The new Lumia 535 was launched in Kenya on Tuesday. The Lumia 535 follows the design principle established in the Lumia 620. It comes with the latest version of Windows Phone and with regular over-the-air updates, you’ll always have the newest software in class or at work.
With Microsoft Office built in, and quick access to your files through One-drive, viewing and editing your documents is easy and you get 15 GB of free One-drive storage, which helps you to upload your photos and share them with friends in a private folder.
Coming packed with premium features, the Lumia 535 sports a colourful design, easy readability in sunlight on a large five-inch display and a quad-core processor for a smooth smartphone experience. And if the built-in 8 GB of internal storage and 15 GB of free One-drive storage isn’t enough, bulk up to an additional 128 GB by adding a micro-SD card.
With its 5 inch qHD screen, latest Windows Phone software and Lumia firmware, 5MP front facing camera and 5MP rear facing camera, the Lumia 535 defines the standard for an affordable smartphone in 2015. Taking stunning selfies and fit more friends into the picture has been made more mesmerising with the wide-angle, 5 MP front-facing camera.
It also comes with the popular Lumia selfie app installed for easy access to the front-facing camera, enhance your selfies with filters and easily share with friends from the app to One-drive, Instagram, Twitter and more.
Another recent feature is the notification panel that you pull down from the top of the screen, like in Android. It shows incoming notifications from your messaging apps or emails, as well as giving quick access to critical settings such as Wi-Fi and screen brightness.
The back of the device prominently displays the Microsoft logo as well as a single LED flash that enhances your photos to those of high quality. To maintain the Lumia 535’s slim 8.8 mm thickness, the camera module is raised slightly and has a protective lip for the lens.
The 3.5 mm headset jack is placed at the top of the device, off centre, while the micro USB charging and sync port is located at the bottom of the phone. The Lumia 535 sports a rather loud rear firing speaker that is also located at the bottom of the device. This speaker is clear and reproduces sound quite well. The device comes in a wide range of exciting colours including blue, green, orange, white and dark gray.
As smartphone screens have steadily grown in size over the years, the larger displays have primarily been the territory of the flagship devices. The Lumia 535’s five inch screen breaks this tradition in a major way considering that the midrange 2012 Lumia 620 was 3.8 inches, by bringing large screen to the affordable tier. The Microsoft Lumia 535 is very affordable at Sh13,800. The device is already available in the stores.
Lumia has great customization capability of home-screens with resizeable tiles and folders, which became available earlier, with the Windows 8.1 Denim update available on Lumia 535.
“Lumia is one personal phone and no one is similar to the other, it’s the most personal phone in that your home-screen is defined by the apps you set as live tiles,” said Microsoft’s Kingori Gitahi.