel sizes but does not give you the optimum location for a speaker. The maximum SPL playing music is around 81 dBA, and the sound quality is as expected not fantastic, with very little low range and a very tinny sound.

If you are to play music on this device, it would be best to do it through either headphones or a Bluetooth speaker. It does have a graphic equalizer, which can be used for the internal speaker or headphones.

Due to technical issues, I am unable to do a recording for call quality at this time.

Final Words

The Lumia 735 is in an interesting place in the Lumia lineup. The Lumia 630/635 is significantly less expensive, and features the same SoC, but has a significantly worse display and camera. The 630/635 is also missing out on basic sensors such as an ambient light sensor, which you do get on the 735. The Lumia 830 on the other hand can now be had for only a little bit more money, and has a larger display with Glance screen support, and a PureView camera with OIS. The body of the 830 is certainly more premium feeling with the aluminum frame, comes with twice the amount of internal storage, and has dual-band Wi-Fi.

Depending on local pricing, it makes the Lumia 735 a hard sell. The 830, as long as it is close in price, is a better Lumia phone in every way. Both models may not be available in all markets though.

One thing the 735 does have going for it is the in-hand feel. The curved sides, smooth polycarbonate back, and curved glass make for a great experience when using the phone. The slightly smaller size may appeal to a lot of people as well, and as Apple has shown, there is certainly a market for a 4.7” phone.

The 735 has been a tough review. There is nothing outright wrong with the phone, but at the same time, it does not wow me with any one feature. The battery life is good, but not outstanding. The display is good, but not great. The camera is also good, and has a great f/1.9 aperture, but lacks the optical image stabilisation and high megapixel count of some of the other Lumia phones which allows you to crop images without losing detail. The front facing camera is much better than other Lumia devices (save the just announced 535 which also features a 5 MP front camera), but it is still a far cry from the rear camera’s capabilities. The lack of a physical camera button is a disappointment as well, and there are no hardware Windows Phone keys either. The real kicker is the lack of Glance screen, especially because this is an OLED display and would offer a great Glance experience.

When the Lumia 735 was announced alongside the 830, there was a significant price difference between the models, and depending on your market, that may be the case today. At launch, the 735 was 219 Euros vs 330 Euros for the 830. That would put the 735 at around $250 USD, compared to $375 USD for the 830. With that price gap, the 735 makes more sense (although one could argue the 830 was priced too high, which I would). If you are looking for a traditional Lumia polycarbonate phone, with a better front facing camera, the Lumia 735 is a good mid-range phone if priced correctly. However the 830 is better, so if both are available in your market for around the same money, check out the 830.