Two mid-range Lumia’s launched recently and each takes a different approach. The Lumia 830 has been dubbed an ‘affordable flagship’ and while it doesn’t quite live up to the name it combines reasonable specs with a fairly low price tag, while the Lumia 735 is lower end but better equipped to take good selfies. Read on for the differences in full.
Both the Nokia Lumia 830 and the Nokia Lumia 735 have a plastic back, but while the Lumia 735 also has plastic sides the Lumia 830 (below) has a metal frame, so it looks substantially better and higher end.
The shape of the two phones is similarly rectangular but they have different dimensions, with the Lumia 735 coming in at 134.7 x 68.5 x 8.9mm and 134g, while the Nokia Lumia 830 is 139.4 x 70.7 x 8.5mm and 150g. So the Lumia 830 is longer and wider as is necessary due to its larger screen, but it’s actually slightly slimmer than the Lumia 735 which adds to its premium appeal.
The Nokia Lumia 735 (below) has a 4.7 inch 720 x 1280 AMOLED display with a pixel density of 312 pixels per inch, while the Nokia Lumia 830 has a 5.0 inch 720 x 1280 IPS LCD display with a pixel density of 294 pixels per inch.
Which of the two is better is somewhat debatable. The size is the main difference. So if you want a more pocket friendly phone that’s also easier to operate with one hand you’d be wise to opt for the Nokia Lumia 735. It’s also slightly sharper thanks to the smaller screen size and it’s brighter too.
But the Lumia 830 has more of a flagship size. It’s not quite so pocket friendly but it makes watching videos and playing games that little bit more immersive and the extra space also helps when web browsing.
The Nokia Lumia 735 and Lumia 830 both have a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 400 processor and 1GB of RAM. So they’re equally powerful, despite the Lumia 830 being billed as a slightly higher end phone.
In combination with the slick Windows Phone 8.1 OS they both deliver smooth performance even though their specs aren’t great on paper. Apps aren’t quite as quick to load as on say the Nokia Lumia 930 but general operation is lag free.
This is one of the main differences between the two. The Nokia Lumia 735 has a 6.7 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera on the front and a 5 megapixel snapper on the back. So it’s good for selfies and it can also record 1080p video at 30fps.
The main camera can take reasonable snaps, especially for a mid-range phone and the front-facing camera is particularly impressive for a phone in this class, plus it’s further boosted by selfie tools, such as the ability to add effects to your pictures.
The Nokia Lumia 830 has a substantially better 10 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera on the back which even includes optical image stabilisation and like the Lumia 735 it can record 1080p video at 30fps. However its front facing camera is only 0.9 megapixels. The upshot is its far better at taking photos in general but a lot worse for selfies.
The Nokia Lumia 735 and the Nokia Lumia 830 both have 2200 mAh batteries, but the Lumia 735 has better life, lasting up to 600 hours on standby or for 22 hours of talk time, while the Lumia 830, due presumably to its larger screen, only lasts up to 528 hours on standby or for 14 hours and 48 minutes of phone calls.
The Nokia Lumia 830 has twice as much internal memory as the Lumia 735, with 16GB to the Lumia 735’s 8GB. Just 8GB really isn’t much at all, but both phones also have a microSD card slot with support for cards of up to 128GB.
Both phones have the same selection of connectivity options too, with Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC all supported.
There are a number of differences between the Nokia Lumia 735 and the Lumia 830 and they don’t all work out in the more expensive phones favour. The Lumia 830 has a more premium build, a larger screen, more built in storage and a better main camera, while the Lumia 735 has a sharper screen, better battery life and a superior front-facing camera and there’s no difference in power between the two.
Where does that leave you? Well it depends mostly on whether you care more about selfies or other snaps, storage or battery life and screen quality or build.
Perhaps the biggest difference though is the price, with the Nokia Lumia 735 available for around £200 while the Nokia Lumia 830 is likely to set you back around £300, that’s a big difference for two quite closely matched phones and for our money makes the Lumia 735 the more tempting of the two.
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