Great budget phone with decent specs at a fantastic price, I think!
Available on Amazon for £85.00
5" touchscreen with Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
5MP rear & front-facing camera with video recording
Windows 8.1 operating system with Quad-core processor
All comments (30)
mccririck
9 Jan 16#1
550 is out now I think. There's a 540 as well.
chancooluk to mccririck
9 Jan 16#4
The 540 is India/Asia only. It is not available in the UK.
chancooluk
9 Jan 162#2
Honestly you would be better off with a Lumia 550 from Carphone warehouse for the same price.
It has a smaller, but higher resolution / quality touch screen. Better processor and Windows 10. The only thing that isn't quite as good is the front facing camera.
Also, the 535 has some touch-screen issues that cause it to mis-behave or detect ghost touches.
mtcerio to chancooluk
11 Jan 16#23
I had one, this made it unusable.
KyleGM
9 Jan 16#3
As much as I love Windows Phones (I have a Lumia 950XL) I'd advise spending an extra £30 for the new 550, it's going to outperform this in everyway and the 535 is notorious for having a very unresponsive screen.
NEtech
9 Jan 16#5
Get a 635 cheaper than this most of the time. Mega cold for a 3G only phone. Can even get the 550 for close to this price.
bigivan
9 Jan 161#6
Don't have a problem with mine, great for budget phone
benyoung89
9 Jan 16#7
showing sim free for 99 quid?
chancooluk
9 Jan 16#8
It was £49.99+£10 top up this morning on PAYG (all CPW phones are unlocked regardless). It had been that price for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately the price has been increased, but still cheaper than the SIM Free option (unlocked either way).
roflll
10 Jan 16#9
This is a great phone, and I much prefer it over the 550 purely for the screen size and cameras. The touchscreen problems were rectified a year ago.
There area quite a few bugs in the 550 due to Windows 10, which will be sorted out soon. The 535 is likely to get Windows 10 very soon, and hopefully it'll be stable.
JC1997
10 Jan 16#10
got it from Vodafone for £39 :stuck_out_tongue:
tallpete33
10 Jan 16#11
Or the 640 is still £79 at vodaphone
Libertas
10 Jan 16#12
Looking for some guidance please.
I've never owned a windows phone - only android or apple iphones,
I've just reserved two of the Vodaphone Smart First 6 Phones (£20 at argos) - purely as backup phones for two members of my extended family.
A) What are the upsides of a windows phone over android?
B) How is app availability?
I can leave the two voda's and get the 550 instead - but I'd need to know why I should?
My thanks to any, willing to help.
Quids to Libertas
12 Jan 16#27
All imo...
Pros:
Much more stable platform than android
Simple and straightforward design
Nice build on phones, relatively robust
Smooth OS (I can't recall if I've ever had a 'freeze' on the phone compared to my last android)
Cheaper phones.
Cons:
Lack of apps. (doesn't sound like much, but in the last month three of the apps on my windows phone have ceased working, but I believe you can still get them on android. The lack of apps on windows is - imo - getting worse, and some of the more prominent ones just don't make apps for windows - BBC for eg)
My son who is a developer/designer took a look at my windows phone at Xmas and just laughed (the git). But I tend to agree with him when he explained what he was laughing at.
To sum up, just try putting a fortnightly event that's gonna last say 18 months into the phones calendar. I've been able to do that in android since I first bought one about 6 years ago.
Not quite. While you are very likely to get an unlocked phone if it's a network exclusive ( IE colour or finish) it may be network locked. If CPW get a better deal from a network they may take that as cost is a factor and the phone may be locked. . There in no way to guarantee its unlocked until you get the phone in store.
adamhearn
10 Jan 16#15
A) "Better" phone experience for less money in that the hardware requirements for Windows Phone OS are less/is better optimised than comparable versions of Android thus it should run a bit slicker. Unless you're really impatient you're not likely to notice too much. It's also very different to Android/iOS so may take longer to "learn".
B) Comparatively poor, though of course it depends on what you really want/need instead of it just being a numbers game. For instance, you cannot get official Sky or Panasonic TV apps for Windows Phone which makes it pretty much a non-starter for me even though everything else is available.
Another question is what level of investment you have in apps from a store currently. You [usually] cannot transfer those licenses to the new platform so you would have to re-purchase them.
elliot_joseph
10 Jan 16#16
Its not a bad deal but it's been £49 before pay as you go on a number of occasions. The phone is ok for 59 but it has a few niggling issues. It's good in terms of functionality but I've had a few and the let down is the touch screen sometimes goes a bit haywire. It runs alot of apps for the value though and is quick
foes4you
10 Jan 16#17
I would wait til the mythical windows 10 is actually on a phone before buying one.
amour3k
11 Jan 16#18
Upgrade is exactly what it says on the Tin 'UpGrade'? .. if you DON'T have an existing Pay & Go Phone from Network 'X' then your NOT going to be eligible for that Phone under that particular criteria, etc, etc? (its known as UpGrade for a reason ..... ) :-)
redondo5
11 Jan 16#19
If it has the data free Nokia drive app I would by this
chancooluk to redondo5
11 Jan 16#24
It does. It's called HERE Drive (same app as Nokia drive, which was later renamed and sold off as HERE). It's pre-installed on the Lumia 535.
Babbler
11 Jan 16#20
Managed to get one for my dad @ £49.99 including £10 topup at chirstmas at CPW - Was even cheaper on virgin payg upgrade (£39.99).
bluecityste
11 Jan 16#21
is there any way of getting this as an 'upgrade' without already being on payg?
allan1954 to bluecityste
11 Jan 16#22
no.
chancooluk
11 Jan 161#25
Yup, same here. With 'double-tap to wake' enabled mine used to unlock itself and type in a bunch of wrong PIN numbers all on its own, which rendered the phone useless as Windows Phone locks you out after too many wrong PIN attempts. Had to hard-reset it to be able to use it again. This was after the firmware upgrade which was supposed to fix the problem.
I'm using a Lumia 550 at the moment for review purposes, and had no issues with the touch response so far.
allan1954
12 Jan 16#26
i use the wifi hotspot feature on my windows phone have you tried this on the 550 any problems please.
chancooluk
12 Jan 161#28
Many apps are finding their way to Windows since Windows 10 was released. The new BBC Store app was released as a universal app before it hit android and iOS! Still, there is a lot of catching up to do.
BTW, the calendar app in Windows 10 now supports a full array of repeatable events:
Quids
12 Jan 16#29
Tbh, it concerns me that the idea of a 'fortnightly event' never occurred to the MS programmers in the first place.
After that, what else never occurred to them?
chancooluk
13 Jan 161#30
Checked this last night by tethering my Asus android tablet. I don't usually use the feature as I don't have enough data allowance, but it worked ok.
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Opening post
Available on Amazon for £85.00
5" touchscreen with Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
5MP rear & front-facing camera with video recording
Windows 8.1 operating system with Quad-core processor
All comments (30)
It has a smaller, but higher resolution / quality touch screen. Better processor and Windows 10. The only thing that isn't quite as good is the front facing camera.
Also, the 535 has some touch-screen issues that cause it to mis-behave or detect ghost touches.
There area quite a few bugs in the 550 due to Windows 10, which will be sorted out soon. The 535 is likely to get Windows 10 very soon, and hopefully it'll be stable.
I've never owned a windows phone - only android or apple iphones,
I've just reserved two of the Vodaphone Smart First 6 Phones (£20 at argos) - purely as backup phones for two members of my extended family.
A) What are the upsides of a windows phone over android?
B) How is app availability?
I can leave the two voda's and get the 550 instead - but I'd need to know why I should?
My thanks to any, willing to help.
Pros:
Much more stable platform than android
Simple and straightforward design
Nice build on phones, relatively robust
Smooth OS (I can't recall if I've ever had a 'freeze' on the phone compared to my last android)
Cheaper phones.
Cons:
Lack of apps. (doesn't sound like much, but in the last month three of the apps on my windows phone have ceased working, but I believe you can still get them on android. The lack of apps on windows is - imo - getting worse, and some of the more prominent ones just don't make apps for windows - BBC for eg)
My son who is a developer/designer took a look at my windows phone at Xmas and just laughed (the git). But I tend to agree with him when he explained what he was laughing at.
To sum up, just try putting a fortnightly event that's gonna last say 18 months into the phones calendar. I've been able to do that in android since I first bought one about 6 years ago.
B) Comparatively poor, though of course it depends on what you really want/need instead of it just being a numbers game. For instance, you cannot get official Sky or Panasonic TV apps for Windows Phone which makes it pretty much a non-starter for me even though everything else is available.
Another question is what level of investment you have in apps from a store currently. You [usually] cannot transfer those licenses to the new platform so you would have to re-purchase them.
I'm using a Lumia 550 at the moment for review purposes, and had no issues with the touch response so far.
BTW, the calendar app in Windows 10 now supports a full array of repeatable events:
After that, what else never occurred to them?