Microsoft’s latest entry-level smartphone, Lumia 540, is now available in India at a price of Rs 10,000, but it will struggle to compete with the recently launched Lumia 640, which is available at the exact same price from Flipkart.
The only area where the Lumia 540 has an advantage over its competitor is in still photo selfies, thanks to its 5 MP front camera. Lumia 640 has a 0.9 MP front camera.
Other than that, the specifications of the two models are either the same or the 640 has a clear edge.
Even within the camera department, when it comes to video, the scales are reversed, with the 640 clearly having a big edge here.
The 640 records HD video with its front camera, while the other model records only 480p video from both the front and back camera.
In fact, with 640, you can record full HD 1080p video from the back camera. In terms of clarity, 1080p video is exactly three times clearer than 480p video because each frame contains 1 mln pixels compared to 0.33 mln pixels in the 480p mode.
There are other ways in which the 640 is a better phone. For example, it is built on the mid-range Snapdragon 400 chipset, while the 540 is built on the Snapdragon 200 chipset. This will result in a power difference of around 25%.
That said, the Snapdragon 200 is a very capable chipset and even tablets, such as the Huawei Honor T, function very well with the set.
It should also be noted that the Lumia 640 was launched two months ago at a price of Rs 12,000, and has seen its price decline by Rs 2,000 since then. Flipkart is the exclusive seller of the phone, while the new phone will be available through all outlets.
Similarly, the price of the Lumia 540 can also be expected to decline to Rs 9,000 within one month, and to around Rs 8,500 in two months. There is one more Lumia phone to consider in this price range, the Lumia 535, priced at just Rs 7,000.
As a result, we believe that buyers should either wait, or go for 640 if in a hurry.
The third contender, the 5-inch Lumia 535 is very similar to the 540, except with for the display quality. The new model has twice as many pixels or dots (1 mln) compared to the 535.
The 535 also comes with a 5 MP camera at the back and front, while the other two phones have 8 MP shooters at the back. As a result, for Rs 7,000, the Lumia 535 makes little sense.
Coming back to the comparison between 540 and 640, the key points where the 600 series phone overtakes the 500 series are looks, graphics capability and the ability to shoot full HD video using the rear camera.
The Lumia 540 is able to shoot only 480p videos from both its front and back cameras.
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