Window: Hands-On Experience With The New Microsoft Lumia 532

Hands-On Experience With The New Microsoft Lumia 532


At a press event in Mumbai yesterday, I had chance to try out the new Lumia 532 device from Microsoft. Microsoft made announcement about both the new affordable devices, Lumia 435 and Lumia 532. But, they had only Lumia 532 for hands-on by the media. I just want to share my experience I had with this new device.
Design:

The Lumia 532 design follows the old Nokia Asha stlye body with premium layered design. The semi-transparent layered design actually looks cool and it is comfortable in the hands as well. After using 4.5-inch plus devices, 4-inch Lumia 532 felt small in my hands. It has a LCD display with a decent WVGA (800 x 480) resolution. Even though the color reproduction on the display was not accurate, but you can adjust it with the display color profile settings to some level. The device is available in bright green, bright orange, white and black. I saw the bright green, bright orange, and white versions at this event and it looked attractive. One thing I wish it had was a hardware camera key.
Performance:

The Lumia 532 has a quad core Snapdragon CPU and 1GB RAM. Just like any other Windows Phone device, there is no lag whatsoever.It just works. When you look at the price point of this device, there are very few Android devices which can match the performance of this device out of the box. It has ambient light sensor, accelerometer and proximity sensor for great experience. I was surprised by the fact that this device supports Glance Screen because my Lumia 930 Icon does not supports it.
Pricing and Value:

Lumia 532 will be available at a best buy price of INR 6499. This device also comes with amazing offers in India. Read about it in detail here. Yes, you can find an Android device with better specs at this price point, but I believe Lumia 532 offers great value that those devices. Things like performance, integrated Microsoft services and out of the box experience are few things that stands out for this device. Coming to the most important thing, it runs on Windows Phone 8.1 and the Lumia Denim firmware. So, it includes Cortana in markets where it’s available, Live Folders, Apps Corner and Action Center. Microsoft has also announced that it will support upcoming Windows 10 release. Overall, I think it is a great value product for a an average consumer.