Microsoft Lumia 535 review

The Lumia 535 has all the latest Windows Phone 8.1 features, including Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant that can search the web to answer questions and queries via voice control. As with previous Lumia handsets we’ve tested with Cortana, there’s still a long way to go before it can rival Apple’s Siri in terms of accuracy and efficiency, but it is still in beta at the moment, so we’re hoping it will be improved over the coming months.

The main problem with Cortana in its current form is that you have to be very specific in your requests. For instance, if you try making an appointment for “Monday morning”, Cortana will default to 8am and trying to change the time involves several more steps and requests that we’d rather do without. Siri, on the other hand, immediately asks you what time you’d like to make the appointment for and schedules it accordingly.

Trying to change conflicting appointments with Cortana was also a bit of a hassle, as she would only notify us of a conflict after she’d scheduled the second appointment. Siri, on the other hand, immediately picks up conflicts and asks what to do. 

^ Cortana defaults to 8am when you ask her to make an appointment for you in the morning, but changing the time via voice control isn’t easy 

Cortana’s main strength was creating reminders, as she immediately asked us when and what time we’d like to be reminded about our request, whereas Siri just created the reminder and that was it. You’ll have to be careful in how your phrase your reminders and appointments, though, as neither assistant picked up conflicts between reminders and calendar appointments.

Other requests and questions result in general Bing searches as well, which only search for the terms you posed in the question. For example, when we asked Cortana “What’s the latest celebrity news?” it only turned up broad hub pages for “celebrity news”. Siri, on the other hand, found specific stories about individual celebrities that looked far more interesting to read.

One Cortana feature we particularly like is Quiet Hours. This turns off all calls and notifications during set times of the day, which is really handy if you don’t want to be disturbed in the evening when you’re at home. Close friends and family can still get through if you add them to your ‘inner circle’, though, so you needn’t worry about missing anything important. Anyone who calls twice within three minutes will also be allowed through in case of an emergency, but you can always disable this feature if you prefer. 

^ Colours look good and there’s a reasonable amount of detail on show, but shadow areas are a little dingy and green

The Lumia 535 has five-megapixel cameras on both the front and back of the phone, but we weren’t very impressed with the overall picture quality. Outdoors, our shots were reasonably well-exposed with rich, accurate colours, but particularly light or bright areas seemed to bleed out into the surrounding picture, making certain areas appear slightly soft and hazy. We found this rather off-putting as it removed a lot of the detail on show and gave everything a noticeable white and yellowish sheen. Objects and buildings further also weren’t particularly crisp round the edges, and shadow areas looked a little green, but this isn’t surprising for a 5-megapixel camera.

We’re not sure how Microsoft’s gone so wrong with the Lumia 535, but it remains one of the worst Windows phones we’ve ever tested. This is a shame, as it’s just as well built as other Lumia phones and its funky set of colours offer a great alternative to the swathe of budget black and white Android phones available. Still, if you’re set on getting a cheap Windows phone, the Lumia 630 is a much better buy than this poor first effort, as it’s not only much quicker and easier to use, but it also has a much longer-lasting battery.