Hi Friends,
I have been using Microsoft Lumia 540 Dual SIM phone for last 2 and half years. Please find the review of this phone based on my experience.
Phone Body /Hardware - Lumia 540 looks very good and its body is made with a very good plastic and it doesn’t slips off your hand. You get a good hold on phone due to rigid body material. Body of the phone is too strong that it doesn’t crack or get scratch when it falls. So hardware wise it is very strong phone. Internal configuration is also very good it runs on 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor which many other phone companies prefers.
Call Audio quality - This is the major plus point with lumia 540 that I experience last 2.5 years. Unlike other phones in same price range, the audio quality is the best and I hardly experience any noise in the audio. Audio is clear and loud. Speaker also very good in quality.
Network signal - Lumia phones are excellent in transmitting and receiving signals and it works really well with both 2G and 3G networks.
Phone performance - Phone is equipped with 1 GB RAM and 8 GB ROM. In normal usage [this does not include high end gaming or 3d gaming] phone performs really well. I never face any issue like phone hung or unresponsiveness. One of the very good feature with windows phone is that it gives you an option to install your application in Micro SD card rather than on phone which keeps your phone ROM free for system usage and it improves phone performance. Apart from applications, you can configure to save pictures, videos to Micro SD card.
Intelligent software that automatically detects issue with phone - I think I never see this kind of feature in any android phone. In this feature, phone OS recommends you to restart if it detects any issue with phone. In other android phone when phone hangs or behaves in different manner, we need restart it but in windows phone, OS itself suggest to take a restart to fix issue.
Battery life - With normal usage like calling, WIFI and limited 2g/3g usage, phone battery easily last till a day or sometime more than a day also.
User friendly design - Here lumia phones do not get good marks. If you carefully observe phone UI, you feel little tough to use or understand it. One such example while showing contact information, you will find the name of contact on small fonts and other less important detail are appearing on bigger font! Another example if you browse through setting options, you find some settings starts with Small case while other starts with Capital Case letter, this looks wired!
Compatibility with Windows 10 - Lumia 540 supports Win10 OS as well and I used this OS on my phone for about 6 months. I can tell one thing confidently that phone performance really drops to very low level if it runs on Win10. Also many features on Win10 does not work well, looks like it is beta version software. So my advice is to run this phone with Win8.1 version only.
Microsoft Office support - This is one of the plus point with Lumia phone that it gets Microsoft Office installed with phone when you purchase it. It makes many day to day jobs very easy like writing /editing document, working with excel sheet, PPT etc. Microsoft outlook software on Lumia is the best performing Outlook client that I ever used on any mobile platform. It has many exciting features like mail with attachment, OOO/Automatic reply setting etc. So it is best phone for people who want connect to their office mail server.
Application Support - I think in this area, Microsoft has to work harder to make this phone more popular among the users. All other things are good with phone but there is severe shortage of apps on Windows platform. Many games or utility apps are not available on Windows platform and those which are available have many serious bugs which are not addressed for years. So if you are App or game lover then this phone will not impress you much.
Value for money - Well it depends on what you expect from this phone. If you expect a lot of customization, apps or games then this phone will disappoint you. But if you just want to use this phone for basic purpose like calling, internet usage, or simple Apps then you will love this phone and it will be your companions for years without any issue. Even after usage of 2.5 years I never face any hardware issue in my phone and it still works very smooth for me.
I hope this review will help buyers to make good, choice.
Thanks for reading the review
Rajesh