By Rich W Woods

The Nokia Lumia 520 was the best selling Windows Phone in the history of the platform. The Lumia 530 was slated to be the successor to the Lumia 520; however, it didn’t deliver on the value that the Lumia 520 delivered. The camera has a fixed focus, it has half the storage, it’s thicker, heavier, it only records 480p video, and worst of all, it doesn’t have the physical camera button. The one improvement in the Lumia 530 was that they used a quad core processor, a 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 200 to be exact, to replace the 1 GHz dual core Snapdragon S4 Plus in the Lumia 520.

Then came the Microsoft Lumia 435. The Microsoft Lumia 435 uses a 2 MP fixed focus camera and a dual core Snapdragon 200 processor. When it came out, I said a lot of “If the Lumia 530 wasn’t quite low end enough for you”. When Microsoft asked me to review it, I was very skeptical; however, over the last five days, the Microsoft Lumia 435 has really shown me just how wrong I was.

I compared the Nokia Lumia 520 to the Microsoft Lumia 435 and while the Nokia Lumia 520 had the far superior camera, the Microsoft Lumia 435 was the better phone. It has 1 GB of RAM, which is a very useful feature.

Continue reading Nokia Lumia 530 vs Microsoft Lumia 435 Comparison →

By Rich W Woods

Recently, Microsoft asked me to review the Microsoft Lumia 435. If you’re not familiar with the device, it is Microsoft’s newest low end device, now behind the Nokia Lumia 530. I was skeptical, as it is also the first Windows Phone 8.1 device to use a dual core processor, something we haven’t seen since the original Windows Phone 8 devices, which are really becoming long in the tooth now, even the flagships.

Right now, the Nokia Lumia 530 costs around $60. The Lumia 635 costs about $50 on AT&T although it’s a little pricier on T-Mobile and much pricier unlocked. So where does the Microsoft Lumia 435 fit in? It costs around £40, so the question is, why would I buy this when I can get the Nokia Lumia 520 for just $30? Read on.

Continue reading Nokia Lumia 520 vs Microsoft Lumia 435 Comparison →