Back in March, we got to take a look at the Microsoft Lumia 640 XL at MWC and I was pretty impressed with it. Now, we have it in its retail packaging. As always with the Lumia packaging, the phone sits to the right on its own compartment. But we’ll remove that and place it to one side while we get a proper look at what comes with the phone in the box.
First up is the battery. This is a removable battery. It is 3000mAh powers which should give you plenty of standby time. Of course, it comes with Microsoft’s branding on the outside. We also get the Quick Start Guide, which is really easy to get through and shows you all the stuff you need to know to get your device set up. You also get a power adaptor and usually it doesn’t have a USB output. It’s just a regular power adaptor like the old days. We’re going to put everything back in the box and get our first look at the device itself.
Like most Lumias, it does contrast the black glass on the front with a plastic rear cover. This one is a white model. It’s a white matte finish, which is really nice, soft touch finish and it’s not shiny at all. It does feel really, really nice. It obviously comes in other colors as well. But to get the battery in, we have to remove the rear shell off. And we do it by prising it open from the bottom and then we can just pop the battery in, connecting it to those golden connector points. But we also have a port for the micro SIM card and a microSD card. Now actually taking the rear shell off and putting it on again isn’t very difficult at all. But once on, it sort of feels like it belongs—it doesn’t look like a two part device.
Now on the back, we have a camera. This is a 13MP Carl Zeiss lens capable of shooting 1080p video. And as you can see, it’s got a slight protrusion out the back. There’s also a single LED flash. On the bottom edge, is the microUSB port. On top, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the front is the 5MP front-facing camera. As you can see, the buttons are on-screen, there are no capacitive buttons.
At 157.1mm tall, it’s roughly the same as an iPhone 6 Plus. Despite having a larger display, it is noticeably thicker than both the 6 Plus and the Note 4 but it’s still only 9mm thin. On the front is a 5.7-inch LCD display. Now this is 720 x 1280, so those of you who like really sharp displays might be a little bit disappointed with the 259ppi on this.
Powering the device on the inside is a Qualcomm 400 Quad-Core, 1.2GHz chip. It also has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. But like I already showed you, isn’t a microSD card. And you can expand it up to 128GB.
There are various models and options of this 640 XL. There’s an LTE model, which I don’t have. There’s also a dual SIM model. And they’re all be varying in price and features, depending on which market you’re in. but it does come loaded with Windows Phone 8.1 with the Lumia Denim update. So all the currently available latest stuff that’s on Windows Phone is going to be on the 640 XL. And when Windows 10 for Phones comes out later this year, it will be upgradeable to that as well.
Now in terms of first impressions, like I’ve already said, I like the look and the feel of the device. It is a tiny bit big and the display actually isn’t terrible. The colors are good and the contrast is good, at least for a very budget-minded phone. I can also say it’s very fast too but I’ve only had it powered on for a few hours so we’ll see how it copes with day-to-day life when I bring you my full review later on.
Key specs include:
- 5.7-inch IPS LCD display, 720x1280 resolution
- 259 pixels-per-inch
- 13MP Carl Zeiss camera w/1080p video
- Single LED flash
- 5MP front camera w/1080p video
- 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor
- 1GB RAM
- 8GB storage
- Expandable up to 128GB via microSD
- 3,000mAh removable battery
- Available in LTE and dual-SIM models globally
- Runs Windows Phone 8.1 with Lumia Denim
Short spoiler: For the ~£200 GBP ($295 USD approx) it's pretty great value for money.