We go hands-on with the Lumia 735

It finally happened – Microsoft made a smartphone for selfies. It eventually had to happen obviously – its competitors have outed a selfie smartphone equivalent for some months now, and it’s only now that the company has had the time to do so. The Lumia 735 is being brandied about by Microsoft as a camera for the selfie-obsessed, and we spent some quality time with the smartphone a few days ago when we met with Microsoft execs.

Lumia 735 specs

• 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor
• Adreno 305
• 1GB of RAM
• 4.7-inch AMOLED ClearBlack HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, 720 x 1280 resolution
• 8GB of storage, expandable via microSD up to 128GB
• 6.7-megapixel rear camera with Carl Zeiss optics, AF and LED flash
• 5-megapixel front camera with 24mm focal length
• WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS
• 3G, LTE
• Wireless charging
• Windows Phone 8.1
• 2200 mAh
• 134.7 x 68.5 x 8.9 mm

First Impressions: really nice looking phone with powerful camera features

Since it’s a Lumia device, the design of the Lumia 735 isn’t surprising – it uses a solid plastic body that’s removable and swappable, allowing you to mix and match different colors as you see fit. The device fits well in the hand, and the curves of the smartphone allow you to hold it nicely as you use it. One thing that we didn’t like was just how ridiculously loud the color of the 735 was, which is further exaggerated by the glossy finish on the device. The orange color of the device that we used during hands-on was really stands out (so much so that we started referring to the color as safety orange) and would really be easy to spot across the room.

For a phone that’s being touted as a selfie phone, it was odd to not see a physical camera key on the Lumia 735. Speaking of cameras, the Lumia 735 has a new selfie camera app that allows you apply several effects and filters to the photo. The app also allows you to take selfies using the main camera – the camera detects when there’s a face in focus, then takes a photo. This app is present on both the Lumia 735 and Lumia 830, and can be installed in some other Lumia phones. You can see how this works on the demo below:

On the hardware side of things, you’re looking at an 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor paired with 1GB of RAM. Like the 830, we didn’t see any signifant lag even with the less than stellar hardware on the device, and navigating through the phone was extremely smooth, with no issues at all. The 4.7-inch AMOLED ClearBlack HD display is protected with Gorilla Glass 3, and looks awesome with excellent viewing angles all around.

There’s two versions of this phone – the Lumia 735 which we handled will have LTE on board, while the Lumia 730 would have dual-SIM capability but no LTE. Aside from the dual-SIM/LTE both devices are identical.

No official price has been set for the Lumia 735, but international prices put them at 199 EUR (Php 11286) for the 730 while the 735 goes for 219 EUR (Php 12420).