Nokia Lumia 635 review

        The Nokia Lumia 630 was one of the first to show off Nokia's vision of a classy entry-level phone, and the Nokia Lumia 635 is identical in all but three areas.
The first and perhaps most notable of those areas is its price tag. At the time of writing the Lumia 635 is available SIM free from around £85 (US$90 / AU$170) for the Lumia 635 compared to a roughly £70 (US$85 / AU$130) price tag for the 630.
 That additional cost gets you 4G LTE network connectivity, as well as a glossy finish to the Lumia 635's colourful rear cover. That price bump used to be bigger, but the question remains, is it worth the extra?
Alongside these extras, the Nokia Lumia 635 offers the same 4.5-inch 854 x 480 display, the same quad-core Snapdragon 400 CPU backed by 512MB of RAM, the same 8GB of storage, and the same 5-megapixel rear camera as the 630.
In fact, it inherits pretty much all of its sibling's strengths and weaknesses.
 With the average smartphone size seemingly expanding by the year, the Nokia Lumia 635 almost feels small in the hand. In fact, moving from an iPhone 5S to the Lumia 635 didn't feel like such a jolting leap as moving to something like the Nokia Lumia 1520 or the OnePlus One did.
 But with a 4.5-inch display, it's small in relative terms only. In fact, I'd probably say that the Nokia Lumia 635's screen is very close to optimal in terms of the balance between single-handed usability and widescreen media clarity.
Sadly the Lumia 635's screen is not going to show your HD movies or favourite web pages in the best light. At 854 x 480, the resolution is distinctly behind the smartphone curve. The similarly priced original Motorola Moto G, for example, offers the same size of screen with a 1280 x 720 resolution.

Still, Nokia has always had a number of display tricks up its sleeve, and the Lumia 635 is no different. IPS and ClearBlack technology combine to ensure that viewing angles and outdoor legibility are above what you'd normally expect from a "cheap" smartphone.
However, I was disappointed that there was no apparent sign of Nokia's super sensitive touch display technology, meaning you can't operate the phone with gloves on. This was even present in the Nokia Lumia 520, so it's not as if it's a high-end feature.
Nor do you get the desirable tap-to-power-on option that the likes of the Nokia Lumia 1320 possessed, or the ability to glance at the time and whether you have any new notifications by hovering your finger over the display. The absence of these features is perhaps a little more understandable as Nokia strives to keep costs down on the Lumia 635.